Henry Tudor Escapes to Brittany

Friends, I'm going to make this announcement quick. If you want to delve deeper into the history behind each episode, remember, you can always get more on our bonus episodes This week, producer Al and I are donning our true crime caps to figure out if Richard Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III, was a royal serial killer But for now It's time Fa vongeons America's turning two hundred and fifty this year. Why don't you celebrate with total wine and more For a milestone like this, you want to make sure there is something for everyone Total wine has the largest selection great beer, wine and spirits for every guest and every kind of celebration And those big moments add up, so it's good knowing you're getting the lowest prices And if you need a recommendation The total wine team can help Get ready for America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, shop total wine and more today and get everything you need at the lowest prices If spirits are not sold in Virginia and North Carolina, drrink responsibly be twenty one Good sleep is everything That's why Ollie's science F support is made with a blend of melatonin and Lthianine for both kiddles and grownups So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help Y racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance Find Ollie sleep solutions for the whole family at Oie. com That's O L LY d. com The oarsmen rowing the barge along the Thames pull up at the riverbank, hop out, and mor their boat at Westminster Pier A small, tough woman with a pinched face and hard eyes steps up. She hesitates before she sweeps along the unsteady gangplank to disembark Her name is Margaret Beaufort, and right now, despite herself, a smile of triumph is playing at the corners of her mouth Just behind Margaret comes a young man She doesn't know him very well. In fact, she's only ever met him a handful of times, but she loves him more than anything else in the world. It's her only son Henry Tudor The baby Margaret gave birth to during the plague swept winter of fourteen fifty seven is now thirteen years old, the same age that Margaret was when she popped him out frrankly, it's a miracle that either of them have survived this long And it's even more of a miracle Margaret has the chance to bring the lad here to Westminster to meet England's new king sort of Henry VI The date is october twenty eighth, fourteen seventy, and just a few weeks ago, in a spasm of truly bizarre political gymnastics England's Yorkist king Edward IV fled his kingdom And the old Lancastrian king Henry VI, was taken out of the Tower of London and plonked back on the English throne And since King Henry is both Margaret's son's namesake and his half uncle adamant that the two need to meet which is why she's brought him here now to the palace of Westminster, where the king is living In her wildest dreams, she never thought this day would come After being greeted at the gates, Margaret and Henry are whisped through the palace to where the king is sitting among a group of nobles, receiving visitors. Margaret's heart must be racing with excitement Although As she claps eyes on the king. bit of a struggle to keep it racing. It's been years since Margaret last saw Henry VI and time hasn't been kind to him Feble, vacant. I'm very shabby He's wearing a tatty old blue velvet gown, the sort of thing she'd expect to see at a funeral Not in the royal court Is he mad quite, but he definitely looks a few turnips short of the full harvest festival But never mind, because as Margaret greets the king and introduces her teenage boy to him and the other nobles The most astonishing look comes over Henry VI's face. It's as though he's seen a ghost He peers at Henry for a while in silence, and then, with the most serene look on his face, he says, This indeed, is the one to whom we and our adversaries must yield power What does that mean You and I might wonder, but Margaret is in no doubt Yoda in the old Navy bathrobe has spoken, and his cryptic words seem to tell her that her boy is destined to grow up to be a king and conqueror in his own right clear how, when or why, But in his mum's mind, Henry Tudor is now destined for greatness. There is just one Any tiny problem anyy day now O king of England, Edward IV, will be heading back to his kingdom determined to get his crown back Anone who stands in his way is going to have their head handed to them in a sack If Margaret isn't careful, A little tudor golden boy is going to be one of them I'm Dan Jones and from Sony Music Entertainment, this is History Season ten of a Dynasty to die for Episode six prophecy Among the many authors who've dropped out of favour since their heyday is a nineteenth century Frenchman called Eugene Soo Born to a well off surgeon from Napoleon's armies, Su had a bit of a career as a military medic himself But he soon wanted to prove that the pen was mightier than the scalpel In eighteen thirty, he published his first book, Kernoch the Pirate which kicked off a prolific career in which he put out dozens of works, which were notable for several things Firstly He had a lot of success publishing his stories as serialals You know, one exciting part every week, loads of drama keeping the audience on the edge of their seats desperate to hear what happens next If only someone would make a history podcast that worked like that Sue was also fond of writing about medieval history He did novels on Joan of Arc, the Crusades, French peeasants Rebellions, and more. And on top of all that, Sue is probably most notable today for coming up with the phrase La Vonon Semon Trebien Fraud Yeah. as it's usually translated into English Revenge is a dish Best served cold. Sue wrote his books just over three hundred and fifty years after the Plantagenet family was bringing the chaos to Western Europe in the fifteenth century ever there was a phrase to describe how Edward IV is feeling in the spring of fourteen seventy one La Vonjon, Simon, Trebiill and Fraud Is it? Because we heard last time This guy has really been put through the ringer He thought he was sitting pretty on the English throne securing it for the House of York and putting the country back together again after the disasters of Henry VI's reign. Then his old ally Richard Neville, AKA Warwick the Kingmaker, went rogue He recruited Edward's brother, George Duke of Clarence as his useful idiot then recruited the shambolic Henry VI as his useful mega idiot. And between them, these three amigos managed to hound Edward out of England forcing him to abandon not only his kingdom, but his heavily pregnant wife Then they put Henry VI back on the throne callalling it a readaption And now by the sounds of things Henry VI is living his best life chilling in Edward's palaces, wearing filthy smcks and telling weird little Welsh boys that they're going to grow up to be the dog's cock Edward is an amiable guy with a fairly deep reservoir of patience But in fourteen seventy one It's run completely dry So by Easter, he sails from his exile in Burgundy lands on England's northeast coast at Ravenspur in Yorkshire With a band of troops at his back He means business Edward hasn't just been inconvenienced He's being humiliated And someone is going to have to pay. The good news for Edward once he lands in Yorkshire is that he doesn't run up against any immediate resistance. In part, that's because he's playing it slightly cautious. Rather than saying he's come back to depose the guy who deposed him after he deposed him which is always a bad look He just says he's come back to claim the lands that are his in his noble capacity as Duke of York He says he's just a loyal subject. Wh wants a bit of justice And although that's plainly an absolute croc of piping hot horse waste, His claims of loyalty major towns and cities like York. Nottingham and Leicester comfortable in letting him pass by feed his troops and recruit more supporters to his cause. By march twenty ninth, Edwards outside Coventry That's significant Because inside Coventry Kingmaker is holed up with a bunch of his pals congratulating themselves on having done such a good job of king making. When they find out Edward is approaching, they slam the city gates and send defenders to the walls They may or may not have observed that today is the tenth anniversary of the Battle of Toughton The clash in fourteen sixty one when Edward first won the throne by vanquishing a Lancastrian army in a blizzard But if that's passed them by, Edward reminds them becausecause it's at this moment he drops his pretense of just coming back to be Duke of York. He sends them word that he's here to do away with Henry the usurper And if they don't like it, then they can come out and see what he has to say to them King makeake that. Inside Coventry as Edward suspected Warwick doesn't have the men or the appetite for a fight. So the gates of Coventry stay locked And Edward, wanting to keep the energy among his followers high Leaves Warwick to have a think about what he's done Sweeps off down London As he goes, Edward is starting to look increasingly like the man with the plan And as he approaches London He gets a visit from maybe the last person he expected to see Oh then again maybe the first person. Edward's brother, George Duke of Clarence, the first of the useful Iidiots, a spineless buffoon who enabled a good many of Warwick's shenanigans Now decides Oh that he's back the wrong horse He shows up in Oxfordshire, comes to Edward, and dramatically throws himself on the ground, begging for his brother's forgiveness It's a pretty dismal pantomime. And it's hard to see how you could blame Edward if he would have Clarence smeared in jam and staked out naked for the ants to eat But Edward doesn't Instead, he hauls Clarence to his feet not to worry and escorts him back to Coventry so he can show Warick just how badly the country is falling away from him Having done that, and still not persuaded Warwick to come out and face the music Edward goes once again in the direction of London When he arrives, he marches through the open gates The gates are open because the citizens have seen which way this wind is blowing So they let him inside the walls, then the clergy at Stt Paul's let him enter the cathedral to give thanks for the success he's had so far And after that Edward scores another major win Henry VI, shabby and virtually insensible, has not even had the gumption to leave the Citol. He's staying at the Bishop of Lambeth's house So Edward sends men to escort the old fruit cake back to the Tower of London They don't have a hard time making the arrest After that Edward turns his mind to the last two items on his to do list, which are Arguably the most important of them all The first thing he needs to do is go and see his wife, Queen Elizabeth Woodville patiently waiting for him in sanctuary where she's looking after their first son A little boy named after him. The happy couple have a very happy reunion, in which Edward meets his one year old kid, and Elizabeth probably asks him nicely that if he's considering fleeing the realm in future M maybe give her more of a heads up So she can pack an overnight bag But that sort of thing is going to have to wait Because having regained his wife, Edward's second major task is to serve up a giant helping of ice cold revenge to the person who deserves it most of all It's been the mother of all slogs winning his kingdom back and Edward's determined never to be knocked off his perch again To that end Now is very much time to put Operation Kill Warwick the Kingmaker into action In the Middle Ages, history turned on making the unthinkable possible toppling a king Or finally making that leap to go from being a hobby blacksmith to opening your first ever metalwork market store Now if I was setting up my first ever metal workor shop today I'd look no further than Shopify. and it caters to everyone from metal workers to metal heads. 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King's army marches out of London heading north Thousands of hooves and boots move together. Men are armed with longbows, swords and axes. Some are dragging carts loaded with cannon. It's a damp Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday One way or another, someone's going to die There's not a hope in hell of a resurrection. There are two kings in this army. The leader, indisputably is Edward IV, but he's brought along the other king of England too, the man he's been referring to as Henry the usurper If God only knows what Henry makes of it. it's astonishing to think that this peace loving old duffer has actually been present on more battlefields than his warrior father, Henry V ever was But actually, what Henry VI feels about this capaper is neither here nor there. Edward's going north in search of Warwick, the so called Kingmaker He's brought Henry for one purpose only, to give the lie to Warwick's claim to be left Tant of England under Henry's authority. Either way, a mighty reckoning awaits, and it's not very far away truly In fact, Edward has barely made it ten miles out of London before his scouts catch sight of the very man they're looking for Finally, having been reinforced by loyal supporters, including his brother, Warwick has raised enough troops to dare to leave Coventry. He's been heading south towards London for the past few days, and now the two sides are going to clash By the time the King's army and Warwicks are in full sight of each other, it's getting dark. T late in the day for a battle So they both camp overnight. But both sides know that when the sun comes up on Easter Sunday, the showdown is on The trouble is, as the sun comes up, so does a thick mist. A fog that clouds the short distance between the two armies and stops them getting a clear sight of each other. You'd have to be nuts to fight in these conditions Given everything that's happened in England over the last quarter of a century, these people passed the nuts threshold Long ago Fog or no fog They're going to have it Two armies crash into each other, with Edward leading his from the front and Warwick commanding his own from the rear. Unsurprisingly, it's a vicious fight, mostly waged at close quarters, as the guns can do nothing in the fog but shoot blind To begin with, it looks like Warwick is going to have the best of it One of Edward's divisions is commanded by his good friend Lord Hastings. That division gets routed, and those who aren't butchered there and then, flee back in the direction of London, spreading the word that the king has been defeated. It's fake news. In fact, Edward's army hangs together, and they manage to keep fighting for several hours, by which stage the whole battlefield is chaos. But it's chaos that will favor the king As the battle wears on, two things happen. The first is that Warwick gets an almighty bollocking from his brother, John Neville, for trying to command the fight from the rear rather than getting stuck in John Neville basically calls Warwick a coward and goads him into abandoning his favorered method of command for something riskier and less familiar The other thing that happens is that once a whole load of Warwick's men are done chasing Lord Hastings raabbel back to London, they turn around and go back to join the main battle once more. It's their undoing By the time they re arrive at the battlefield The lines have pivoted, but in the fog They don't realize. So when they lay into what they assume are Edward's realignes, they're actually attacking their own team. And their own team starts screaming treason. So suddenly, everyone is fighting everyone all at once. It's a proper royal rumble. and after four hours of fighting, when the fog lifts and everything's done ew men have ever seen anything like it The injuries are horrific. Men with their noses hanging off their faces and their guts hanging out. The dead number in the thousands. One chronicler writes that there was never in a hundred years a fiercer battle in England than this which is really saying something But amid the ferocity Battle has a definitive outcome As the bodies are counted and identified, T members of the House of Neville are found cold and motionless on the field One of them is John Nevill The other is his brother whom he egged on into fighting in the midst of the melee Warrick the Kingmaker Dead His body and his brothers are stripped naked except for loin cloths it up placed into open coffins Then, Edward has them both brought to London setat down on the steps of St. Paul's, where in the words of the Chronicler, Others might see them, which many thousands did Warwick the Kingmaker, Arch manipulator, man of the peoplee, and Let's be real here, Borderline narcissistic headcase. has made his last king For two generations, he's tried to keep one hand and sometimes both hands, shoved up the backside of a ruler of his choosing Finally, all his scheming has brought him to his miserable reward. Puppet turned protegey, turned nemesis, Edward I F Finally, broken free But Edward isn't finished A few days after the Battle of Barnet at the start of May The last remaining Lancastrians who weren't cut down fighting with Warwick are on the run in the Cots Halls when they too hear the ominous sound of a Yorkist army heading in their direction. It's Edward, coming to finish the job he started. withith backup from Lord Hastings and the youngest royal brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester Edward is now a formidable opponent Blood up. and momentum behind him The Lancastrians boast a pretty impressive force themselves Queen Margaret of Anjou has finally made it over to England with her warlike teenage son, Edward of Westminster She's taking shelter in an abbey Her army is led by the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Devon Warwick's old deputy of Calais, Lord Wenlock It looks set to be an even matchup But in the end It's nothing of the sort The armies collide near Twesbury, a market town just shy of the Cotswords After an initial period of hard fighting The Lancastrian Resolve melts The battle turns into a rout, and just as happened at Barnet Many of the leading nobles are killed including seventeen year old Edward of Westminster The only child of Queen Margaret and Henry the VI The Battle of Tuwesbury is fought and lost by the Lancastrians in a few hours on may fourth, fourteen seventy one After it, Queen Margaret is captured and sent off to be kept under house arrest until she can be deported to France At the start of the year It looked like Edward IV and the Yorkist monarchy were down and out Now As summer is starting to burst and bloom in the blood soaked English hedgeerows It seems like the Wars of the Roses might just be settled Once. for old Your summer weekends fill up fast, but Crocx has your back. Road trips, beach days, last minute getaways, whatever's on the agenda, swing by your local store and find your new goat too. Try it, style it, make it yours. becausecause the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off Wlock out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest crox store today It's not quite midnight. onn Tuesday, the twenty first of may fourteen seventy one And Henry VI is lying morose and miserable back in his rooms at the Tower of London The Ter is quiet. or as quiet as it gets on a night in a place that's full of prisoners and guards, cooks and servants. wild animals Even by Henry's standards, This has been a day to forget. His readaption is well and truly over backack in jail His pretended best friend Warick the Kingmaker, is dead Queen Margaret is a prisoner Half the small number of nobles who still supported him are also dead And so most tragically of all is his son Theoretical heir, Prince Edward The pool of people around Henry has been shrinking steadily for a long time. Now He's almost entirely alone Or is he In fact Someone's approaching his chamber It's an uneven football The sound of a man with a slightly uneven gait someone like, say Edward IV's youngest brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester who's been hanging around the tower quite a bit lately could Richard be doing coming to his cell this late at night? business might he have with Henry? The next morning When Henry's guards look in on his rooms They find a miserable sight. Henry VI, on off Lancastrian King of England, is dead The official cause of death is Sheer displeasure and melancholy. But there's a widespread suspicion that this one has the efficient hands of Edward I F's more loyal brother Richard all over it When Henry's body is taken to St. Paul's for display It leaks blood over the cathedral pavement And when the news spreads abroad that Henry is dead Foreign diplomats conclude that Edward IV has finally decided to show his ruthless side and crush the seed of the Lancastrians becausecause truly 's hard to know who's left to represent their line. Although Maybe there is just one person. In September, an army sent by Edward IV is besieging Pembroke Castle. Inside it is one of the few Lancastrians still at Lberty. Henry VI's old half brother, Jasper Tudor With him is his nephew who was born in the castle fourteen years ago to Margaret Beaufort Henry Tudor hasn't exactly got pure royal blood in his veins But his connection to the old Lancastrian royal family is strong enough to count for something And let's not forget how old Henry VI remarked, during the readtion This kid was the one who everyone else O day have cause to fear A much diluted bit of Lancastrian claret prophesying of a shambolic basket case is hardly the stuff on which great lineages are founded But After his torid experience in fourteen seventy to seventy one Edward I F isn't taking any chances The problem is The army he' sent down to try and winkle Henry Tudor out of Wales isn't quite strong enough considerable fortress at Pembridge And the Tudors still have friends in Wales So in mid September While one band of Welshmen arrives to cause a distraction outside Pembroke, Jasper and Henry Tudor slip out of the castle head to the nearby town of Tenby start making hasty arrangements to get the hell out of Dodge They hire a boat and with a small handful of servants see They're heading for the continent France, for Brittany, for anywhere they can be kept safe of Yorkist vengeance. fromrom now on. They'll have to live their lives depending on the goodwill of foreign protectors, and in the fear that assassins could find them at any minute Whatever it was that Henry VI thought he saw in young Henry Tudor during that brief meeting almost a year ago will probably never be known best this kid can hope for from now on is survival To find out if he has the faintest hope of that Come back for our next episode of This is History Do listen in to next week's episode to see if our boy Henry Tudor ever makes it back from his French dispatch. But if you've got any passing interest in Tudor history No spoilers, please For now, I need to ask my dear royal favorites, who I know are avidly watching and listening to this episode a big question Do you think it was Richard Duke of Gloucester AKA the future Richard III Wh killed poor old Henry VI I know we don't do true crime here on this is history Boy This season will be full of it Join your fellow medieval cold case investigators Patreon. com Forward slash. This is history.