Free The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry by Christopher Wilkins

instance, when he sent the Earl of Worcester to govern Ireland in September 1467, it was King Edward who encouraged Worcester to sell two of his key appointments to them, that of Constable of England to Lord Rivers and Constable of Porchester to Anthony. To coincide with this purchase Anthony was granted the Captaincies of the Isle of Wight and Carisbrooke Castle, the latter acquired from a follower of Warwick, the ownership (effectively private equity) in these positions being exchanged for four of the manors from Jacquetta’s Bedford inheritance. In these arrangements the King merely renounced the rights of the crown and confirmed the new appointments.
    But such moves fuelled the establishment’s antipathy towards the Woodvilles, as Mancini surmised, ‘mostly because of...jealousy which arises between those who are equal by birth when there has been a change in their station’. To rub salt into the wound, Lord Rivers was elevated to an earldom and made Treasurer of England. As the court jester joked, ‘The Ryvers are so high he could scarce escape them.’ 18
    This was the court where Edward Woodville grew up, his family working closely together with his sister right at the centre and the old nobility watching for mistakes. Unfortunately the Queen did make enemies and irritated a number of people. She was certainly manipulative and sometimes unwise, but has been unfairly blamed for a number of events. For instance, she is said to have brought about the death of the Earl of Desmond because he had disparaged her. There is no evidence to show that she had anything to do with his execution. It was simply a matter of Irish politics.
    Lord Worcester had been appointed Lieutenant of Ireland in place of Lord Desmond. His job was to sort out the mess of the day. On his arrival in Ireland, he gathered information, made his inquiries, worked out his plan and then held a parliament at Drogheda where Desmond was attainted for, ‘Fosterage and alliance with the Irish [enemy], giving the Irish horses, harness [armour] and arms and supporting them against the faithful subjects of the King’, i.e. encouraging and arming the rebels.19
    Desmond was found guilty and sentenced to death. Worcester may have been a ruthless, cunning man but his integrity is unquestioned, and in ordering Desmond’s execution he would be certain that he was improving the security of the realm. The Queen’s involvement is most unlikely. She could certainly arrange patronage and access but her influence on actual government was no more than marginal at most.
    Real government of the country was by the King, with his Council to help and advise.20 The King’s objective was to ‘maintain the peace both outward and inward’, or so wrote Sir John Fortescue, the leading political theorist of the day. The Council was the inner circle of the powerful men of the land, the great and the good, the forum where the King tested his ideas and gathered a consensus for his plans, which could be tricky when there were ‘over-mighty’ members such as Warwick.
    King Edward’s solution was to use the Woodvilles and other friends as a counterbalance, which made Warwick very aware of his declining influence. He issued his own proclamation criticizing the King for ‘his estrangement of the great lords of his blood’. The King ignored him, and Earl Rivers as Lord Treasurer remained a powerful member of the King’s executive team, which had its hands full trying to keep abreast of Lancastrian plots.
    Just such a plot was uncovered in 1468 when 18 people were arrested, among them Sir Thomas Cook, a considerable City merchant living in conspicuous luxury. At the time, Lord Rivers was the Lord Treasurer and so responsible for taking surety and collecting fines. He was certainly so vigorous in the pursuit of his duties that it has led to the affair being used by some historians as proof of the Woodvilles’ cupidity.
    Unrest continued, with a disgruntled Warwick persuading Duke