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- [00:00]
Dan Jones
Hello, friends. Now, today's episode of Hot Medieval Action contains repeated acts of almost unfathomable generosity from a lord to one of his subjects. So in honour of that, I thought it was only right to play the part of the benevolent master and give you my overmighty subjects a nice little freebie, as I'm so fond of saying. Over on Patreon, Royal favourites of this show. Get access to bonus episodes, exclusive videos, lively discussion posts and and more. This week we're giving away a free sampler of that content. To get it, visit patreon.com thisishistory and look for the free membership preview post pinned to the top of the page. All right, that's enough of me. On with the episode after this short break.
- [00:49]
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- [00:55]
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- [00:56]
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- [01:20]
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- [01:54]
Dan Jones
The line of hungry diners stretches all the way down Warwick Lane, just as it does every morning in the air above it, the sweet, rich scent of roasting meat drifts. The hundreds of Londoners in the line wait in good humor. Some are stropping their knives on bits of leather. Some are rubbing their hands. There is no pushing or shoving. They know that as soon as the doors are thrown open, there'll be food for them all. This magnificent house belongs to Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. Depending on who you ask, he's either the second most powerful man in England besides the Plantagenet King Edward iv, or the most powerful. But actually. Quiz the crowd of people lined up outside about politics and they'll probably look at you like you're demented. Because they're not here to play Plantagenet top Trumps. They're here because their bellies are rumbling. And it's well known that anyone who turns up at one of Warwick's many houses across England will get fed, properly fed, if Anyone ever tells you there's no such thing as a free meal, they're wrong. Because here on Warwick Lane in London, once a day there's a free feed of half a dozen roasted oxen laid on. For anyone who fancies it, the only rule is that you can eat as much as you want, then carry away as much meat as you can fit on the blade of your knife. The same is true of every other tavern in England, where the Earl's name is above the door. The Earl of Warwick figures the route to a realm's hearts is through their stomachs. Yet Warwick himself is nowhere to be seen. On this morning in the winter of 1467-68, he's hundreds of miles away from London on his estates in the north. He's been there for weeks, refusing to come to the royal court, straight up ghosting the king who six years ago he helped put on the throne. There hasn't been a blazing row, no handbags at dawn. But ever since King Edward married his controversial queen, Elizabeth Woodville, Warwick has been brooding. Rumours have been flying around that he's on maneuvers. And if that's the case, all his free feeds could be the sign of something far more serious than a sulk. This could be the start of a feud that will plunge Plantagenet, England right back into the darkness of a civil war. I'm dan jones and from sony music entertainment, this is history season 10 of a dynasty to die for. Episode 3 love bombing. The early 19th century Russian writer Ivan Krylov isn't a guy who's read much anymore, but he's referenced obliquely millions of times every day. Because in 1814, Krylov wrote a fable called the Inquisitive man. And that story has given us a famous English idiom. The Inquisitive man is a super short tale, barely more than a paragraph. It tells the story of a guy who goes to a natural history museum and is captivated by all the little things he sees. Beetles and flies, cockroaches and insects so tiny you can barely see them with the naked eye. This fellow spends three hours checking out all these minuscule wonders, having the time of his life. Then when he comes back and tells his pals all about it, they listen politely before asking what he thought of the museum's elephant. The elephant, he says, and he confesses that he never noticed one. How could you have missed it? They say it's the size of a mountain, but no, it's completely passed him by. Now, as you'll have probably guessed, it's from this story that we get the phrase the elephant in the room. But lest you think this is just me dropping random literary trivia on you, let me explain why it's important to Plantagenet politics in in the late 1460s. Because in many ways, it looks like Edward IV is on a roll. After the rocky start he had trying to drag England into order after the horrors of the Battle of Towton, he's been standing on business, but he's missed, you guessed it, the elephant in the room. Before we get to that problematic pachyderm, however, let's recap on the good things that Edward has achieved since 1461. For a start, he's married. It's true that his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, a widow English, bit downmarket, isn't everyone's cup of hot ex Lancastrian milf, but she sure floats Edward's rubber dinghy. The couple have two daughters by 1469 and another one on the way. There's a new royal family emerging and expanding as well as all that Edward's gone some way to quelling Lancastrian plotting. The battles of Hexham and Hedgeley Moor have gone his way. The old king, Henry VI has been captured and is doing his forsooth and forsoothing. Safely behind the walls of the Tower of London, the old queen, Margaret of Anjou, is gnashing her teeth in exile on the continent. Edward has committed himself to a coherent foreign policy, pro Burgundian, anti French, which gives shape to the direction of English policy now that the new normal is having no significant lands in France. In other words, he's slowly getting a grip on kingship. As Edward enters his mid-20s, he's starting to project the confidence that's been lacking from English kingship that died when Henry V expelled his soul through his dysentery, ravaged fundamentally back in 1422. Yet what Edward's missing is the elephant in the room. That's Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. He's the biggest beast in England, and since becoming king, Edward has made him even bigger. With grants of land, titles, offices and prestigious postings, Edward has allowed Warwick to cultivate his man of the people shtick. And he's acquiesced, as Warwick has built up two virtually impregnable power bases, one in northern England and the other in Calais. What Edward has failed to spot is that he's made Warwick unmanageably big. When Queen Elizabeth Woodville comes along, the Earl feels disrespected, overruled, sidelined, and he starts to nurse A big grievance. But Edward has developed a blind spot to just what a dangerous behemoth Warwick has become. So here's a question. Is Warwick right to resent the Woodvilles so much that he stops showing up at court and starts framing himself as the most popular man in England? Certainly, he would say so. He'd point to the Woodville family being given undue preferential treatment in the aristocratic marriage market. He'd remind everyone that he was made to look like a 24 carat chump over the alliance with Burgundy. He'd glare in the direction of the Woodville golden boy, Sir Anthony Woodville, whom Edward encourages to prance around being the most glamorous knight in England. And although Edward's slow to realize it, there are others who can see that Warwick isn't taking kindly to losing his monopoly over the King. Rumours are spreading in France that he's done with the House of York and is considering throwing his lot in with Lancastrian dissidents connected to Margaret of Anjou. Whispers are also flying around that he's going to try and pull off an audacious move in the marriage market, engaging one of his two daughters to Edward's brother, George, Duke of Clarence, who's still technically heir to the crown. So the elephant in the room is starting to trumpet, but it takes Edward a surprisingly long time to hear it. And even when he does, he continues to treat Warwick with the same deference that's turned him into such a big beast in the first place. When the rumors of Warwick's disaffection reach court, Edward invites him to leave his northern estates and come to court to put his side of the story. Warwick says he isn't interested. Instead of telling him to get his ass down to London Stadt or have it shipped down in chains, Edward just shrugs and lets him be. When it emerges that Warwick really has been making moves aimed at marrying his eldest daughter, Isabel to Edward's brother George, the King still doesn't leap into action. He assumes that Warwick just needs a bit more buttering up and they can get back to business as usual. Whether out of complacency, distraction or inexperience, Edward is losing sight of what his most powerful subject is thinking. He isn't hearing the alarm bells that should be ringing by now. And before the 1460s are out, those bells are going to be jangling loud and clear right across the kingdom. When you consider medieval history like I do, you realise that a great deal of change hinges on leaps of fate, faith, something England's King Henry VI largely did not do. Now he might have been better suited to selling stained glass windows. And he would have been unstoppable if Shopify was around in his day. It's a commerce platform that helps you make that leap to get your business into the world. Henry would have loved Shopify's inbuilt design studio, where he could have sampled hundreds of ready to use templates to build a beautiful online store. Plus, this shy king would have had plenty of AI tools at his disposal, helping him elevate his product descriptions, page headlines and product photography. So make that leap. Turn what if into with Shopify today. Sign up for your £1 per month trial today at shopify.co.uk dynasty. Go to shopify.co.uk dynasty. That's shopify.co.uk dynasty.
- [13:19]
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- [13:25]
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- [13:37]
Dan Jones
Please stay.
- [13:40]
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- [13:51]
Dan Jones
Royal Heavies Storm into the compound known as the Steelyard on the north bank of the River Thames. They've come armed with battering rams and bad intentions. The goons push past merchants protesting in German, Danish and heavily accented English, heading to the wharfs and storehouses where the richest pickings are to be found. They smash down doors, they break locks, they carry off sacks of wool, bundles of cloth, crates of beeswax. If it looks like it's worth something, they're taking it. Don't like it? Tough. This is daylight robbery by royal order, signed off by the King and the Royal Council. The merchants, part of a sprawling European trading network known as the Hansa, have known this day was coming for months, years even. But now it's here. It's still shocking. The Steelyard, a mangled English translation of Stahlhof, meaning sample yard, is supposed to be their safe haven. It's a self governing compound with its own rules, laws and tax privileges, which exists under the protection of the King of England. Only now the King seems to have changed his mind about where what that protection involves. His guys are helping themselves to hundreds of pounds of commercial stock. They're arresting anyone who tries to get in their way. What the hell is going on? Well, what's going on is that in the summer of July 1468. Edward is giving Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, pretty much anything he wants, which in this case means strong arming the Hansa merchants. For decades, there's been friction between English merchants and their competitors from the Hansa. Rivalry over trade with the wealthy ports of the Baltic. Clashes at sea. The line between mercantile rivalry and outright piracy has never been totally clear, but lately it's been like the Wild West. A year ago, in 1467, English merchants feuding with Danish members of the Hansa went to Danish held Iceland, robbed and burned houses and murdered Iceland's Danish governor. This year, in 1468, the Hansa went tit for tat and seized a load of English ships in port in Denmark, impounding their cargoes and arresting the sailors. So now it's time to go tat va tit and hit the Hansa where it hurts in their London compound. Or at least that's the opinion of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. Cast your mind or your ears back to last season and you'll recall that Warwick has long been an enthusiastic amateur pirate honing his skills on the seas around Calais. Go to episode 11, season 9 in our archive if you want a refresh. What's more, one of the ships impounded in Denmark last year belonged to him. So Warwick is a mega hawk when it comes to the Hansa. And in the summer of 1468, Edward has decided to give Warwick what he likes. Hence the raids, the confiscations, the arrests. If it looks like a quick win for Warwick, Edward is content to go along with it. This is part of a love bombing campaign in which Warwick is being showered with nice things. He's made guardian of Edward's youngest brother, Richard, Earl of Gloucester, and of a young nobleman called Francis, Lord Lovell. He's the underage heir to a number of lucrative estates. When Edward's sister Margaret goes off to marry the Duke of Burgundy in July 1468, Warwick is granted the honour of personally escorting her to Dover, where she boards the ship, taking her across the Channel. Of course, Warwick has mixed feelings, at best, about the alliance with Burgundy, which is why, the same month as he's walking Margaret down the metaphorical aisle, his enemies in the Hansa have their Hanseatic asses handed to them at the steelyard. If that's not giving a guy what he wants, it's hard to know what is. And by the way, none of this comes for free. Sticking up the steelyard might feel good in the moment, but it causes huge political complications for Edward afterwards, as word gets Round of the raid, the Hans friends in high places start dropping into Edward's DMs with a lot of angry face emojis. The King of Poland, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Duke of Burgundy, they all get on his case. And English ships on the high seas start feeling the heat too. They're liable to be attacked and robbed in retaliation. Still, Warwick is happy though, right? Wrong. Unbelievably, he still has the hump. Even to get him to attend a royal council, Edward has to bend over backwards. Warwick won't come to London, so the court moves up to Coventry, home turf for the Nevilles, where he feels like he's the man calling the shots. At that council meeting, Edward suggests that Warwick might like to make nice with the Woodvilles and others he doesn't like. Still, the computer says no. He agrees to squash beefs with a couple of non Woodville noblemen who've aroused his ire. But he absolutely refuses to play with the Queen's father, Lord Rivers, or her glamorous knightly brother, Anthony Woodville. He knows they're increasingly unpopular in the country at large and and given his man of the people shtick, he can get away with blanking them in public. What's more, around the same time that he's having the steelyard raided, Warwick's deputy in Calais, an old soldier called Lord Wenlock, is said to be in regular communication with would be Lancastrian rebels in England and France. That seems worryingly close to Warwick himself, flirting with treason in gratitude. It might as well be Richard Neville's middle name. And the King's love bombing has done nothing to stop him. In fact, it's done the opposite. The more Warwick is rewarded for bad behaviour, the more he assumes he can just keep on expecting nice things for no return. He seems genuinely to think he can get rid of the Woodvilles for good if he just keeps acting up. His brazenness and the entitlement is almost unbelievable. But every so often history throws up a politician who realizes that fortune favors the absolutely unscrupulous. Warwick wants absolute privilege from Edward. He wants the Woodvilles gone. He wants to be lavished with good things, despite his increasingly obvious disloyalty. And if he doesn't get what he feels he's owed from Edward, then the kingmaker might just go shopping for another option.
- [21:07]
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- [21:32]
Dan Jones
Windsor Castle is packed with the most noble and knightly men in England. They're all dressed in bright, colorful costumes over jackets bearing their family symbols. Each one of them wears an expensive long blue robe known as a mantle, emblazoned with a crest in Old French that reads, It's a meeting of the Order of the Garter, the knightly club established more than a hundred years ago by Edward iii. Membership is strictly limited and only the King's closest pals are allowed in. And today, in May 1469, the Knights of the Garter have a job to do. They're going to rubber stamp the election of a new addition to their ranks. That's Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, now Edward's brother in law and his closest European ally. Charles and Edward are limbering up for a joint attack on France. And as part of the diplomatic dance, they've been trading chivalric honors. In 1468, Edward was nominated to join Charles of Burgundy's Order of the Golden Fleece. Now Edward is returning the favour. Charles isn't around to receive his garter honours, but Edward's spent a fortune having them made and FedExed over to Burgundy. He sent Charles a garter made from gold by one of London's top goldsmiths. He's added a mantle and an accompanying hood made from the finest woollen cloth, lined with miniver and ermine. In fact, Edward has sent Charles a completely bespoke mantle. Unlike regular garter robes, his is red, dyed using costly pigment extracted from the dried bodies of dead female kermes insects. Edward is going out on a limb to make his brother in law feel special and he expects all the other Garter knights to sign up to his scheme, as in literally sign up. The reason the Garter Knights are gathered at Windsor is to add their names to the document making Charles membership final. And they do. Edward signs first, followed by his brothers, George, Duke of Clarence, still heir to the throne, and the 16 year old Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Further down the list is another of the King's brothers in law, Anthony Woodville, the glamorous knight. But before him, listed in precedence right after the full royals, is Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. This is a sensitive one, for obvious reasons, but finally, Warwick seems to be on his best behavior and he dutifully signs his name on the parchment, agreeing to a policy he doesn't like in the company of one of the Woodvilles, whom he outright detests. Is he finally coming in from the cold? Well, Edward thinks so. In fact, to Edward, the sight of this peace and harmony breaking out is a relief, because it seems like his love bombing campaign has at long last paid off. Warwick has fallen into line and now Edward can ease back on tickling the awkward bastard's plums and get on with other more pressing business. There's a war to organise with France, and in the north of England, there seems to be trouble brewing too. There have been a couple of outbreaks of disorder in the name of the Percy family, who used to rule the roost there during the Lancastrian days. The latest is led by some punk called Robin of Redesdale, who's running his mouth against the Yorkist crown and the Woodvilles, citing abuses of power. Edward needs to come up with a way to stamp on him fast. Before he gets to work on that, though, Edward goes to give thanks for the improving situation at court by praying at one of England's leading religious tourist sites. After the ceremony at Windsor, he heads to East Anglia to visit the shrine to the Virgin Mary at Walsingham. And that's when all hell breaks loose. At the signing ceremony to induct the Duke of Burgundy, Warwick was all smiles. But Edward should have guessed that the guy who serves six roasted oxen every morning in his London houses was never going to stop cooking up beef. You see that trouble up north that Edward is going to have to deal with, the punk called Robin of Redesdale. Well, as it turns out, that's not a Percy rebellion after all. It's being coordinated by one of Warwick's leading supporters in the north, a guy called Sir John Conyers. No matter how much Edward wants to see things otherwise, there's no sugarcoating this one. It's inconceivable that Conyers could be backing a major rebellion in northern England without the say so of his master, Worwick. This is treason and it leads back to Warwick's door. And now, thanks to Edward's wishful thinking, Warwick has a march on him. There's talk of 60,000 people gathering under the Robin of Reedsdale banner. All those free meals have gone a long way. Edward has to switch out of pilgrimage mode and into kill anything that moves mode, and he needs to do it fast. In mid June, he hustles north with troops, accompanied by his Woodville relatives, Earl Rivers and Anthony Woodville. As they go, Edward sends out urgent calls for reinforcement from his subjects in the Midlands, demanding archers and men to join his army. Among his letters are missives to Warwick and his brother George Neville, Archbishop of York. On the letter to Warwick, dated July 9, 1469, Edward asks him to come unto His Highness with all urgency and adds, we trust that you should not be of any such rebellious disposition towards us as the rumor here runneth, considering the trust and affection we bear in you. It's the last plaintive love bomb dropped from an aircraft that's smoking from both engines. And it does no more good than any of the other heart shaped gifts Edward has dropped on his feckless right hand weasel in the last five years. Because while Edward marches north, Warwick is heading in the opposite direction, towards the coast. He's running for his old lair in Calais. And he's taking with him a group of people that he thinks are going to shape the course of English history. One is his brother, Archbishop Neville of York. Another is the eldest of his two daughters, Isabel. And the third is the man Warwick has picked to be his new puppet. It's George, Duke of Clarence, a man who has almost all the royal credentials that Edward IV boasts. He's the King's brother, the most senior noble in the land, and so long as Edward remains without a son, the heir to the Plantagenet crown, it's a full blown coup. That's for next time on this Is History. Goodness. Peace in Plantagenet England didn't last long, did it? But as Warwick goes on to do what he does best, that is to plunder. To my dear royal favourites, I want you to enter your theatre of the mind. Go back to 1468 and tell me what you'd swipe from the Hansa storehouses. On the King's orders, look out for producer al's post on patreon.com thisishistory.
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