← THIS IS HISTORY — A DYNASTY TO DIE FOR
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Hello friends, and welcome. Now, last time I left you on a cliffhanger. With the first Battle of the wars of the Roses about to kick off, we'll be picking up that story in a moment. But before we do, I need to let you know that this episode contains a number of instances of hardcore ultra violence directed towards men and beasts. While I've got you, I also want to tell you about a couple of things. The first is that there are now special signed numbered editions of my books, the Plantagenets and the Hollow Crown, available via Millennia Books. And if you're a royal favourite, you can get a discount on both. Just visit our Patreon to get your code and links. I also want your help. Next month my new mini series, History's Greatest Fails launches. It's a collab with my dear friend and fellow history nerdazoid, Elizabeth Day. We'll be discussing how failure is the lifeblood of historical achievement and in the bonus episodes, producer Al will be stepping into the studio and he and I will be discussing your favorite failures from history. We'd love you to leave us voice notes. To get that chat started again, head to our Patreon. So to find out how to leave us a message. Ok, that's enough plugs. Let's get back to the thugs. Battle is looming in St Albans and it's going to be messy after this short break. You know what? You gotta feel sorry for King Henry vi because he wouldn't be anybody's personality hire and he was just as bad at HR as at Kingship. He's the guy who forced all his warring nobles to hold hands in the Love Day Parade. If only Plantagenet England had Indeed sponsored jobs. With Indeed, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all the right boxes. Less stress, less time, more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed sponsored Jobs and listeners of my show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com thisishistory just go to Indeed.com thishi thisishistory right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.comthisishistory Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the coliseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History hit twice a week. Join me Tristan Hughes As I hear exciting New research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the ancients from history. Hit. Forsooth. And forsooth. Forsooth and Forsooth. Henry VI has never been one for cursing, but right now he's really letting rip with the worst language he's ever uttered. As well he might, the Plantagenet King of England is being hustled through the streets of St. Albans by men loyal to him, or at least loyal to the Crown. They're hauling him along like he's a sack of potatoes, which he might as well be for all the use he's been as king. Right now, in St. Albans, an old Roman town north of London, all the drift and failure of his 33 year reign is coming home to roost. It's May 22, 1455, and all over the city men are fighting. Some are shooting arrows, others hacking away with small swords and knives. Houses are being looted. Barricades built to try and control the mayhem are being torn down. From a church tower somewhere, the alarm is being sounded, as if that could possibly help. On the King's side are a couple of thousand loyal men, retainers of the nobles who've been trying to prop up the royal regime. Their commander is Humphrey, Duke of Buckingham. As close a thing as England has to an elder statesman right now. On the other side are a few thousand more men who also claim to be loyal subjects of the Crown. Their leader is Richard, Duke of York, ably backed up by his northern allies from the Neville family. They're out for blood. It's not the King's blood they want, but rather that of his favorite, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. All the same now, blades are swinging and arrows fizzing. Anything can happen. So the ring of guards around Henry VI are doing everything they can to hustle him through the chaos and get him somewhere safe. Anywhere safe. The commander Buckingham, takes personal charge and tells them to head towards a grubby looking shack. It's apparent from the stench wafting from it that this place belongs to a tanner, a leather maker who uses animal urine and crap to soften the hides. It's not exactly the most regal hideout, but beggars can't be choosers. Before they can get there, though, they're cut off by archers and men at arms wearing Yorkist badges on their coats. There's a beat, then one of the Yorkist archers draws his bow. Henry VI is 33 years old. the same age his dad, Henry V, had conquered half of France, this Henry could barely conquer his way out of his own pajamas. He's as out of depth in this battle as he has been throughout his whole reign. And now it looks like everything might be rushing to an end. Forsooth, and forsooth, he says again. Forsooth and forsooth. I'm dan jones and from sony music entertainment. This is history season 9 of a dynasty to die for. Episode 10 the battle of st albans. I don't know how many battle sites you've ever visited, but in my experience, they often feel strange, kind of jarring. More often than not, historical battle sites are tranquil, even innocuous patches of field or beach or town. It can be hard to get your head around the fact that anything nasty ever happened there. Head to Dunkirk, for example. You can sit by the beach and watch families picnic and cyclists potter along the seafront path where 86 years ago a third of a million Allied troops were evacuated while being strafed by Messerschmitts. Or walk around the rolling green fields of Picardy. It's almost impossible to visualize the medieval bloodbaths that took place there at Crecy and Agincourt. It's the same in St Albans. Today. It's a teeny city about an hour's drive north of central London. There are some famous Roman ruins, a cathedral that feels far too big for the rest of the place, a high street with a medieval clock tower, likely the one that was sounding the alarm in 1455, a few charity shops and a Starbucks. It's nothing spectacular, and it's certainly wild to think that around 600 years ago this place was overrun by marauding medieval armies. It's even odder to believe that on May 22, 1455, King Henry VI was on that very spot being dragged for his own safety to a stinking tanner's hovel. But that's Plantagenet history for you and we can't get enough of it. By the way, if you want to share your favourite battle site recommendations with our royal favourites, head over to our Patreon and join the medieval travel thread. For now, let's get back to st Albans in May 1455, because we really need to get our heads around what's going on there and how things have got so very out of hand. As we heard last time, at the heart of the crisis in 1455 is a colossal super size law. Heavy beef between two nobles. There's Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, architect of England's humiliation in the Hundred Years War against France. He's the King and Queen Margaret's favourite. On the other side is Richard, Duke of York. When King Henry VI went mad, York was appointed Protector. He banged Somerset up in the Tower. But now Somerset is out and he's bound to want his revenge. York is convinced that their feud is now a zero sum. He needs to take Somerset out or he's toast. That's why he has an army in the field. He's making a show of strength that'll force the King to give Somerset up, to put him on trial for treason and execute him on top of that. And forgive me for repeating things you already know, but this stuff is notoriously complicated. There are sub beefs within the big beef. Think like little bits of biltong within the bourguignon or mini sliders inside. The producer Al is making stop with the cow flesh analogies. Faces at me. You get the idea. Let's just say that the main sub beef at st Albans in May 1455 is between two northern noble families. York is allied with a Neville family whose toughest nut is Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick on Somerset. And the King's side is Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. The Nevilles and the Percys have been knocking lumps out of each other in northern England for years. The collapse of royal authority means they have to side with whichever of the big beast nobles they think can best further their own interests. Hence a York, Neville or Yorkist alliance on the one hand or who want change and a Somerset Percy alliance on the other, who like the status quo. At St Albans, these are the teams lined up and the prize in the middle of them is the King. Whoever controls Henry controls their own destiny. When everyone arrived at St Albans, there were negotiations between messengers from York's team and and the elder statesman Buckingham. But there was no way that the King was going to agree to York's central demand, which was Somerset's head on a plate. While those negotiations were going on, some of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick's men got fed up waiting and started an assault. It was a surprise attack, which is why everything is is now so chaotic and why Henry VI is now being dragged towards that tanner's hut to try and get him safe, even if it's literally in a shack that smells worse than a public toilet. When Henry is cut off by the Yorkist archers, tempers are at their hottest. If everyone were thinking clearly, the Yorkist would lower their weapons. But everyone is very much not Thinking clearly, the Yorkists have got it in their heads that anyone protecting the King is connected with Summerset and is therefore a traitor. Which means they're fair game. So the bows aren't just drawn, they're loosed. A volley of arrows is shot into the group around King Henry. Men go down, blood welling from arrow wounds. The Duke of Buckingham is hit, though he's only wounded. An arrow grazes King Henry's neck. Forsooth. And forsooth. This chump yells again, you do foully to smite a king anointed. So, Henry, babe, now really isn't the time. The men around the King of PG rated curse words finally make a break for it and drag the burbling idiot into the tanner's hut and slam the door. The wretched place is definitely not palatial, but it's defensible. They hold it down while outside, the fight rages on. It's not a long fight, in fact, it only lasts about half an hour in total. And as it unfolds, it becomes increasingly, horribly obvious that the King and Buckingham have got off lightly. The nobleman Lord Clifford, a senior royal commander and ally of the Percy family, is hacked to death in the street. So is Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, the chief enemy of the Nevilles. Somerset isn't hanging around in the street waiting for the fight to come to him. If this guy has shown one talent over the years, it's been for covering his noble backside. So he scarpers into a pub called the Castle Inn along with his 19 year old son, Henry. But someone sees him go and pretty soon the place is surrounded. Somerset realizes he can't stay in there. At long last, he's run out of places to hide. He and his lad decide they're going to have to fight their way out of the corner. So out they come, swords swinging. The odds are stacked against them. Although young Henry Beaufort fights bravely, he's badly wounded. For his dad, Somerset, wounded isn't an option. He's been a marked man since the start of this horror show. So after a short fight, Somerset is surrounded and cut to shreds. Back in the tanner's hut, Yorkist troops have now got Henry VI surrounded too. Although he's bleeding from his arrow scrape, he's not getting chop sueyed. Yorkist troops invite him to come out of his hole. Then they take him to the more rarefied surroundings of St. Albans Abbey. When Henry gets there, he's met by a welcome party of Richard, Duke of York. And with the top two Nevilles, York's father in law, the Earl of Salisbury and Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. They greet the king respectfully, then bring him to the holy shrine of St. Alban himself. They swear their loyalty, but make it clear that from now on, they're going to need Henry to follow their instructions and be ruled by their advice. What can Henry say? Forsooth. And forsooth barely covers it. He meekly agrees. The Yorkists claim victory, but it's hardly a happy camp they rule over. The wounds opened at the Battle of St. Albans are going to take decades to heal. Hello, Dan Jones here. I'm an author and medievalist, and I don't think it'll surprise you to know I've amassed enough hardbacks to fill a moat. But in the process, I've often lost where I am while purchasing a book online, drowning in a sea of tabs that each require a new login. That's why I find bookshops powered by Shopify a breeze to use. Shopify is an online commerce platform that remembers my details across different businesses, meaning everything is in the one place. Plus, businesses that use Shopify have access to beautiful and functional design templates, meaning I find the right book faster. So if you're a business, see less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their Shop pay button. 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.
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Hey, psst. You didn't hear this from me, but normal gossip is back for its ninth season. Join me, Rachel Hampton, as I share the juiciest gossip from the real world with some very special guests. This season, we're bringing back some old friends, a Radiotopia buddy, and for the first time ever, a Nobel laureate. That's right, we have Malala. On season nine, Normal gossip is out on all your favorite podcast platforms.
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London's thoroughfare of Fleet street is almost deserted when the students creep through the night carrying their grisly sack. There's no one about at this hour but the City Watch and a few of the last drunks staggering home. It's September 1456, a year and a half on from the Battle of St. Albans. But England is no happier now than it was then. That's what these young men, law students from the nearby Inns of Court, mean to illustrate. And they're going to do it in a way no one can ignore. The students arrive at their destination, a structure known as the Standard. This is a Large public water fountain where everyone who lives around here can draw fresh water from the conduit. That's the water system that serves the city. They tip out the contents of their sac. Five freshly severed dogs. Heads roll onto the pavement. A couple of the students wince. But they all knew what they were getting into here. They set about impaling the heads on poles and hammering them into the ground around the Standard. Once that's done, they pull out some sheets of parchment. There are five sheets, each one of them covered in writing. They're cryptic satirical poems directed at the men in charge of the country, whoever they might be. Each poem is fixed so that it's hanging out of a dog's mouth. Then the students scarper back to their digs, presumably cackling about what a crazy prank they've played. Well, it sure beats stealing shopping trolleys and running about with a traffic cone on your head. The next morning, Londoners crowd round the water fountain in a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Exactly what the poems are getting at is hard to figure out, perhaps deliberately so. Here's When Lordship fails, good fellowship falls away. My master is cruel and shows no courtesy for whose offence Here am I beaten. It is no reason that I should die for his trespass and he go free. That's the note in the first dog's mouth. The other four are broadly similar. Who are they attacking? Richard, Duke of York. Well, since St Albans, he's claimed to be the leader of the Royal government and he's staying in a house just round the corner from the Standard on Fleet Street. Are they digging him out or are they pro York And a warning to anyone thinking of messing with the guy in the name of Somerset who was butchered at St Albans. Historians have been arguing about it for years, and it's a fair bet that The Londoners in September 1456 aren't much clearer either. Which is probably the point. These clever, clever students are sending a message that things are generally, like, bad and the whole political class is running England into the ground. If we take a quick look over what's been going down since the Battle of St Albans, it's hard to disagree. In the aftermath of the battle, Richard, Duke of York, has command of the King and he gets him to sign off on him Richard becoming protector of the realm for a second time. So far, so good. But it quickly becomes obvious that York is going to find the job very tricky. For one thing, he's obliged to reward the Neville family and other allies who helped him win at St Albans. Richard, Neville, Earl of Warwick gets to be Captain of Calais and mops up a load of the dead Somerset's estates in Wales. But York can't be too liberal handing out lands, because the common complaint in government is that handing out lands needs to stop. Parliaments are demanding an act of resumption so that lands are taken back into royal hands to bolster the national finances. And when York does try to muscle an act of resumption through Parliament in February 1456, the Lords who are set to have their lands taken away, kick up a fuss and York resigns the Protectorate in a huff. He tries to keep a controlling hand in government by travelling around, stamping out disorder and patrolling the borderlands with Scotland. But by the autumn of 1456, when the Dogheads go up on Fleet street, he's a lame duck. Or indeed a dead dog. Or you get the idea. So where is power going? Well, one thing is very clear. Henry VI is not going to magically step up and become the military beast everyone would love him to be. Instead, the person who is going to step up is the Queen. Margaret of Anjou has always been the one with a bit about her, and now she has a three year old son, Prince Edward, as the focus for her political ambitions. Margaret also has a number of good reasons to not want York in charge of England, to name but one of them. Margaret had a soft spot for Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and weirdly enough, she doesn't take kindly to people killing her friends. So at the same time as the dogs heads are being nailed up on fleet street in September 1456, Margaret is putting on her own shirt of power. She moves the royal family, and therefore the royal court, to Coventry in the Midlands. When she arrives, there's a huge show of pageantry to greet her and the feeble king she brings with her. She decides this is going to be the new center of political gravity in England and if York doesn't like it, it's up to him to do something about it. In the meantime, the extended royal family is slowly expanding, or at least the Beaufort section of it is, via a connection with the odd Welsh French Tudor branch. As Margaret looks around the royal realm, she reckons Henry's half brothers, Edmund and Jasper Tudor, could be useful in helping to govern it. Since they have Welsh blood, they're both handed big responsibilities in Wales to try and counter York's influence there. The 25 year old Edmund Tudor is also granted a very prestigious marriage. In 1455. He's wedded to a 12 year old girl called Margaret Beaufort Niece of the late Duke of Somerset, Gross as that is by today's standards, and unusual even by medieval norms, Margaret Beaufort gets pregnant right away. And on January 28, 1457, at Pembroke Castle in Wales, she gives birth to a son who's given the name Henry. But there's another twist. By the time Margaret is in labour in Pembroke, Edmund Tudor is dead. He's been skirmishing with Yorkist troops who dispute his authority in Wales. They take him prisoner and while he's locked up, he catches plague and dies. So Edmund Tudor never meets his son, Henry. From now on, it's going to be up to his 13 year old mum to look out for him. You wouldn't give the little fella much of a chance. But life is strange, as they say. And it's about to get even stranger because with tensions running high between the royal family and the Yorkists, King Henry VI belatedly decides he's had enough of the bad feeling. He wants to make love, not war. So he announces something he thinks is going to mop up all England's problems. It's pretty much the most Henry VI coded thing you can begin to imagine. Short of a stained glass appreciation festival, it's going to be known as a love day.
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It's March 25, 1458, and the roads leading from Westminster Abbey to the city of London are packed with people. Some are Londoners, others are out of towners. Hundreds of them are wearing badges advertising their allegiance to the great lords who've been in town for the last two months. These men are retainers, members of private militias loyal to the lords whose badges they're wearing. With royal authority at such a low ebb, and blood feuds between the great families hiring retainers is all the rage. Needless to say, this isn't exactly a recipe for peaceful coexistence. The mutual hatred between these families is what hapless old King Henry has been doing his best to defuse. Since January, he's had all the nobles coming to see him in London and other nearby palaces, trying to persuade them to be nice to each other and settle their grievances. In fairness, that's what a king is supposed to do. But Henry's way of going about things leaves a little to be desired. Rather than knocking heads together and telling these guys to cut out the nonsense or else, he basically begs them a pretty please to stop being such naughty boys. The problem is the Battle of St. Albans. A lot of folk are still extremely salty about what happened there. Not least the sons and heirs of Lord Clifford, the Earl of Northumberland and the Duke of Somerset. To try and squash all the beefs, Henry has ordered York and his Neville pals to accept a public telling off and to pay compensation to the bereaved families. To make this a little bit more palatable, no money will change hands directly. The Crown will divert debts owed to the Yorkists into the hands of their victims families. The public telling off involves Henry bleating about the execrable and most detestable deed by them done at St. Albans. In return for accepting all this, the Yorkists get. Well not a lot. Besides the promise of peace and reconciliation, it's not the most even handed deal in the world. Yet the worst of it in the long run is not the deal terms but the public parade that everyone has turned out to see on March 25th. This is the heart of what's known as the Love Day. Starting from Westminster, all the squabbling nobles have to line up side by side holding hands. On one side are the Yorkists, Richard, Duke of York, the Neville Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, and the other are those who feel they've been hard done by at St Albans. So at the front of the parade goes the senior Neville Lord, the Earl of Salisbury. He's holding hands with Henry Beaufort, the new Duke of Somerset. He was the kid wounded in the fighting at St Albans. Behind them are the Earl of Warwick holding hands with Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter. He's a key ally of the Percy family. Next comes the King on his own. Bringing up the rear is Richard, Duke of York, holding hands with none other than Queen Margaret. On one level the whole thing slightly resembles a kindergarten outing to a dinosaur museum. Teacher making sure all the kiddies are hand in hand with their partners and everyone is carrying their packed lunch. You can sort of see what Henry VI is trying to do with it. He's asked everyone to get along. Now here they are getting along in public. But as the Love Day participants stroll down the road From Westminster to St Paul's Cathedral in London with their many thousands of retainers and all the London citizens watching, they're really telling another story. It's a new story, and one that's going to take some considerable untelling. Here are all the main characters in the country who have all sorts of overlapping relationships, rivalries, squabbles and areas of common interest. They fell out bloodily three years ago, and it's been difficult to keep them all from each other's throats since. But the way they're now presented is as two distinct teams. You're either a Yorkist or on the side of the Somersets and the Queen. That's the faction that'll come to be known as the Lancastrians, after the Royal Duchy of Lancaster, which gained power after Henry's grandfather, Henry IV, usurped Richard II in 1399. As far as anyone observing the Love day would be able to tell, English politics has gone completely tribal. Even though the charade is designed to promote peace, the deepest message is you have to pick a side. So, as the lines of nobles move hand in hand through the city's streets, something more dangerous than ever is being set up. The House of York and the House of Lancaster are being paraded together as factions. And while the factions have been forced to hold hands for today, by the time the year is out, those open hands will turn into fists. But that's for next time on this Is History. Now, friends, if I ever tell you to parade around your town holding the hands of your worst enemy, please dethrone me. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Henry. As you'll find out in next week's episode, he's gone about giving peace a chance the absolute wrong way. Which is why medieval Londoners found five severed dogs heads at their local watering hole. I wouldn't call that your run of the mill student prank, but I need others to get that macabre mental image out of my head. So tell me, royal favourites, what are your favourite school pranks? And please, keep it pg.
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