Pod Insights Gone Medieval The Murder of Henry VI About this episode An investigation into the dramatic siege of London in 1471 and the controversial and mysterious death of Henry VI. Matt Lewis is joined by Andrew Boardman to unpack Thomas Neville's assault on London, a rebellion that set the city on fire and led to panic within its walls. They explore the aftermath and the evidence that Edward IV made a calculated decision to end Henry VI’s life to quash future rebellions.
Was Henry VI's death due to 'pure melancholy' as reported, or something more sinister?
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Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
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0:01 Matt Lewis? From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
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1:21 Matt Lewis? Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.
2:00 Matt Lewis? Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis. The death of a medieval king is always a moment of crisis, upheaval, and for some people, opportunity. In the complex and superheated politics of England in 1471, this was particularly true. Two dynasties, the House of Lancaster and the House of York, are vying for the crown. Only one can win, and in the spring of 1471, it looks like it's York and its patriarch, King Edward IV. He's taken back the crown he'd lost six months earlier. He's destroyed his enemies on the battlefield, and he's ensured that the only heir of Lancaster is dead.
2:44 Matt Lewis? Now, all that remains is the aging King Henry VI, in many ways, the antithesis of Edward, but also his greatest remaining problem. When Edward got back to London after the Battle of Tewksbury, keen to move on from the blood, sweat and turmoil, he might have been shocked and disturbed at what had been happening there. It's a moment that's often glossed over, but there was a siege of London by a famous soldier, and it might just have sealed the fate of poor Henry. Today's guest is Andrew Boardman, a medieval military historian whose latest book, The Rose, the Bastard and the Saint King: The Murder of Henry VI, is out now.
3:28 Matt Lewis? And Andrew is going to help us uncover this important but overlooked moment in the Wars of the Roses. Welcome to Gone Medieval, Andrew, it's fantastic to have you with us.
3:38 Speaker 02 Thanks for inviting me, Matt, great to be here.
3:41 Matt Lewis? I'm very much looking forward to get stuck into some of my favourite bits of history in the Wars of the Roses. This is going to be really interesting. I wonder if you could just paint the scene for us a little bit to get us started. We're in 1471, what is going on? Why is this a moment of crisis?
3:55 Speaker 02 Well, we're still in the Wars of the Roses. He's the first Yorkies king. He's been driven into exile by Warwick, his former friend, and Warwick has restored Henry VI to the throne, which brings in a period of about... Six months, which is known as the readaption, where Henry VI is on the throne and Warwick is controlling him to a certain extent. So that's in 1470. With Edward being over in Burgundy, he's in a position where he obviously wants to come back to England and is trying to canvass some support. He eventually does that.
4:36 Speaker 02 He lands back in England again and he marches on London. There's a couple of things that happened in between that period, but basically he marches on London. Warwick follows him with an army. Edward marches out of London, fights the Battle of Barnet. Warwick is killed. And then soon after that, Queen Margaret, who has plotted with Warwick before this time, including plotting the, why I call the Pinter Movement, which is Falkenburg's involvement on the sea and Warwick and the Commons of Kent,
5:18 Speaker 02 which is canvassed with propaganda to march on London and then overwhelm Edward again.
5:26 Speaker 02 When Margaret lands, she marches into England. Edward marches out of London.
5:33 Speaker 02 They fight the Battle of Tewksbury. Henry's heir, Prince Edward is killed on the battlefield. And then Edward marches on Coventry, unaware that there's something happening in London.
5:47 Matt Lewis? I mean, you've just explained something in under three minutes that I would normally take about an hour to explain to anybody. The readaption is such a fascinating, complex period. And I think even in the context of the time, in terms of medieval England and even in terms of the Wars of the Roses, this is a really frantic moment where the throne is changing hands at a new pace, isn't it? Kind of Edward's been on the throne for 10 years. He's kicked off for six months and Henry's back. And then Edward's back again and you've got this kind of increasingly uncertain, fragile situation. You know, we know that eventually Edward will, will win out of this, but it must have been pretty unclear to anyone in 1471 precisely what was going to happen next.
6:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, there was two kings. So Henry VI, he'd been in prison since 1465. So he'd been in the Tower of London, not in a cell, but locked up in apartments. And so Henry VI is in the Tower. Edward has been exiled. So there's two kings there. And then there's Warwick in the middle, scheming which way it will fall.
6:53 Matt Lewis? Yeah.
6:54 Speaker 02 And as you say, at that time, it was very uncertain which way that would go.
7:00 Matt Lewis? We're going to talk about the 1471 siege of London, which is the focus of your, your book, the events that take place in London in 1471, while Edward is gone on that campaign around the Battle of Chelmsford. I wonder if you could tell us to start off with, I, I think this is a moment that quite often gets kind of glossed over, passed over. People never seem to spend much time thinking about what happened and how important it was. Why do you think, given that we're talking about a siege of the capital city, why do you think it gets so little attention?
7:29 Speaker 02 I'm not too sure, actually, because it's, it's, it's quite a large event. There's the Commons of Kent and Essex, Surrey and Sussex are all up in arms in rebellion. If that isn't a serious crisis, I don't know what isn't. So I think the reason why it's been glossed over, it's not that there isn't enough accounts, because in my book, I do detail a lot of accounts that can support the evidence. So it's not that, it's just that most historians have tended to go straight on to the 12 years of peace after the Battle of Chelmsford. And they'll obviously mention Henry VI as well. But this is one of the
8:12 Speaker 02 reasons that I got really, really interested in the book. I was looking at that time and look, looking at what might have happened and what actually happened. Because I think what people tend to do is they tend to look at it and gloss over the event and they're not looking too deeply into it, which I wanted to do. I wanted to look into it deeply and see if I could find out what actually happened, not just at this age of London. But to Henry VI, in fact, who killed him?
8:46 Matt Lewis? I mean, I often wonder whether it's one of those points at which the king is away, Edward IV is away, fighting another battle, which is what everybody is focusing attention on, and it almost becomes just another event too much. It's a bit too much complexity to add into the situation. So people, you know, tend to just gloss over this and not worry too much about the fact that it happened. But it is a significant moment that has effects and after effects and consequences that we need to think about if we want to properly understand what's happening at this point in the Wars of the Roses.
9:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think you're right there. It's just, these things are happening all at the same time.
9:23 Matt Lewis? Yeah.
9:24 Speaker 02 So there's a simultaneous sequence of events that are happening. It isn't one thing after another. It isn't like Barnet and then Chelmsford. It's like, at the same time as Chelmsford is before, things are happening in Kent and things are happening in London. And Edward is unaware of it.
9:45 Matt Lewis? Yeah.
9:46 Speaker 02 Which is interesting. I found that really interesting, that the king wasn't really aware what was going on.
9:53 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah, it must have been a bit of a shock for him. And could you introduce us to the main protagonists when we're talking about the siege of London, when we get to the actual siege? Who are the main opposing forces?
10:05 Speaker 02 Right, so outside London, you've basically got Falkenburg, Thomas Neville, member of the Neville family, but a bastard. So he wasn't sort of like, it didn't seem to figure much in the wars prior to this event. But I found some evidence that he did actually work with his father and also with the Neville family on the sea, because he was a mariner. He was a pirate, basically. So I found quite a lot of evidence that that was happening. So you've got Thomas Neville, and then you've got other parts of the country
10:48 Speaker 02 that are actually leading the rebellion. So in Kent, you've got people like Nicholas Fons, who's the Lord Mayor of Canterbury. He's obviously figures quite a lot in the rebellion. And you have people like Sir Geoffrey Gates. And you have people like Sir George Brooke, who was involved in the Calais garrison. And you've got then a lot of minor gentry in the South that are leading that particular rebellion. On the other side, in London itself, you've basically got the people that Edward the Fourth left in London and didn't take to Tewksbury.
11:30 Speaker 02 So you've got some elder gentlemen who are trying to organise the here of Falkenburg rebellion. They try to organise themselves and they do that to a certain extent, but I fall down on the side of the alderman and the Lord Mayor of London as being responsible for actually protecting London. But you've got the Earl of Essex, for instance, he's quite old. You've got Lord Dudley, who's quite old. You've got Lord Jurassic, who's, he didn't actually go. And then you've got the main guy, which is Lord Rivers. Lord Rivers was wounded at the Battle of Barnet.
12:11 Speaker 02 Whether that is the reason why he didn't go to Tewksbury, I'm not sure. But Lord Rivers is the man that we look to as being the saviour of London. But whether that's true or not, is open to debate. So that's the two sides.
12:30 Matt Lewis? We'll find out. And Lord Rivers is Anthony Woodville, who is Edward the Fourth's Queen's brother. So he's kind of the Yorkist king's brother-in-law, who has remained behind in London, as you say, for some reason or another. And I wonder if you could talk us through a little bit more about who Thomas Neville is. So we've mentioned that he's the son of Lord Fockenburg. Where does that put him in the Neville family? What relation is he to Warwick, who people may well be better acquainted with?
12:58 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, basically, he's the cousin. So with being a cousin, a bastard, it's probably not seen, there's no detriment there. But it's just that Thomas can't really inherit property. It's a sad state of affairs really, but he can obviously marry well, he can become a soldier. Uh, he can become part of the clergy and get help. But I, I, I think I believe that the, the Neville family did help Thomas and his brother. Because of course, Lord Falkenburg had two bastard children, William and Thomas, who worked together. And we don't hear very much of William.
13:42 Speaker 02 We don't hear very much of Thomas, but we don't hear very, very much of William. And he does figure in the story. So if I go back a little bit, Lord Falkenburg was like Edward the Fourth's right hand man. He was an elderly man, even when he fought at Tauton. And he was in charge of the archers at Tauton. And he more or less won, I believe, he more or less won Edward the throne.
14:12 Speaker 02 Now, his bastard children then obviously not inheriting any property. Because after Falkenburg wins at Tauton with Edward, he becomes Earl of Kent. But that doesn't mean very much to Thomas. But I believe that Lord Falkenburg gave his bastard children quite a good living. We find out that, okay, Thomas is on the sea and becomes a pirate. But Warwick was a pirate as well. And so was his father, the Earl of Salisbury. They, they were all at sea and all raiding foreign shipping, which was a nuisance to England.
14:53 Speaker 02 An absolute nuisance because foreign trade, you know, was the thing that needed to be pursued. And if you have pirates in the English Channel, for instance, then you've got a real problem. So Thomas is coming from that angle because he is Lord Falkenburg's son. But Lord Falkenburg dies in fourteen sixty-four, sixty-three, sixty-four, in the north of England.
15:18 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah.
15:19 Speaker 02 So then Lord Falkenburg, he can't pass any title on, but Thomas Falkenburg just.
15:28 Speaker 02 Moves towards Warwick and becomes Warwick's man. And that's one of the reasons why the siege happened. Because Warwick formulated a plan involving Thomas, involving Queen Margaret, coming back to England. And I think that's the crux of it really, that I reckon, without going too fiction, that Falkenburg, you know, was was pleased to be under Warwick's tuition, if you like.
15:57 Matt Lewis? Yeah, I always think of Warwick, whatever he may or may not have been. He was, he must have been this kind of glittering famous figure that everybody wanted to be like, you know, he was a famous soldier. He's a famous pirate. He's a famous general. He has loads and loads of money, this lavish hospitality. Whether you think he's a good guy or a bad guy, he must be someone that everybody wanted to be around, that kind of magnet at the centre of society.
16:22 Speaker 02 But it it was achieved with propaganda. I mean, he knew how to, how to handle the comments in Kent, for instance. And he knew how to, he had these beautiful speeches we hear about in the Chronicles. And he delivers these speeches and appeals to the common people.
16:41 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah.
16:42 Speaker 02 So by appealing to the common man in a place like Kent, for instance, which had no real nobles. They were looking after certain districts, then it became very well liked in Kent.
16:55 Matt Lewis? Yeah. And you mentioned then that there was a kind of a plan that was behind Thomas Neville's assault on London. What was Thomas Neville doing? Why does he attack London? What's he hoping to achieve?
17:07 Speaker 02 He's hoping that he will free Henry VI from the Tower. So then what will happen is then that will release a lot of closet Lancastrians in London to take London. March on Edward, who's at that time in Coventry and win back the throne. But there was a spanner in the works because obviously, as I said, Warwick got killed at the Battle of Bowneck, which Falkenburg knew about.
17:40 Speaker 02 But he didn't dissuade him from attacking London. He followed what Warwick wanted him to do. Nevertheless, he didn't bank on Edward winning at Tewksbury. Even London only got news of that right at the last minute, when Falkenburg and his rebels were encamped on Blackheath. So that would have come as a bombshell.
18:04 Matt Lewis? Yeah, and I always imagine people in London at this time must have been so uncertain about what they should do, because if Edward wins at Tewksbury, he's obviously going to be unhappy if they haven't resisted a siege by a relation of Warwick in favour of the Lancastrians. But if Edward loses and it's a Lancastrian army with Margaret and Prince Edward who turn up in London, they're going to be fuming if they've held out against the Lancastrians. So you must have been inside those walls with no real concrete news, thinking, there's two moves I can make. One will be disastrous, and I don't know which one it is.
18:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is really interesting. I found it interesting that there was certain polarities in London itself behind the walls. So you've got Yorkists and Lancastrians behind the walls, thinking, as you say, what's going to happen? And then you've got thousands, literally thousands of commons outside the walls, hoping to get in and free Henry VI. So there's a lot of things happening all at once, which are both political and military.
19:14 Matt Lewis? And life and death for the people who are caught up in the middle of it potentially as well.
19:18 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
19:18 Matt Lewis? So how does the siege begin? What does Thomas initially do as he approaches London?
19:23 Speaker 02 Thomas relying on an Essex contingent as well, because the Essex men and women were up in arms. At the same time as he was able to raise a lot of people in Kent, there was obviously a parallel situation going on, where he was coordinating what was happening in Essex, as well as what was happening in Kent. And he matched with roughly 10,000 rebels to Blackheath. I mean, it does say in the Chronicles, 20,000, but it tends to be over-exaggerated. But at least 10,000, which is much bigger than Cage Rebellion in 1450.
20:08 Speaker 02 And Cage Rebellion were big enough. There's a lot of parallels between Falkenburg Rebellion and Cage Rebellion as well. And when Falkenburg and his and his men got to Sittingbone, he sent a letter to the Commonalty in London and said, this is what I want to do. I want to march through London and we won't do anything. We won't pillage, we won't take anything without paying for it. Then we're going to march on and defeat Edward. But of course, he was lying. What he wanted to do, according to the Chronicles, again, is he wanted to march and attack London, free Henry from the Tower, and then release the Lancastrians
20:51 Speaker 02 and march on Edward with Lancastrian support.
20:54 Matt Lewis? So he's telling London he's not going to do any harm, but there's a strong suspicion that that's not entirely true and that he is actually trying to turn London over to the Lancastrians at a point where it's it's hedging its bets and trying not to come down too heavily on one side or the other. So I mean, what actually happens when he gets to London then? Does he kind of knock on the gates and say, let me in? And they say, no?
21:14 Speaker 02 They basically march onto Black East, they create a camp, and they receive a message back from the Commonalty and the Lord Mayor saying, sorry Falkenburg, but you're not going to come in. And they bar the gates. So they bar London Bridge, they bar all the gates to London, and they raise the militias within London. So all these militias are pre-made by the aldermen who are in charge of the 26 districts in London. And Falkenburg's there at London Gate, so wonders what he's going to do. He basically decides to tell
21:52 Speaker 02 them or to let them know that he means business. So he attacks London Bridge. He attacks London Bridge and he attacks the Great Stone Gate, which is on Southwark. Attacks that, fires it, can't get in because the troops are doing all sorts. They're pouring boiling oil on the attackers. They've got plenty of ordnance there, they've got artillery. And Falkenburg retreats, thinks again, and decides to march on Kingston, which is the next bridge up the River Thames. He gets to the River Thames and he meets Lord Rivers, who has taken lots of troops up the Thames by barge.
22:36 Speaker 02 And again Falkenburg, then he gets bamboozled really, because Rivers says, watch you out because Edward's on his way and he's got a large army and you don't stand a chance. So Falkenburg.
22:53 Matt Lewis? Did I don't even know if that was true at that point? Is that an empty threat from Rivers? Is he, is he playing a game?
22:59 Speaker 02 It's an, I think it's an empty threat because at that time, if you look at the dates, Edward was still in Coventry. So we know that by just the dates. I think at this point Edward does know what's happening because a rider's gone out and we know that a rider arrived in Coventry and the rider, the messenger told them that London's on fire because the bridge, of course, is obviously burning. At that time, Rivers saying, be careful, you know, submit to Edward. You're not going to get into London because the Lord Mayor's not going to allow it again.
23:35 Matt Lewis? And imagine if you, if you Falkenburg, by this point, you feel like you, maybe you've gone too far to just back down, you know, what are his options really?
23:42 Speaker 02 He knows that Edward has, has won at Chigsbury. On the letter that came from the mayor to him on Blackheath, there was a, a copy of Edward's letter that Edward sent to London to say, look, I've won at Chigsbury and I've executed lots of Lancastrians. So at that point, I think Falkenburg is thinking, well, maybe I should rethink the situation. In fact, I think he gets told by some of the people that are with him, Nicholas Vaughan, for instance, I think he's thoroughly thinking, listen, you know, there's 10,000 people here, you know, they're all getting a bit nervous, you know?
24:24 Speaker 02 So I think what Falkenburg then decides to do, and it's written in the Chronicles, that he, he takes his army back. To London Bridge and decides to split it up. So he splits the army up into two sections. He uses his ships to ferry men across onto the Essex side. He posts that army in charge of two men who we know only as Spicing and Quinton. And they link up with the Essex rebels and they are told that we're going to attack London in sync. And I think that is what Falkenburg's next move
25:05 Speaker 02 was. He decided to do a double attack on London, but these are happening simultaneously. And we know that from the London Chronicle, that these happened both simultaneously on the 14th of May.
25:19 Matt Lewis? So Falkenburg is, you know, he's all in now, both feet in. He's going for an all out assault on London.
25:27 Speaker 02 London Bridge, again.
25:28 Matt Lewis? What happens? How how close does he come to any kind of success?
25:32 Speaker 02 Very close. He actually gets through London Bridge to the centre of London Bridge, to the drawbridge tower. Now the drawbridge is up, so he can't get any further than that. But of course, London Bridge is burning at this time. There's nearly 100 odd houses that have been fired and destroyed, all falling into the Thames. But he can't get any further than that. And again, he gets stopped by Sir Ralph Joslin, who's one of the men who figures quite prominently in the London Bridge battle. In fact, he becomes Lord Mayor after the event. So he does quite well there, I think. But as these two things are happening, over on the other side of the Thames, you've got
26:16 Speaker 02 an attack on Allgate, Bishopsgate and Cripplegate, just on the east side of London. And again, houses are fired, the walls get stormed. It's just mayhem, you know, the, I mean, the people in London must have been wondering what was going to happen. And by that time, of course, cannons have been unloaded from the ships, from Falkenburg's ships. Falkenburg has gone into like a mode of, well, we'll just storm London and destroy it. So he lines all these serpentine guns on the south bank and he starts sharing them.
26:50 Matt Lewis? He's bombarding London walls and presumably London is firing back at him.
26:54 Speaker 02 And and London's firing back. Yeah, absolutely. But people are getting killed in the streets. So it's an epic, it's an epic siege which lasts two days. There's a lot of turning points which you can look at and look at the chronicles and think, well, who was commanding here? And it does actually say who was commanding at certain points. And then you can look and think, well, you know, is that true? But they actually describe what these people are wearing. So these are like eyewitnesses. So which is, which is fantastic for the Wars of the Roses. Because you've got white eyewitnesses that are telling you what's happening in a battle, which is unusual.
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29:10 Matt Lewis? Yeah, I wonder to what extent Falkenburg was relying on the fact that Warwick, as you said, master of propaganda, widely loved by the people. Warwick in particular was always welcomed into London in previous times. Whenever he bought a Yorkist army and they were assaulting the Anghastrians, London tended to throw its gates open to the Yorkists. And I wonder whether Thomas Falkenburg was thinking he would get the same kind of treatment as someone close to Warwick. But it seems like when he didn't get that, falling straight back on a military solution, kind of alienates London from him. He doesn't really give them any option but to defend themselves and fire back at him and treat him as an enemy.
29:49 Speaker 02 I think that's absolutely right. I mean, the fact that Falkenburg was in a situation on Blackheath when he first arrived, and the Lord Mayor was called John Stockton, he told him, basically, you're not coming into London. And the Londoners were fearful. There was going to be 1450, Jack Cage Rebellion all over again. So they would get into London, there were executed nobles, they would pillage the streets. From that point onwards, the Londoners had the advantage. Because of course, what they were doing is they were fighting for the homes and the families, whereas Falkenburg was leading a rebellion. And this is what
30:32 Speaker 02 I think squared it for Falkenburg and why it didn't actually get into London, because the Londoners fought tooth and nail.
30:39 Matt Lewis? So you've said we've got two days of a siege, we've got London on fire, London Bridge on fire, we've got cannon pounding away on both sides of the River Thames. How does it come to an end? Is there a major turning point? Or is this just a case of two days in and no one's getting anywhere?
30:55 Speaker 02 No, I think Falkenburg is the chronicle that is there, like now witness, one of the London Chronicles says that Falkenburg retrieves from London Bridge and it gets chased.
31:10 Speaker 02 He gets chased along the Thames and he ends up back at Blackheath with a few of his supporters. But they leave him alone then, incredibly. All this time, Algate is being pounded and the Essex rebels almost get into London. In fact, they get to the other side of Algate. But then what happens is the the portcullises come down on top of the troops underneath the bridge. And they get trapped. And no matter what happened then, because the portcullises were down.
31:49 Speaker 02 There were two portcullises in Algate, then Falkenburg's men, under Spicing and Quinton, retreat back to St Bottel's Church. And at that point, there's also an estalade from the Tower of London led by rivers with horsemen that hit the rebels in the flank. And that was the end for the rebels, really. They get chased right up to Stadney and leave London burning, leave London in flames. But to give the Londoners credit, if they hadn't have stopped that particular attack,
32:28 Speaker 02 then it would have been quite easy for the rebels to get down to London Bridge, free Henry VI and complete the mission.
32:37 Matt Lewis? So it did come quite close to success.
32:39 Speaker 02 It was very close.
32:40 Matt Lewis? Thomas Neville has made it back to Blackheath. They appear to be leaving him alone. They've chased him that far. What happens to him in the aftermath of all of this?
32:49 Speaker 02 I think I think he gets word then that Edward has dispatched riders, quite a big contingent of riders, 1,500, to come down from Coventry to London and to protect London. Because at that point, nobody knows what's happening, whether Falkenburg has managed to get into the capital or not. And then Edward would be after that with the main army. And I think Falkenburg gets wind of this. He deserts everybody on Blackheath and he rides to Rochester first, then to Sandwich.
33:24 Speaker 02 And his drugs, his fleet to arrive in Sandwich, so that he can probably use that as a bargain.
33:31 Matt Lewis? Presumably Edward then, when he gets back to London and finds out that this, you know, wrote, because I mean, the, the Nevels are also cousins of Edward the fourth, you know, they're, Fockenburg is a cousin of the king, uh, part of a family that used to be loyal to him and, and no longer is. This guy's kind of set fire to London, done his best to take it in the name of, or with the intention of freeing Henry the sixth. Presumably Edward's not going to let it lie. Presumably he's got to, he's got to sort Fockenburg out now.
33:56 Speaker 02 Yeah. And it's, it's Richard Duke of Gloucester that gets to London first. So Richard's in charge of the boward that comes to London. He gets into London, thinks to himself, where's the rebels? Because they've all been beaten. So he congratulates everybody, of course, and then goes to the tower. And to make sure that Henry's still there. And then he obviously does a, a recce of attempts to make sure that all the rebels have dispersed. And then goes back to London to wait for his brother. And Edward arrives and the first thing he does on the 22nd of May, is knight everybody in the commonalty and the older men, the sheriffs, he knights them all outside the gates.
34:39 Speaker 02 Because he knows how close it was.
34:42 Matt Lewis? And we're going to come on to what all of this might have meant for Henry the sixth in a moment, but I wonder if we could just close off Thomas Neville's story. What happens to him in the end?
34:50 Speaker 02 Thomas is waiting patiently because everybody's deserted him. A lot of the Calais contingent have gone back over to Calais as rebels, but Thomas is left in Sandwich. So Edward and his brother Gloucester ride out with an army. And put it to Fockenburg that if he surrenders, then he will be given a pardon incredibly.
35:20 Matt Lewis? Sounds a little bit too good to be true.
35:22 Speaker 02 If you look at it from Edward's point of view, he wants his fleet back. There's 47 ships in Sandwich, which could have been fired, that could have been destroyed. So he wants his fleet back and is willing to do that.
35:39 Speaker 02 If Falkenburg submits to me. So he does, and he's given a pardon. So Falkenburg then, he gets the freedom of the, of the city. He lives in Westminster for quite a while. The same year, and then he gets a summons with Gloucester to go to the north. And work with Gloucester in the north, managing the north. But then Falkenburg reverts back to his old ways. And he escapes with his brother and goes back to sea. He puts in at Southampton. And he gets captured again, gets sent north again with Gloucester. And then he gets executed by Gloucester as Constable of London.
36:25 Matt Lewis? Yeah.
36:26 Speaker 02 So in effect, as a rebel, it gets his just desserts, but you can't feel some sympathy for him.
36:34 Matt Lewis? Yeah, it's so tricky when people are, you know, they engage in these acts of rebellion. They somehow manage to get pardoned. And instead of thinking, I have had the luckiest escape that anyone ever had. I'm going to sit in front of a fire with my feet up for the rest of my days and be grateful. They seem, you know, determined, almost compelled to go back into rebellion. That will ultimately lead to them being executed. It's slightly, I don't, I find it hard to make sense of it, to be honest.
37:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's the amazing thing about it really, I think, that a lot of the time it's to do with politics. So for instance, after Tauton, for instance, if we go back 10 years in the Wars of the Roses. Edward tries to make friends with the North. So he'll do anything to get some support. So he pardons lots and lots of people. If you look at London, for instance, he's got quite a lot of sympathy as Falkenburg, even though he's attacked London. He's got a lot of sympathy in Kent, because of course, everybody's gone back to their homes. And there's been a long list of people that are getting executed.
37:46 Speaker 02 Because they're committed treason. So there's politics where Edward is unsure what to do. With Falkenburg, because he doesn't want another rising. He doesn't want anything else to happen in Kent. He don't want any more trouble. So I think that's one of the reasons why the pardons are there to placate
38:10 Speaker 02 the commons in this instance, or in Towson's instance, to placate the nobles, the northern nobles, which of course they never did. It never placated them.
38:20 Matt Lewis? Yeah, Edward the Fourth seems quite keen on giving people second chances, but it rarely seems to work for him.
38:26 Speaker 02 Yeah, unfortunately, he's quite astute. He's quite clever, but in The Wars of the Roses, as we know, there's lots of twists and turns which go against that.
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39:27 Speaker 03 Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? 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.
40:12 Matt Lewis? I wonder if we could just kind of close off Thomas's story with a thought about what his tale tells us about illegitimate children during this period. You mentioned he's not in a position where he can inherit anything and that makes him to some extent slightly more dangerous. He's got much less to lose than some of his other relatives who could be attainted and could lose lots of land. But he does seem to have been, you know, involved by the Neville family in military activity and some of their political activity and things. So is he useful to the Neville family but somehow more dangerous to Edward once he rebels because he's illegitimate?
40:49 Speaker 02 In retrospect, I think, I think Thomas was a true rebel. It was a rebel with a cause, if you like. Warwick's cause. It was recruited by Warwick. Warwick said that he was the captain of Kent and of the fleet. So it was like the admiral of Warwick's large fleet. What more do you want? As a rebel, he's got a force that he can move around the country, carrying guns and troops. So it's massive. It's a massive appointment for Falkenburg. And it was true to Warwick, right to the end. Yeah, he had his doubts
41:30 Speaker 02 about whether he should attack London, which he did anyway. But once Warwick was killed and he went, he followed through. You've got to give him credit there. It could have gone home.
41:42 Matt Lewis? Yeah, he's a fascinating character that people don't know well enough, I don't think.
41:45 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
41:47 Matt Lewis? And I guess we should then get on to the kind of the final part of the three parts of your title, which is Saint King.
41:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, the juicy stuff.
41:56 Matt Lewis? I wonder how much of an impact you think this episode of the Siege of London has on what happens to Henry VI? Does it really drive home for Edward the problem of having Henry sat there as a potential figurehead for everyone else and kind of compel him to deal with Henry?
42:14 Speaker 02 Yes, massive, massively. The two, the two things, the Siege of London and the Death of Henry are the same. There isn't one without the other. Although when Edward came back to London, he must have thought to himself, I'm not going to have this again. This is not going to happen. I've got rebellions up and down the country, but I need to do something with Henry. I think he was willing to let Henry live right from forty sixty five. I think he was willing to let Henry live. I suppose a holy man, I've got no other word for it really, but politically, he was so important.
42:59 Speaker 02 Even though he was in, he was in prison, he was so important. And just, just sitting there in prison, it was massively important to the Wars of the Roses up until that point.
43:13 Matt Lewis? Yeah, I guess any, any attempt at rebellion has a kind of default figurehead that they can turn to in opposition to Edward. You know, anyone who decides on Monday morning that actually they don't like Edward anymore, has a ready-made replacement they can transfer their allegiance to, and that's always going to be a problem for Edward if he's trying to be tough.
43:31 Speaker 02 Now, I thought in the book, when I first started researching this five years ago, it was a case of, yeah, of course Edward's going to do that. Of course Edward's going to execute the ex-king.
43:45 Speaker 02 But then I thought to myself, is there anything else? Is there something else that I'm missing? And the first thing was the siege of London, that would have massive implications. And the second thing was Henry himself. Henry maybe died, wasn't executed, but maybe he did die of melancholy, grief, anger, as the arrival Edward's official chronicle tells us. Is, is it that? Or is it that someone went in like Gloucester and, um, and killed him with a sword or a dagger?
44:20 Matt Lewis? Oh, that's a nice segue into, into the next question I was going to ask you because there is this official story that comes out of the Yorkist government that Henry dies of, in air quotes, pure melancholy, you know, when he's told that his, his son's been killed, his queen's been captured, his, his dynasty is over, his cause is done. That he, you know, because of his poor mental health and his, his ailing physical health and the descriptions of him when he comes out of the Tower of London in 1470, that he collapses and dies.
44:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:51 Matt Lewis? Do you think there's any mileage in that? Or are we just talking about Yorkist propaganda here?
44:55 Speaker 02 That's a really good question. I still have my doubts. The only thing I can say is that I do know from two accounts that Queen Margaret, when she arrives with Edward under guard, is allowed to go see Henry in the Tower. And it does say that Margaret visited him at that time, that Henry didn't know anything. So he didn't know his son had been killed at Jinxbury. He obviously knew about the siege because he would have heard it. But he didn't know that his cause was in ruins, that Lancastrians had been executed. He didn't know anything about that. He didn't even know whether he was about to die. Because,
45:39 Speaker 02 of course, he must have thought that there's nothing left. There's just me. Is Edward, after all this time, gonna kill me in the Tower of London? So I think you needed to look at the strands from a different angle. What is going on? And why Henry might have died of a stroke or a heart attack? Because he was so weak. He'd been in prison for five, six years and been incommunicado. He'd really only got his servants looking after him, which diminished over the years.
46:19 Matt Lewis? Yeah, I, I do tend to feel like the Yorkist story that Henry dies, as you say, of a stroke or a heart attack or, or just collapses somehow, is kind of too easy to cynically push aside. I, it's hard to believe it, it does come across as propaganda. But, you know, this is a guy who's been in really poor mental health for 15 years by this point, who the, the descriptions of him in 1470, when he comes out of the Tower, suggest he wasn't being physically cared for very well while he's in Edward's custody. So this guy is, is a shambles. And I think it's impossible to, to completely write off the notion that he died of natural causes, even if you were to think that, that him being murdered is more likely.
46:59 Speaker 02 Henry, as if you look into the history of the wars of the Roses, Henry had a disability. And we know that he was the map king. And but he had he had some disease, which I believe was acute intermittent puerile, which if you look medically, it's got like neurological symptoms. It can cause seizures, confusion, memory loss. Everything points towards this disease or a disease of catatonia, where basically he can't communicate with anyone when he's in this stupor. Now, one of the takeaways from this disease is that you're prone to seizures and heart attack.
47:44 Speaker 02 Now, if Henry obviously got to know about his son's death, Lancastrian fall at Tewksbury, did he have an heart attack in the town? And I was madly responsible.
47:56 Matt Lewis? Yeah, interesting to wonder about, I guess. I mean, you you have subtitled the book The Murder of Henry VI. So where do you fall down? Do you think he's he's murdered rather than being a death by natural causes?
48:08 Speaker 02 I think Edward decided to get rid of him. He was basically too directly involved. He was he's almost certainly the icon of the Lancastrian cause still. And he had to get rid of him or face another rebellion or face another group of nobles who want to unseat unseat Edward. So I think he's got to get rid of him.
48:35 Matt Lewis? And I guess the the big barrier up until this point, so Edward keeps Henry in in prison for five years. The biggest barrier to doing away with him any earlier, even if Edward had wanted to, is Henry's son. So while there's this young prince out there who might turn out to be more like, you know, his his granddad, Henry V, who knows what this kid's going to grow up to be. While he's out there, if you kill Henry, what you're doing is renewing the Lancastrian cause in this young prince who is not in Edward's custody at this point, he's in France. So in some ways, keeping Henry alive as this kind of useless figurehead works for Edward. Because if people want to oppose Edward, they've got to follow Henry. But everyone knows Henry is a bit rubbish. But once Prince Edward is gone, his heir is gone.
49:20 Matt Lewis? And then you throw in the siege of London. All of this is kind of coming together to force Edward's hand. And now that Prince Edward is gone, he's got the freedom to do it as well.
49:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think Henry was a hostage. It was a hostage situation when he was in prison because there's the fact that he was always there. If, for instance, Edward needed to bring him out of the tower, put him in front of the troops like he did at Barnet, for instance, and then get a few more troops, Lancastrian troops, into the army, then he was there. He was there to do that. But he just outlived his usefulness.
49:55 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah. It's hard not to feel sorry for him at this point in his own story.
49:59 Speaker 02 You've got to feel sorry for him. A lot of people say he was mad. I think he was a man that was born in the wrong time.
50:05 Matt Lewis? Yeah. Shakespeare famously gives us the wicked Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III, kind of reveling in stabbing Henry to death and doing away with the old king. If Edward has decided this has to be done, do we have any kind of idea, any kind of evidence about who might have done it or how it might have been done?
50:27 Speaker 02 I think if you look at all the chronicles that mention his death, mention Henry VI's death, the take home from that is that others were there, and I'm putting others in parentheses, because merely every chronicle mentions Gloucester, apart from the Arrival, which is official Yorkist propaganda. Every chronicle mentioned these others that were there, almost watching as Henry gets killed in the tower, watching the execution. I believe these others are real. I really do
51:07 Speaker 02 believe they are real, that somebody must have killed him. Somebody must have killed Henry. I don't believe Gloucester did it himself. He had no reason to do it himself. He has no reason to hold the dagger himself. So who did it? And then I started researching whom I have done it. And I'm still investigating, but I've come up with quite a few suggestions of who may have done it. But of course, Gloucester was Constable of England. It was only doing his job if he did organise Henry VI murder in the Tower.
51:46 Speaker 02 Edward says, I want him killed because of this, because we can't afford this to happen ever again. Gloucester goes off, finds somebody and has it done.
51:59 Matt Lewis? So ultimately the buck has got to stop with Edward.
52:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, and unfortunately Gloucester's in the middle, as he, as he usually is. He was tasked with executing Falkenburg. You know, can you get rid of Falkenburg for me, Richard? Yes, I'll get rid of him because he's too dangerous.
52:19 Matt Lewis? Yeah.
52:21 Speaker 02 So he does away with Falkenburg.
52:23 Matt Lewis? When you mention that these others are there fairly consistently amongst the Chronicles.
52:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:28 Matt Lewis? It does kind of make you wonder whether what we're thinking about here is rather than some kind of dirty scene in Shakespeare where Richard is, is wickedly ramming a knife into Henry himself because he wants to, because he really wants to kill him. Are we looking at here a witnessed execution? Maybe with some form of court martial trial, something like that, but an execution which people can witness so that they can take away from this that Henry is now dead. He's gone.
52:56 Speaker 02 I, I believe so. As, as, as odd as it might seem, and as sort of like American, if you like, as it might seem. Because you have witnesses when people go, we're getting executed in America, for instance. You have lots and lots of witnesses and you have judges to see if it's done properly. Maybe that is exactly what happened. Somebody was tasked to do it and was rewarded afterwards. Robert Radcliffe, who I've investigated at the moment, he got well rewarded for some unknown reason. Not just with money, but with land. He got lots and lots of land. He got a captaincy of the, the governorship of Calais, Garrison.
53:41 Speaker 02 He married into Edward's family, the Wells's family. And it's just like, why is this guy getting all these? It's quite interesting because if I couldn't link him to the, to Henry VI, then I wouldn't understand, but I can link him to Henry VI because he looked after him. And so did William Sayre and a few others who looked after Henry VI in the tower before his death. And Robert was the last man to look after him. When the amount of people, the amount of servants that Henry VI had to bring you food, to
54:25 Speaker 02 clean him, to look after him, because he wasn't in a cell, whether that was him, whether he knew him, he knew who he was, whether Henry knew Robert, if really was.
54:37 Matt Lewis? And perhaps someone in Henry's mental and physical state, it would be less terrifying, I guess, if someone you know well, who you're used to coming to your room all the time, comes in, even if you're not aware that he's perhaps there to end your life on that occasion.
54:53 Speaker 02 But I do believe, and it needs to be a take home, that Richard actually organised it.
55:00 Matt Lewis? Yeah, yeah. So we've got kind of Edward gives the order, Richard is organising it as constable, but potentially there is, there is an executioner out there still to be found.
55:09 Speaker 02 Yes, there is, and I'm doing my best.
55:11 Matt Lewis? Well, when you find him, you'll have to come back and tell us because I'm keen to know who it was now. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Andrew. It's been fascinating to pick apart this moment that people quite often skip over in the Wars of the Roses. We will know Barnet in Chelmsford, and we will know that Edward gets his throne back. We perhaps missed this, this critical few days in London that decide the fate potentially of Henry VI. Thank you so much for joining us.
55:36 Speaker 02 Thanks, Mark. Great.
55:37 Matt Lewis? I hope you've enjoyed this episode. Andrew's book, The Rose, The Bastard and The Saint King, The Murder of Henry VI, is out now, if you'd like to understand this moment in more detail. And you can find several episodes on the Wars of the Roses in our back catalogue, if you'd like some context for this episode, or a refresher on the wider wars of the roses. There are new instalments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a
56:19 Matt Lewis? new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free. Head to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.
57:00 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
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