Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty by Elizabeth Norton Page B

he was kept (a) long time by two squires, and two yeomen of the crown, and their men; and every man was suffered to come and speak with him, by licence of the keepers’. Whilst the capture of Henry VI was a symbolic blow to the Lancastrian cause, in reality, it had little effect on the efforts of Margaret of Anjou, Jasper Tudor or Henry VI’s other supporters, as the Lancastrian king had long ceased to have any role in the management of his cause. Jasper continued to work towards his half-brother’s restoration, and in 1468, after being provided with three ships by Louis XI, he sailed to Wales. As a Welshman, Jasper was popular there, and he gathered a force of 2,000 men and carried out a number of successful raids in the principality. With such a small force, he was never going to be able to mount a full-scale invasion however, and when Edward IV sent William Herbert against him, he was once again forced to flee to France.
    William Herbert was called upon by Edward IV when the King received news of Warwick and Clarence’s rebellion in 1469. By the summer of that year, Henry Tudor was twelve years old and considered old enough by his guardian to receive his first taste of war. Herbert joined Edward IV at the Battle of Edgecote, near Banbury, on 26 July 1469, where the King’s forces were decisively defeated, with the King being captured soon afterwards. Disastrously for Henry Tudor, who appears to have found himself in the thick of the battle, William Herbert was captured and summarily executed. The defeat and death of his guardian placed Margaret’s son in a very dangerous position, and he was rescued only by the kindness of Sir Richard Corbet, a kinsman of Herbert’s wife. According to Corbet’s own later account to Henry, when he had become king,
Pleaseth your Grace to call to your remembraunce the first service, that after the death of the Lord Herbert after the field of Banbury, hee [Corbet] was one of them that brought your grace out of danger of your enemyes, and conveyed your grace unto your towne of Hereford, and there delivered you in safety to your greate Uncle now Duke of Bedford [Jasper].
     
    The young Henry Tudor evidently made an excellent impression on Corbet, and he also recorded that, when he came to England in 1485 to claim the crown, he was one of the first to join him and pledge his support.
    Henry was taken first to the house of Herbert’s brother-in-law at Weobley in Herefordshire, where Herbert’s widow had also gone once she learned of the outcome of the battle. Margaret and Henry Stafford were apparently taken aback at the speed of events, and they were enjoying their favourite pastime of hunting in the area around Windsor when they heard the news. Margaret did not know what had become of her son, and she must have been distraught, immediately sending a trusted servant, William Bailey, and a party of men to try to locate him. It was with relief that she heard that he was at Weobley and still in the custody of the Herberts rather than taken by the King’s enemies. Henry himself does not appear to have been too troubled by all that was going on around him, and his stepfather’s accounts for the period record a payment ‘to my lord Richemonde at Weobley for his disportes to bie him bowes and shaftes’. Margaret and Henry Stafford moved quickly to Woking once they knew that the boy was safe, in order to consider what action to take in relation to him.
    With William Herbert’s death, Margaret evidently hoped to recover custody of her son and to secure the return of his lands and title. In August 1469, she resolved to take action and travelled with Henry Stafford to London. Margaret hoped to negotiate with Clarence, who had received Henry Tudor’s lands from his brother and was then one of the men in authority in England, over her son’s wardship. The couple carried out research into the position of Henry’s wardship with Stafford’s receiver, Reginald Bray, purchasing a copy of the