S10 E8 | No Mercy

Hello, friends. I do hope you're liking the final season of our Plantagenet saga. This is just a quick reminder to let you know that you can listen back to all ten seasons of A Dynasty to Die For ad-free over on patreon.com forward slash thisishistory. That's where you can watch this week's bonus episode, where producer Al and I discuss the historical precedence of bad brothers in the English royal family. Let me tell you, I mean it when I say George, Duke of Clarence, was really unprecedented. Now, it's time to meet him. You're listening to a quick ad. You know what else is quick? Selling your car on Carvana. Just put in your vehicle information and we'll give you an offer. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing lowballing you. Which means, by the time I'm done explaining this, you could have basically done it. Still haven't started? Hey, better late than never. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply. Your home, coach. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer. New members only. BJ's. Home of the save. The horsemen are moving with deadly focus. There are about 80 of them. Ranks of grim-faced warriors, armed and full of evil intent. Passers-by dive out of their way as they race past. Not that the horsemen care. Their mission is to get to their target fast. And no one's going to stop them. On a Saturday afternoon in April, the horsemen find it. It's a nondescript house in Keyford, a sleepy village in southwest England. Their leaders, a gentleman called Richard Hyde and a merchant named Roger Struggle, come forward to demand entry. And with a force like this at their back, there's not much point in arguing. Then again, the person they've come here to find hardly looks like your typical felon's e-fit portrait. Anchorette Twinehoe is roughly 65 years old. She's a grandmother, recently widowed, from a decent gentry family. And for the last few years, she's made her living as a lady-in-waiting to aristocratic women. She's not exactly Billy the Kid. But Hyde and Struggle have orders not simply to. seize her, but to do so with a show of maximum force. Those orders come down from the man who pays their wages. He's George, Duke of Clarence, younger brother of the Plantagenet King of England, Edward IV. Until recently, Twinehoe herself was on Clarence's payroll too, as an attendant to his wife, Isabel Neville. But in December 1476, Isabel died from complications following the birth of her second son some weeks previously. And that. ostensibly, is what has led Clarence to send the posse out today. On Saturday, the 12th of April, 1477, Twinehoe is to be placed under arrest and taken to Clarence, who has a few choice questions about the circumstances of his late wife's death. To be precise, Clarence is entertaining some magical thinking. Surely his wife can't be one of the thousands of unlucky mums in medieval England who die every month from infections or internal damage suffered during childbirth. No, instead, he's crying foul play. And as he tells it, the foulest player of all is Ancret Twinehoe. His charge is that this heinous murderess gave his poor wife a mug of poisoned beer. On what evidence he has, no one's quite sure, but Clarence is now hell-bent on what he would call revenge. Clarence's men know that he wants action and fast. So they take poor old Twinehoe on a forced march north. In just three days, they take her home. And they take her 120 miles, passing through three shires, from Somerset, where she's been arrested, all the way to Warwick Castle, which is Clarence's HQ. When they get her there, what's waiting isn't a fond how-nice-to-see-you or thank-you-for-your-service. Instead, this elderly woman is hauled before a kangaroo court and charged with poisoning Isabel. And she's not the only one. Another sometime Clarence servant, a guy called John Thursby, is convicted of killing Isabel's baby. The baby who died in January. Both Anchorette and John plead innocent, but they're wasting their breath. Both are found guilty. On the same afternoon, Twinehoe and Thursby are dragged through the streets of Warwick, then led to a gallows where they're hanged. In this way, George, Duke of Clarence, a gold-plated dimwit if ever there was one, has what he thinks is revenge. But later, some of the jurors who pass the guilty verdict admit they were being leaned on by the court. They were being leaned on by the court. They were being leaned on to produce the big G and not to diligently inquire into the truth. If it sounds like there's something fishy going on, that's because there is. Anchorette Twinehoe has been judicially murdered at the behest of the king's brother, who's acting either under some weird delusion or according to a secret motive. Edward IV was supposed to be the king who put a lid on the madness that engulfed England in the Wars of the Roses. But it looks like no one told his loose canon. Is the king going to stand for this blatant abuse of power? If he lets this slide, it surely looks as though the House of York is just as bad as the rest of them. I'm Dan Jones, and from Sony Music Entertainment, this is History. Season 10 of A Dynasty to Die For. Episode 8. No Mercy. When I think of the roll call of kings, queens, princes and punks who've populated our Plantagenet adventure for the last ten seasons, I think of the role of the king, queen, prince and punks. I find that for each one I have a snapshot in my head, a sort of scene that sums up their story and their character. Take Henry II back in Season 1. I close my eyes and see that ginger bow-legged lunatic getting so angry that he's thrashing around on his bedroom floor stuffing handfuls of his mattress straw into his mouth. Or King John. Yep, there he is, whacking Arthur of Brittany upside the head with a rock and hoiking the poor lad's body into the River Seine. I think of Isabella of France gnashing her young teeth in fury as her husband, Edward II, gives all their wedding presents to his best friend forever, Piers Gaveston. Then there's Henry V. I see him on campaign in France having an argument with his brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence. Clarence is pleading for the life of a soldier in Henry's French army whose campaign is in progress. He's committed a serious offence and is going to be executed. Clarence asks for special consideration for the man and Henry, impassive, tells him no dice, Tommy boy. Justice must be impartial and be seen to be impartial. As Clarence kneels before him, Henry says, brother, if you'd committed the same crime, I'd execute you too. It's a powerful scene because who could imagine being so coldly compromised and so compartmentalised as to put the absolute application of the rules above family ties? I think not many of us. But that's what makes Henry V such a fascinating study in kingship, his robotic, self-denying service to the job. I think it also makes Henry a good point of comparison with Edward IV. Last time I characterised Edward IV's campaign to France as a Henry V tribute act, so at the risk of repeating myself, I now want to compare the pair's approach to tough love. Because here we have two Plantagenet kings, powerful guys with political smarts, who both have a younger brother who's Duke of Clarence. Yet in one case, Henry's, the vignette is of the king, his arms folded, letting his brother Clarence know that he can expect no favours just because they're related. But then we have Edward. He has a brother called Clarence too, and yet how many times does he let George, Duke of Clarence, get away with it? It's something no one else would have been allowed to do. For years, Clarence served as Warwick the Kingmaker's idiotic marionette, dancing around with a stupid grin on his face as Warwick manipulated his strings. Yet rather than reading his brother Clarence the riot act, Edward has constantly indulged him. Even when Clarence rebelled with Warwick, helped put Henry VI on the throne, and literally chased Edward out of the kingdom, he still got away with it. Which is why, in 1477, when the anchor at Toulouse case blows up, Clarence feels he can do whatever he likes. He's fed up that his wife and one of his sons have died. For one reason or another, he wants to pin the blame on some defenceless old granny who used to hang his wife's frocks up when she left him on the bedroom floor. And because he's George, Duke of Clarence, he just does it. Anchorette is arrested on his authority, not the king's. She's dragged halfway across England to a place, Warwick Castle, where Clarence rules supreme, and there's not a chance in hell of her getting a fair trial. Along with her supposed accomplice, she's rushed from arrest to trial to sentence to execution in the space of just three days. And then Clarence just kills her. Where is the law in all this? How does Clarence figure he has the power of life and limb over anyone he takes against? The fact that he's going around acting up, in this way, is a sad indictment of Clarence's lousy personality, but it's also, we have to say, a reminder of how dismally Edward IV has managed his brother in the years he's been on the throne. It seems like Yorkist blood isn't just thicker than water. It's as viscous as a cocktail made of molasses, stiffly whipped egg whites, and superglue, left overnight in the freezer. Or, well, maybe it's not. Because, as Clint Eastwood once said, "A man's gotta know his limitations." And between Edward and Clarence, they might just have discovered some. So, to take us into the great unravelling, let's try to figure out exactly what's going on in Clarence's head, if anything, in early 1477, when poor old Anchorette Twinehoe meets her grotesque comeuppance. For that, we need to wheel back a bit, to 1477. For that, we need to wheel back a bit, to 1477, when poor old Anchorette Twinehoe meets her grotesque comeuppance. 1771, when the great crisis of Edward's reign is subsiding. The first thing to say is that, as we've heard, Clarence emerges from the nightmare of Henry VI's re-adaption remarkably unscathed. Warwick the Kingmaker ends his days stretched out naked on the steps of St Paul's, and Henry VI comes to a sad end in the Tower of London. Clarence, meanwhile, seems to be lined up for nothing but yummy treats. Specifically, he can slip on a pair of dead man's shoes. Since Clarence is married to the late Warwick's daughter Isabel, that means he can step up and take over a chunk of the heiress's massive estates. He gets to chill in Warwick Castle, manage the lands, and generally lord it around like he wasn't part of the whole conspiracy to dunk on King Edward's head. But this, it seems, isn't enough for Clarence. Because in the path up of Warwick the Kingmaker's power base, he has a rival. That's his brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Now, Richard is a less conventionally dashing character than Clarence. He has a spinal deformity called scoliosis, and he's less smooth and polished all round. But Richard is tough, loyal, brave, and bloody-minded. Steely-eyed, with a firm, tight jaw, Richard knows exactly what he thinks he's due, and how to go about getting it. And he has his sights set on Warwick's estates too. And since there's another heiress, Isabel has a sister called Anne, Richard wants to stick a ring on her and slide into half the Warwick inheritance. After all, there's plenty to go around, right? Wrong. When Clarence gets wind of this, he throws a shit-fit, tries to hide Anne, disguising her as a kitchen maid. Then he protests at the royal council. Neither low trickery or high politics works. King Edward agrees that fair is fair, and in 1472, he orders that Clarence hand over lands in the north and Wales so that Richard can have his share. Big mistake. Because now, Clarence feels hard done by, and he acts up. Which brings us back to Anchorette Twinehoe. In October 1476, Clarence's wife Isabel does indeed give birth to a short-lived young boy. In December, she dies, quickly followed by their son. We shouldn't underestimate the power of grief on Clarence's mind, as well as greed. Isabel was his meal ticket to the Warwick estates. His son was a backup to his elder child as his heir. Loss can make people do strange things. But there's a twist in this, too. One of Anchorette Twinehoe's relatives had recently flipped from being one of Clarence's paid retainers to joining the Woodville-dominated household of the king's eldest son. He's part of a rash of defections, and it's likely that Clarence is stewing on this and wants to take some revenge. Which is why, in a pure spite, he grabs Anchorette and has her killed. It's a warning to anyone else thinking of defecting from his side to what he sees as the enemy ranks. The message is, he's still George Duke of Clarence. He's not just a spare, and he'll do whatever it takes to get the respect he deserves. Unfortunately for George Duke of Clarence, his flagrant abuse of power doesn't scare anyone into being nicer to him. Instead, it just confirms what everyone already knew. This guy is trouble to his core, and sooner or later, King Edward is going to have to take off his brotherly blinkers and deal with him once and for all. The medieval aristocracy had many virtues, but dressing subtly wasn't one of them. Some outfits looked less like Lord of the Manor and more like Lord of the Manor. And more escaped upholstery. Which is one reason I like Quince. They make the opposite. Timeless pieces in premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere and merino wool. I've been wearing one of their soft cashmere sweaters lately, and these 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60. Everything at Quince is priced 50-80% less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middle. Find your next four favourites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know. It was This Is History. It's the best way to support the show. My favourite royal death of all time is Richard the Lionheart. He was shot by a crossbowman using a frying pan as a shield. Now if I were using any brand of pan in my armoury, there's only one I'd choose. Hexclad. These pans have changed my life. So whether you're defending yourself in a siege or bringing some Michelin to your home kitchen, their 13-piece non-stick stainless steel pans are what you need. Plus, you can put them in the oven, stir-fry without needing an industrial-sized gas hob, and you can chuck them all in the dishwasher once you're done. So trust me when I say you need a Hexclad upgrade to make everyday cooking, or siege defence easy. For a limited time, This Is History listeners get 15% off with our exclusive link. Just head to hexclad.co.uk forward slash dynasty. That's h-e-x-c-l-a-d.co.uk forward slash dynasty. Offer excludes bundles and other items already on sale. Support This Is History and let them know we sent you. The torturers have been hard at work on the academic for a while. When he finally breaks and starts spilling what he knows. The polite term used for what they're doing to Dr. John Stacey is a severe examination. Which sounds all right, until you consider what a severe examination of all the skin under your fingernails looks like when they're yanked off one by one. Or what it might entail to have a severe examination of the effects of someone in hobnail boots stamping repeatedly on your balls. It's a messy job, but when it comes down to the security of the Yorkist crown, someone has to do it. Which is why Stacey is here now, coughing up his confession, along with a fair amount of blood. And the guilty tale he tells is of the utmost gravity. Stacey is an astronomer, based at Oxford University, who has quite a history of predicting high-end political events. Back in the 1440s, he told William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk to beware the tower. If you want to find out what this cryptic statement meant, revisit season 9 of A Dynasty to Die For, and search for episode 7, Cade's Rebellion. Now, it turns out Stacey the soothsayer has been up to his old tricks. To be precise, he's taken a commission from a guy called Thomas Burdett, who's charged him and another academic wonk, with predicted the death dates of Edward IV and his eldest son, which happen to lie in the not-too-distant future. The kicker? Burdette used to be in the pay of Warwick the Kingmaker. Since Warwick the Kingmaker became Warwick the Wormfeeder, he's been thick as thieves with Warwick's former puppet, George, Duke of Clarence. So, Stacey's confession is political dynamite. When word of Stacey's dark horoscope gets to the king, he quite reasonably takes it badly. As if Clarence quarrelling with the whole royal family and slaughtering old ladies wasn't enough, he's now playing silly buggers with a crystal ball. On top of that, since Clarence became a widower, he's been casting around for a wife who can bring him even more nice things. The word is, the top of his list of marriage material is Mary of Burgundy. She's the daughter and the heiress of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Now, this is a huge trip down No Fucking Way Boulevard all of its own. It's not so much that Mary of Burgundy is the stepdaughter of King Edward and Clarence's sister. You know what they say, kids, incest is best. More pressing is the fact that the Duke of Burgundy, Edward's longtime political ally, has just kicked the bucket himself. So, whoever marries his heiress will stand to take over one of the most powerful non-royal states in Western Europe. Clarence looks into the mirror and feels that could be him, but then of course he does. Edward, on the other hand, sees Clarence trying on the idea of becoming Duke of Burgundy and sees something rather different. Even through the rose-tinted glasses with which he views his brother, this is, next level, never going to happen. So what does Edward do now? Well, painful to report, he still can't quite summon the willpower to pay Clarence the compliment of a good kicking. But he decides to do the next best thing, which is to have his astronomer strung up. In May 1477, Edward puts together a judicial panel of high-ranking lords and judges to put Stacey's commissioner, Burdett, and a couple of his associates on trial. Just as Anchorette Twinehoe's trial was stitched up from the start, so's Burdett's. On May 20th, he's hanged at Tyburn on charges of imagining the king's death and inciting rebellion. It's hard cheese on Burdett, but it's also an unmistakable warning shot to Clarence. If he has any sense, any interest at all in self-preservation, now's the time to show it. At this point, I suppose, I should pause and let you consider whether you think Clarence has any sense. Thought about it? Well done. The answer is, of course he doesn't. Instead of heeding the warning and toning things down for a while, in June 1477, he storms into a meeting of the Royal Council, ranting and raving about his innocence. He seems to have literally zero concept of the optics of any of this. And more to the point, he's finally misjudged where King Edward's head is at. Edward's instinct is always to be merciful to his useless brother, but now all his major advisers close ranks and give him the same message. This clown has to go. It can only be a matter of time before Clarence does some new dumb thing which could have fatal consequences for the crown. So at the end of June 1477, Clarence is arrested and taken to the Tower of London, and there he's left to languish for six months. But this can't go on forever, because Edward can't ignore one inescapable fact: as long as his brother is alive, he can't be a king. As long as he's alive, England will never be at peace. This is a story I've been told many times in my life, and it's not just one of my own. I've never been a king. It's a story I've been told many times in my life, and it's not just one of my own. I've been told many times in my life, and it's not just one of my own. Done. No hassle, no negotiation, no guy from an online listing low-balling you. There's a clash of lances as the two knights charge one another in the lists. The horses pass, and then the riders wheel at the end of the lists, change lances, and make to ride another turn. Although it's a chilly January day, the crowd is loving every minute. There's not much in the world finer than a good jousting show, and over the years, Edward IV has mastered the art of putting on a crowd-pleaser. It's mid-January 1478, and even by Edward's standards, this is one of the best times for a crowd-pleaser. It's one of the best-attended tournaments held for a long time. Almost all the extended royal family is in London. In fact, a couple of days ago, there was a big gathering to celebrate the marriage of the king and queen's second son, Richard, a young boy who's marrying the similarly tiny heiress to the Duchy of Norfolk. All in all, it's a joyful time. You'd never know that, parallel to all this, something else is going on in London. At Westminster, Parliament is in session, and it's meeting with the express purpose of holding a trial for treason. The defendant is George, Duke of Clarence. Since the king made his decision to move against Clarence, a comprehensive case has been put together, spelling out in fine detail all the dodgy, dastardly, delinquent and downright dumb stuff Clarence has done over the course of his political career. The original charges against Clarence, when he was first arrested, were those of interfering with the legal process. This charge has two components. First, that Clarence illegally shafted Anchorette Twinehoe. Secondly, is that he keeps banging on about how Thomas Burdett was so innocent. Since then, the charges have multiplied. When Parliament opens, amid the fun of the jousting outside, a bill in the. the king's name is presented. In it, Edward reminds everyone that he's been extremely patient and decent towards those who've crossed him, even in the case of heinous treasons. But, he adds, his good nature has been roundly abused. He goes on to say that Clarence has been responsible for spreading rumours about his legitimacy. He's been conspiring with enemies inside and outside the realm to undermine the law. He's been slandering the king's authority. He's been alleging that Edward has stolen land from him. He's secretly got hold of a copy of a document dating to the re-adaption of Henry VI, which says he, Clarence, is the rightful heir to the throne. To paraphrase somewhat, all of this adds up to treason with a capital T. The king is well and truly done with this guy. Edward says that he might have been able to forgive Clarence again, but says the duke has proven himself incorrigible. Now, that word is interesting, and it shows just how seriously Edward takes what he's doing, or at least it suggests how his arguments have been framed for him. Incorrigible is the word that was used in the 14th century to justify the depositions of Edward II and Richard II. It's clear that what's happening to Clarence is supposed to be regarded with the same sense of solemnity. In that context, it's also crucially important to note that Edward presents the accusations himself. Normally, a bill of attainder, which is used to destroy a noble, would be presented to Parliament by a third party, and the king would sign it off. Edward is flipping the script. He's the one asking the country to agree with him that this nonsense can't continue. Clarence is brought to Parliament to answer the charges, he denies them all, and asks to settle the case through trial by combat. No one else has a word to say in his defence, and, with his request for a judicial battle denied, Clarence is sent off back to the tower to await the verdict and his fate. The verdict is in no doubt. On February the 7th, 1478, George, Duke of Clarence, is found guilty of high treason and acquittal. And sentenced to death. Unlike poor old Anchorette Twinehoe, he's allowed a few days to prepare himself. In fact, ten days go by, and Clarence is still alive and in the tower, to the consternation of some in Parliament. On February 17th, the Speaker of the Commons goes to the King and asks, in not so many words, whether they're flirting or fucking. Edward, with a somewhat heavy heart, confirms it's the latter. And the next day, in the Tower of London, a bizarre scene is played out. A large barrel, or butt, of the sweet Portuguese wine known as marmsey has its top prized off. George, Duke of Clarence, or rather, plain old George, since he's been the tainted of his titles, is led up to it, dunked in the wine, and held down until he drowns. Whether it's his choice, or Edward's choice, is not quite clear. Either way, on February 18th, 1478, England is finally rid of one of the most troublesome noblemen the Plantagenet dynasty ever produced. He's not very widely mourned, though in the best-known portrait of his daughter, Margaret, she's wearing a bracelet with a tiny wine barrel on it, presumably in his memory. Edward, of course, takes roughly as much flak for killing his brother as he would have if he'd let him be. But the moaning just seems to bear out the oldest political maxim that you can't please everyone, and most of the time, you can't please anyone. With a little hindsight, 1478 is really the long-overdue closing of a chapter that began more than a decade earlier, when Clarence first teamed up with Warwick the Kingmaker. The stage is now set for Edward to start thinking of the future, about what his legacy might be. Astonishingly, he's still only 36 years old, young even by medieval standards. For the Yorkist king, battered but proud. Battered but proven now to be a survivor par excellence, you'd think that things can only get better. He's vanquished the puppet master and the puppet. But then again, this is the Plantagenets we're talking about. And the next great lurch of fortune's wheel is always coming a lot faster than anyone imagines. But that's for next time, on This Is History. Thanks for watching. Well, there's never been a more apt episode for me to use the phrase "terrible way to go". But you can't say that drowning in a vat of Portuguese wine is a boring way to go. Which makes me want to ask my royal favourites. If you could choose a novel way to exit this earthly realm, what would it be? Let's go out with a bang together. Write in at patreon.com/thisishistory Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. And slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it, layer by layer. Until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.