The Last White Rose Read Online Free PDF

… you broke to him … any such matters, for he would take it to be said but of envy, ill will and malice,’ replied Sir Hugh. He then explained how this sort of thing had got him into trouble before. In 1486, hearing in confidence from a friend that Richard III’s former henchman Lord Lovell, in sanctuary at Colchester, was plotting mischief, he had immediately told Sir Reginald Bray, who had brought him to the king. When Henry asked him to name his source, Conway had refused because he had been sworn to secrecy by his informant, so that his warning only served to irritate the king.
    Sir Richard Nanfan reluctantly agreed that Henry was a little too prone to question warnings. He recalled that when he and Sir Sampson reported their suspicions about Sir James Tyrell – the murderer of the Princes in the Tower, who had recently been executed as a de la Pole supporter – the council refused to believe them, saying they were motivated by malice. When Nanfan had written to the king that Sir Robert Clifford was going round Calais insisting that Perkin Warbeck was Edward IV’s son – ‘Never words went colder to my heart than they did’ – Henry had demanded proof from Sir Richard, who made Clifford repeat it in front of the town marshal, ‘Else I had like to be put to a great plunge’ – by which he means he would probably have been hanged. The meeting was forced to admit that Conway would need much firmer evidence for his allegations.
    Sir Hugh told the meeting that each and every one of them was in very grave danger. They did not have strongholds where they could take refuge (like Vaux or Browne), while they had too many enemies in Calais ‘that will be glad to destroy and murder us all’. Moreover, it had been written that Henry’s reign would last no longer than Edward IV’s – which had been little more than twenty-two years – but did not specify his source.

    Terrified the conversation might be reported to the king, Conway’s hearers angrily refused to believe the prophecy, protesting their loyalty to Henry VII and the Tudors. Norton told him to burn the book in which the prophesy was written, adding that he hoped its writer would come to a bad end. ‘I pray you, leave off this prophesying about the king,’ said Sir Richard, who added that Conway was talking about things he himself had never heard of before. ‘My prayer is that I live day neither hour longer than the king’s grace, and [that] his children shall have and enjoy the realm of England.’
    In response, Conway insisted that he was only mentioning such matters for the good of the king and his children, as well as for the safety of Calais. Nothing would ever be achieved without open and honest discussion. There could be no security so long as ‘The Lady Luse’ was in the castle: ‘for the castle is the key of this town: he that is therin being of a contrary mind may let men enough in one night to destroy us all while we shall be in our beds sleeping’. Elizabeth Lucy – ‘The Lady Luse’ – was the wife of Sir Anthony Browne, lieutenant of the castle or citadel of Calais. A niece of the late Warwick the Kingmaker (her father, the Marquess Montagu, had been killed at the battle of Barnet in 1471), she had her own ideas about the succession. Once King Henry was dead, continued Conway, ‘she being in the castle here and Edmund de la Pole her cousin at his liberty … she would help him in his cause with all her power and … let him come into this town by the postern [gate] of the castle, to the destruction of us all’.
    Sir Hugh was saying that even now – nearly twenty years after Bosworth – Calais remained full of irreconcilable Yorkists who had never accepted the Tudor regime. He and his colleagues must never relax their guard in case King Henry should die unexpectedly. He also added that Calais was on the opposite side of the Channel to Kent, where he knew Suffolk had powerful supporters, such as Sir Richard Guildford.
    Sir