In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,7

remembered. It was the growing discord in his marriage which was changing him; he was turning from a satisfied man to a disgruntled one, and that affected his nature and consequently his attitude toward his subjects.

Buckingham had powerful connections in the present as well as the past. He was married to a daughter of the Percys, the great lords of the North. His son—his only one—had married the Countess of Salisbury's daughter, so that made a family connection between him and my godmother. Small wonder that she was worried. He had three daughters, one of whom had married into the Norfolk family, one to the Earl of Westmorland and the third to Lord Abergavenny. So it was clear that Buckingham was well connected.

Someone said of him, “My lord Buckingham is a nobleman who would be a royal ruler.”

Knowing my father, now I can guess that such a remark would set up warning signals in his mind. His father had been plagued by pretenders to the throne—Perkin Warbeck, Lambert Simnel, to name the two most important. A king who sits warily on the throne has to be careful.

Buckingham was a stupid man. It was a great mistake to antagonize Wolsey. Obsessed by his nobility, I suppose it was natural that he should resent a man of lowly birth who had climbed so high that the King relied on his judgment and had more affection for him than he had for the greatest nobleman in the land.

He should have had more sense than to pit his wits against Wolsey. Precarious as his position was with the King, he could not afford to challenge the cleverest man in the kingdom.

For some time my father must have been toying with the idea of ridding himself of the arrogant Buckingham who, in time, would doubtless be laying claim to the throne.

Matters came to a head over a simple incident, as such matters do.

It was the custom for one of the highest-ranking nobles to hold the basin while the King washed his hands. This was Buckingham's duty. Wolsey was standing beside the King, chatting amiably to him as they did together, for if my father liked someone he never hesitated to show it and would allow that person all sorts of privileges; and when the King had finished washing his hands, Wolsey attempted to use the basin too.

Buckingham was incensed that he should be holding the basin for a lowborn son of a butcher, as he called him. Wolsey's father had owned land in Ipswich and may have bred sheep and cattle; if so, he doubtless sold the carcasses. In any case the epithet “Butcher's Cur” was often bestowed on him by his many enemies and frequently used by those jealous of his power. The Duke tilted the basin and poured the water onto Wolsey's shoes.

The King was amused and nothing was made of the incident at the time, but naturally it was not brushed aside. Wolsey would not forget; Buckingham had to be taught a lesson; and as the King was already uneasy about Buckingham's pretensions to royalty, it was not difficult to bring a charge against him.

Men in high positions can be sure of one thing: they have many enemies. It was not long before a case was brought against Buckingham and he was committed to the Tower on a charge of treason.

I believe it was easy to prove a case against him. He was supposed to have listened to prophesies of the King's death and his own succession to the crown and of even expressing an intention to kill my father, but that was mainly hearsay. The King wanted to be rid of him. He would always be a menace. He must have remembered the uneasiness of his own father, and Buckingham was condemned as a traitor. He was beheaded on Tower Hill, and his body was buried in the church of Austin Friars.

I should not have known anything of this at the time, as I was only five years old, but I was aware of the effect it had on the Countess, for the Duke's son was her son-in-law and it was a family tragedy. The Countess was a clever woman. She knew that the Duke had not lost his head because of treasonable acts. He had died because of his closeness to the throne. And she herself? She was even closer. Her father had been the brother of Edward IV. My father was the grandson of that Edward through his mother,