March 1st 1471: Edward’s time in the Burgundian Court
The Opulant court of Duke Charles
In October 1470, the invading Earl of Warwick used his influence to force King Edward into a tactical retreat. He left King’s Lynn with a little fleet of ships to go into exile. He had an uncomfortable voyage over the North Sea, harried by ships belonging to the Hanseatic League, with whom he’d been pursuing a trade dispute. His choice of safe haven had hardly been much better; the court of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Though Duke Charles had married Edward’s sister, he had divided loyalties, and the exiled Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was a favoured member of his court.
Phillipe de Commyns, diplomat and commentator, explained the position:
I have formerly mentioned the reasons that prevailed with the Duke of Burgundy to marry the sister of Edward, King of England, and it was principally to strengthen his alliance against the King of France; otherwise he would never have done it, for the love he bore to the house of Lancaster, to which he was allied by his mother, who was Infanta of Portugal, but her mother was the Duke of Lancaster's daughter; wherefore his kindness for the house of Lancaster was as great as his hatred to that of York. At the time of this marriage, the house of Lancaster was quite depressed, and of the house of York there was no great talk; for Edward, who was both Duke of York and King, enjoyed the peaceable possession of the kingdom. In the war between these two contending houses, there had been seven or eight memorable battles in England; in which threescore or fourscore persons of the blood-royal of that kingdom were cruelly slain, as is said before in these Memoirs. Those that survived were fugitives, and lived in the Duke of Burgundy's court; all of them young gentlemen (whose fathers had been slain in England) whom the Duke of Burgundy had generously entertained before this marriage, as his relations of the house of Lancaster. Some of them were reduced to such extremity of want and poverty before the Duke of Burgundy received them, that no common beggar could have been poorer.
Edward made it safely to Bruges, where he was guest of a prominent citizen. It took until January 1471 for his brother in law to give him an audience. His loyalty to the Lancastrian cause had been shaken by King Louis XI of France, who started moving against Burgundian possessions and a strong rumour that the Earl of Warwick was setting England against Burgundy in support of France.
Duke Charles was suspicious that Louis, the ‘Universal Spider’ was orchestrating a pincer movement, and sent the Lancastrians from his court, after they gave their word that they would not join the Earl of Warwick, and transferred his support to King Edward, helping to prepare for his return to England.