When the news of the arrest reached London the Woodville family and its supporters were in alarm. They tried to raise an army, but London was barren soil for them. So the queen took her other son and her daughters into the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. This was the second occasion when she had sought the protection of the holy place, but the circumstances were now infinitely more dangerous. Two families were vying for control; no council was strong enough, and no group of nobles powerful enough, to come between them. The dead king should have foreseen the consequences of his actions, in building up two centres of over-mighty subjects, but he had made no effort to forestall them. So now the queen sat down among the rushes strewn on the floor of the sanctuary, surrounded by ‘much heaviness, rumble, haste and business, carriage and conveyaunce of stuffe into Sanctuarie, chests, coffers, packs, fardels, trusses, all on men’s backs, no man unoccupied, some lading, some going, some discharging, some coming for more, some breaking down the walls to bring in the nearest way …’.
Gloucester had taken immediate action to secure the person of the monarch in order to underline his authority in any struggle with the Woodvilles. He wrote to the council, and to the mayor of London, insisting that he had acted to preserve the life of the king and that he had no designs upon the crown. On 4 May he brought Edward V to London and, as a sign of his good faith, he insisted that all the lords and aldermen should swear an oath of fealty to their new monarch. Edward was taken first to Ely Place, but then was removed to the Tower of London as the appropriate place to prepare for his coronation.
Six days later Gloucester was appointed as Protector, although the length and extent of his protection was not made clear. The coronation itself was to be held on 22 June, and at that point the young king could declare himself ready to rule on his own account. That might be the wish of his mother. Henry VI had been fit to rule at the age of fifteen; Richard II assumed the duties of kingship at the age of seventeen. So in theory Gloucester had precious little time to enforce his authority. He may also have feared that the Woodvilles were set upon his destruction.
The fact that the queen herself remained in sanctuary demonstrated the uncertainty and danger of the situation. One of Gloucester’s first actions as Protector was to remove the kin and allies of the Woodvilles from positions of influence. In that decision he seems to have had the support of the majority of the royal council, who did not see the dismissals as part of any plot to seize the crown. Gloucester also rewarded his allies. The duke of Buckingham, for example, was granted control of Wales and its border lands; it was a happy coincidence, perhaps, that he also usurped the power of the Woodvilles in that region.
The chroniclers of the period concur that by the end of May Gloucester had prepared himself to seize the crown; hindsight may be the real judge here. It is possible that Gloucester himself did not know, or was not sure, what to do; he recognized as well as anyone, from the history of his own family, the power of chance and the unexpected.
The first real sign of his intentions came in a letter to his northern allies on 10 June, in which he asked them to come to his aid ‘and assist us against the queen, her blood adherents and affinity, which have intended and daily doeth intend, to murder and utterly destroy us and our cousin, the duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of this realm …’. His words suggest fear and insecurity in equal measure. He did not mention Hastings as possible victim of these intrigues, because he now had cause to suspect him as well. It seems likely that Hastings had become aware of Gloucester’s decision to supplant the young king, and had decided to resist the attempt; all of the chroniclers report his loyalty to Edward.
On 13 June, at nine in the morning, Gloucester joined the council at the White Tower of the Tower of London in a good humour. There is a lively account of the meeting by Thomas More, in his life of Richard III; the record has often been treated with scepticism, but More’s principal source was undoubtedly John Morton who as bishop of Ely was present on the occasion. ‘My lord,’ the duke of Gloucester said to the bishop, ‘you have very good strawberries in your garden in Holborn. I request you let us have a mess of them.’
‘Gladly, my lord,’ the bishop replied. ‘Would to God I had some better things as ready to your pleasure as all that.’ The bishop despatched his servant, and Gloucester retired to his chamber. He returned to the council, an hour later, in a much altered state. He was now in a sour and angry mood; he had a habit, when perplexed or enraged, of chewing his lower lip. ‘What do those persons deserve,’ he asked the councillors, ‘who have compassed and imagined my destruction?’
