When the Island Went to War With France

Back in the days of old, back when I was still at school, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, I don’t recall the Isle of Wight ever being mentioned in history lessons.

As an Island resident, popular local history often includes tales of Pluto pipes, the “pipeline under the ocean” that was intended to supply fuel (but that didn’t…) to the British and American forces on their return to mainland Europe following the Normandy landings of the Second War; and it also tends to reference the failed attempts by King Charles I, to escape from Carisbrooke Castle when he was imprisoned there in 1647, during the English Civl War, .

Given that 1066 is one of the more memorable dates of British history, it’s perhaps surprising that more isn’t made of the tale of King Harold camping not far Brading Haven, back when the harbour still extended to Brading, in the months before the 1066 invasion. He waited there, in the Spring, in the expectation of an invasion force landing somewhere along the coast; but the invasion was delayed, and harold set of to fight battles elsewhere, before returning to hasting when the invastion did come.

Around the same time, tales could be told of the fabulously wealthy Bishop Odo of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror, unofficial regent when William was out of the country. Odo was well known to the Island, and whilst at Carisbrooke Castle was stripped of his position as the Earl of Kent by the King himself, after the King discovered that Odo was making a power play and aspiring to become Pope. There is also the legend of Odo’s gold…

But this story is not those stories, although it is a story of another Lord of Carisbrooke Castle, of another Captain of the Island: Sir Edward Woodville.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of him? From the later 1400s, the time of the War of the Roses?

If not, you’ll have heard of his sister. Or at least, her sons, Edward’s nephews: the Princes in the Tower, killed by Richard III to shore up his claim to throne.

In fact, many of the Woodville family had interesting tales to tell: let’s start with Edward Woodville’s mother, Jacquetta. Her brother-in-law, from the House of Lancaster, was Henry V, and her nephew Henry VI, also of Lancaster.

When her husband, the Duke of Bedford (Henry IV’s brother) died, Jacquetta, still aged only 21, remarried one of her husband’s knights, Richard Woodville, Edward’s father.

Edward’s aforementioned sister, Elizabeth, whose first marriage ended with the untimely death of her husband, who had been a supporter of the House of Lancaster. But then she secretly married the Yorkist King Edward IV. As well as being mother to “the Princes in the Tower”, Elizabeth had had several other notable children, not least the short lived King Edward V, and a daughter called Elizabeth.

That Elizabeth, Edward’s niece, Elizabeth of York, went on to marry the first of the Tudors, Henry Tudor, which is to say, Henry VII.

So looking sideways across three generations, this makes Edward’s mother the sister-in-law of a Lancastrian King, and his sister the wife of a Yorkist King and the mother-in-law of a Tudor one.

Needless to say, it also means that Edward’s niece had an interesting family story. Not only was she the daughter of Edward IV (York), she was also the sister of Edward V (York), the niece of Richard III (York), and, incidentally, by virtue of her marriage to Henry VII (Tudor), the mother of two queens: Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and Mary, Queen of France; she was also the mother of our very own English Henry VIII, and the grandmother of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. Got that?

But this story isn’t about them. It’s about Edward.

Edward: one time drinking buddy of the King Edward IV and now called up to court to be invested in the order of the Garter by Henry VII. It’s 1488, and waiting outside are two emissaries from Bittany. When Henry had been exile, he’d been protected by Brittany, although it was France that helped him take the English throne. Brittany and France were, at that time, two separate kingdoms.

France was laying claim to Brittany, and with a threat of invasion, the Bretons sought the help of the King of England. In a master stroke of diplomacy, Henry, who perhaps owed both sides his allegiance, had been given the role of mediator, but now the Bretons explicitly asked for his help.

“No can do” he said, although we might perhaps imagine the language he used was very particular, very Johnsonian… “No one from this island, this island of Britain, of which I am sovereign, and upon which I now stand will help you” perhaps? Listening closely, a long time ally of Brittany, is Edward Woodville. Edward Woodville, Captain of the Isle of Wight. An island just a short hop away from what some locals still today call “the big Island”.

Woodville pleads with the King, but the King has spoken. And so, Edward returns home, across the Solent. To another island. Accompanied by the two Breton ambassadors.

After a couple of weeks, Edward Woodville has raised a force of 400 men or so, who are joined by 200 more from Southampton. They set off for Brittany, and are well fêted when they arrive: parties, celebrations, more parties. A truce is called, and the Bretons all but stand down, preparing the oncoming harvest.

With word afoot about the English support for Brittany, Henry VII writes to King Charles of France explaining that the force is a rogue one, an amateurish one, made up of thieves and reprobates, and certainly not an officially sanctioned expeditionary force.

But then, France makes it move. The English force, with foot soldiers wearing the red cross on their white tunics for the first time, along with a thousand or so similarly clad soldiers of Brittany to give the appearance of a larger English force, make their march against the much larger, and far more professional, French force, bolstered by elite Swiss mercenaries.

The English force inflicts huge losses on the French army, but suffers more in return. One of the dead, leading the charge, is Edward Woodville. The battle goes to and fro, but when a magazine, an ammunition dump, explodes behind the Breton lines, chaos ensures and France takes the field.

Several garrisoned towns hold out under siege for a few more months, and the French King writes to Henry VII, wryly noting Henry’s previous letter — I quite understand it had nothing to do with you — and responding in kind: we now have peace with Brittany were it not for a few troublesome rebels holding out in a couple of besieged towns. I’m sure you quite understand we must all put such rebellions down.

And so it was. Henceforth, Brittany would be a part of France. And of the Isle of Wight volunteers, led by Sir Edward Woodville, who took on France in support of Brittany, but one lad survived to return home and tell the tale. Sir Edward’s page boy, Diccon Cheke.

So next time you’re up at Carisbrooke Castle and walk through the gatehouse, often referred to in Victorian times at least as the Woodville Tower, see if you can spot the coat of arms of Lord Scales, Edward Wooodville’s elder brother and an earlier Captain of the Isle of Wight.

And that is the end of my story of how a small band from the Isle of Wight invaded France.