On 18 February 1478, George, Duke of Clarence, was executed in the Tower of London following his conviction for high treason in parliament. Tradition has it that he was drowned in a butt of malmsey, by order of his brother, King Edward IV. Relations between Clarence and the King had been tempestuous for several years. They had fallen out in the late 1460s when the Duke defied his brother and married Isabel, daughter of Richard, Earl of Warwick, then joined the Earl's ill-fated rebellion in 1470. Although Clarence had returned to his brother's side the following year, his authority over his Midlands and Welsh March heartlands gradually declined. For this, Edward was partially responsible, as he had liberally recruited from his brother's tenantry. The King had also promoted his in-laws—personal enemies of Clarence—often at the Duke's expense.
In December 1476, Isabel died in Tewkesbury following childbirth, as did their newly-born son a few days later. Historians have speculated that Clarence now became near deranged with grief, and that he came to imagine she had been poisoned. The following April he sent an armed force to arrest one of her ladies, Ankarette Twynho, in Frome, Somerset. A servant of Clarence's, John Thursby, was accused of poisoning the Duke and Duchess's newly-born son. Another man, Roger Tocotes, was accused of harbouring them, but evaded arrest. Twynho and Thursby were found guilty and immediately executed. The following month, in response, the King ordered an investigation into possible treason among some of Clarence's closest retainers and servants. This resulted in the execution of two of the Duke's associates, Thomas Burdet and John Stacy. Clarence publicly disputed the findings of the commission, and this, and other allegations, led to his own arrest and eventual execution.
Historians have generally considered Clarence's fall from power to have been the direct result of his abuse of his feudal authority and usurping of the King's justice. While none consider Clarence's actions as justifiable, differing motives have been presented. His original attack on Twynho, Tocotes and Thursby has been variously been put down to either petulance or a lack of mental stability. The executions, in turn, were probably a symptom of his declining authority. Haemorrhaging support as his affinity was, Clarence may have intended both a show of strength and a warning to his followers not to betray him.
Background
Relations between King Edward IV of England and his brother George, Duke of Clarence, had been fraught since the late 1460s, when Clarence had drifted into the orbit of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who himself had become increasingly dissatisfied with Edward's rule. Originally Warwick's protégé—the Earl had been largely responsible for Edward's accession in 1461—Edward had become increasingly independent. In 1464, he angered Warwick by marrying Elizabeth Woodville, whom the Earl saw as being from a parvenu family, and thus a marriage against the country's interests. In 1469, Warwick had rebelled; Clarence was by now his ally, as Edward had tried to prevent the Duke's marriage to Warwick's daughter Isabel. Although Clarence had returned to Edward's side in 1471, and fought with him against Warwick at the Battle of Barnet, he was no longer fully trusted.
The Midlands was the heart of Clarence's power in the 1470s. Since 1473, it had become his primary residence, and he went out of his way to recruit local families traditionally loyal to the Beauchamp earls of Warwick. Notwithstanding the Duke's efforts, his authority was slowly being eroded, mainly through the competitive recruitment of his tenants by other nobles and the King himself. The power of William, Lord Hastings—a new favourite of the King—had been gradually increased in the Midlands at the Duke's expense, who had lost the Honour of Tutbury to him. The King appears to have been dismayed at Clarence's inability to rule the region effectively and regularly intervened to buttress his brother's power in the region. His having to do so emphasised Clarence's own ineffectualness. This regional weakness was in part due to Edward's own policy of appointing castellans to Duchy of Lancaster (i.e. royal) castles surrounding the Duke's lands, encircling him with men loyal to the King rather than the Duke. Clarence was also jealous of the power of his and Edward's younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, while the Woodvilles encroached on his Marcher lands, where they were building a regional hegemony.
By the early 1470s, suggests the historian Charles Ross, the two brothers were on "thoroughly hostile terms". The Croyland Chronicle reports that both parties had spies in the other's household—whom the chronicler calls "flatterers"—reporting back on the private conversations of the other and that Edward and Clarence "now each began to look upon the other with no very fraternal eyes".
Deaths Clarence and Isabel already had a son, Edward, and on 5 October 1476 in Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire, Isabel gave birth to another, whom they named Richard. Contemporary reports suggest she looked healthy in the period immediately after the birth. Clarence took her back to Warwick Castle on 12 November, but she may have become ill. Contemporaries—including the Abbey's own chronicler—believed Isabel to be suffering a illness. She died on 22 December 1476, aged 25. By then her death appears to have been expected. In a double blow, Richard died eight days later on 1 January.
Isabel was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, accompanied by "elaborate obsequies" and a month-long lying in state, with vigils and funerary masses. Richard was buried in Warwick Castle with less fanfare. Clarence may have been suspicious that the deaths of two people close to him―possibly by poison―in such a short space of time were not a coincidence. But if so, he did not immediately act upon his suspicions, and it is possible that he had to travel to Ireland in the meantime, where he was lord lieutenant.
It is curious, suggests the medievalist John Ashdown-Hill, that the deaths of Isabel and her son occurred at such different lengths of time following their supposed ingestion of poison. According to the later charge, Isabel was poisoned on 10 October 1476, but did not die until 22 December, a period of 73 days. Their son Richard was supposed to have been poisoned on 21 December 1476 and to have died on 1 January, a period of only 11 days. Ashdown-Hill explains this by suggesting that October was actually a scribal error for December, in which case she died the day, possibly a few hours, after her son. This would also explain why Isabel was erroneously said to have been at Warwick when she was actually in Tewkesbury.
Arrest
Ankarette Twynho was seized at her house in Keyford, near Frome, on 12 April 1477; Clarence may have believed her to be a witch. The historian Michael Hicks has called the method of Twynho's arrest "highly irregular" and it has been compared to an abduction. She was taken —across three shires—in three days. For context, this was akin to the speed with which some of the most important political news of the previous 20 years had travelled. For example, the report of the dumping of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk's murdered body on the Dover shore on 2 May 1450 arrived in London on 4 May. This was a distance of approximately , averaging a day. Similarly, in 1455, news of the murder of Nicholas Radford in Devon took five days to travel the from Exeter to London, averaging a day.
Accused parties
Ankarette Twynho and her husband William, who had died by 1476, were minor Somerset gentry. William had been a long-term Clarence retainer, while Twynho had been in the Duchess of Clarence's service until her death, possibly as a lady's maid. She had a role caring for Isabel after Richard's birth but seems not to have been a midwife nor involved in the birth itself. It seems unlikely that Twynho accompanied her mistress to Warwick.
Accused with Twynho was one John Thursby, a politically insignificant Warwickshire yeoman. He was charged with poisoning baby Richard, in whose service he had been. Another man, Sir Roger Tocotes, was accused by Clarence of aiding, abetting and harbouring the criminals, and possibly of orchestrating the whole plot. He managed to avoid capture. Of the three accused, Tocotes was the most important; he was brother-in-law to the influential ecclesiastic Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, whose executor he was to be. By 1477, he was a knight banneret and had twice been Member of Parliament for Wiltshire and sheriff.
Tocotes is known to have been in Clarence's inner circle from 1468. A close personal friend, "nobody was a more constant associate of the Duke of Clarence in adversity or prosperity", according to Michael Hicks. As such, Hicks suggests, "a more improbable object of Clarence's hostility it is difficult to imagine".
Trial and execution Clarence forbade Twynho's daughter and son-in-law from entering Warwick, and they had to await news in Stratford-upon-Avon. Twynho was stripped of her jewels and money and imprisoned in the castle. On Tuesday 15th, with Thursby, she was tried in the guildhall. She was charged with veneficium, by giving Isabel "a venomous drink of ale mixed with poison". The killing of a master or mistress by a servant was legally petty treason; Twynho pleaded not guilty. Thursby was accused of poisoning Richard, also with bad ale. The trial was brief. The Duke was present for the proceedings, and may even have led the prosecution.
Twynho and Thursby were found guilty; there was only one penalty. Sentenced to death, they were to be "led from the bar to the said lord King's gaol of Warwick aforesaid, and drawn from that gaol through the centre of that town of Warwick to the gallows at Myton, and be hanged there on that gallows until... dead". Before Twynho was taken from the castle for the last time, several jurors visited her in remorse. They explained how being in fear of the Duke, they came to a judgment "contrary to their conscience". The Parliament Roll later recorded that
Both Twynho and Thursby were "drawn at the horse's tail" through Warwick to their execution. This had been carried out by noon; between arraignment and death less than three hours had passed.
Clarence's involvement
As Warwick was the Duke's , it was unlikely that the accused would receive a fair trial. Clarence could bring influence to bear both on jurors—four of whom were his tenants from Warwick and Solihull—and on the justices. All of these were local men. Hicks argues that "undue pressure" was undoubtedly required to reach the verdicts Clarence wanted. The historian A. J. Pollard has called it a kangaroo court, with Clarence acting, a contemporary record says, "as though he had used a Kyng's power".
It is possible that the Duke deliberately altered the chronology of events, depending on whether October was a scribal error for December when the charges were read. Twynho was accused of committing the crime while she and Isabel were at Warwick Castle—thus allowing the Duke to try her there—although contemporaneous evidence indicates that the Duchess was at Tewkesbury until mid-November. To gain the verdicts he needed, Clarence probably engineered proceedings, and if he deliberately changed December to October in the charges, then he also fabricated evidence. Further, all the responsible officials were his men. These included not only the county clerk, but also the justices of the bench, John Hugford and Henry Boteler. The latter were the Duke's current and former retainers respectively. On these grounds, suggests the historian Christine Carpenter, the indictments were most improper.