Archive for the ‘Medieval Miscellany’ Category

This is the first part of the talk Bruce MacCarthy gave at the general meeting of the New South Wales Branch on 8 February 2014.

Introduction

Today, some historians divide the Plantagenets into four distinct Royal Houses: Angevins, Plantagenets, Lancaster and York but, collectively, the Plantagenet family as they are now known formed the longest-running dynasty in British history, with 14 kings over more than 330 years from 1154 to 1485.  Even if we similarly group together the Hanoverians and their successors, from George I onwards, they have so far provided only 11 kings and queens and are only in their 300th year in 2014.

In my two journeys to Europe, I have always tried to visit places with Plantagenet connections.  For example, I have been to the ruins of Dürnstein Castle, where Richard I was held captive by Duke Leopold of Austria in 1192-3.  In May 2008, my wife and I toured King John’s castle in Limerick.  This castle was built on the orders of King John, and was completed around 1200.  It is well worth a visit for the excellent historical displays.  Of course, we also visited the Richard III Museum in York, when we were there in 2010, and I recall an article on this museum in your 2011 journal.

Read the rest of this entry »

5
Feb

MEDIEVAL JEWELLERY

   Posted by: Lynne Foley Tags:

The following is the text of Lynne’s fascinating talk from the December meeting of the NSW Branch.

The transcendent, timeless beauty of medieval jewels has not diminished with the passage of time.  Made from precious metals – gold, silver and gemstones, the pieces that have come down to the present day still retain their beauty and quality of craftsmanship.

The humbler ranks in society had their jewellery too, but made of base metals, iron, pewter or copper, and  in place of gemstones, coloured glass. The less well-off left no wills or inventories of goods, no portraits so most of our information deals with the upper classes.

Silver was much more common in the 12th and 13th century and rich mines in Germany supplied silver in great quantities.

Gold was the most valued metal of all, and Cheapside, the principal thoroughfare from St Paul’s to the Tower, became the hub of the goldsmithing industry.  Some goldsmiths were in holy orders and monasteries were good customers, in need of chalices, cups, censers etc. used in services.  Abbot Sugur of St Denis, well known for his love of rich vestments and gold pieces, justified the work of goldsmiths at his abbey by saying that such display was to praise God.

Due to a shortfall in gold from the mines of Western and Central Europe, recycling of older pieces was high.  Ancient coins, jewellery or other gold objects were melted down and reused.  We are lucky that in such circumstances, so much has survived.

Gemstones were largely supplied by trade. Travelling merchants obtained   stones  such as rubies, sapphire, emeralds, diamonds and turquoise from the East – India, Ceylon, Arabia and Persia.  Germany and Russia were sources for amethysts.

All metals – base or precious – were worked by a smith beginning with an ingot which was hammered into a sheet for working, or the metal could be heated until molten and poured into a mould. Such a mould was found in Ashill in Norfolk. It was dated to about 1300 but its current location is unknown.

Surface decoration took many forms – engraving of patterns or letters using a fine tool on the front of the piece; the use of a hammer and punch on the back of the sheet, and adding colour by setting the piece with gems.

Another way to add colour was enamelling – this technique is essentially ground glass fired at very high temperature onto the metal surface. A type of enamelling found on medieval jewellery is champlevé, the metal was deeply engraved with a design, filled with ground glass and fired. Basse taille was translucent enamel which allowed light to be reflected from the gold or silver surface, giving a sparkling effect that as Campbell asserts, no modern goldsmith has ever surpassed.

Perfected in Paris as early as 1400, émail en ronde basse, is the technique which allowed objects to be enamelled in the round by fusing molten glass to gold.

An item showing the beauty of enamel work is the Dunstable Swan. It was found on the site of a Dominican priory in Dunstable, Beds. and owned possibly by a member of the De Bohun family, whose sign was a swan.

Until the fifteenth century, gems were polished, not cut, and irregular gems were held in place with a lip of metal or a four or five-pronged claw setting. Pearls were pierced for sewing onto clothing or mounted on a tiny rod projecting from the body of the pearl.

Several hoards of medieval jewellery have been found – the Fishpool Hoard was voted one of the top ten British treasures. The hoard contains 1237 gold coins mainly dating from the reign of Henry VI and gold jewellery.  Possibly it may have been part of the Lancastrian treasury; concealed by a survivor of the Battle of Hexham who may have died of wounds or killed in a subsequent battle before the treasure could be retrieved. The hoard remained secreted in Sherwood Forest until 1966.

One of the most famous hoards is that called the Cheapside Hoard found in a cellar in 1912.  Again death being a probable reason why the pieces were never retrieved.  Although, as it falls at the end of the period under discussion, it deserves a mention.

The hoard is a veritable Aladdin’s cave; the pieces date from the Elizabethan to Jacobean period and are of the highest quality. An emerald watch is not only one of the most spectacular items in the hoard, it is unique. Other medieval watches exist but none like this.

The maker has cut the lid and case out of one rough emerald or two prisms of matching size, colour and translucency. In fact, there is so much light, the case need not be opened to tell the time. The dial features champlevé enamel; Roman numerals mark the hours and the dots half hours. The hands are lost as is the mechanism, but x-rays have revealed how the watch was driven. The loss of the hands and mechanism may be due to the watch being ajar, allowing water to enter.

The salamander was a popular jewellery design throughout Europe, particularly Spain.  The Cheapside example is made of emeralds; its feet and undercarriage display opaque white; it has flecks of black enamel indicating the scaly flesh of a salamander and a coral tongue, though the tip is snapped off – perhaps during recovery.

For any member who may be visiting London from now until the 27 April 2014, the jewels are on at the Museum of London, Docklands.

Two finds of interest to us are the Middleham jewel, found in 1985 and the Middleham ring, found in 1990.

The Middleham Jewel (photograph by Jonathan Cardy, obtained through Wikimedia Commons)

The Middleham Jewel is a lozenge-shaped pendant, engraved with religious scenes and figures. The front has a large sapphire, a Latin inscription and an engraving of the Trinity.  The reverse side has an exquisitely engraved Nativity scene. This piece is dated to the third quarter of the fifteenth century.  It has slots on the side for pearls, which over time have disintegrated.

The Middleham ring is inscribed with 12 letters ‘S’ on the outside and on the inside with the word ‘sovereynly’ which is thought to mean ‘in a lordly manner.’

The significance of medieval jewellery goes beyond its material or decorative value – in medieval times it served many more purposes than today.

Jewellery was used as symbols of affection or to cement alliances such as the betrothal ring sent to Margaret of York by Charles the Bold; stones were thought to  have magical powers; mainly in powdered form, gems were used as medicines. Before the existence of banks, gemstones and jewellery were well regarded as security for loans and were a form of portable wealth. Jewellery served also religious functions and complemented clothing both for adornment and practical application – brooches were useful in pinning together layers of clothing.

For the nobility, gemstones and jewellery were an unmistakable signal of social standing, wealth and influence.

At the highest end of the social scale was the king, who was expected to maintain a grand estate appropriate to his royal dignity. In this, Edward IV did not disappoint.

From surviving accounts we know that Edward’s routine expenditure on jewellery was considerable. In July 1461, he redeemed from the executors of Sir John Falstoff two valuable jewels which had been pledged by the king’s father Duke Richard, who had owned also a jewelled collar valued at £2,666 – a fabulous sum for the times.

Edward spent £125 on a jewelled ornament ‘against the time of the birth of our most dear daughter Elizabeth.’  In 1469, although a cash-strapped Edward was pawning jewels to raise money, he still found spare change of  £930 for jewels supplied by John Barker and Henry Massey, two London goldsmiths.

A bill survives from Cornelius the goldsmith which gives an idea of what purchases comprised. A few examples are: a gold cross set with a diamond, 4 rubies and 7 pearls; a flower shape with a green sapphire; a toothpick of gold, garnished with a diamond, ruby and pearl; and gold rings garnished with 4 rubies.

On another occasion, Ross says that Edward had bid – unsuccessfully – £3000 for a huge diamond and ruby ornament owned by the Grimaldi brothers.

On his accession, Edward not only reformed coinage but also changed the design of the noble. Featuring a king holding a sword standing in a boat. Edward placed a rose on the boat and practically obliterated the cross on the reverse by his sign of a blazing sun and another rose.

Considered to be one of masterpieces of the medieval times, it is the position of the suspension loops that is notable. Suspension with either side showing would render the design either askew or upside down.  Therefore it is thought that the pendant was designed to be held up to the face. The coin was not reissued after 1471 and existing stocks were popular. The surviving example would have been owned by a supporter of the family York or of Edward himself.

Upon Edward’s death a coat of gilt mail with his arms embroidered in pearls, gold and rubies, survived until 1642 when it was destroyed by the Parliamentary soldiers.

King Richard was no less aware than his brother of the need for kingly magnificence and display, but with one exception, it is difficult to find evidence of his ownership and use of jewellery.

The exception mentioned is that as Duke of Gloucester, Richard wished to buy a fine emerald owned by Sir John Pilkington. He refused to sell and Richard had to accept that decision.  In his will, proved in 1479, however, Pilkington stated that “I will that my lorde of Gloucestre shall have a emerald set in gold for which for said lorde would have given me c marc.’

In 1529, Henry VIII gave Ann Boleyn a fine emerald – the same one? We will never know.

Ecclesiastical jewellery was just as beautiful as that made for secular use.  Reliquary rings and pendants were used to house alleged relics whose power was their proximity to the body.

Another well-known example is the Wyckham jewel. Made in Paris about 1400, it is set with a ruby in the middle; it shows the Annunciation and carved into the letter ‘M’ for the Virgin Mary. It was given to New College Oxford by its founder, Bishop William Wykeham.

Nature as a source of design was prominent from the late C14th to the early C15th.  The All Souls jewel, made of sheet of gold shaped into a flower, is covered with opaque white enamel and set with a pink tourmaline is rare in two respects–  the ronde bosse enamel is intact and pink tourmaline was a gem not used in quantity until the19th century.

Campbell suggests that the condition of the jewel was probably due to its coming into the care of All Souls College soon after its manufacture. An extant record shows that it was received by the college in 1466.

I would like to conclude this introduction to the world of medieval jewellery with this thought:

‘Very many people find that a single gem stone alone is enough to provide them with a supreme and perfect aesthetic experience of the wonders of Nature.’
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 37, ‘On Gems.’

Bibliography:

1.   Marion Campbell, Medieval Jewellery. V & A Publishing, 2011
2.   John Cherry, Medieval Goldsmiths
3.   John Cherry, The Middleham Jewel and Ring
4.   Gareth Dean, Medieval York. The History Press
5.   Princely Magnificence: Debrett’s Pty Ltd 1981
6.   Hazel Forsyth, London’s Lost Jewels. Museum of London Publishing 2013
7.   ‘The Will of Sir John Pilkington’ – published by the Richard III Society, 2012
8.   Alan Robinson, Masterpieces:  Medieval Art. British Museum Press  2008
9.   Charles Ross, Edward IV
10. Dora Salley, ‘Medieval Jewelry’, Central European University http://web.ceu.hu/medstud/manual/SRM/jewel.htm#raw

1
Jun

THE BONES IN THE URN

   Posted by: Barbara Gaskell Denvil Tags: ,

The drama, the tragedy and the thrill of a good colourful story obviously attracts. Villainy can seem far more interesting than honest hard working decency. So can we ever be convinced to relinquish our attraction to myth and propaganda?

The recent discovery of King Richard III’s burial site has renewed so much public interest that many of the old controversies are once again being discussed. Some articles and FB posts are astonishingly antagonistic, even when the writer clearly has never researched the subject at all, let alone seriously studied the few known facts. So why do people still feel so strongly about a historical figure who died more than 500 years ago?

Of course the main accusation against Richard III has always been the assumption that he murdered his nephews, and the discovery of the skeletons of two children under a Tower staircase in the 17th century has often been quoted as virtual proof of this dastardly act.

I should like to try and put a few of these assumptions into perspective.

In 1674  at the Tower of London a group of workmen were employed to demolish a stone staircase attached to the White Tower, and over several days had dug a full ten feet down to the level of the Tower foundations, when they came upon two human skeletons. Seeing little of interest in this discovery, they threw the bones, along with the surrounding rubble, onto the rubbish dump.

When they related these facts afterwards, others realised that this find could be of some importance. Since the skeletons appeared to be of two young people, being neither of fully grown adults nor of small children, someone began to wonder if these could be the remains of the so-called ‘princes in the Tower’ – i.e. the two sons of the late King Edward IV who had seemingly disappeared during the subsequent reign of King Richard III. Sometime later the bones were therefore recovered from the dump. The reigning monarch at the time (Charles II) subsequently ordered the bones entombment in an urn, to be kept in Westminster Abbey. The assumption, given that forensic examination was unknown at that time, was to accept the bones as those of the allegedly murdered ‘princes’.

This was certainly not the first time that human bones had been discovered in and around the Tower. However, not only did these particular skeletons seemingly, judging by size alone, match the ages of the king’s lost boys, but they were discovered under a staircase, and this rang bells with the unfinished story written long before by Sir Thomas More and entitled “The History of King Richard III.”

So those are the simple facts. But a considerable number of myths, misinterpretations and assumptions have gathered around these facts ever since, and the principal one concerns that same unfinished story left by Sir Thomas More.

Neither at the time, nor during the Tudor age following, did anyone else conjecture as to such precise details concerning the boys’ fates – though assumption continued and increased as the blackening of Richard III’s reputation became a political tool of the Tudors. The only reliable account of when they were last sighted (at least by anyone who cared to write of it) appears in a monkish chronicle which indicates they were still resident in the Tower in late August or early September 1483. Yet surprisingly the actual contemporary evidence appears to indicate that little interest was aroused in the vicinity at the time of this disappearance, and Londoners went about their business as usual. Whether the sons of Edward IV then died, were murdered, or were simply smuggled safely away, was guessed at but never proved.

It was not until around 1515 (30 years after the death of Richard III) that Sir Thomas More started to write his ‘history’. Over the years he wrote several versions of this but neither finished nor published any of them. They have survived however, and many researchers have chosen to take them seriously in spite of the anomalies, excessive number of mistakes, and insistence on recording discussions word for word even when the possibility of knowing what had been said was completely non-existent.

Within his pages, More initially records that the fate of the boys remained in doubt. Then later and quite suddenly he offers a detailed scenario of their heinous slaughter. He gives no explanation of how he could possibly know the exact details which he relates, however the story appears to be partially inspired by Polydore Vergil, the man recently employed by Henry VII to write a history of England. More, however, elaborates hugely on Vergil’s account, adding no end of specific extra colour. How (more than 30 years after the fact) he suddenly came by this wealth of gossip is difficult to imagine. Did More chat afterwards with the murderers? Did he talk with the priest, yet decide to confide in no one else even though he then wrote it down for anyone to read? Did he receive information from some other nameless soul, who also chose to disclose these essential facts to no one else? More, however, now confidently tells us that after their violent deaths the two sons of Edward IV were secretly buried at the foot of a staircase in the Tower of London. He then goes on to explain that Richard III (who had ordered the murders) objected to such an improper burial and ordered a priest to dig up the corpses and rebury them in another more suitable (but unnamed) place, and that this was promptly done.

So the burial under a stairwell is certainly mentioned. Yet according to More, (the only one ever to mention burial under a staircase at all) that is NOT where the two bodies were finally left. He specifically says they were moved to a secret place more appropriate to their station. And here the secret supposedly remained – no longer under a staircase at all.

Yet the actual ‘bones in the urn’ were originally found under a stone stair attached to the exterior of the White Tower (known as the Keep). Apart from the contradiction within More’s story, such a rigorous endeavour is difficult to accept as this area was the access point to the only entrance, and would certainly have been one of the busiest parts of the Tower. Anyone digging there would have been clearly visible. So we are asked to accept that a couple of amazingly determined murderers managed between them to dig 10 foot under solid stone, avoiding all passing gentry including the guards, and to deposit there two suspicious bundles – all while the ‘princes’’ staff raised no alarm nor even blinked in curiosity. And the subsequent solitary priest somehow dug them up again? As the night quickly passed, was he, in absolute secrecy, able to dig 10 foot under stone to rebury the boys’ remains? And if so, in accordance with More’s little book – why were they still found under the staircase?

At that time hundreds of busy people, many with their entire families, lived and worked in the Tower. This was no dreadful place of isolated dungeons and cold haunted corners. It was a royal palace with grand apartments and a number of council chambers, beautiful gardens complete with gardeners, clerks and administrators, a menagerie and its keepers, the Royal Mint and all its wealth of workers, a whole garrison of guards, kitchens, cooks, scullions and cleaners. How a pair of strange and suspicious ruffians could have dug such a deep secret grave in one night completely unnoticed by anyone is frankly an impossible situation. Even at night the Tower really was a hive of industry and activity, and the ‘princes’ themselves had servants day and night. They were not under arrest and nor were they locked in the dungeons – they lived together in a comfortable apartment and more than 14 personal staff were paid to look after them. Yet we are asked to believe that their murder was magically accomplished without anyone at all knowing how, who, or even exactly when.

But let us leave that puzzle and return to the urn. It rested undisturbed in the Abbey for many years, but in 1933 it was decided to open it and discover just what was inside.

The complete description of the contents is on record of course, and the boy’s remains were immediately examined by experts of the time.

Apart from the human remains, there were a number of animal bones – clearly all collected together from the rubbish pit. There were, however, no textiles of any kind. So please – let’s forget that other silly myth of the scraps of expensive velvet. Yes – hundreds of years ago an anonymous scribble in a margin evidently mentioned velvet – but no such thing is mentioned elsewhere, no such thing has survived in any form, and the anonymous scribble has also disappeared – if it ever existed in the first place. So no velvet. Another red herring.

I have also read that a dark stain which ‘could’ be blood, was found on one skull. After 200 years underground we are asked to accept an anonymous stain as an indication of violent murder??? And when this same skull had been left for some time rolling around with fresh animal remains from the butchers? Indeed, those who mentioned the possibility of the stain being blood, later entirely retracted their statement, although this important development is often overlooked. So please! Another ludicrous exaggerated myth.

Now the more important evidence – the scientific examination. Oh – but, wait a moment. This was 1933 and science has moved a long, long way since then. No DNA examination was possible back then. Carbon dating was not employed – too suspect, especially with bones that had been so contaminated for so long. Their antiquity could not therefore be established, so simple assumptions were made – which have been seriously questioned since. The age of the children when they died is also extremely open to opinion. There is absolutely no possibility of sexing these bones. They could have been girls and this remains perfectly likely. At the time a conclusion was made that the two children had been related (this from an examination of the teeth and not from DNA) which has now been shown as probably erroneous. Historians and orthopaedic experts are divided. Some still maintain that these remains ‘could’ be the sons of Edward IV, while others point out the inconsistencies and inaccuracies. There really is no consensus of specialist opinion. The arguments have occasionally become quite heated and no confirmed or complete conclusion has been reached. And there are other anomalies.

For instance, it has been shown that the lower jaw bone of the elder child indicates the presence of a serious bone disease. This would have been both painful and visible. Yet the young Edward V is documented as having been fit, active, prepared for coronation, and described as ‘good looking’. No record is shown of any such existing disease which would have seriously undermined his future life and reign.

There’s another red herring here. Doctor Argentine, the elder prince’s long-standing physician, related that, “the young king, like a victim prepared for sacrifice, sought remission of his sins by daily confession and penance, because he believed death was facing him.”

But Dr. Argentine did not visit his charge because of ailing health. All junior royalty were under the permanent care of doctors who were responsible for their day to day health. A doctor’s appearance here was a consistent matter of course, and would have been ever since birth. And the prince’s recorded statement, apart from being second-hand hearsay, is extremely ambiguous. I doubt he was cheerful at the time, poor boy – with his status in doubt, and his expected coronation suddenly delayed. He may well have expected (and been warned by his dour and pessimistic Lancastrian and Woodville guardians) a bitter end. This does not mean it actually occurred.

So these are the basic facts, and as anyone can see, they do not point specifically in any direction. They prove nothing, not even circumstantially, and any assumption that the bones in the urn are almost certainly those of the two lost boys of Edward IV is absolutely unjustified. Until permission is finally given (many have asked and always been denied) for the urn to be opened once more and the contents subjected to up-to-date forensic examination, we cannot know anything at all. So far the very sketchy facts seem to point towards the bones dating from Norman, or even from Roman times, and at least some experts strongly suggest that the elder is female.

Those interested authors of articles claiming these bones are definitely those of the lost boys, are either fooling themselves or attempting to fool their readers.

Should the bones eventually be examined and proved by DNA matching to be the ‘princes’ after all – we may with our present level of technology discover roughly when they died (to the nearest 50 years). We may perhaps also ascertain the causes of their deaths, but unless there are signs of injury it is unlikely we will learn whether they were killed – still less who killed them.

If, on the other hand, as seems most likely, they are proved NOT to be the ‘princes’ it will settle a long-standing controversy, and provide some very interesting material for archaeological study. In particular it will silence some of the more exaggerated and erroneous myths.

There remains the bigger question – WHAT exactly happened to Edward IV’s sons, and on whose orders? Well that is quite another problem – and there is as yet no answer to that either.

Note: Barbara Gaskell-Denvil is a historical novelist and member of the NSW branch of the Richard III Society.  Her new book, Sumerford’s Autumn, which deals with – possibly – one of the princes, is has hit the shelves during the past week.  It is published by Simon & Schuster Australia, ISBN 9781922052582.

This article appeared first on Barbara’s website http://www.bgdenvil.com/ and is reposted here with her permission.

28
May

THOMAS STAFFORD – 16th CENTURY YORKIST REBEL

   Posted by: Dorothea Preis Tags: , ,

This article is by Stephen Lark, a Ricardian friends from Ipswich, Suffolk.  We thank Stephen for making it available to us.  It was first published in the Journal of the American Branch of the Richard III Society, Ricardian Register, Vol.43, No.2 (June 2012).

Thomas Stafford was executed on this day in 1557.

Introduction

This is the story of Richard’s controversial and, consequently, short-lived great great nephew. Genealogical tables can be included, showing his Clarence and Stafford descent, also his relationships with the Hastings family (William, Lord Hastings, and the Earls of Huntingdon).

He is of particular interest as the first proven legitimate Yorkist to initiate a rebellion against the Tudor regime and I feel passionately that he does not deserve his present relative obscurity. I shall attempt to answer some of the mysteries surrounding his life and actions.

Beginnings

Thomas Stafford was born between 1530 and 1533, in about 1531, according to the original DNB, or 1533 in the new edition. At this time, four of Henry VIII’s key advisers (Cromwell, More, Cranmer and the recently deceased Wolsey) all bore the forename Thomas, which may explain his parents’ choice.

His father was Henry Stafford, only son of Edward, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Eleanor Percy. His mother was Ursula Pole, only daughter of Sir Richard Pole and Lady Margaret Plantagenet (daughter of George, Duke of Clarence). Thomas’ parents married in February 1519, expecting to succeed to the Duchy but this did not happen because Edward was executed in 1521 for “treasonable utterances”.

He is supposed to have said that, were the King to die childless, he would seek the throne and to have consulted a fortune-teller about this. Burke’s says that he was executed “for his vanity and loquacity”. Shakespeare, in Henry VIII portrays him as a plotter, as did the recent ITV film.

His attainder was reversed soon afterwards and Henry was recreated Baron Stafford in 1548.

Thomas was the ninth of fourteen children born to Henry and Ursula Stafford during a 44-year marriage. Many of these, as was usual, died in infancy, including Henry, the eldest. Another Henry was, the eldest surviving son and became the 2nd Baron; Edward became the 3rd Baron and progenitor of the senior branch ever since; Richard was the father of Roger (Froyde) Stafford (an old man deprived of the title under Charles I, for his poverty, after it had passed to him on the initial failure of Edward’s male line).

Dorothy married Sir William Stafford of Grafton (a very distant cousin whose grandfather Sir Humphrey Stafford had been executed in 1486), becoming the mother of William Stafford (1554-1612), a later rebel. For further Stafford genealogy, see Robinson or the author’s Stafford Line (Mid-Anglia Group, 2004). The Buckingham and Grafton lines separated some time in the thirteenth century but Sir William and Dorothy’s marriage partially reunited them.

During Thomas’ childhood, his paternal aunt, Margaret Stafford (Lady Bulmer), was executed with her husband (1537) for their part in the “Pilgrimage of Grace”, his maternal grandmother and uncle (Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (1541) and Henry Pole, Baron Montagu (1539)) both beheaded.

He grew up knowing that his father’s family was one of the oldest in England, his earliest known ancestors being born in the tenth century and, also being of Beaufort stock, were closely related to the Tudor monarchs. His mother’s father was of Lancastrian stock and her mother, as daughter of the Duke of Clarence, was of the Yorkist royal line.

He would also have become aware how dangerous this combination of ancestry could be.

Travels

Little is known of his education but Thomas toured Europe in the early fifties, including Paris (1550), Rome (where he was to visit his uncle, Cardinal Reginald Pole), Venice (where he stayed until summer 1553) and Poland, where King Sigismund Augustus received him, writing to Queen Mary to suggest that the young man be restored to his grandfather’s Duchy, although his brother, Henry, was alive and was knighted in 1553.

In Rome, Cardinal Pole tried to re-convert Stafford to Catholicism. In Venice, Stafford was permitted to view the jewels of St. Mark and the armoury halls; furthermore he and two servants were permitted to carry arms.

Thomas returned to join the Wyatt conspiracy (probably under Henry of Suffolk in the Midlands), being briefly imprisoned in the Fleet – at the same time, Stafford’s cousin, Francis of Huntingdon, and his son, Lord Henry Hastings, were detained in the Tower. He then developed a violent objection to Mary’s Spanish marriage although it is not known whether, like Edward Courtenay (12th Earl of Devon), he considered himself as an alternative suitor.

He declared that she had forfeited the throne, thereby ignoring the claims of Princess Elizabeth, Mary Stuart as a descendant of Margaret Tudor, any remaining descendants of Henry VII’s daughter Mary (i.e. Lady Catherine Grey) and his own brother, Sir Henry.

On his release, Thomas travelled to Fontainebleau, residence of Cardinal Pole, who refused to meet him again, embarrassed at his objection to Mary’s choice of husband, moving on to the Low Countries to mix in extreme Protestant circles, which emphasised his belief that he was destined for greater things.

He had a seal made, consisting of the undifferenced royal arms, tantamount to claiming the throne and, therefore, a treasonable act. Thomas fell out with many of his fellow exiles, such as his brother-in-law Sir William Stafford (Hicks calls him Sir Robert), attempting to assassinate Sir William Pickering (April 1554) and, after further imprisonment in Rouen (1556), left for Dieppe.

Scarborough Castle

After his restoration, Edward IV granted Scarborough Castle to the Duke of Gloucester who visited it in 1484. Perkin Warbeck promised it to his “aunt”, Margaret of Burgundy. Robert Aske led a siege during the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 but troops led by Sir Ralph Evers withstood it. The castle was located in the Catholic north-east of England, accessible by sea but easily defensible.

Thomas Stafford and his band of thirty-five men sailed in two ships from Dieppe on 18 April (Easter Sunday), landed on the Yorkshire coast, sailed up to the undefended Scarborough Castle on 25 April and took the garrison completely by surprise. He warned that the Spanish marriage would enslave the English people, that Scarborough and other castles would be ceded to the Spanish, proclaimed himself Lord Protector and announced his intention to reclaim his grandfather’s title (a pretext employed by Henry of Bolingbroke in 1399, Richard of York in 1460 and Edmund of Suffolk in 1502).

The keep of Scarborough Castle (photograph by Stephen Montgomery, obtained through Wikimedia Commons)

However, the rebellion failed to gather momentum and the local militia acted swiftly. Under Henry Neville, Earl of Westmorland (Thomas’ uncle), they retook the castle. Many of the rebels (who included four Scots) were summarily hanged (hence the phrase “Scarborough warning”, meaning none at all) and others were executed across Yorkshire. Thomas was taken to London and tried for treason, beheaded at Tower Hill on 28 May and buried at St. Peter ad Vincula. With the other executed rebels, he was attainted. Two of his party were pardoned.

The DNB (both editions) says that he was drawn, hanged and quartered but, his father having been restored to the Barony nine years earlier, this seems unlikely. John Strype (1643-1737) confirms that Stafford was beheaded, his work being re-published in 1822, names many of the co-conspirators and includes both Stafford’s and Mary’s proclamations: “May 28: Stafford was beheaded on Tower Hill”.

As a consequence of the rebellion, Queen Mary declared war on France, during which the French took Calais, England’s last possession on the continent.

Five years later, Elizabeth almost died from smallpox.  Lord Henry Hastings (now the 3rd Earl of Huntingdon), together with Lady Catherine Grey, was on the shortlist of successors considered by Parliament – a Yorkist heir who would have inherited the throne peaceably and went on to serve Elizabeth at the highest level for twenty-three years.

Mysteries

Early sources claimed that the Scarborough raid had official French backing because Thomas was a continental Protestant and England’s Catholic Queen was married to a Spaniard. According to Hicks, this is unlikely, as Henri II would have wished to avoid provoking an Anglo-Spanish alliance. Other theories, such as Thomas as a “stalking horse” or victim of Tudor provocation, are also rejected; indeed the reports you may read can be taken at face value.

Both DNB editions, Burke’s and the Complete Peerage all claim that Thomas had a surviving elder brother. His parents’ first son, Henry, died very young and Thomas’ other brother by that name (later the second Baron) seems to have been born by 1527 and Edward (3rd Baron) in 1536. These three “standard sources” do not correspond perfectly and interpretation is important.

There is a little scope for confusion but, having exchanged e-mail with Professor Hicks during which he summarised one of his sources (1534 pedigree: British Library MS 6672 f.193), Thomas’ position in the family has probably been finalised. However, he claimed on several occasions to have been born before Sir Henry. This seems to be analogous to the Lancastrian fantasy (of Henry III’s sons) that formed the basis to their claim.

Sources

Dictionary of National Biography (Entry by A.F. Pollard, 1897).
New Dictionary of National Biography (Entry by Michael Hicks, 2004).
The Staffords (J.M. Robinson, 2002).
The Earlier Tudors (J.D. Mackie, 1952).
The Tower of London: The Official Illustrated History (Edward Impey & Geoffrey Parnell).
Elizabeth I: A Study of Power and Intellect (Paul Johnson, 1974)
Ecclesiastica Memoria (John Strype, volume 3 part 2, 67-9, 513-9, 1721-33).

11
Nov

A Meal Fit for a King

   Posted by: Dorothea Preis Tags:

On this website, Julia has brought us a variety of recipes with a medieval flavor, so when a friend recently posted a link to a YouTube clip of ‘Clarissa and the King’s Cookbook’, I immediately thought of her and all our readers interested in cooking.

In this programme, well-known TV chef Clarissa Dickson Wright investigates The Forme of Cury, a cook book from the court of Richard II, and also tries out some of the recipes.

While with the “cury” of the title, we may think of our favourite Indian or Thai restaurant, here it is simply the Middle English word for “cookery”.  It is one of the oldest cook books in English, compiled by the master-cooks at the court of Richard II (1367-1400).  It is a manuscript scroll made of vellum.  Altogether it contains 196 recipes, from everyday dishes to impressive dishes for banquets, including the spectacular subtleties.

Some of the things on offer sound a bit strange to modern ears, such as whales, cranes, curlews, herons, seals and porpoises. Let’s hope that 600 odd years ago they were more plentiful than today.

On the other hand the spices like caraway, nutmeg, cardamom, ginger and pepper were rare and exotic then, whereas today you find them on any supermarket shelf.  I found the mention of olive oil quite intriguing, as not that long ago most northern Europeans would have regarded olive oil with some suspicion as foreign.

The photograph shows one of a series of reliefs depicting the life of St Martin (1983) at the Bonn Minster by renowned artist Ernemann Sander  (photo by Dorothea Preis)

One of the recipes, Clarissa tries out on the show, is goose with a stuffing of herbs and fruit.  It sounds quite delicious and I could imagine it serving to my family.  Where I come from, goose is the typical meal for the feast of St Martin (11 November – which is why I posted this today) and Christmas.  Not that this was the only treat on this saint’s  feast day.  At primary school we would make lanterns to walk in the St Martin’s procession in the late afternoon, complete with someone dressed up as the saint riding at the front and reenacting the episode of cutting a cloak in half.  Afterwards we would each get a “Weckmann”, a pastry in the shape of a man.

Weckmann (photo by Flammingo, obtained through Wikimedia Commons)

The recipes have been used in a book, To the King’s Taste: Richard II’s Book of Feasts and Recipes Adapted for Modern Cooking.

Editor’s Comment: The following article is by Pauline Pogmore of the Yorkshire Branch of the Richard III Society.  We are most grateful to Pauline for making this interesting investigation available to us.

Tewkesbury Abbey (Photograph by Saffron Blaze, obtained through Wikimedia Commons)

Recent activities in Leicester have once again brought to our minds the question of how many members of the House of York have no known resting place. In April 2012 I had an article printed in Blanc Sanglier (magazine of the Yorkshire Branch of the Richard III Society) on the Clarence Bones, those of George, Duke of Clarence and his wife Isabel Neville. Most of the facts related in this article are based on those in an excellent book Tewkesbury Abbey. History Art and Architecture by Richard Morris and Ron Shoesmith first printed in 2003. The relevant pages dealing with the matter are Chapter 4, pages 31-40. This is a much simplified account of why these bones cannot be those of the Clarence’s.

There is no record of exactly how George was killed. He is said to have been drowned in a butt of Malmsey but in actual fact could just as easily have been beheaded, stabbed or poisoned.  Neither can we be certain as to Isabel’s cause of death. Isabel may have died of the aftereffects of childbirth or of consumption (tuberculosis), but poison is very unlikely except in George’s fertile imagination. As to the bones in the Clarence vault in Tewkesbury Abbeythere is no trace of violence on either set of bones.

Far from being undisturbed since George of Clarence’s interment the vault has been opened at the very least eight times and these are only the recorded occasions. To begin at the beginning the vault was first used in 1477 for the interment of Duchess Isabel. Whether or not it had been planned during Duke George’s lifetime it is the only underground vault in the Abbey and whether it was complete at this time is a matter of conjecture. What is known is that Isabel’s body lay in state in the choir of the Abbey for thirty five days before her interment. Was the vault hurriedly constructed during this period or had the couple already made arrangements for a final resting place. It is also unclear as to who finally paid for the vaults construction George or either of his brothers Edward and Richard or possibly all three met payments at various times. It was opened again the following year for the burial of George after his execution in February 1478.

The next recorded opening was in 1709 for the burial of Alderman Hawling one of Tewkesbury’s citizens. Just how a town Alderman managed to appropriate a royal vault for his burial place remains a mystery. The vault was opened again in 1729 for the burial of the Alderman’s wife Mary and again in 1753 for that of their son John.

The next recorded opening was in 1829 and was recorded in an article in the “Gentleman’s Magazine”, and records 2 skulls and other bones in the vault. The article also makes a valid point that between the burial of George of Clarence and Alderman Hawling there had been the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This point is well made. Henry VIII had every intention of stripping the Abbey of everything of value and then leaving it to fall into decay. This was averted when the townspeople bought the Abbey from the crown. However, before the purchase Henry’s henchmen would have stripped out anything of value and the article in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” states that at that time the vault had been ransacked. Could the coffins of George and Isabel, especially if they were decorated with gold or silver plates or handles, have been opened and the bodies removed. The vault was again opened in 1829 this time for the removal of the three Hawling’s who were buried in a new grave to the south of the vault. The bones assumed to be those of George and Isabel were at this time deposited in a stone coffin. In 1876 the vault was opened again. Although the vault was completely dry the stone coffin was full of water. This may have been a result of a great flood in 1852 which had reached the Abbey. There is no record of when the bones were actually deposited in a glass case but it was certainly prior to the 1830’s when a new glass case was made. At this time the vault also contained 6 coffin handles, part of a coffin plate, a nailand the bottom half of a medieval coffin lid. Of the stone coffin there was no trace.

The next opening of the vault in Tewkesbury was on 13th June 1982 in the presence of the vicar Michael Donmall. This time the bones were removed from their case for examination and cleaning.

The findings of this exercise are interesting to say the least. The bones were 2 separate partial skeletons in poor condition. The male skeleton consisted of most of the leg and hip bones, the upper left arm, left shoulder and the upper part of the skull. On examination it was discovered the man had what amounted to mild arthritic changes and a degree of cranial closure consistent with late middle age 40 to 60 years. His height was approximately 5feet 3inches. This therefore hardly matches George of Clarence. While not on the scale of his elder brother Edward’s height of 6feet 4inches George is thought to have been tall or at the very least average which for the time was 5feet 7inches. Evidence for this is that his brother Richard is always described as of much less height than Edward but the same remark is never made of George. If George had only stood 5feet 3inches it would surely have been remarked on. Added to this is the approximate age of the skeleton. George was born in 1449 and twenty nine when he died which doesn’t fit the age either.

The female skeleton is even more of a mystery. It consists of almost the entire legs minus feet, hips, upper and half of lower right arm and the upper skull. Examination found advanced localised osteo arthritis and a degree of suture obliteration of the skull which suggests an age between 50-70 years. The height was approximately 5ft 4ins. If there was doubt about the male being George it is impossible to believe this is Isabel. Born in 1451 Isabel died aged only twenty five on 22nd December 1476. As previously mentioned she lay in state in the Abbey for thirty five days before her burial in 1477. We have no idea of her appearance since the only known likeness is the stylised drawing in the Rous Roll but we do know that she would not have the skele3ton of a woman of 50-70 years of age. A further mystery is where was Isabel’s baby Richard whose birth could have been a cause of her death. He died in January 1477 and one would have expected him to be buried at the same time as his mother. The only conclusion on the evidence here is that these bones cannot possibly be those of George and Isabel. So who are they.

Conjecture

For the female there is at least a possible identification. Isabel’s mother Anne Beauchamp born in 1426 was, as the heiress of Isabella Despenser, Lord of Tewkesbury. Every Lord except one had been buried in the Abbey since its consecration.  Both Anne’s daughters and their husbands were dead by the date of her death, her nearest relations would have been her grandson Edward, Earl of Warwick a prisoner in the Tower of London aged 17 and his sister Margaret aged 19. They would very likely have had no say in Anne’s interment since neither was allowed to inherit from her. Almost every record says Anne was buried at Tewkesbury the others say Bisham Abbey where her husband Richard “Kingmaker” Neville was buried.Neither give a location for a tomb. It does not stretch the imagination too far that if the burial was at Tewkesbury It was in the vault of her daughter and son in law. Anne was 66 when she died which certainly fits the age of the female skeleton.

However, what of the male skeleton. Could this possibly be the Kingmaker. We know he was buried at Bisham in 1471 after his death at the battle of Barnet. During the Dissolution of the monasteries many remains disappeared. However a great many others were moved to other locations. The Mowbray and Howard dead were taken from Thetford Priory to Framlingham. The Earl andCountess of Essex were transferred from Beeleigh Abbey to Little Easton Church. By this time 1536 Anne’s aforementioned granddaughter Margaret was no longer an insignificant girl but Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury in her own right and a very pious lady. It does not stretch the imagination too far that she would have had her grandparents moved and reburied. However at this point were George and Isabel still in situ.

The question that remains is what happened to George and Isabel. It appears that they havejoined a long line of members of the house of York with no known resting place. The list is a long one.

12
Aug

Duchess Anne of Exeter

   Posted by: Judy Howard Tags: , , ,

It is a tradition in the NSW branch that at the August general meeting we have “Scrabble Talks”.  Once a year, members draw Scrabble tiles out of a bag and then prepare a short talk on a topic starting with their letter.  The following is Judy’s talk on ‘Duchess Anne of Exeter’.  This was a particularly fitting, as the day before our meeting was Duchess Anne’s birthday.

Duchess Anne of Exeter

I’ve been allocated the letter ‘A’ for my talk at the August general meeting of the NSW branch, so I would like to tell you about Princess Anne Plantagenet, better known as Duchess Anne of Exeter, who was the eldest sister of Edward IV and Richard III and apparently Edward’s favourite sibling.  You will be familiar with this memorial brass to Anne and her second husband, which I think is the only likeness of her to survive.


Anne’s story is a very good example of a high born woman who became a pawn in the political manoeuvres of her male relatives.  But we can presume she found happiness towards the end of her life.

Anne was born in 1439 and was the eldest surviving child of the Duke of York and Cecily Neville.  She was betrothed in 1445 at the age of 6 years to Henry Holland, who was 15 years old and the son of the Duke of Exeter.  York paid a huge dowry of 4,500 marks, the largest known in late medieval England. Within five years of this, you will recall, was around the time that the King, Henry VI, began showing signs of his illness and the Wars of the Roses was beginning to seriously foment.  It is believed York’s motive in securing the betrothal was partly political and he was hoping for Exeter’s alliance in his attempt to return to France.  It was also a dynastic move as Exeter was the next closest male relative of Henry VI and descended from John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster.  York took the opportunity to combine two great dynasties but in fact, in both personal and political terms, it was a disaster.

Anne and Henry married soon after their betrothal and Henry inherited his father’s titles and land in 1450 and as the Duke of Exeter and became admiral of England, Ireland & Aquitaine and Constable of the Tower of London.  Their first and only child, also called Anne, was born in 1455, and she went on to marry Elizabeth Woodville’s son, Thomas Grey in 1467.  The young Duke of Exeter, Henry, was described as an unappealing character, violent, cruel and lacking in any real experience and was unintelligent – not the makings of a great husband or political ally!!

During York’s Protectorate in 1453 – 54, young Exeter (York’s son-in-law) played a prominent role in the serious breakdown of local law and order and the uncontrollable violence, particularly in Yorkshire which was York’s biggest challenge during his protectorate, seems to have been perpetrated by Exeter himself.  Exeter planned a major uprising in the north and may have even plotted to murder York by luring him to Yorkshire.

It was unlikely that Duchess Anne was able to escape the animosity Exeter felt towards his wife’s father, given his character.  In addition, York defaulted on the later instalments to her dowry, which is understandable but would not have helped the relationships.  Anne did have a child with Exeter in 1455 but we can presume that the marriage broke down soon after.

Exeter was a staunch Lancastrian during the descent into Civil War and he became a very bitter enemy of York and the Nevilles.  Exeter thought, as the King’s closest relative, he was entitled to a prominent role in government and he was not happy when York began to advance his own claims as King Henry’s heir presumptive. As a committed Lancastrian, Exeter joined forces with Somerset, Northumberland and others in opposition, which culminated in the death of York, his son Edmund and brother-in-law Salisbury at Wakefield in 1460.

In 1461 Exeter fought for the Lancastrians at the battles of Blore Heath, Northampton, St Albans and Towton and even though defeated, he continued to be aligned with the Somerset and the other hard-core Lancastrians.  This caused further and continuing difficulties for the new King Edward in his attempts to establish his rule and find a collegiate solution to the regional turmoil caused by the civil war.  Exeter escaped overseas and was attainted by parliament and his estates were granted to his wife – one advantage of being the new King’s sister.  Exeter lived in poverty during his exile until the Duke of Burgundy gave him a modest pension.  But remember that the Duke of Burgundy was soon to become Edward’s brother-in-law when he married Princess Margaret of York.

Anne at this stage was still married to Exeter and was herself the second lady in the land after the King’s mother, Cecily.

Anne, around this time, began a relationship with Sir Thomas St Ledger who became her lover (who could blame her!!).  Thomas was made an esquire of the body to Edward IV and was granted eight manors in Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire, including a royal manor, and received a number of other wardships and grants.  Here, and in the granting of Exeter’s estates to her, Anne benefited considerably from being the King’s sister.

Thomas proved to be a loyal member of the King’s household, he resisted Clarence and Warwick in 1469 – 1470 and he even joined Edward in exile in 1470.

But, not to be forgotten, that flea Exeter returned to England and commanded the left wing of Warwick’s army at Barnet in April 1471 and in doing so opposed his 3 brothers-in-law, Edward, Richard & Clarence.  He was seriously wounded on the battlefield but eventually recovered to be imprisoned in the Tower of London.  Anne finally got her divorce from Exeter and she married her lover Thomas St Ledger the next year.

But Exeter was not to be put down so easily, he was released from custody in 1475 to join Edward’s French expedition but on the return journey he drowned in the English Channel, reputedly thrown overboard with the King’s knowledge.  A fitting end for such a despicable character.  I wonder what Anne thought??

Tragically for Anne, though, her daughter with Exeter died the same year.

The next year in 1476, Anne gave birth to a second daughter also called Anne, but unfortunately Duchess Anne herself died, probably in childbirth.  The infant Anne, whose father was Thomas St Ledger, was to marry George Manners and become the Baroness Ros and have two children, one of whom became the 1st Earl of Rutland. This title has remained in their family until today – Duchess Anne and her lover Thomas had established a very successful and long lasting dynasty.

But to continue the story of the people in Duchess Anne’s life:  after Edward’s death in 1483, Anne’s second husband Thomas St Ledger attended Richard III’s coronation but in July of that year he was dismissed from all posts.  He became closely aligned with Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and a leader in the Buckingham Revolt around Exeter and held out against the royal forces at Bodmin Castle until mid-November.  Thomas St Ledger was executed a few days after.  How sad for Anne, but we do not truly understand the circumstances of this period and cannot understand the extremes of emotion that Edward’s old household felt given the events which followed Edward’s death and Richard’s subsequent coronation.

We also do not know much about Duchess Anne as a person, which is not unusual for women of this period.  However in 1491 her daughter by her second husband Thomas, founded in her honour the Rutland Chapel, as it is now called, in the north transept of St George’s Chapel at Windsor, just down the aisle from Edward IV’s vault.  The memorial brass to Anne and Thomas is on the east wall of this chantry chapel.

The Chantry, although established for her parents, also contains a fine tomb chest and alabaster effigies of Anne junior and her husband George Manners, the 12th Baron Ros.  These effigies are very fine examples of the period. (You can find photographs of these here)

The Rutland Chantry is a beautiful place to visit and is still used regularly for services at St George’s Chapel.  It has some very beautiful new tapestries hanging within, along with some new furniture and today remains a very peaceful place of worship and contemplation.  A fine memorial to Duchess Anne.

6
Jun

Was Edward V Sick?

   Posted by: Annette Carson Tags: , ,

The following article by Annette Carson, author of Richard III – The Maligned King, was originally published in the March 2012 issue of Ricardian Register, the journal of the American Branch of the Richard III Society.  We are very grateful to Annette for making it available to our branch as well.

In the course of researching and writing my book about Richard III,1 I was struck by an apparently widespread assumption that the boy Edward V was sickly and, if not despatched by nefarious means, probably died of some kind of illness.

Leaving aside storytelling and wild speculation, there are very few respectable sources to which this misapprehension might be traced. Of these, only one was writing at the time of the events he described, and this was the Italian cleric Dominic Mancini, who reported that ‘like a victim prepared for sacrifice … [Edward] believed that death was facing him’.2

It is generally accepted that Mancini had come to England at the behest of his patron Archbishop Angelo Cato, a key figure in the intelligence-gathering circle of Louis XI of France. His visit coincided with a catastrophic breach in Anglo-French relations, on which Cato was doubtless looking for a first-hand report; instead of which Mancini found himself present during a far more interesting series of events: the death of Edward IV, the accession of his son, Edward V, and the latter’s replacement by Richard III.

Mancini gives a very full description of the twelve-year-old Edward V, his graces and accomplishments, physical appearance, whereabouts and general state of mind. This knowledge is attributed to his access to Dr John Argentine, the physician who attended Edward at his lodgings in the Tower of London after his deposition in the summer of 1483. With such a valuable and free-speaking source of information at hand, Mancini’s report would have been a poor effort indeed if he had not winkled out from the boy’s doctor all possible information about his health – a matter of great interest to the French court in those turbulent times, especially if he was ailing or even quite sick.

Yet Mancini’s comment about Edward’s daily confession ‘like a victim prepared for sacrifice’ is conspicuously devoid of reference to any issue of medical health, on which Argentine would have been the prevailing authority. Rather than suggesting that he was physically ill, it sounds like one of those hints Mancini likes to drop that young Edward was set to meet a sticky end.

Some 25 years later, the French chronicler Jean Molinet also wrote briefly of Edward V, describing him as ‘unsophisticated and very melancholy, aware only of the ill-will of his uncle’, a boy who believed that he and his brother were marked for death. Obviously coloured by the then-current assumption that they had been murdered by Richard III, Molinet’s retrospective account depicts Edward as a pathetic figure but undermines its own credibility with the adjective ‘unsophisticated’, which scarcely chimes with the admiring words of Dominic Mancini, who wrote (presumably quoting the physician Argentine): ‘In word and deed he gave so many proofs of his liberal education, of polite, nay scholarly attainments far beyond his age … his special knowledge of literature, which enabled him to discourse elegantly, to understand fully and to declaim most excellently from any work whether in verse or prose that came into his hands, unless it were from among the more abstruse authors’.3

While mentioning John Argentine, by the way, it need not be taken as significant that Edward’s doctor looked after him during his stay in London, as did also a number of other personal attendants, some of whose names are officially recorded. Rather it may be viewed as a sign of the appropriate care and respect given to his royal person. Indeed, since there is no contemporaneous account of his health, we should probably never have heard of his physician had not Mancini enjoyed Argentine’s confidences.

If Mancini’s observations are deficient in crucial specifics, our next source has even less factual evidence to offer. This is Sir George Buck in his History of King Richard the Third written in 1619, over 130 years later. Buck was Master of the Revels at the court of James I, and one of those seventeenth-century antiquaries who made it their business to delve into ancient papers in order to find documentary evidence about times past. Buck was a firm believer that the pretender known as ‘Perkin Warbeck’ was in fact Edward V’s younger brother, Richard. Of Edward he admitted knowing almost nothing, assuming that he must have fallen ill and died while still residing in the Tower of London: ‘[I think the elder] brother Edward died [of sick]ness and of infirmity (for he was weak and very sickly …)’.4

The best argument Sir George could find to support his theory was that Edward’s siblings did not live to make old bones: ‘their sisters also were but of a weak constitution, as their short lives showed.’ It is difficult to construe what kind of lifespan Buck termed ‘short’ for a woman, when death in childbirth was a constant hazard. Certainly some of the sisters lived into their late thirties, and Catherine, Countess of Devon, is said to have died in 1527, in her late forties. Their half-brother, Edward IV’s illegitimate son Lord Lisle, apparently lived to be nearly eighty.

Another basis for Buck’s theory was that no pretender came forward to represent himself as Edward V. This may be so, but very little is known about what lay behind the pretender later dubbed ‘Lambert Simnel’, crowned in Dublin in May of 1487, and supported by the Earl of Lincoln and Edward’s aunt Margaret of Burgundy (and even, perhaps, by his mother Elizabeth Woodville and half-brother Thomas, Marquess of Dorset). Buck may have fallen into the same error as have historians throughout the ages, i.e. the assumption that what he knew then was all there was to know.

Buck’s is the first recorded suggestion in so many words that Edward fell sick and died. But his book about Richard III cannot be said to have been widely read. Indeed for 350 years the only printed version was one in such a bowdlerized form that, until a scholarly edition of the original was produced by Arthur Kincaid in 1979, it was virtually dismissed by historians.

So, I wondered, could it be that the common supposition about Edward V’s ill-health dates from a source that is much more recent? I am referring to something that attracts considerable scepticism nowadays, and that is Lawrence Tanner and William Wright’s 1933 examination of those skeletal remains currently in Westminster Abbey which Charles II decided, in 1674, on no evidence whatsoever, were those of Edward V and his brother.5

The anatomist Professor Wright, and his dental adviser Dr George Northcroft – both of whom agreed enthusiastically with Charles II – identified evidence of a disease of the lower jaw in the elder of the two skulls present, which is visible in their published photographs. Thirty years later another anatomist, Dr Richard Lyne-Pirkis, gave a talk to the Richard III Society in which he stated it as his opinion, on the basis of those photographs, that it was probably ‘a condition known as osteomyelitis or chronic inflammation of the bone, which was quite a common condition in those days’.6 Osteomyelitis would have been extremely painful and increasingly disfiguring, and was very likely to have proved fatal in those centuries before antibiotics.

Other experts in a variety of disciplines have offered alternative diagnoses, the most popular being osteitis, an unpleasant and painful inflammatory disease, though not necessarily fatal in itself; unless, of course, it deteriorated into osteomyelitis.

The Tanner and Wright report concluded that the child whose skull they named ‘Edward V’ suffered from an extensive, chronic condition which had persisted for some years and had spread so far as to affect the temporo-mandibular joints. From the photographic evidence it can be seen to have produced destruction and malformation of areas of the affected bone. The owner of that jawbone would have suffered from inflamed, swollen and septic gums, as well as constant pain and discomfort. However, the problem remained that the Tanner and Wright examination, using the limited means at their disposal in 1933, failed to establish scientifically whether this owner was prince or pauper, boy or girl.7

It seemed to me that the vague assumptions I had encountered about Edward V’s illness must have been assimilated by a kind of reverse-engineering process: in other words, extrapolating backwards from the Tanner and Wright conclusions and superimposing them on to the remarks of writers like Mancini and Buck.

I have always favoured holding assumption up to the cold light of logic, so I decided to make the question of Edward V’s health, and the apparent link with the bones, one of a number of lines of original research that would be unique to my book.8 My starting point was to look at the phenomenon from the viewpoint of his contemporaries. Had a royal child suffered chronically in this way, it must have given rise to comment and concern. Doubtless he would have needed specially prepared food as the illness progressed and teeth were lost or removed. And he would have endured the never-ending attentions of not one but a team of physicians whose ministrations were probably quite as unpleasant as the disease itself.

Yet there is no contemporaneous hint of anything of the kind relating to Edward’s appearance or behaviour. As Prince of Wales he was constantly visible to members of his household, his retainers and the public at large from the age of three when he was first given his own council at Ludlow. As he grew older he was seen regularly at court and was exhibited by his father, Edward IV, to the gaze of his subjects on numerous public occasions.9

Furthermore, Dominic Mancini’s description of Edward at the age of twelve (shortly before his alleged death) speaks of ‘dignity in his whole person, and in his face such charm, that … he never wearied the eyes of beholders.’.10 If Edward had really been the owner of an infected and disfigured jaw, Mancini would surely have made certain in his report, delivered in December 1483, to remark less on the charm of his face and more on the cruelty and heartlessness of Richard III’s treatment of an ailing boy. This would have been music to the ears of Archbishop Cato and the French court, always looking for vulnerabilities in the English regime, especially as England’s most recent Parliament (under Edward IV) had voted funds for renewed Anglo-French hostilities. Yet Dominic Mancini suggests nothing of the sort.

Written material from the fifteenth century is admittedly scanty, and its paucity cannot be held to prove that Edward V was hale and hearty. However, it is equally incumbent on anyone who speaks of his ill-health to back it up with evidence.

It would be fair to expect an exhaustive examination of Edward V’s life and person in a biographical work, of which the only one yet published was written by Michael Hicks. Yet Hicks mentioned nothing of illness or disfigurement, and instead described him as ‘a very good-looking boy’. He also avoided almost all reference to the bones in Westminster Abbey, and on the two isolated occasions where they were briefly mentioned, he showed no sign of being convinced of their identity.11

To conclude my investigation from the standpoint of logic, I turned my thoughts to consideration of how the chronic ill-health of the Prince of Wales would have influenced the way his own heir presumptive – his younger brother – was raised and trained.

Given that diseases of the jaw were not uncommon in Edward’s day, it would certainly have been known that such a chronic infection could worsen progressively and even lead to death. Emotion played no part where questions of inheritance were concerned, and this was a matter that involved succession to the crown of England. Their father the king would surely have stopped at nothing to secure his Yorkist dynasty.

Yet no provision whatsoever seems to have been made for the younger boy, Richard, to receive appropriate training in kingly responsibility. Instead he remained at his mother’s side, never taking charge of his own household, even after the appointment of his own council in 1477. Neither was he placed under the tutelage of a suitable nobleman to learn the arts of arms and chivalry. In May 1483, when his brother arrived in London as king, Richard lurked with his mother in sanctuary.

Such lack of interest in preparing the younger brother for the possibility of kingship seems to point fairly conclusively, I would suggest, to absence of any concern for the health of the elder.

Postscript: There is still considerable room for research into the findings of Tanner and Wright, including the possibility of facial reconstruction, with which I have found it difficult to make progress. I hope to pursue this further now that I have taken up residence again in England.

ENDNOTES

1. Annette Carson, Richard III: The Maligned King (Stroud, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011).

2. Dominic Mancini, De Occupatione Regni Anglie per Riccardum Tercium Libellus, ed. C.A.J. Armstrong (Gloucester, 1989) p.93.

3. Mancini, p.93.

4. Sir George Buck, The History of King Richard the Third (1619), ed. A.N. Kincaid (Gloucester, 1979) p.140.

5. Archaeologia LXXXIV, 1934.

6. Richard Lyne-Pirkis, Regarding the Bones Found in the Tower; speech given on 27 February 1963.

7. A survey of the principal academic commentaries devoted to the subject of the bones, whether by scientists or historians, can be found in Carson, pp.184-200, from which it will be seen that there is no consensus as to their identity, or sex, or age, or antiquity. What gives rise to most dubiety is that any attempt to calculate the age of the elder child is automatically stymied by the need to adjust computations to take account of retardation of development due to his or her chronic jaw disease, but nobody knows how much allowance to make.

8. For the record, examples of other matters explored in depth and generally overlooked by mainstream biographers include examination and reconstruction of the precise location at the Tower of London where the bones were found; a fresh look at the shifting allegiances which preceded the rebellion of October 1483; questions raised by the death of Edward IV; and Richard III’s proposed second marriage, particularly its implications as reflected in Elizabeth of York’s letter to the Duke of Norfolk.

9. Carson, p.190.

10. Mancini/Armstrong, p.93.

11. Michael Hicks, Edward V (Stroud, 2003) pp.176, 191.

© Annette Carson 2011

7
May

Richard III as Law Maker

   Posted by: Dorothea Preis Tags: , , , , ,

As a law maker Richard clearly showed that his view on education was not only a religious duty, but went much further than that.  While trying to limit the activities of foreign merchants in England the statutes of his only parliament included a Proviso, exempting all merchants and craftsmen concerned in the book trade from the scope of the Act.  This was clearly intended to encourage a good supply of books. [Armstrong, p.276]  Books were in his day the most up to date means of spreading ideas and learning.  If he encouraged books, he must have supported the circulation of ideas.

Richard III as Law Maker

Abbey Gateway, St Albans (© D Preis)

The context between books and education becomes clear in the following example:  Only a few years after William Caxton introduced the printing press to England in the mid 1470s, there was a printing press  in St Albans as well, located in the Abbey Gateway.  This was the third one in England, after Caxton’s in London and one in Oxford.  We don’t know the identity of the St Albans printer, but he was referred to as “sometyme scole master of Saynt Albans”.  [‘Printing in England’]  The press in St Albans produced books between 1479 and 1486, eight of which have survived.  The first six, printed between 1479 and 1483, were Latin university texts.  It has been suggested that they were aimed at purchasers from Cambridge, where at that time no press had been established. [Orme, p.181]

We should not forget, however, that Richard’s appreciation for books was also a personal one.  There are eighteen surviving texts, of which we know for sure that they are connected to him.  In some he signed his name, two are dedicated to him and one has an indirect dedication.  It seems likely that these are just a part of a far more extensive library, though without an inventory it is impossible to draw too many conclusions. [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books’, p.374]  With these surviving books we can be sure that they belonged to him, because he put his name in the text itself.  With others his name might have been on the flyleaf, which has got lost since then, or they might have been marked with his arms, which have since been changed to someone else’s. [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books’, p.381]

From his books, Sutton and Visser-Fuchs conclude that he was “an industrious and committed reader”, who showed a high level of education and literacy.  This lead them to speculate that he could possibly in his early youth , as the youngest son, have been destined for the church, though this would have changed when his father and brother were killed and his brother  Edward became king.  [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books’, pp.384-385]  Considering that many of the learned (church-) men among his close connections had humanist interests, it is surprising that among the books we know he owned there are no works of theology or humanist interest.  All of us who like reading and books, can glimpse a kindred spirit when Sutton and Visser-Fuchs conclude that “He did not collect them [books] as objects but used them for what they could give him and others in the way of instruction, consolation and entertainment”. [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books’, p.385]

I think that all these examples of Richard’s relationships with learning, be it with learned men,  the centres of learning, books ,as well as his activity as law maker shows clearly that learning was something close to his heart.  I would like to close my talk with the words of the anonymous chronicler of Magdalen College in Oxford:  “Vivat rex in eternum!

Bibliography

Books:

Virginia Davis, William Waynflete, Bishop and Educationalist.  Studies in the History of Medieval Religion.  Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1993. ISBN 9780851153490
Rhoda Edwards, The Itinerary of King Richard III 1483-1485.  Richard III Society, 1983. ISBN 090489309X
Peter Hammond, Richard III and the Bosworth Campaign.  Pen & Sword Military, 2010.  ISBN 9781844152599
Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages, 1348-1500.  Penguin Books, 1990.  ISBN 9780140124927
A. H. Lloyd, The Early History of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Derived from Contemporary Documents.  Cambridge Library Collection, 2010.  ISBN 9781108008976 (First published in 1934)
J.M. Melhuish, The College of King Richard III Middleham.  Richard III Society, London (undated)
Nicholas Orme, Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England.  Yale University Press, 2006.  ISBN 9780300111026
Jeremy Potter, Good King Richard?  An Account of Richard III and his Reputation.  Constable Books, 1996.  ISBN 9780094688407
Charles Ross, Richard III.  Yale English Monarchs, Yale University Press, 1999, Reprinted 2005.  ISBN 9780300079791
John Stow, A Survey of London, witten in the year 1598 by John Stow.  Whittaker, London, 1842.
Anne F. Sutton & Livia Visser-Fuchs, The Hours of Richard III.  Alan Sutton Publishing Pty Ltd, 1996.  ISBN 9780750911849

Articles:

P.S. Allen, ‘Bishop Shirwood of Durham and His Library’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 25, No. 99 (July 1910), pp 445-456.
Elizabeth Armstrong, ‘English Purchases of Printed Books from the Continent 1465-1526′, The English Historical Review, Vol. 94, No. 371 (April 1979), pp. 268-290.
W. H. G. Armytage, ‘William Byngham: A Medieval Protagonist of the Training of Teachers’, History of Education Journal, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Summer 1951), pp. 107-110
Michael J. Bennett, ‘Education and Advancement’, in:  Fifteenth-Century Attitudes:  Perceptions of society in late medieval England, ed. Rosemary Horrox.  Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp.79-96.  ISBN 9780521589864
Christopher Brooke, ‘Urban church and university church:  Great St Mary’s from its origins to 1523’, in:  Great St Mary’s, Cambridge University’s Church, ed. John Binns & Peter Meadows.  Cambridge, 2000, pp.7-24.  ISBN 0521775027
R.B. Dobson, ‘Richard III and the Church of York’, in:  Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Age, ed. Ralph A. Griffiths & James Sherborne.  1986, pp.130-154
Rena Gardiner, ‘The Story of Magdalen’, Magdalen College (2003).  URL:  http://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/4303/Illustrated_Magdalen_College_History.pdf Date accessed: 13 July 2010
Robert C Hairsine, ’Oxford University and the Life and Legend of Richard III’, in:  Richard III:  Crown and People, ed. J Petre.  Richard III Society, 1985, pp. 307-332.  ISBN 9780904893113
Rosemary Horrox, ‘Richard III and Allhallows Barking by the Tower’, The Ricardian, Vol.VI, No.77 (June 1982), pp.38-40
Rosemary Masek, ‘The Humanistic Interests of the Early Tudor Episcopate’, Church History, Vol. 39, No. 1 (March 1970), pp. 5-17.
Anne F. Sutton, ‘’A Curious Searcher for our Weal Public’:  Richard III, Piety, Chivalry and the Concept of ‘The Good Prince’’, in:  Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law, ed. P.W. Hammond.  Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 2000, pp.69-105.  ISBN 9781900289375
Anne F. Sutton, ‘Richard of Gloucester’s Lands in East Anglia’, in:  Richard III and East Anglia:  Magnates, Gilds and Learned Men, ed. Livia Visser-Fuchs.   Richard III Society, 2010, pp.1-30.  ISBN 9780904893199
Anne F. Sutton & Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books Observed’, The Ricardian, Vol.IX, No.120 (March 1993), pp.374-388
Anne F Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and Two Turbulent Priests’, The Ricardian, Vol. XIX, 2009, pp.95-109
Anne F. Sutton & Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘’As dear to him as the Trojans were to Hector:’ Richard III and the University of Cambridge’, in:  Richard III and East Anglia:  Magnates, Gilds and Learned Men, ed. Livia Visser-Fuchs.  Richard III Society, 2010, pp.105-142.  ISBN 9780904893199
Barrie Williams, ‘Richard III’s Other Palatinate:  John Shirwood, Bishop of Durham’, The Ricardian, Vol.IX, No.115 (December 1991), pp.166-169
B.P. Wolffe, ‘The Management of English Royal Estates under the Yorkist Kings’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 71, No. 278, Jan. 1956, pp. 1-27.

British History Online:

‘Colleges: Barnard Castle’, A History of the County of Durham: Volume 2 (1907), pp. 129-130. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=39906 Date accessed:  5 November 2010
‘The history of All Hallows Church: To c.1548’, Survey of London: volume 12: The parish of All Hallows Barking, part I: The Church of All Hallows (1929), pp. 1-20. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=100058 Date accessed:  8 April 2012

‘The colleges and halls: Queens’’, A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 3: The City and University of Cambridge, 1959, pp. 408-415. Online URL: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/cambs/vol3/pp408-415 [last accessed 22 May 2020]

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:
Cecil H. Clough, ‘Gunthorpe, John (d. 1498)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009.  URL:  http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11752  Date accessed:  10 March 2011
Virginia Davis, ‘Waynflete , William (c.1400–1486)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.  URL:  http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28907  Date accessed:  20 Jan.  2011
Michael Hicks, ‘Neville, George (1432–1476)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008.  URL:  http://0-www.oxforddnb.com.library.sl.nsw.gov.au/view/article/19934  Date accessed:  14 April 2011
Jonathan Hughes, ‘Barowe , Thomas (d. 1499)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.  URL:  http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/1503  Date accessed:  10 March 2011
Peter Partner, ‘Wykeham, William (c.1324–1404)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009.  URL:  http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30127  Date accessed:  7 March 2011
A.J. Pollard, ‘Shirwood, John (d. 1493)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008.  URL:  http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25447  Date accessed:  10 March 2011
John A. F. Thomson, ‘Russell, John (c.1430–1494)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008.  URL:  http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24318  Date accessed:  10 March 2011
D. P. Wright, ‘Langton, Thomas (c.1430–1501)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009.  URL:  http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16045  Date accessed: 10 March 2011

Internet sites:

‘Middleham Collegiate Church’, URL:   http://www.britannia.com/tours/yorksmon/middleham.html Date accessed:  27 March 2010
‘St Mary’s Barnard Castle’, URL:   http://www.stmarysbarnardcastle.org.uk/ourparish/43-st-marysbarnardcastle Date accessed: 17 March 2010
‘Church on mission to revamp building’, Teesdale Mercury (2 March 2010).  URL:   http://www.teesdalemercury.co.uk/teesdale-news/story,2513.html Date accessed:  17 March 2010

‘History of the Chapel’, King’s College Cambridge.  URL:   http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel/history.html [last accessed 22 May 2020]

‘Printing in England from William Caxton to Christopher Barker – An Exhibition: November 1976 – April 1977’, University of Glasgow.  URL:  http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/printing/ Date accessed:  16 April 2012

Part 1 – Richard III and Learned Men

Part 2 – Richard III as the Founder of Collegiate Churches

Part 3 – Richard III and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge

Richard III and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge

For someone supporting learning and ambitious to provide a more learned clergy in parishes, it would only be natural to have close relations to the two universities at Oxford and Cambridge.

1. Oxford

After his coronation Richard left on a Royal Progress on 21 July 1483.  One of his first stops was Oxford, where he arrived on 24 July and stayed at Magdalen College [Hairsine, p.308] on the invitation of its founder, Bishop Willaim Waynflete.  Though geography certainly played a role, the fact that he visited Oxford so early in his reign, must mean that there was a keen interest as well.

He was not the first royal visitor to Magdalen though.  In September 1481 Edward IV had been staying at Woodstock, where Waynflete visited him and talked him into having a look at his College, which Edward did on 22 September.  He and his entourage arrived after sunset and were welcomed in style.  They spent the night and much of the next day at the College, where Edward listened to a brief speech congratulating him on his arrival and petitioning his support [Magdalen College Register ‘A’, ff.7b, 8, quoted in Hairsine, pp. 325-326].  A statue of Edward on the gate commemorates his visit.

Richard III and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge

Gate of Magdalen College, Oxford – Mary Magdalen in the middle, William Waynflete on the left and Edward IV on the right. (© D Preis)

Richard’s reception was a grander affair.  He was “honourably received, firstly outside the University by the Chancellor of the University and by the Regents and non-Regents; then he was received honourably and in procession at the College of the Blessed Mary Magdalene by a speech by the lord Founder” (i.e. Waynflete). [Magdalen College Register ‘A’ f.27b, quoted in Hairsine, p.309]

The day after his reception, we see Richard following his own cultural taste. Unlike the short speech, which was given to Edward, he listened to two debates, one on moral philosophy and one on theology.  I think Hairsine is right when he remarks:

There was certainly no need for a medieval autocrat to sit through not one but two learned debates if he did not find a genuine interest there.  One is lead to believe that Richard’s visits to Oxford and Cambridge were welcome interludes from the cares of government [Hairsine, p.309].

Richard seems to have been impressed with the debates as well as his welcome and rewarded the participants and Magdalen College handsomely with venison and cash.  The whole event was in detail recorded in the Register of Magdalen College, which the anonymous Chronicler ended with the words Vivat rex in eternum, which can be translated as a “may the King live forever!” [Hairsine, p.309].

Richard III and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge

Magdalen College, Oxford (© D Preis)

In the end of October 1483, Richard came for a second visit to Oxford, again staying at Magdalen College, though not much is known about this visit [Hairsine, p.311].  The last documented connection between Oxford University and Richard is in March 1485, when Richard recruited an Oxford graduate into his service [Hairsine, p.317].

 

2. Cambridge

Richard’s connection to Cambridge lasted over a much longer period compared to the one to Oxford, starting in the mid 1470, when he gave 20 marks to the university in 1475-76.   It seems to have been a very close and cordial relationship from both sides.  On 7 April 1481, the congregation of the university wrote a remarkable letter to the then Duke of Gloucester.  In it they announce that in gratitude for the many favours he had shown them, they would “ask every Cambridge doctor or bachelor of theology who preached at [two places in London famous for their Easter celebrations] to mention Richard by name, to commend him to their listeners, and ask for prayers for his well being,” an honour which had never been granted to anyone before.  In early 1480 or 1481 two representatives of the University travelled to London to see Richard – a six day journey in bad weather.  In 1482 the University staged a procession to celebrate his victory against the Scots. [Sutton & Visser Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, pp.112-114]

The good relationship continued when Richard became king.  Probably in late June 1483, the University wrote to Richard to ask for his mercy towards one of their graduates, Thomas Rotherham, the Archbishop of York, who was Chancellor at that time.  He had been arrested on 13 June 1483 in connection with the Hastings affair.  Rotherham was released in due course. [Sutton, Visser-Fuchs, ‘Universities’, pp.95-99] Richard visited the University in early March 1484 and was welcomed with a procession and masses.  They also decided to say a special mass every year on 2 May for Richard and Anne.  They promised that as soon as they would hear of his death they would perform a special funeral mass, a promise they kept, as the accounts for 1485 show the expense for candles used at the ‘exequies of King Richard”. [Sutton & Visser Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, pp.114-115]

There are especially three institutions in Cambridge, which benefitted from Richard’s generosity and which we can admire today.

2.1 King’s College

On a visit to the King’s College Chapel in Cambridge more than 20 years ago, I bought a postcard showing “The Kings who built the Chapel”.  Though Henry VIII is depicted as the crowning glory, it was the inclusion of Richard which made me buy the card and eventually investigate this subject.

Richard III and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge

King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (© D Preis)

King’s College was founded by Henry VI in 1441, building work started in July 1446.  When Edward came to power in 1461, the workmen packed up their tools and very little was done to continue during his reign.  This changed dramatically, when Richard became King.  He gave instructions that “the building should go on with all possible despatch” and to “press workmen and all possible hands, provide materials and imprison anyone who opposed or delayed”.  He also sent his own master plumber and glazier to help with the building. This result was that by the end of his reign the first six bays had reached full height, of this the first five were roofed with oak and lead and were in use. The University thanked him for funding and “erecting the buildings of King’s College, the unparalleled ornament of England.”  Drawings of a planned tower still exist, which can be dated to 1484. [‘History of the Chapel’; Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, pp.116-117]

Henry Tudor was in no rush to continue the project, even though the college complained that the building “begun by royal munificence now stands shamefully abandoned”.  Only later Henry realised that the association with the “royal saint” Henry VI might help with legitimising his reign and decided to finish the chapel with work starting in earnest in 1508. [‘History of the Chapel’]

2.2 Queens’ College

While Richard left his mark on the King’s College Chapel during his reign, his relationship with Queens’ College predates his reign.

Queens’ was originally founded by Andrew Doket as the college of St Bernard in 1446, one year later Henry VI confirmed this, but as his foundation.  In 1448 a further charter declared it to be the foundation of Margaret of Anjou.  From 1465 onwards, Elizabeth Woodville came to be regarded as a co-founder, which explains the name (Queens’), though there is no evidence that either Margaret or Elizabeth ever gave the college any endowments. During Richard’s reign, when he made further grants to the College, Queen Anne was also considered a founder, but that was “conveniently forgotten when political circumstances changed in 1485”.  Andrew Doket remained as president until his death in 1484 and worked tirelessly for the benefit of the college.  [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, pp.121-129; Ross, p. 135]

Richard III and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge

Queens’ College, Cambridge (© D Preis)

 

Richard relationship with Queens’ began on 1 April 1477 when he gave the property of Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, to the college, with the aim to fund 4 priests, fellows of the college, to say prayers for a number of Richard’s living relatives and for the souls of departed.  Among the people to be commemorated in the prayers were – apart from his family – also friends, who had fallen in the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury.  There were also to be prayers for John de Vere, the 12th Earl of Oxford, executed in 1462 by Edward IV, and his widow, to whom the manor of Fowlmere had belonged.  [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, pp.120-124; Ross, p.135]

Richard’s endowment to Queens’ has to be seen in connection with the foundation of his colleges at Middleham and Barnard Castle.  The statutes of his college at Middleham require that, should it not be possible to find a dean from among the 6 chaplains there, this position should be filled by one of the 4 men at Queens’.  This would ensure that Middleham and Barnard Castle had the best religious instruction, liturgy and music available. [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, p.120]

Queens’ benefitted greatly from Richard and Anne during his reign.  Anne intended to give estates from her Neville and Beauchamp inheritance to the college, but it had to give all this up when Henry Tudor came to the throne.   Richard also gave the college a silver seal including a boar device, which might have been part of new arms, which survives to today as one of several arms.  [Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, pp. 126-129]

Queens’ is almost completely constructed of red brick, probably imported from Holland.  The oldest part, which Richard would have known is the Old Court.  Because of the durability of the bricks this court still is almost as it was built [BHO, ‘Queens’].

2.3 Great St Mary’s

In 1478-79, Richard gave £20 for the rebuilding of the university church, Great St Mary.  Even after his death his support for the church continued to have an effect.  On 21 January 1495, Thomas Barowe, a close associate of Richard and master of the rolls and keeper of the great seal, gave the extravagant amount of £240 to the rebuilding of the church and for “masses, prayers and ceremonies in honour of King Richard III and Dr Thomas Barowe – who were to be enrolled in the list of the university’s benefactors”.  Richard was for a while politely forgotten, but has more recently been restored.

Richard III and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge

Great St Mary, Cambridge (© D Preis)

The rebuilding of the nave was begun in the late 1470s, at the time of Richard’s gift.  Barowe, who had intended the church as a monument to Richard, would with his gift have secured its completion.  Possibly he was continuing a process initiated by Richard’s gift of £20, as there are records stating that he acted as a messenger to bring gifts from Richard to Cambridge. [Brooke, pp.18-21; Sutton & Visser Fuchs, ‘Cambridge’, p.113]

Part 1 – Richard III and Learned Men

Part 2 – Richard III as the Founder of Collegiate Churches

Part 4 – Richard III as Law Maker (incl. bibliography)