Ricardian Bulletin Ricardian Bulletin

Ricardian
Bulletin
Magazine of the Richard III Society
ISSN 0308 4337
June 2009
Ricardian
Bulletin
June 2009
Contents
2 From the Chairman
3 Society News and Notices
6 The Bosworth Portal Goes Live
7 Bosworth 2009
8 Who Do You Think You Are? The answer is: Ricardians
12 The King Richard III School, Majorca
13 New Exhibition at Barley Hall
14 Beating the Eggheads
15 News and Reviews
23 Media Retrospective
27 The Man Himself: Cashing in on Richard: by David Fiddimore
29 Proceedings of the Triennial Conference 2008: Part 5: Henry VII as Suspect
34 Our Past in Pictures
35 Retrospective on the Quincentenary of the Death of Henry VII: Part 2. Later Opposition
38 Depicting Richard as Founder
39 Richard and Realpolitik: by Gordon Smith
42 A Revised Date for the Dublin Coronation of ‘Edward VI’: by Randolph Jones
45 Miracle in Bedfordshire: by Lesley Boatwright
47 Edward IV’s Precontract of Matrimony: A Clarification: by Marie Barnfield
49 Report on Society Events
51 Correspondence
52 New Members
53 The Barton Library
55 Future Society Events
56 Branches and Groups: Contact Details and Reports
62 Obituaries
64 Calendar
Contributions
Contributions are welcomed from all members. All contributions should be sent to Lesley Boatwright.
Bulletin Press Dates
15 January for March issue; 15 April for June issue; 15 July for September issue; 15 October for December issue.
Articles should be sent well in advance.
Bulletin & Ricardian Back Numbers
Back issues of The Ricardian and the Bulletin are available from Judith Ridley. If you are interested in obtaining any
back numbers, please contact Mrs Ridley to establish whether she holds the issue(s) in which you are interested.
For contact details see back inside cover of the Bulletin
The Ricardian Bulletin is produced by the Bulletin Editorial Committee,
Printed by Micropress Printers Ltd. © Richard III Society, 2009
From the Chairman
T
here has been a flood of books about Richard III and related subjects recently, and it seems
that even more are coming. Is this all coincidence or is there a reason? Is there an
anniversary that I’ve forgotten about? Whatever the explanation, it is a rather nice antidote to the
current plethora of celebrations for the five hundredth anniversary of Henry VIII’s accession. I
have no doubt that Henry would have been none too pleased by his great uncle grabbing the
posthumous historical limelight almost as much as he has.
Our summer issue has another mix of informative and entertaining articles, reviews and
notices. How does the editorial team do it? While we continue with the proceedings of last year’s
Triennial Conference, the pre-contract debate rolls on, and there are articles on Richard III and
realpolitik, the opposition to Henry VII and a new look at the Dublin ‘coronation’ of 1487. David
Fiddimore provides a fascinating insight into the marketing of Richard III, which includes
examples of some of the very unusual forms this can take.
Our presence at this year’s Who Do You Think You Are? Live event at Olympia provided
much positive publicity for the Society, and, I hope, has attracted some new members. There is a
comprehensive review in this issue, illustrated with some nice photos of those who took part. I
would like to thank them all, especially our ‘star’ attraction, Josephine Tewson. No-one who was
there is likely to forget what it was like to see Jo in action, whether it was chatting-up the
prospective new members, selling her autograph or posing for pictures (for a fee to the Society,
of course). Once again, it was a joy to behold.
In the 2005 winter issue of the Bulletin a debate was held on the merits of historical fiction,
and in this issue we have a letter that reopens that debate. Prompted by a work of fiction in the
spring Bulletin, the letter raises questions about whether we should have fiction in the magazine
at all. As you will be aware, we aim to include a broad range of articles and features to match the
interests of readers of the Bulletin. However, we are aware that fiction can be contentious, and it
would be interesting to hear your views on this matter.
Recently, there have been some changes in the way that the Executive Committee operates
and these are outlined in full on page 4. Most significant is the establishment of the Ways and
Means Sub-committee, which has been set up to consider issues in detail and to make
recommendations to the full Executive Committee. This will enable it to make more informed
decisions which is especially important at a time like this, when, like other organisations, we
need to be more careful with our resources. We also have some new people in post, and I extend
a warm welcome to Diana Lee, our new Business Co-ordinator, and Gillian Paxton, our new
Papers Librarian. I wish them well.
Looking ahead, there is Bosworth, the Australian Convention and the AGM, which this year
is back in London. These events will be reviewed in future issues of the Bulletin, of course, but I
do ask all members who can to support them. The Society remains strong, and I look forward to
seeing and meeting members at various events during the next few months, but we mustn’t be
complacent. In these recessionary times, we must work even harder to keep up our membership
numbers, while at the same time continuing to spend our money wisely.
Enjoy your summer or, if you are in the antipodes, may your winter be kind to you.
2
Society News and Notices
Richard III Society Members’ Day and Annual General Meeting
Saturday 3 October 2009
Notice is hereby given that the 2009 Annual General Meeting of the Richard III Society
will be held on Saturday 3 October 2009 in Staple Inn Hall, High Holborn, London WC1V
7QJ.
The formal business of the meeting will include reports from the Society’s officers, the
presentation of the annual accounts of the Society to 31 March 2009 and the election of the
Executive Committee for the coming year.
Exact timings for the day will be notified in the autumn Bulletin.
Nominations for the Executive Committee should be sent to the Joint Secretaries, Susan and
David Wells, by post to 23 Ash Rise, Halstead, Essex, CO9 1RD, to be received not later than
Friday 18 September 2009. All nominations must be proposed and seconded and accepted by
the nominee in writing.
Resolutions for the agenda, also proposed and seconded, should reach the Joint Secretaries at
the address and by the same date as set out above.
If you intend to come to the Members’ Day and AGM, please let us know by completing the
form in this Bulletin.
Call to Branches and Groups
If your branch/group wishes to make a report at the AGM, please let the Joint Secretaries know
by Friday 18 September so that it can be included on the AGM agenda. Reports may be made in
person by a branch/group representative or, for overseas branches/groups, if no local
representative is able to attend the AGM in person, a printed report may be supplied to be read at
the AGM. Reports should not exceed three minutes, and should consist of new material not
previously reported verbally or in print.
Refreshments
Light refreshments may be purchased during the informal part of the day. Lunch will be by own
arrangements. Information about local facilities will be given in the autumn Bulletin.
STOP PRESS.
The speaker at the 2009 AGM will be Dr Tobias Capwell, curator of arms and armour at the
Wallace Collection and formerly of the Burrell Collection. More details in the September issue.
3
New Society Arrangements and Officers
We have a new sub-committee
A ‘Ways and Means’ sub-committee has been set up, chaired by our President, Peter Hammond,
to look at the funding implications of projects, and ensure that the society receives value for
money. The new group will report back to the Executive Committee, so that informed decisions
can be made, ensuring that the latter remains as the principal decision-making body of the
Society. New projects and proposals may be channelled to the new sub-committee through the
Secretariat. This is a new venture, and we hope that it will ensure that our collective energies, and
our cash, are concentrated where they will do the most to further the Society’s aims.
Diana Lee is our new Business Co-ordinator
Further to the changes in the administration of the Society that
have come about following the resignations of Jane Trump and
Wendy Moorhen from the Executive Committee, we have
created a new post, that of Business Co-ordinator. The holder is
not a member of the Executive Committee, but will report to it
through the Secretaries or the Chairman. The function of the Co
-ordinator is to liaise between the Society and the organisations
that provide us with a variety of services, such as Royal Mail,
Micropress, our printers, and Portland and Pharos, our
distribution houses.
It is with very great pleasure that we can announce that the
first Business Co-ordinator will be Diana Lee. Diana is well
known to many, having been a member of the Society for many
years. Indeed, formerly Diana Cumber, she met her husband, Peter, through that well-known
dating agency, the Richard III Society. Diana has recently resigned from her role as treasurer to
the London Branch and so we are very pleased that she is willing to transfer her talents to the role
of Business Co-ordinator. We thank her for taking on the post and wish her well in it. We also
thank Wendy, who formerly performed this function, for her offer to advise Diana as necessary.
There are new arrangements for the Bulletin
Please now send all material for inclusion in the Bulletin to Lesley Boatwright (contact details
inside back cover), preferably by attachment as a simple Word document to an email. Failing
that, a typescript or clear hand-written document by post will do. And please don’t put any fancy
formatting into the electronic document, as it has to be removed before the file is imported into
Publisher, and doesn’t always go quietly. Sometimes formatting that looks correct in the email
version does not transfer to Publisher and has to be done again. Everything should ideally be in
10 pt Times New Roman, justified, and with a paragraph indent of half a centimetre, and no extra
spaces built in anywhere, such as after paragraphs. Photographs to illustrate articles are very
welcome – especially when sent electronically. There are guidelines available for intending
contributors – ask Lesley to send you a copy.
Articles of the more academic sort should also now be sent to Lesley, who will then circulate
them to Peter Hammond and Angela Moreton, who, with Lesley, form an articles sub-committee
within the Bulletin team. It would be kind to send these articles well in advance.
When Lesley has put the Bulletin together, and the team have discussed it, Heather Falvey
will now be in charge of the final proof-reading.
4
Moira Habberjam has retired as Secretary of Yorkshire
Branch
We asked Moira to tell us about her years in office.
In the beginning, I hadn’t much time to speare from my regular
commitment to the Yorkshire Archaological Society archives, which was
my first and most important interest. I met Pauline Routh while she was
researching Dodsworth’s documents in the archives, and she later became a good friend. We
‘old’ members of the YAS used to sit doing our own work, calendaring documents, while the
archivisit ran an evening class for beginners and upwards. It was during one of the evening
coffee breaks there that I met Arthur Cockerill, Joan Preston, Mary O’Regan, Sharon Stow, Cris
Reay and Sheila Jolley, who were members of the class and also Ricardians, and I occasionally
went to the Leeds meetings of the local Richard III Society, held at Joan’s or Arthur’s house.
I can’t give the precise date when I was roped in to become Secretary of the Yorkshire
Branch. It had an enthusiastic and colourful committee, with many members to call on for
service, and we were really very active during the eighties and nineties – and had a lot of laughs
along the way. I remember the fun Tim Hill and I had preparing our book of cartoons, The
Yorkshire Jester, with the much-loved Nancy Metcalfe, who did the cover and many of the
cartoons.
We also instituted the free public lecture, and I remember with what joy I was eventually
allowed to run it at no cost whatsoever in the very prestigious lecture room of the Leeds Art
Gallery, but I had to write a pleading and grovelling letter each year for the privilege. By the time
that the Director of Public Galleries in Leeds retired, our lecture had become a statutory event
that no-one questioned. We invited so many wonderful speakers to talk, sometimes more than
once, with never a refusal. We confined our choice of lecturers mainly to those with credible
Yorkshire connections, but we were not prejudiced, only prudent with money for travelling
expenses and confident that we had enough home-grown talent. The whole Committee came to
welcome the speaker for lunch at my house before the lecture, and I remember how hilarious
everything was – especially the boned chicken roasted round a ham, which Nicky Bland had
helped me to prepare. It looked nothing like the illustration when prepared – in fact it looked
more like a frog that had been squashed on the road, but it tasted all right.
The Branch was really buzzing in the eighties and nineties. We ran excursions all over the
north, a medieval banquet in York every other year, several trips to Middleham each year, and
had our AGMs with a speaker in York. And we have continued to meet up with the US Ricardian
trip when it passes through Yorkshire each year, led by Linda Treybig. Happy memories!
Last year, of course, Moira received the Robert Hamblin Award for service to the Society.
Phil Stone read out the citation before mentioning Moira’s name, and she really didn’t know he
was talking about her – hearing her own name at the end was a great surprise to her. As we said
in the winter Bulletin of 2008, she was for once at a loss for words.
And we have a new Papers Librarian
We are pleased to announce that the Society’s new Papers Librarian is Gillian Paxton, an
academic librarian soon to be an archivist. She can be contacted at 70 Grayrigg Drive, Westgate,
Morecambe, Lancs, LA4 4UL, or email her at [email protected]. Look out for more details of the
move of the Papers Collection in the next Bulletin.
We send our grateful thanks to Becky Beale, who has run the Papers Library with great
devotion for the past seven years, and also thank the several members who responded to our
appeal for help when she was obliged to give up looking after the Collection.
5
The Bosworth Portal Goes Live
PHIL STONE
Further to Wendy Moorhen’s article in the last edition of the Bulletin, I am delighted to report
that the Bosworth Portal is up and running and looking very good.
Beth and I went up to Bosworth a couple of weeks after the Portal went live, taking with us a
large supply of the Society’s brochures for display alongside the Portal. Whilst there, we talked
with staff and visitors, who all told us how much they liked the display. Indeed, some of the staff
said that it had taught them much more about Richard III. We learnt that staff were pointing out
the Portal to visitors as they came in to the exhibition, and Richard Mackinder, who runs the
Battlefield Centre, told me that there had, indeed, been a lot of interest amongst members of the
public who had seen it.
Our thanks go to everyone who has been
involved with the Portal, beginning with the
folk at the Bosworth Battlefield Centre, and
Richard Van Allen for the initial idea. Our
thanks, too, to Neil Trump for seeing the
technology through to completion; to Graham
Turner, Geoffrey Wheeler and Gerry Hitch for
the wonderful artwork; and to Wendy Moorhen
and John Saunders for the text. And especial
thanks go to Wendy for bringing it all together.
The Portal looks great and fits in well in the
reception area of the Battlefield Centre’s
exhibition. It promises to be a great asset for
the Society. As the season gets underway and
visitor numbers increase, I look forward to
learning that the school children of
Leicestershire and around are flocking to see
our screen and that, as a result, they are
pestering their parents to make them members
of the Society – well, we can dream.
Visitors to Bosworth find out about
Richard III from the Society’s Portal
The Bosworth Portal is a joint project between the Society and the Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre and Country Park. It
covers four aspects of Richard’s life,
considering him as soldier, duke, king and
uncle, and giving details of the campaigns
he fought, his home life as Lord of the
North, his taking of the throne, and finally
the thorny question of the Princes in the
Tower. The Centre has its own website at
www.bosworthbattlefield.com
6
Bosworth 2009: Sunday 23 August
This year our one-day visit to Bosworth comprises the traditional service in Sutton Cheney
church, and visit to the Battlefield Centre, including tea. Those attending will be able to visit the
completed new exhibition featuring:






Displays depicting medieval life, warfare in the medieval period, the history of the
Wars of the Roses and the birth of Tudor England
An evolving battle room with a graphic re-telling of the events of 22 August 1485
Displays featuring the alternative theories regarding the site of the battle, which will
set out the latest archaeological surveys, results and artefacts found as Leicestershire
County Council carries out a research programme to determine the battle location
A new film about the Battle of Bosworth, the Wars of the Roses and the lives of
Richard III and Henry VII
Costumed guides to talk visitors through the new exhibitions
A timeline history of the Ambion Hill site covering the 5,000 years of occupation
In addition to the exhibition, it will also be possible to visit the Medieval Village, described
as ‘Ambion Parva: a collection of reproduction buildings combined to create the sense of
medieval village life bringing history alive. The buildings on site include “Captains Retreat”, a
two-storey house with jettied crossway; “Gunners Cottage”, a cruck cottage; and “The Old Salt
Road Inn”, a medieval ale-house. Foundations have been set for the construction of an
Apothecary House and many more buildings are planned, including a church, barn and other
workshops.’ It will also be possible to walk the Battlefield Trails. For more information see
www.bosworthbattlefield.com/index.htm
We hope that many members will attend during the day, as this is one of the Society’s major
social events and an occasion during the year when members from all over the world can meet.
Please also note that the Visits Committee is considering the format of the Bosworth event for
future years, so this year may be the last occasion for some time to visit the Battlefield Centre.
NB: comments and suggestions with regard to the nature of the event would be welcome – please
contact me, at the address on the booking form or by email: [email protected].
Programme
09.15
Coach departs Embankment Underground Station (Embankment exit).
12.30
Memorial service in Sutton Cheney Church, with Society wreath-laying
13.30
Lunch – bring packed lunch: picnic area available, or pub. Village Hall ploughman’s
lunch will be available for those booking, and paying, in advance
14.15
Coach leaves Sutton Cheney for Battlefield Centre
16.30
Tea in Tithe Barn restaurant at battlefield (sandwiches, homemade cakes, pastries etc )
17.45
Coach leaves Bosworth for London, arriving c. 20.15
Members attending independently may book for such elements of the day as they wish:
COST for London Day Outing Coach (coach + battlefield entry + tea) = £32.00
COST for Village Hall lunch = £5.00 Please note: this is now pay-in-advance, rather than on the
day, to ensure that bookings are taken up, and that suppliers are not left out of pocket.
COST for Tea only = £7.00
Please see booking form in centre pages.
Elizabeth Nokes
7
Who Do You Think You Are?
The answer is: Ricardians
T
he ‘Who Do You Think You Are? – Live’ exhibition was designed to follow on from the
BBC television series which traces the family history of celebrities, who may or may not
end up in floods of tears at the revelations. There were no tears visible at the exhibition, though;
just crowds of people interested in finding out about the past, of their own families, their own
district, or even their own calling. The exhibition contained several hundred stands providing a
variety of methodologies and information for both the amateur and the professional genealogist
and historian, together with local and national historical and special-interest groups.
The Society’s stand was well located – larger and in a much better position than in 2008. As
someone from the College of Arms on the stand next door said, ‘this is where the most seriousminded exhibitors are’. Someone hadn’t taken up the other half of our stand, so we were allowed
more space than we had paid for, and, once Dave Wells had adjusted the spotlights to shine on
our posters rather than into outer space, we had a very visible presence indeed. Opposite us was
The Society’s stand, with Marian Mitchell and Richard Van Allen in attendance
the stand where some of the celebrities present came to sign their books: Nick Barratt (now a TV
genealogist and house-historian, originally a specialist on finance in the reign of King John),
Andy Robertshaw (TV military historian), Sir Matthew Pinsent (Olympic gold medallist
oarsman) – so people could feast their eyes on our display while queueing for autographs.
Our stand presented a very professional image. It attracted a regular flow of visitors, who
varied between the knowledgeable, the inquisitive, and the mildly amused. We had many happy
8
conversations about the Society’s raison d’être and,
hopefully, made some conversions. A number of
people said they hadn’t really known that Shakespeare
had got it wrong, and would think about it. We shall
never know how many of the seeds of doubt we planted
in people’s minds at the exhibition will grow into real
interest in the truth of what happened in 1483 – that is
why it is completely impossible to calculate the gains
made from our presence at such events. A lot of people
did know that Shakespeare had got it wrong, and most
of those knew it because they had read The Daughter of
Time.
As last year, we sold a number of copies of the
Testator Index, and Jeremy Potter’s book Good King
Richard?, and we also brought along four sets of The
Logge Wills in case there were some more seriousminded family historians about. We sold all four, and
took an order for a fifth – the heralds on the College of
Richard Van Allen watches Dave
Arms stand bought three.
Wells adjust the spotlight
We were interviewed twice by peripatetic radio
people. Richard Van Allen and Lesley Boatwright spoke to Southside Broadcasting, and Phil
Stone to Gulf States Radio.
Some of our display boards were about family history in the fifteenth century, and what to
look at next when researchers had got back past the days of parish registers of baptisms,
marriages and burials. These were officially started in 1538 by Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s
Keeper of the Privy Seal, but only about 800 survive from that time. In 1597 Elizabeth I ordered
that these records should be entered into parchment books from then on, and gave the clergy the
option of copying up details from the start of her reign in 1558 from the bits of paper still in the
parish chest, so many more survive from that period. But their survival is a lottery.
Where do family historians find their ancestors
before parish registers?
We advised people to look
in records such as land
transfers,
records
of
criminal and civil cases,
records of church courts,
and, above all, wills. At
this point, we broke the
bad news: most of these
records in the fifteenth
century will be in Latin.
And we also told them
about
the
Society’s
palaeography
course,
which gives help on how
to read fifteenth-century
handwriting.
Lesley
Boatwright,
The Society’s new officers at our stand: Lynda Pidgeon
who attended on all three
(Research Officer), and Dave and Sue Wells (Secretaries)
days as ‘Latin Consul9
tant’, had brought handouts explaining how a medieval will was set out, with examples of the
Latin used for the formulaic bits, and what the Latin words were for the most common bequests,
such as land and farm animals, bedding and table-ware, pots and pans, clothes and jewellery. A
number of people had come
up against these problems –
we were surprised at how
many visitors had managed
to trace their family history
back to the fifteenth century
and even beyond.
Generally
this
was
because they had found a
‘gateway’ ancestor, one
from a family whose tree
was already known and in
print. We spoke to people
who descended from the
Quartermain family, from
the Hawtreys, and we even
spoke to one man who said
he was a Tyrell. We met a
woman who said her cousin
was married to a Robert
Brackenbury who was a
Visitors wanted to have their photos taken with Josephine Tewson ...
descendant of Richard III’s
Robert Brackenbury, and a
man who said a friend of his
was surnamed Stanley, and
some people in Leicester
wouldn’t speak to him
because of what Those
Stanleys had done to
Richard. One woman had
found her name in the
Domesday Book, but when
pressed admitted there was a
gap between 1086 and her
next oldest discovery – in
1710. Another had with her
a family tree which showed
a descent from Edward III,
and Lynda Pidgeon spent a
good half hour going
through the ramifications
with her.
... and to buy her autograph
Josephine Tewson, of
Keeping Up Appearances
and Last of the Summer Wine, was, once again, a great supporter, attending on both Saturday and
Sunday and explaining Richard III’s total innocence on all charges. As ever, the ‘double-takes’ of
the passers-by were a joy to behold as they realised they were really seeing Josephine Tewson
(though one rather confused lady thought she was Josephine Tey). Jo’s patience and enthusiasm
10
were inexhaustible. She managed, with
great charm, to swell our takings by selling
autographs and charging for posing for
photos, and our thanks go to her for the
time and effort she gave so willingly.
Various people had brought Latin with
them to be translated. Lesley explained his
school motto to a schoolboy (‘What you
do, do it well’). The moment she arrived on
the Sunday she was confronted with a
document dated 1703, which is a much
later hand than she is used to, but
fortunately was able to read enough of it to
work out that the man’s ancestor had
simply been a witness to the transaction,
Society Vice-President Kitty Bristow and Joan
not a party to it, so she didn’t have to work
Cooksley visit our stand
out the details of the complicated land
transfer it recorded.
The best documents were brought by a woman whose ancestor had been a ship’s captain in
the mid seventeenth century, and was paid by the Venetians to fight the Turks. The Turks
captured him and were holding him to ransom, but the Venetians wouldn’t pay him the money
promised. He appealed to Oliver Cromwell, and then to Charles II, when his imprisonment had
already lasted 16 years. Unfortunately, the trail goes cold, and she didn’t know if he had ever
been released.
There were some very interesting talks and workshops were going on all round us. Celebrities
such as Matthew Pinsent, Ainsley Harriot and Lesley Garrett spoke in the open theatre areas
about their family history. There was a DNA workshop every day, and people could book time
to ask Society of Genealogy experts about difficulties they had met in their own research. The
National Archives, centrally placed, were plugging the fact that the 1911 census is now available
on line. Across the way from our stand, the Probate Service was extremely busy enlightening
visitors on the mysteries of probate. On the other side of us the College of Arms artists were
sitting quietly painting coats of arms: in our few spare minutes most of us wandered across in
turn to watch. When the Society of Genealogists first began to hold Family History Fairs some
years ago, quite a few second-hand booksellers attended,
not all of whom priced their medieval books at outrageous
prices, but nowadays very few booksellers come, and their
medieval books are extremely pricey.
A number of people staffed our stand through the
weekend. Lesley Boatwright had to be there all three days
in case she was needed to do Latin or palaeography for
visitors. Richard Van Allen, Howard Choppin, Marian
Mitchell, Phil Stone, Dave and Sue Wells, and Geoff
Wheeler were there two days each; Lynda Pidgeon was
there on the Friday, and Peter and Carolyn Hammond on
Sunday. Wendy Moorhen arranged for the production of
our display posters, and Richard Van Allen masterminded
the whole thing and worked tirelessly on its organisation.
The Society’s thanks go to all.
A very successful weekend, especially for those who
like to lunch on ice-cream. There were some very good
sausages available too.
Lesley Boatwright at lunch
11
The King Richard III School, Majorca
PAUL FOSS
F
or some years I have been visiting the beautiful Mediterranean island of Majorca. This is
mostly because I like it, but it is also very easy to get there, with only half a day’s travel.
Added to this, I have a cousin who lives in the south-west of the island and I like to visit her.
Some years ago I noticed a sign for the King Richard III College in Portals Nous, so I knew of its
existence, but when the College principal made an enquiry of the Society, I thought I would visit
it on my next trip.
The little town of Portals Nous, a few kilometres to the south west of the city of Palma, is
now by-passed by the motorway, but that has left a bright and cheerful main street with lots of
shops, banks and estate agents, and surgeries of doctors and dentists advertising in English and
German. All this is to service a large collection of villas and apartments whose owners would
rather carry on their business in the balmy climate of the Balearics than in Birmingham or
Bremen, Coventry or Krefeld. The quiet side streets of the town are largely framed with high
garden walls overhung with palms and bougainvillea and the Calle Oratorio, the address of King
Richard III College, is no exception, with the added charm of the old oratory overlooking the sea.
On that first visit I was whisked off for a tour of the school, with the pupils in class, by Mrs
Merino, the charming vice-principal. As you might expect, English is the main language of the
school, though I understand that there are children of many nationalities, but all conforming, with
a common language, smart uniform and exemplary behaviour. The enthusiasm of the children on
encountering someone with a direct, even if rather tenuous, link to the King Richard of their
school name was both endearing and somewhat alarming in the questions they posed.
On my latest trip I took with me a gift from the Society to the pupils – nearly four kilograms
of lapel badges. To say the children were over the moon is an understatement and I can think of
no better way to increase awareness of Richard in the young. We have here young, enquiring
minds and willing carriers of appropriate knowledge all over the world, and even if there are not
that many King Richard III Colleges, there are young people for whom a little contact can make
the Wars of the Roses seem more than a page in a history book.
Pupils of the King Richard III School wearing their badges
12
New Exhibition at Barley Hall
PETER HAMMOND
A
splendid new exhibition, called ‘Plague, Poverty and Prayer’, funded by the Wellcome
Trust and designed by York Archaeological Trust, was launched at Barley Hall in February
2009. This new exhibition explores everyday life for the citizens of York from the Norman
invasion to Tudor times. Visitors can find out about illnesses and diseases from the period; who
may have treated them and some of the remedies used, as well as the importance of folk
medicine, prayer, astrology, spells and mysticism to those living in Britain at the time. This
exhibition takes four main subject areas to explore the topic: Medical Care, Cures, Living
Conditions, and Illness and Disease.
The exhibition is housed on the first floor of Barley Hall, using the Gallery and the Lesser
and Great Chambers. To illustrate the subject there is archaeological evidence from York, both St
Leonard’s Hospital in York, one of the largest hospitals in medieval Europe, and St Nicholas’s
Hospital,York’s only leper hospital. As well as these, evidence from other hospital sites in
Britain is used, including Soutra in the Scottish Borders, the Great Hospital at Norwich, and St
Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.
The Gallery houses ‘Cures and Medicines’ during the period, using environmental
archaeological evidence and other primary sources, such as manuscripts including the
Killingholme Medicinal and the BarberSurgeon Book from York. There are
home-cure remedies based on recipes
published in the fifteenth century.
These medicines were specially made
for the exhibition by a Society member,
Dr Tig Lang. The other chambers
examine living conditions in medieval
York and the effects these had on issues
such as life expectancy, standards of
health, mortality rates in children, and
types of disability. A female skeleton
from the lost church of St Stephen,
Two views of the new ‘Plague, Poverty and Prayer’
excavated by York Archaeological
exhibition at Barley Hall
Trust at Dixon’s Yard, is displayed and
interpreted, alongside recent research
material on types and prevalence of
disease and illness evident in the period.
Subjects covered include tuberculosis,
anaemia, dental disease, leprosy,
degenerative joint disease, osteoporosis,
syphilis, and plague.
Normal entry fees to the Hall apply.
Opening hours of Barley Hall are
currently 10.00 am – 5.00 pm, Tuesday
to Sunday. The exhibition is on until
November.
13
Beating the Eggheads
BILL WHITE
Y
ou may perhaps have seen me in a Museum of London team in the BBC2 Eggheads quiz on
20 March? (In fact, this was a repeat of a show first broadcast on 30 November 2008.) It
was great fun and there is Ricardian relevance, however slight.
For those who have never seen the show, a visiting team of five friends, working colleagues,
society acquaintances, etc, challenges the resident team of five ‘Eggheads’ – people who have
been successful in TV or radio quizzes at national level (such as Mastermind or Brain of Britain).
There are four rounds, with a random selection from nine categories of questions, in which one
by one the challengers take on the Eggheads in rotation. The first three questions each are
multiple-choice and if honours are even at the end of this, fresh questions are asked without the
benefit of a written choice of answers. Then, it is a matter of ‘sudden death’ and the person who
answers a question incorrectly is eliminated. The final round consists of General Knowledge
questions and involves as a minimum the Egghead and challenger who have not so far been
selected to answer questions, plus those experts and challengers who managed to defeat their
opponent during a specialist round. The depleted teams then proceed through three rounds of
multiple-choice questions and then ‘sudden death’ until one team emerges as winners. The team
of Eggheads usually wins and each day that they defeat their challengers £1,000 is added to the
prize money for the next show.
My team-mates decided that should the subject of science come up then I was the one best
suited to compete in that round. So it transpired: the first category to be declared was science. My
team also chose the Egghead for me to challenge directly. It was Judith Keppel, who had been
the first contestant to win the top prize on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? We were each
successful during the multiple-choice rounds and eventually she was eliminated. My other team
members put in a fine performance, although each in turn ultimately was defeated by the
Egghead they were challenging. The next topic was my preferred subject of history and my
colleague Rob was doing rather well until he gave the wrong answer in a question on The Great
Flag Debate of 1965. However, his Egghead opponent was CJ de Mooi, winner of The Weakest
Link, and MENSA chess champion, whose weakest subject was thought to be history. ‘In which
conflict was the Battle of Hexham?’ he was asked and was offered a choice of the Crimean War,
the Wars of the Roses or the English Civil War. Although ‘CJ’ professed not to know the answer
he guessed correctly and our team member was eliminated. By the end of four rounds my two
colleagues, Vicky and Becky had been eliminated in the said ‘sudden death’ battles, so only Jack
(who had not played) and I remained to face the combined talents of the four remaining
Eggheads. To cut a long story short, the Eggheads gave an incorrect answer to one of their
multiple choice questions on General Knowledge, whereas we answered our three questions
correctly and were therefore victorious. Our reward was to share the accumulated winnings of
£33,000, which is the second highest sum won in over five years of the competition.
The prize money came in useful, of course, but even without it we had a most enjoyable day.
The BBC entertained us very well. The arcane dress code (i.e. which coloured or patterned top or
shirt did not clash with the background) caused slight problems and this was the first time despite
ten years of appearing in TV documentaries that I had to go into make up. This affected our girls
the most and we said to Vicki and Becky : ‘Looking like that, you’ll need to find somewhere to
go tonight; don’t waste it!’.
If anyone is inclined to enter a Richard III Society team to challenge the Eggheads I can
thoroughly recommend it.
14
News and Reviews
Bolton Percy Gatehouse is to be a Holiday Let
Ricardians looking for late medieval buildings in which to take their holidays will in future be
able to stay in Bolton Percy gatehouse, 10 miles to the southwest of York. The gatehouse is about
to be converted into a two-person let by the Vivat Trust, a registered charity, and an active historic buildings preservation trust.
Timber-framed gatehouses are rare and this
is the only surviving example in the north of
England. Built in c. 1467, it is now all that
remains of a courtyard which originally included
a medieval manor house and a timber-framed
barn. Included on English Heritage’s buildingsat-risk register for the past ten years, the
gatehouse today looks a rather sorry sight from
the outside (indeed, one half of it has already
collapsed and been lost). There are some hints
however that it was once of high status, e.g. the
close studding and a beautiful carved head of a
green man. Once inside this is confirmed,
particularly in the upper part of the hall, which
The Bolton Percy Rose
has some fine carvings including a large rose on
one of the roof brackets. The original purpose of
this hall is unknown. It may have been used by the local Guild of St Mary. There are also records
of a school in Bolton Percy in the Middle Ages although the hall seems too fine to have been
used for a school room.
The gatehouse lies
adjacent to the church, All
Saints, which was built in
the early years of the
fifteenth century and consecrated in 1424. It is
unusual in being built all at
the same time, replacing
what was probably an
Anglo-Saxon one with
Norman alterations. It is
also unusual in having
some of its original fifteenth-century glass in the
east window and, although
restored, this retains an
accurate impression of its
original appearance.
Another of Bolton
Upper half of Gatehouse looking north
Percy’s attractions is a
Garden Churchyard which contains many interesting plants, a peaceful place to reflect on the
interesting buildings standing close by.
Doreen Leach
15
The National Trust is Disappointed
We said in the last Bulletin that, following the inaccurate references to Richard in an article about
the city of York by Vicky Sartain in The National Trust Magazine for spring 2009, Phil Stone
had sent a stern letter to the National Trust. Phil has received the following letter from its editor,
Sue Herdman:
Thank you very much for your letter regarding the recent Days Away feature. You are
right to point out the historical errors and I will be taking time to discuss this element of
the feature further with the writer. Miss Sartain spent several days in York gathering
information and the tourist board also checked the piece, so it is disappointing to discover
that there are so many inaccuracies. Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.
At the time of going to press the summer issue of The National Trust Magazine had not
arrived, so we don’t know if any of our indignant members who wrote in to them have had their
letters published.
Richard III to be performed at Wilmcote
Susan Finch tells us that there is to be an outdoor production of Richard III in the grounds of
Mary Ardern’s House, Wilmcote, on 31 July and 1 August. No other details are available. Susan
spotted it in a leaflet on the Shakespeare properties.
Was Richard III Humpty Dumpty?
Sylvia Sherwood recently looked on the web to see if she could track down the origin of Humpty
Dumpty. On a page called The Phrase Finder (www.phrases.org.uk) she found some theories:
that it was a powerful cannon in Colchester mounted on a church tower during the English Civil
War, which was toppled by an enemy shell; that it referred to an inept British use of a Roman
siege-engine known as a testudo; – and that Humpty Dumpty was really Richard III, who fell off
his horse named ‘Wall’ at Bosworth and was hacked to pieces, so that ‘all the king’s horses and
all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again’.
Conservation of York Minster East Window
In 1402 John Thornton of Coventry was commissioned to produce the biggest single expanse of
stained glass in York Minster
the Great East Window. This was to depict the history of the
world from the beginning to the end, and the task was completed three years later.
It is hoped that when Richard III saw it the glass was still in prime condition. Since then it has
suffered from poor restoration techniques and damage in a fire in 1829. Doreen Leach tells us
that now a mammoth project is under way to return the window to its original splendour. So far,
all the glass has been removed and put into storage, and conservation is about to start, thanks to a
Heritage Lottery Grant and other fund-raising activities. Before removal, all the individual panels
were photographed and an impressive actual-size replica banner now hangs in front of the
tracery, giving visitors at least an impression of the window while it is being worked on. The
Bedern Glaziers Studio (located in the thirteenth-century chapel of the Vicars Choral close to the
Minster) was recently opened by the York Glaziers Trust to enable visitors to watch conservation
of the glass taking place. The Trust is one of Europe’s leading stained-glass conservation studios
and visitors get a close-up view of the work being undertaken, and an opportunity to chat to
conservators. Further information can be obtained from York Minster:
http://yorkminster.org/visiting/what-to-see-and-do/glass-conservation-studio/
16
Conferences to Come
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
13-16 July 2009
There was a brief note in the last Bulletin reporting that the Society will be sponsoring a session
and having a sales stall at this prestigious annual event.
The Leeds Medieval Congress brings together thousands of scholars from all over the world.
Although the sessions only take up four days, it is a marathon event. There are four time-slots on
the first three days and two on the last, each lasting an hour and a half. This year more than 375
individual sessions are on offer, all of which will be fitted somewhere into those time-slots, so
there will be over 25 sessions on offer at any given moment. This means that many difficult
choices have to be made by those attending, who often wish they could be in two places at once.
Each year the congress has one special thematic strand. Last year it was ‘The Natural World’,
which had already been chosen before it was announced that 2008 would be the UN
‘International Year of Planet Earth’; they responded by having 160 sessions exploring the natural
world and its interaction with human civilisation in the medieval period. This year it is ‘Heresy
and Orthodoxy’, and Leeds say this has triggered an unprecedented response from a wide range
of scholars. These special strands run alongside many others. Last year English Heritage
sponsored four sessions on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the University of York
arranged a series of sessions entitled ‘Desperately Seeking the First-Person Narrative’. There are
also individual sessions, whose subjects may be wonderfully diverse. Last year there were
sessions on Monks as Water Managers, Exemplary Animals, Unnatural Offspring and Filial
Impiety in Old French Literature, Children in the Medieval Village, and even Bodily Functions in
Late Medieval Literature and Art.
There are also special evening lectures, musical performances, a medieval banquet, a dance
workshop, and workshops on calligraphy, cosmetics and textiles.
We have been allocated a very good slot for our session, from 9.00 to 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday
14 July, but we are up against some stiff competition: How to Spot a Heretic, Some Medieval
European Ideas on Magic, and Daily Life in a Cisterican Abbey, to name but three.
Our session is called Will Power: Sex, Politics and Salvation in the Logge Register of PCC
Wills 1479-86. Lesley Boatwright will deal with the salvation aspect in her paper on ‘Admission
Fees at the Pearly Gates: Nice Little Earners for the Craftsmen and the Chaplains’. Lynda
Pidgeon will speak on ‘Merry Widows and Grave Choices’, and Wendy Moorhen on ‘The Will
of William, Lord Hastings, executed 1483’.
Unfortunately, the conference isn’t the sort of event that you can drop in on. Even speakers,
coming up to give their paper and go away again the same day, have to pay for a day pass at a fee
of £94.50. So we will not be expecting many members to come along to hear us.
Other conferences
The Harlaxton Medieval Symposium 2009
This symposium is on ‘Ritual and Space’, and will take place 20-23 July at Harlaxton Manor,
Grantham, Lincs. Papers include Catherine Lawless on ‘Saints, Gender, Space and the City’,
Philip Morgan on ‘Inhabiting the Battlefield in the Middle Ages’ and Jennifer Alexander on
‘Symbols to Ward off the Evil Eye’. There will be croquet on the lawn (weather permitting) and
an excursion to Lincoln Cathedral. For a provisional programme and booking form, email the
organiser Christian Steer at [email protected]. Closing date 30 June 2009.
17
The Monumental Brass Society’s 2009 Conference
Entitled ‘Canons, Clergy and Churchmen’, this will be held at Salisbury, 4-6 September. Papers
include Nigel Saul on ‘The Monuments and Brasses in Salisbury Cathedral’, Martin Heale on
‘The Funerary Monuments of Abbots and Priors in Late Medieval England’, and Christian Steer
on ‘The Canons of St Paul’s and their brasses’. There will be a tour of the Cathedral and a visit to
the parish church of St Thomas. For further information and details of how to book, visit the
Society’s website, www.mbs-brasses.co.uk or email [email protected].
Fotheringhay News
The ninth Annual Organ Concert will take place at 7.30 pm on Saturday 26 September. It will be
given by William Saunders of Ipswich. Tickets can be bought at the door. (£11, £9.50, students
£2)
The AGM of the Friends of Fotheringhay Church will take place in the Village Hall at 2.30 pm
on Saturday 7 November. The speaker at the annual lecture will be William Craven, and his
subject will be on a matter relating to Mary, Queen of Scots. Members will be admitted free. The
fee for non-members is £5.
Jousting Results from the Royal Armouries
Richard III Society member and ‘jousting artist’ Graham Turner made his debut at the Sword of
Honour Team Tournament held at the Royal Armouries last Easter in the four-man team fielded
by Destrier. After four days of jousting and very intense competition, Destrier managed to beat
the Royal Armouries team to reach the final against the title holders, the Order of the Crescent,
but unfortunately they couldn’t quite continue their run of form and had to settle for second
place. Next year they hope to do even better ...
Graham’s horse Magic, who is not yet fully trained and did not take part in the Sword of
Honour Team Tournament, will be present at some slightly lower-key Destrier events during the
summer to give him the experience he needs to prepare him for the big tournaments.
The next visit to the Royal Armouries will be for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Individual
Championships over the August bank holiday weekend, and Graham is delighted to be one of the
twelve knights invited to take part.
Graham’s
involvement
in
jousting provides considerable
inspiration for his paintings, and
he is currently working on a new
canvas that focuses on the
moment of impact from the rider’s
viewpoint, something Graham is
probably uniquely qualified to
convey. He will be exhibiting his
work as usual at the Tewkesbury
Medieval Festival on 11 and 12
July. Details of his paintings,
prints and cards can be found on
his website: www.studio88.co.uk
– along with a selection of photos
and information about his jousting
experiences.
18
Book Reviews
The Raven King: Matthias Corvinus
and the Fate of His Lost Library
by Marcus Tanner
Yale University Press (2008), 265 pages plus illustrations
ISBN 978-0-300-12034-9
The Silesian traveller Nicolas von Popplau visited Richard III’s
court in the spring of 1484 when it was residing at Pontefract.
He had open access to the king and recorded some of the
conversations he had with him. Richard had asked him about
European princes and politics, especially in relation to the
Turks. Nicolas told him about the king of Hungary and the successes that he had had against the Turks
and Richard replied, ‘I would like my kingdom and land to lie where the land and kingdom of the king
of Hungary lies, on the Turkish frontier itself. Then I would certainly, with my own people alone,
without the help of other kings, princes or lords, completely drive away not only the Turks, but all my
enemies and opponents!’ This Hungarian king was Matthias Corvinus, one of the most renowned and
remembered monarchs of that country. The name Corvinus comes from the Latin for raven, which
was the symbol of Matthias family. If you go to Budapest today you will see the words ‘corvin’ and
‘corvinus’ attached to most things of cultural or historical significance. Indeed, during the 1956
Uprising, the Corvina Cinema was the site of some the fiercest fighting against the Soviets.
The Raven King is about King Matthias Corvinus, his famous library and the attempts to locate
and reassemble it following its disappearance after the sacking of Budapest by the Ottomans in 1526.
This quest over subsequent centuries became a litmus test for Hungarian nationalism.
Matthias was born in February 1443 in Cluj in modern day Romania, the son of János
Hunyadi, who was regent of Hungary from 1446 to 1452. When the childless Ladislas V died in
1458 the fifteen year old Matthias was elected king. His court at Buda became a great centre of
learning, and his sumptuous library, known as the Bibliotheca Corvina, was famous for its
collection of rare manuscripts. It is said that Matthias tried to persuade the nobles of his court to
read books, but he apparently met with little success. The library has been estimated to have held
between 2,200 and 2,500 volumes in Greek and Latin alone, and if this number is anywhere near
correct it was a vast collection. In comparison the Waynflete library at Magdalen College Oxford
would have held some 800 volumes. It is likely that only the Vatican library contained more than
the Bibliotheca Corvina.
Through a fortuitous marriage to Beatrice, the daughter of Frederick I, King of Naples,
Matthias gained better access to the Italian book market and his library certainly grew
significantly thereafter. It took a lot of effort to compile; scholars were sent to Italy and entrusted
with the purchase of books, which were sometimes bound and illuminated closer to home. Italian
scholars, writers and artists took up residence at Matthias's court, which became the most
important humanist centre north of the Alps. He introduced printing into Hungary, sent
Hungarian students to Italian universities, and founded a university at Bratislava. He also
reformed the judicial system and reduced his dependence on the nobility by establishing an
independent army of mercenaries – the Black Troops – which he used against both home-grown
and foreign foes. Matthias’ lands were considerable, extending in the north almost to Berlin,
including Lusatia, Bohemia, Silesia, and Austria, and down the Adriatic coast to include
Belgrade. Hungary was one of Europe’s great powers and Matthias a significant Renaissance
monarch. Crucially for the rest of Europe, his military strength enabled Hungary to act as a
19
bulwark against further Ottoman encroachment into Europe following the fall of Constantinople
in 1453.
Matthias died in Vienna on April 6, 1490 and was buried in the Hungarian Royal city of
Székesfehérvár, but no trace of his tomb survives. He left no legitimate heir and so was
succeeded by Ladislaus II of Bohemia, one of the sons of the great Polish king Casimir IV.
Unfortunately his successors lacked both his strength and capabilities and within forty years of
his death the Ottomans overran much of his empire and captured Budapest itself. And that is
where the story of the lost library really begins. When the Turkish Sultan entered Buda on 21
September 1526, his soldiers engaged in extensive looting and pillaging. It is not certain what
happened to the books from the king’s library; they may have all been taken to Constantinople,
but eventually they were dispersed throughout Europe and beyond, becoming lost objects of
nostalgia and pride for the Hungarian nation. Myths grew up about the library, particularly over
its content and size, both being subject to exaggerations. Its loss became almost as symbolic as
the lost library of Alexandria.
The Raven King surveys the surviving books from the library and follows their path from the
sacking of Budapest to their present homes in the great libraries of Europe and the United States.
The book charts the quests of many Hungarians and others to restore the library, which was such
an important symbol to the Hungarian nation. With the decline of Ottoman power in the
nineteenth century and improved relations with the west, especially with the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, some of the books began to emerge. In 1877 fifteen of the original books were returned
to Budapest, an event that was treated as a national celebration, almost as though it were the body
of King Matthias himself that had been returned.
Today some 216 books from the original library have been located. Some are poor and
inaccurate translations, but equally many are of great value. The Raven King has a useful
appendix which catalogues these books, six of which can be found in British libraries. Whilst the
reality suggests that the library was never quite the size that its mythology implied, it was
nonetheless one of the most extensive in fifteenth-century Europe. The aspiration to re-establish
physically the Bibliotheca Corvina in full is of course no longer achievable, but there is a project
to build a virtual re-creation, and details can be found by visiting www.corvina.oszk.hu
The Raven King’s author, Marcus Tanner, is a former foreign correspondent for The Independent
specialising in the Balkans, and so is well placed to understand the history and politics of that
turbulent region. The book is recommended not only for the Indiana Jones type quest for the lost
library, but also for the insight it gives into the life and times of the remarkable Matthias Corvinus.
Although he was an exact contemporary of King Richard, Matthias is little known in the English
speaking world; this book helps to remedy this.
I rather think that Richard and Matthias would have got along together quite well. They had
similar concerns for chivalric justice and honour and of course they shared a passion for books. How
much Richard would have known about the extent of Matthias’s library is uncertain, but he would
doubtless have been mightily impressed, and perhaps too a little envious. Interestingly, Richard signed
all his books, a habit that was certainly not commonplace at the time. Matthias had all his marked with
the raven symbol which greatly helped subsequent authentication of his books, much as Richard’s
signature helped Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs trace and identify books from his library. When
considering Matthias in the context of his contemporaries Tanner notes, ‘Compared to the grim and
miserly Henry VII, Matthias’ sinister father-in-law Ferdinand, or Ferrante, of Naples, or some of the
other contemporary European monarchs, his humanity and sense of humour stand out.’ Perhaps
Matthias Corvinus gives us a clue as to the type of Renaissance Prince that King Richard III may have
become had he won on that fateful August day in 1485.
John Saunders
20
Mediaeval Colchester’s Lost Landmarks
by John Ashdown-Hill
Breedon Books, Derby, 2009 Hardback, £14.99.
ISBN 978-1-85983-686-6
This is a fascinating book, based on original research in the Essex Archives. It concentrates
primarily on Colchester towards the end of the fifteenth century when religious buildings were
‘at their apogee’. Dr Ashdown-Hill hopes that other researchers will be encouraged by his ‘foray
into the lost world of Mediaeval Colchester’ and the full references given in the book would be a
good starting point for anyone wishing to work on this area. The book is aimed at ‘local readers,
visitors to Colchester and anyone with an interest in the past’ so it is not intended for an
academic audience. Most of the book is thus very accessible although some statements,
particularly relating to the Benedictine Order, could really do with a fuller explanation for the
general reader
There are ten chapters of varying lengths, the longest and most detailed being about St John’s
Abbey and the two priories, St Botolph’s and Greyfriars. Other chapters cover nearly every
aspect of town life including, hospitals, churches, houses, inns and markets. Schools,
entertainment and even the water-supply and disposal of waste are not forgotten. There is a plan
of Colchester c.1460-80 plus some useful appendices including a list of local inhabitants (all
male) who swore fealty to Edward IV in 1472. The book is well illustrated (although the pictures
are rather dark) and there is a comprehensive index.
The author could have been better served by his publisher. The illustrations listed at the front
of the book are numbered but no page numbers are given. However, the illustrations as they
appear in the text are not numbered so, to find a specific illustration, it is necessary to trawl
through the book. I was unable to find the source of the pictures used to illustrate the dust jacket.
The chapters themselves are not numbered but on p. 127 there is a reference: ‘see chapter two –
Wayside Crosses’ and likewise on p. 138: ‘see chapter six – The Pillory and the Gallows’.
Wayside crosses are in fact covered in chapter five.
Despite these small niggles this is a book which will be much appreciated by all who deplore
the loss of many of Colchester’s important landmarks. Many disappeared quickly after the
Reformation but others, such as the church where John Howard, Duke of Norfolk worshipped,
lasted into the 1950s before demolition. Hopefully readers will be encouraged to seek out the
remains of the sites for themselves and perhaps take up Dr Ashdown-Hill’s challenge to ‘delve
further’.
Doreen Leach
The Cleaving of Paycocke’s
by Orlando Wysocki
Four O’Clock Press, 2008
Paycockes House in Coggeshall was built in the late fifteenth century by John Paycocke, and is
now a National Trust property with a resident custodian. The history of the Paycocke family and
its connections with Coggeshall have been well documented by the historian Eileen Power in her
book on the family published in 1920. The Cleaving of Paycocke’s is a story that takes place in
three time dimensions – the early sixteenth century focussing on John Paycocke’s son, Thomas;
the early 1920s focussing on Isobel Holst, the daughter of the composer Gustav Holst who lived
there with his family at the time; and in the present day with the National Trust custodian and his
two teenage daughters. It is about the relationship they all have with the house and its history,
and the similar unexplained happenings that they experience.
The book did not attract me because of any anticipated Ricardian story-line; indeed the link to
our period takes time to emerge. My attraction was a family history interest in the Paycockes.
21
The novel weaves its three time periods together into a pattern that carries the central story
forward and back with skill and a growing sense of anticipation for the reader. Around the central
theme of the book the individual lives and experiences of the three main protagonists add further
interest and dimension to the novel. It’s the sort of book that once the story takes hold the
narrative compels the reader along at a swift pace. In its second half the various strands begin to
close-in on the climax and the Ricardian connection suddenly dawns. But that is as much as I will
reveal in this review. To tell more would spoil the experience for any new reader.
Orlando Wysocki is a new writer and this, his debut novel, shows much promise. It’s a long
novel at over five hundred pages, but a jolly good one nonetheless.
John Saunders
Desert Island Docs
The National Archives have begun a series of podcasts, to be put on their website, in which
people who work there choose their favourite TNA document to have with them on their ‘desert
island’, and speak about them. It is envisaged as ‘a conversation between the castaway and the
document’, with the voice of the document added later by an actor. A new one will appear each
month once the series has got under way, though past ones will still be available.
This is the brainchild of the Education Technical Officer at TNA. He is interested in using the
website to drive learning forward, turning the documents into resources which are useful for
schools, believing (quite correctly) that most people don’t have a clear idea of the great range of
documents available at TNA, which include maps, fabric samples, photographs etc.
The first and second podcasts were on the letter sent by the young Princess Elizabeth to her
sister, Queen Mary, protesting her innocence, and on the dead rat that somehow got listed as one
of the documents. The speaker on this podcast used the rat to discuss how documents were
looked after (or not, as the case may be) through the ages.
I did the third podcast, and my chosen document was KB 9/365, the indictment of Alexander
Syda, vicar of Bethersden, Kent, as a fifteenth-century football hooligan, which I wrote about in
the autumn 2007 Bulletin. I’ve never been recorded speaking into a microphone before, and it
was an eye-opener: I had to do quite a bit all over again because I had turned the pages of my
notes and the microphone had picked the sound up. I haven’t heard the result yet, so have my
fingers crossed that I don’t sound too dreadful. Was I interested in football, they asked? As someone brought up in Watford and living in Charlton, I was glad I could say ‘No’.
Lesley Boatwright
Hand numbered and signed limited edition prints depicting
Richard III King of England 1483-1485




An historical interpretation of Richard III
Full colour and black and white prints available
Print size approx. 11½ x 8½ inches (297 x 210mm)
Image size approx. 8 x 5½ inches (200 x 140mm)
Visit our website at www.shakespeare.eu.com and click on the
Historic Richard III link or write to us at B J Harris Figurines,
123 Coverdale Road, Great Glen, Leicester, LE8 9EB
22
Media Retrospective Part 1:
Richard III and the BBC History Magazine
The BBC History Magazine for March 2009 had a cover and feature article
about Richard, based on a new book, ‘Richard III and the Death of Chivalry’,
and also a back-page article on ‘My History Hero’ - Anthony Woodville.
THE ARTICLES reviewed by Dave and Sue Wells
T
he BBC History Magazine, March 2009, revealed the ‘real reason why Richard III was
butchered’ at Bosworth. The feature article is based upon a new book by Dr David
Hipshon: Richard III and the Death of Chivalry (The History Press, 2009).
The article claims that Duchy of Lancaster records in The National Archives reveal that there
had been a twenty-year power struggle in Lancashire which culminated in William Stanley’s
forces supporting Henry Tudor at Bosworth. It suggests that the background to this was the
growth of power and landholding by the Stanleys in west Lancashire, Cheshire and North Wales.
This brought them into conflict with families in east Lancashire, one of whom was the
Harringtons of Hornby.
During the Wars of the Roses, the Harringtons were Yorkist supporters. After the Battle of
Wakefield, the Stanleys were awarded their castle at Hornby by Edward IV, but James
Harrington refuse to concede, with consequent increasing friction between the two families,
ultimately leading to false indictments by Stanley against the Harringtons.
Following the re-adeption of Henry VI, Edward, in an attempt to secure the northwest of
England, enrolled the support of his younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who displaced
Stanley as forester of lands in Amounderness, Blackburn and Bowland, and James Harrington
became Richard’s deputy in the Forest of Bowland. Amounderness contained the Harrington’s
disputed castle at Hornby. Further struggles continued between the Stanleys and Harringtons and
it is suggested that Richard was a strong ally of the Harringtons, who were believed to be
working to help Edward recover the throne.
However, it appears that, following his reinstatement, Edward IV decided to appease the
Stanleys, and the Harringtons were forced to relinquish Hornby, with other properties being
awarded in compensation. Disputes between the families were still extant by the time that
Edward died in 1483.
Many of the leading families in the region had connections through marriage to the
Harringtons and when Richard came to power, he made a number of appointments which
diminished the influence and power of the Stanleys.
Against this background, the article concludes that, with Harrington at his side, Richard III
presented Stanleys with an opportunity to take advantage of the situation and support Tudor at
Bosworth, which ended fatally for King Richard. The same magazine is rich in Ricardian
references. Their Reader Panel was asked to vote on whether they thought that Richard had the
Princes in the Tower murdered, with an interesting result. 31% said ‘yes’, 17% ‘no’, and 52%
‘it’s impossible to tell’.
This is where we are reminded of that old saying: ‘there are lies, damned lies and statistics’.
You could reasonably say that, in a BBC History Magazine poll, 69% of the respondees did not
agree that Richard III had the princes murdered. More seriously, are we finally starting to see
23
signs of the tide turning? We have long argued that there is real reason for doubting the
traditional ‘history’. Is this an indication that this view is becoming more widely held – or were
most of the respondents Ricardians?
Anthony Woodville: History Hero
The magazine’s back page article is less kind to Richard. Entitled ‘My History Hero’,
historian and novelist Robert Irwin writes a piece about Anthony Woodville, later Earl Rivers.
He says that, ‘Woodville has also suffered in modern times from people who believe that Richard
III was one of the greatest saints in English history. They are bound to throw mud at Woodville
because Richard III had him killed’. (Is this a reference to the Society?) The item continues,
‘Woodville was appointed protector and tutor of Edward V, the young prince who would be
murdered in the Tower, almost certainly on Richard’s orders. Once Richard was in power,
Woodville was doomed.’
No sitting on the fence for Mr Irwin, then.
THE ILLUSTRATIONS discussed by Geoffrey Wheeler
‘The Counterfeit Presentment of Two Brothers’ (Hamlet Act III Scene 4)
I
t has been nine years since a portrait of Richard III made the front cover of the BBC History
Magazine (vol.1 no.3), with the familiar NPG image to promote Michael Hicks’ biography
and the provocative caption ‘Dastardly Dick’. Since then numerous articles have featured his
ever-controversial life and times, but it is sad to see that in the latest issue the standard of
accuracy of the accompanying illustrations has reached a new low.
Even the most casual Ricardian observer would see that this cover shows the old version of
the Antiquaries ‘Broken Sword’ portrait, before it was cleaned and restored for their 2007
exhibition – the new version is now familiar to members from the past five covers of the Bulletin.
In the Time-Line sequence, the image of John
de Vere, captioned ‘15th Earl of Oxford’ is
indeed taken from an engraving of his likeness on
the black marble tomb at Hedingham but, of
course, it was the 13th earl of Oxford who fought
at Bosworth and Stoke, and who is known from
the drawing of his lost tomb, once at Earl’s Colne
Priory.
Perhaps the most serious errors occur
regarding the attributed portraits of the Stanleys.
Lurking behind Richard in the main title photo on
p.26 is a gentleman in armour who is described in
the caption as ‘Sir William Stanley’.
The earliest reference to portraits of the
Stanleys appears to be in the Notebooks of the
engraver and antiquary George Vertue, who
records his visit to Wentworth Woodhouse, York,
seat of the Fitzwilliam family: ‘Sir Wm Stanley
Ld Chamberlain to K. Hen. 7 by whom he was
beheaded, in Armour wrought with Gold and an
Harquebus (or little Fusil) in his hand, ½ len[gth],
he has a bonnet on, and his helmet a t’other
24
hand’.1 Although only a shadowy vignette of his head and shoulders appears on p.26, this is
enough to show the thoroughly Elizabethan ruff and feathered hat, whilst the complete figure
displays armour of the 1570s, as seen, for example, in contemporary portraits of Elizabeth’s earls
of Essex and Leicester. Additionally, of course, anachronistically for the fifteenth century, he
carries an arquebus, or musket-type gun, developed in the sixteenth century. Responsibility for
the continued misidentification must stem from its continual repetition in the hallowed pages of
the old DNB. Since 1917, James Tait’s entry on Sir William confidently states: ‘a three-quarterlength portrait of Stanley, in richly ornamented armour, is preserved at Wentworth House, York,
and was engraved in Baines’s Lancashire (iv g). He is represented with a thinnish face and a
short beard.’ Remarkably, this has continued into the new
Oxford edition of DNB (2004, vol.5 p.276) where Michael
Bennett, author of The Battle of Bosworth (Sutton, 1985) – who,
if he had seen an actual reproduction, ought to have had doubts –
repeats in his paragraph on ‘Likenesses’: ‘Portrait known to
have been at Wentworth House, York, in 1897’.
Turning to Lord Thomas, later earl of Derby, again it is
Vertue who catalogued it at Wentworth: ‘Stanley, old E. of
Derby, in a bonnet, his robes wrought with real Gold & a Goldheaded staff in his hand. ¾ [length] (Thomas).’ Tait’s DNB entry
agrees, though describes it, or a copy, ‘At Knowsley, engraved
in Baines’s Lancashire, [it] shows a long thin face, with a full
beard’. And it was this description which unfortunately Paul
Murray Kendall seized upon and took at face value, as in his
celebrated biography, when describing Richard’s court in 1485,
Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby - he alludes to ‘Thomas, Lord Stanley, with his thin, shrewd face
or William Cecil, Lord Burghley? – full of years and gravity and exemplary sentiments and prudent
counsel and exudations of loyalty’.2 Again, presumably Kendall
had not seen a photograph, though one had appeared in Robert Somerville’s History of the Duchy
of Lancaster (vol.1, 1953), identified as ‘Lord Stanley’, as this time there was no mistaking the
identity of the sitter: the Knowsley painting is a standard copy of the usual type, attributed to A.
van Brounckhorst in the NPG version, of Queen Elizabeth’s William Cecil, Lord Burghley. At
least Michael Bennett’s latest entry (DNB vol.5, pp.237-40) omits any reference under
‘Likenesses’, though of course his damaged tomb effigy from Burscough Priory still survives in
Ormskirk Church, Lancs.
1. George Vertue, Notebooks, vol.2 p.79 (Walpole Society, 1930-55).
2. P.M. Kendall, Richard III, 1961 edn., p.334 (and note 15, p.489, citing DNB as his source).
APRIL POSTSCRIPT
The April issue of the BBC History Magazine carried a correction: ‘We portrayed the wrong
William Stanley on p.26 of the March issue. We used a portrait of William Stanley (1561-1642),
6th Earl of Derby, rather than the William Stanley who fought at Bosworth’. Geoff comments,
‘It looks as if someone has tipped them off about that one but not about the other more easily
identifiable and famous Lord Burghley, which was reprinted yet again as an illustration’.
The April issue also carries an interesting letter from a John Spiller, who gives his address as
Ashton Sixth Form College, which is the school at which the original author, David Hipshon
teaches. Spiller thinks the Stanleys are to be admired for the shrewd game that they played during
the Wars of the Roses, keeping their options open until the last minute. A rejoinder by Hipshon
says ‘we can be fairly sure that Richard was surprised by Stanley’s betrayal at Bosworth’.
25
Media Retrospective Part 2
Leicester Mercury, 7 February 2009:
‘Richard’s coffin’ at Bosworth, by Jenny
Ousbey
‘A medieval stone coffin which is rumoured
to be that of King Richard III will be given
pride of place at Bosworth Battlefield. Now
fully cleaned, the casket makes its public
debut at the battlefield centre ...’ The article
quotes Richard Knox as saying, ‘the
association with Richard III is a bit fanciful,
but it has captured imaginations’.
From George Cobby, Amersham
Programme for Milton Keynes Theatre’s
production of ‘Noises Off’, by Michael Frayn
‘The confusion of identity caused by chance
resemblance has always played a significant
part in human affairs. Edward IV had a
notorious lookalike, Leofric Leadbetter, a
tallowboiler from Stony Stratford, who fooled
many courtiers and visiting heads of state.
Not even their wives could tell them apart. On
one occasion Leadbetter gave the royal assent
to three statutes and probably fathered the
future King Edward V before the imposture
was detected. Some historians believe that in
the subsequent confusion it was in fact the
king, not Leadbetter, who was hanged.’
George comments: ‘This essay is remarkably unfunny, supposedly examining components of farce, including identity confusion.
I have begun to wonder what I have been
missing in my Ricardian reading during the
last thirty years. If Edward was really Leofric,
then that gives our Richard an even greater
claim to the throne. I leave it to others to
write the book.’
‘National intrigue’ is putting it rather high,
but is this an artefact on its way to becoming
part of Richard’s accretion of mythology, in
spite of all efforts to prevent this? Eds.
From John Knights, Brighton
Honourable Intentions, by Gavin Lyall
(1999), p. 166.
The speaker is a solicitor employed by the
government: ‘For better, or worse, what the
public wants to believe is beyond the reach of
the law. Look at Richard III: everybody
knows that he was a bad hat who murdered
the little princes in the Tower. In fact he
didn’t, and was quite a good king – probably
better than Henry Tudor who rebelled against
him and won. But don’t ask me how you can
change public opinion after this time.’
From Sally Henshaw, Leicester
Sally sent us the following two extracts:
Leicester Mercury, 2 February 2009:
Medieval coffin is now a battlefield draw
‘A medieval stone coffin which caused
national intrigue when it was discovered on a
county building site has been officially
unveiled at Bosworth Battlefield. ... Chairman
of Leicestershire County Council Tony
Kershaw and the managing director of David
Wilson East Midlands, John Reddington,
officially unveiled the coffin in its new
home ... Councillor Kershaw said: “This is a
tremendous find and where better to place it
than Bosworth Battlefield? Everyone should
come along and take a look at the coffin and
all the other exhibits at the battlefield which
date back to the time of King Richard III ...”.’
The account is illustrated by a picture of
Councillor Kershaw beaming in front of the
coffin.
From Elizabeth Nokes, London
WWW.Shortlist.com, 26 February 2009. The
Guest List: Tom Jones’s ultimate moments in
military history.
(Sub-heading: ‘Our legendary knight of the
realm unveils his pick of the battles’;
Bosworth is sandwiched between the Korean
war and the fall of France in 1940.)
‘No. 8. Battle of Bosworth Field. 1485.
Richard III, of course! He was defeated by
Henry VII, who was Welsh. That’s why I like
this one. Henry won handsomely and it was
the beginning of the Tudor empire. Britain is
such a tiny island, [but] to have all this
fantastic history makes you unbelievably
proud, doesn’t it? It’s remarkable, really.’
26
puppet festival that saw acts from Taiwan,
Bulgaria, Brazil, Sweden and Quebec this
summer. Jan comments, ‘I have no idea why
this play came to our small city (population
23,000) or where else in North America it is
touring.’
From Jan Ogilvy, Whitehorse, Yukon,
Canada
Yukon News, 12 December 2008: report by
Genesee Keevil on ‘Richard 3.5’, a play
performed at Whitehorse by Sandglass
Theater.
‘It’s easy to kill a puppet. After all, they’re
not alive to begin with. But when Eric Bass
smothers and beheads tiny, inanimate figures
in Richard 3.5, the audience still gasps in
horror. “Actors can never really die and
puppets can never really live,” said Bass ...
“so bringing puppets to life and then killing
them begs all the questions that are interesting
to the art form – in what way does the
audience bring the puppet to life, and what
happens to the audience when the puppets are
beheaded and suffocated?” A two-man
ragtime cabaret revolving round murder,
Richard 3.5 is a black comedy featuring
puppets and candles. It’s based on Shakespeare’s Richard III. “We reduced it to 11
murders and seven songs we made from the
Shakespeare text,” said Bass. “The murders
are the fun part.”
‘The puppets appear to be made out of
candle wax, and as each puppet meets its
bitter end, one of the giant candles gracing the
stage flickers out. “So there’s a metaphorical
element to the design – for every life that’s
lost, the world does get a little darker. ... And
those that perpetrate it make the world darker
for themselves too.” ...’
Jan’s daughter found more information
about the performance on the internet:
‘Richard 3.5: Light Ruminations on Murder
is a collaboration between Sandglass
Theater’s Eric Bass and award-winning
physical comedian Bob Berky. ... Surrounded
by dramatic giant candles, from whose wax
the puppet victims are created right before
your eyes, Richard and his Emcee accomplice
dance and sing their way through this cabaret
version of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. See
Richard in a rare television interview, see him
win the annual Gloucestershire Pie Eating
Contest, see him recount for you (and you
only) the extent of his prowess at
annihiliation ....’
The Sandglass Theatre also holds workshops and hosts a bi-annual international
From Peter Legge
Daily Mail Quick Quiz, Friday 27 March
2009, question 5:
‘The two Princes Edward and Richard were
imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1483
by which monarch?’
From Geoff Wheeler
Evening Standard, 23 January 2009: ‘Let’s
enjoy Hollywood’s great love affair with
history, flaws and all’, by Dominic Sandbrook (on the latest Oscar-nominated films).
‘There is something rather heartening about
Hollywood’s eagerness to embrace the recent
past. In an age when thousands of children
leave school with only the barest idea of our
national story ... any engagement with history
should be welcomed, even when it comes
from Tom Cruise. ... Fiddling with the
historical record, of course, has been part of
the writer’s craft since Homer told the story
of the fall of Troy and Shakespeare had
Richard III offering his kingdom for a horse.
Nobody goes to the National Theatre
expecting to see plain, unvarnished historical
truth. So why kick up a fuss when Hollywood
film-makers make similar alterations? The
answer, of course, is cultural snobbery. It’s
fine for high art to distort history ... but a
disgrace when tawdry American movies do
it ... This is patronising nonsense. Ordinary
moviegoers are just as capable of distinguishing fact from fiction as any scholar.’
From Geoff Wheeler
Stephen Thomas contributed a four-page
article in the March issue of Family History
magazine, in the Local History section, on
‘My Ancestor ... fought in The Wars of the
Roses’. His brief overall survey of the
conflict was commendably fairly free from
serious errors, except for the inevitable faux
pas when it came to its title, as he stated the
campaigns ‘became known as the Wars of the
27
Roses after the insignia of the white rose used
by the House of York and the red rose that
appeared on the coat of arms of the House of
Lancaster’. A double confusion, compounded
by large colour illustrations of the respective
badges and the combined Tudor Rose. He
continued, ‘this series of dynastic struggles
lasted until 1487, when Henry Tudor (a
distant relative of the House of Lancaster)
killed Yorkist King Richard III at the Battle
of Bosworth Field and took the throne for the
Lancastrians’. So, right date, but wrong
battle! Naturally, given the nature of the
publication, the main emphasis is on
genealogical source material, and he
concludes ‘once you have located an ancestor
who stands at the gateway to Royalty, work
hard among his extended family for clues to a
more distinguished past. It is estimated that
millions have these connections. It is just a
matter of finding the link.’ The Further
Information column lists half a dozen
reference books on the period as well as
websites for manorial records and medieval
sources. It’s a pity that presumably it was
written too early to include a reference to the
Society’s publication of the Logge wills and
the Testator Index.
surely wins the prize for
misinformed short paragraph.
the
most
From Gwen Millan, London
Time Team Special, 13 April, ‘Henry VIII’s
Lost Palaces’, said by Tony Robinson as he
rushed about explaining things, ‘Henry’s
father had stolen the throne ...’
From Geoff Wheeler
Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2009. Stephen
Adams: Kingdom Come: Regal Suggestion for
Giant Horse’s Name.
‘Some suggested that it should be called Big
White Elephant or Eyesore. But judges of a
Daily Telegraph contest to find a name for the
giant horse that will cast a shadow over
southern England decided that only one
moniker would do: Kingdom.
The unofficial contest, prompted by the
decision to construct a 164 ft sculpture in
Ebbsfleet, Kent, was won by Mr Alan Hill, of
Sherborne, Dorset.
Mr Hill ... said that his name for Mark
Wallinger’s design was inspired by another
horse embedded deep within English culture:
that of the ailing monarch in Shakespeare’s
Richard III.
He laments “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”’
From Geoff Wheeler
London Review of Books, 26 February 2009.
‘Wedlock’ by Wendy Moore (Weidenfeld
2009) reviewed by Deborah Friedell.
This quotes from a contemporary pamphlet
on the illegitimate child of Mary Bowes ‘the
richest heiress in eighteenth-century Britain’,
which was ‘hidden for three months, then
presented at its baptism as a newborn infant,
which fooled no-one’. She concludes ‘How
remarkable it was that Bowers contrives to
have children brought into the world with
teeth, after the manner of Richard III’.
From Elaine Henderson, Devon and Cornwall Branch
Radio Times 18-24 April, ‘Soaps’ by Gareth
McLean, on Coronation Street
‘Though Maria’s growing closeness to Tony
may seem improbable, bear in mind that both
suffered a great grief at the loss of a loved
one. (That Tony is responsible for Maria’s
loss only complicates matters, in a Richard III
kind of way.)’
From Geoff Wheeler
Nicholas Robins, ‘Walking Shakespeare’s
London’ (Globetrotter Walking Guides, New
Holland 2004), p. 73.
‘The real Princes were allegedly found dead
in the Garden Tower a month after Richard’s
coronation. They were buried in the
Wakefield Tower and later removed to an
unconsecrated place, probably next to St
John’s chapel, under those stairs two small
skeletons were found in the late 17th century.
Charles II had the remains interred in
Westminster Abbey.’
Geoff comments: I thought the spring
Bulletin’s selection from I Never Knew That
about England was bad enough, but this
28
The Man Himself:
Cashing in on Richard
DAVID FIDDIMORE
I don’t know why, but my attention has been drawn recently to the concept of Richard III as a
brand name. There are people out there selling little pieces of Richard, or using his influence to
market their products and services, and I wonder if this is significantly different from the
commercial treatment of other UK, or even other European, monarchs? Well, yes, it is. A quick
search of the internet will reveal far less commercial attention paid to Richard I, or even Henry
V ... and I have yet to come across a Louis the Bold after shave, or a Charlemagne pizza.
Whatever else people say about Richard, he certainly sells.
The selling of Richard seems to break down into three distinct categories:
First, artefacts that somehow promise a little piece of Richard on the mantelpiece. This
includes the Dassier medallion, of which I wrote in the winter 2008 Bulletin, and these delightful
faux Richard III goblets, a snip at less than £15. A genuine Richard III silver halfpenny (London
Mint) will set you back another £375, while you
can get an 8-coin set of reproductions from the
reigns of Richard III and Edward IV, or a Richard
reproduction gold angel for less than a
fiver. Or what about a Richard III Toby
jug for a mere £375?
Secondly, there are books, literature
and films, on DVD or VHS. A quick
scoot through eBay the other day threw
up (a) 12 DVDs of the Olivier Richard, 4 DVDs of the McKellen version, and 4 of the BBC’s
most recent production, all relatively inexpensive; (b) 4 copies of the Shakespeare play,
outnumbered by 7 notes and study-guides for the same; (c) Cheetham’s Life and Times, Potter’s
Good King Richard, Seward’s Black Legend and Williamson’s
Mystery of the Princes in the Tower – the latter outrageously
priced, but I suspect the others will be knocked down for less
than £10 each.
I saw a cheap paperback reprint of Mancini recently, but the
bidding went up to a ridiculous £33, and you can buy it for less
on Amazon. And I recently bought a miniature, leather-bound
copy of Shakespeare’s play designed for a doll’s house.
29
There are also pictures and postcards galore: Richard at Bosworth, Richard after Tewkesbury,
King Richard III at Paddington Station (you work it out) ... Nicolai Abilgaard’s distinctly odd
painting Richard III, the David Garrick Richard, and Laurence Olivier, of course, glowering from
a dozen ciné stills. My own current favourite is an advertisement for a show at Manchester’s
Taurus Bar in November 2008. The tickets were
only £6. If I lived in Manchester I’d have found
the Shake-scene Company’s Drag King Richard
III hard to resist.
Lastly, there is the use of Richard as a brand:
the use of Richard’s aura and reputation to sell
something else. These range from theatre
posters for trendy living-room walls (McKellen
and Olivier dominate the market, but there are
very nice Jonathan Pryce and Peter Dinkledge
posters out there if you are prepared to wait) ...
to a 1930s US advertisement for a water heater.
I have also seen Richard enlisted to sell: the
Tate Gallery (poster of Blake’s ‘Richard III and
the Ghosts’); the National Portrait Gallery, of
course (poster-sized Richard III portrait); the
Royal Shakespeare Company (featuring
photographs of Guinness’s 1953 Richard III as a
web-site selling point; the Union of Young
Theatre Artists of Tbilisi, Georgia (in
Georgian); a CD cover of orchestral works by
Smetana; Philippe Stark’s Richard III chair; and,
on eBay again at present, no fewer than 17 CD
copies of the 1997 song ‘Richard III’ by the pop
group Supergrass.
Who was responsible for creating the ‘brand’
of Richard III? Shakespeare, I’d guess. His
grossly distorted caricature has a sort of fascistic
anti-attraction that draws one to it, and from
Shakespeare’s image flowed both the stream that
led to the questioning of his version, and
ultimately to the creation of the Society ... and
the towering theatrical and film performances of
The Richard III Chair
the 19th-20th centuries, both of which have kept
versions of Richard squarely in the public eye.
It is interesting to reflect that the Shakespearean fable which, as Ricardians, we reject as
propaganda and over-simplification, may actually have been directly responsible for keeping
Richard alive. Without it, he might have remained an obscure, short-lived king from a small,
damp country at Europe’s edge.
Maybe it’s even time to say ‘Thanks’ to William Shakespeare. When he lifted his pen on The
Tragedy of King Richard III, he probably didn’t know what he was about to start.
[We regret we have been unable to contact copyright owners of some of these photographs. Eds.]
30
Proceedings of the Triennial
Conference 2008
Part 5: Henry VII as a Suspect
SEAN CUNNINGHAM
T
here is no doubt that had Edward V and
Richard of York lived, they would have
ended any theoretical and practical claim to
the crown – other than God’s judgment in
battle – that Henry Tudor could have
presented. For this very reason Henry needed
them to have died when most commentators
thought that they had died: during Richard’s
reign. We have only to look at the trouble
caused to Henry by the claims of Yorkist
pretenders to realise the powerful hold that
the fate of the Princes, and the legacy of
Yorkist rule, retained within the early Tudor
polity.
Had Henry been able to eliminate the
Princes in 1485 and make it well known that
they were dead, and so spare himself the
rigours of dealing with pretenders and rivals
for the next twenty years then he would
surely have taken the opportunity. Yet for
Henry to have been guilty, the Princes would
have to have been alive on 23 August 1485,
and to have survived over two years’
imprisonment
without
revealing
any
conclusive evidence or even rumour of their
whereabouts.
Henry’s paternal blood ties to the house of
Lancaster carried no weight because they
came from Henry V’s queen, Katherine of
Valois, and not from a descendant of Henry
IV. His mother’s Beaufort family was
connected directly to Edward III, but by an
illegitimate line. Before the demonstration of
God’s judgment at Bosworth, his main claim
to support was undoubtedly his intention to
marry Elizabeth of York, which would have
transferred the superior Yorkist claim to him
in right of his wife. (Richard, Duke of York,
claimed the crown in 1460 through descent
from the second and fourth sons of Edward
III, Lionel of Clarence and Edmund of
Langley, whereas the Lancaster claim was
through the third son, John of Gaunt; this
claim was accepted, then transferred to
York’s son, Edward of March, and confirmed
by God’s judgment in the battle of Towton in
1461.)
Yorkist legitimacy should have been
invested in Edward’s marriage and children.
It was only Richard III’s allegations of
Edward’s pre-contract of marriage to Eleanor
Butler that cast doubt upon the legitimacy of
Edward’s children. While Richard of
Gloucester was able to depose Edward V
largely on this basis, it was clear that Henry’s
only real chance of claiming the crown lay in
Elizabeth of York’s right as Edward IV’s
legitimate direct heir. This was where
Henry’s defamation of Richard began. It was
vital that he disprove the allegations of
Elizabeth’s bastardy, but there was the tricky
problem that in declaring Elizabeth legitimate
and the inheritor of the Yorkist claim, he was
also restoring dynastic weight to Edward V
and his brother Richard of York. Their
disappearance and death therefore became
vitally important. If there was even a
possibility that one of them were alive,
Henry’s attraction as a candidate would
disappear, as would Elizabeth’s position as
inheritor of the Yorkist claim. This fact was
fully understood by Yorkist conspirators
against the Tudor crown, and was exploited
fully by Perkin Warbeck’s backers after 1491.
31
Why would Henry have pledged at
Christmas 1483 to marry Elizabeth when he
became king had he not believed the Princes
to be dead already? This could have been a
hollow gesture from a pretender with little to
lose and without much prospect of
successfully invading and deposing an
experienced king. The oath was an
acknowledgement by Henry that his hopes
rested on a marriage to the surviving senior
heir of the Yorkist dynasty. Those who had
been in England after June 1483 but who had
rebelled in the autumn would also have been
very reluctant to support Tudor had they
believed that either of the sons of Edward IV
was still alive. Even as a figurehead to a
further rebellion to free the Princes, he would
have been a bizarre choice as leader. His
political and military inexperience and his
lack of broad support within England would
have rendered his involvement pointless in
anything other than a plot to get the crown for
himself. Furthermore, Lancastrian figures
such as John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, would
not have lent their support to such a plot to
restore Yorkist rule that was likely to
continue their own disinheritance.
The extent to which many of these men
debated the supposed return of Richard of
York during 1492-4 is a clear indication of
the attachment that former service to Edward
IV and his heirs still held over their exhousehold servants, almost a decade after the
Princes’ supposed disappearance.
Could Henry have had the Princes killed
before 1485? Neither he nor his mother,
Margaret Beaufort, had access to the Tower
in Richard’s reign. With Henry overseas and
Margaret under house-arrest, a pro-Tudor
conspiracy would have had to recruit to their
plot a senior figure in Richard’s regime to
have gained access to the Princes. The plot of
John Taylor and Thomas Astwood to spring
Warbeck and Warwick from the Tower in
August 1499 was only viable because they
had recruited contacts within the garrison of
Sir Simon Digby, the lieutenant. It is unlikely
that the boys were removed from the Tower
on Richard III’s orders: he was not the kind of
political animal to leave vitally important
affairs unresolved and open to manipulation
by others. To remove them from the Tower
and send them elsewhere was to take them
beyond his own direct control. He was more
likely to have tightened security around the
Princes than to have slackened it by sending
them away.
There is no real evidence that the Princes
were still alive on the night of 22 August
1485.1 Henry became king largely because of
the political force of his victory against
Richard III in battle. His intention to marry
Elizabeth cemented the allegiance of those
Yorkists who had rebelled once Richard
deposed Edward V. But this was the root of a
fundamental problem that Henry faced at the
start of his reign. His support and authority
were generated and applied only by those
around him and not by Henry himself. With
this background, the Princes simply had to be
dead for Henry’s regime to have any chance
of success. It was for this reason that he chose
not to attempt any kind of prolonged analysis
of his royal claim or the status of his wife.
This has led some to see certain aspects of his
behaviour in the period 1485 to 1488 as
suspicious.
Why did he make no direct accusation that
Richard had killed the Princes? Was this a
missed opportunity, or had it more to do with
the balance of politics and Henry’s urgent
need to stabilise the polity in his favour?
Condemning Richard as a monster would
heap guilt by association upon those of his
former retainers and associates who had
survived Bosworth, escaped attainder,
received the general pardon of October 1485
and had begun the long process of
rehabilitation under the new regime. At the
close of 1485 Henry now needed their support
and experience, if not their acceptance of his
rule, without resistance. Having decided not
to attaint the majority of Richard’s supporters,
Henry opened the door for a recovery of their
influence. Going back to a harsh dissection of
Richard’s methods would only invite
comparison between Richard’s time as an
experienced and successful lord of the north
and as king, and the new, untried Tudor
regime. Henry could not risk forcing former
opponents to compare him to Richard, which
would destabilise the weak national authority
32
that Henry held during his first year as king.
Some men, like Sir Thomas Broughton or
Thomas Metcalfe of Middleham, simply
bided their time until clear opportunities to
depose Henry arose. So even though there
was no natural Ricardian heir, there were
enough senior figures of Yorkist blood, such
as the earl of Warwick, to cause Henry
serious problems. It was logical and sensible
for him not to look backwards any more than
he had to.
Henry’s first parliament did not overturn
Richard III’s Titulus Regius that had declared
Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville
invalid, though he did require that all copies
of it be destroyed and the enrolment erased.
Henry simply ignored the problem of
Elizabeth’s illegitimacy, and used the
authority of parliament to end all ambiguities
about his royal rights. Close discussion in
parliament would only have emphasised the
more straightforward rights of the earl of
Warwick. Henry used parliament to invest the
future of his dynasty solely in the heirs of his
body. Marriage to Elizabeth of York or
reliance upon her status was no longer
something to be proclaimed.
Once he had a toehold on power, Henry
distanced himself from the Yorkists who had
carried him to the throne. The reversals of
attainders and provisos of the Act of
Resumption in the first Tudor parliament
gave clear prominence to Henry’s restored
Lancastrian relatives and supporters. For
some former Yorkists, this was enough of a
setback to prompt them into rebellion in
1486. And had there been any whiff of a
rumour that the Princes were alive then these
early defections from the Tudor crown would
probably have been more widespread. As it
was, Henry perhaps discovered less about
their fate than he had hoped, and
subsequently said almost nothing about it to
parliament.
The evidence of disquiet within the
Woodville group in particular in 1486-7 is
something that needs a closer look, since it is
symptomatic of a deterioration in the
relationship between the family and Henry
VII. What caused it? The Woodvilles had
suffered a heavy blow on Richard III’s
seizure of the throne, when they were targeted
for their malign dominance over Prince
Edward. They could have expected to recover
their position once Henry was king, with
Elizabeth of York as his queen. Yet in March
1484 Elizabeth Woodville had come to an
agreement with Richard and brought her
daughters out of sanctuary, which gave her
and Richard an opportunity to find a marriage
for Princess Elizabeth, and so deprive Henry
of his intended bride – and hence his Yorkist
allies. When Queen Anne Neville died, a
marriage between Richard and his niece was
discussed – an acknowledgement by Richard
and Elizabeth Woodville that the princess
carried real dynastic weight as Edward IV’s
heir. Here Tudor and Richard seem to have
acknowledged the same thing, that the Princes
were dead and Elizabeth of York embodied
Edward IV’s line. For Elizabeth Woodville,
this seemed a far more certain way of
ensuring Woodville political survival than
sitting in sanctuary and hoping for Tudor’s
victory. Her cold pragmatism almost wrecked
the basis for Tudor’s plans to invade, and he
was not the man to forget this. The
Woodvilles and the Tudor queen were not
afforded the status they might have expected.
Henry did not marry Elizabeth until 18
January 1486. What should have been an
auspicious celebration of the union of the two
noble houses that had competed for the crown
for almost 40 years has left no formal record,
and seems to have been a very low-key event.
Elizabeth was not crowned queen until 25
November 1487, after Henry had overcome
two major rebellions and she had given birth
to a healthy Prince of Wales. Was this neglect
enough for Elizabeth Woodville to become
involved in the conspiracy in favour of
Warwick during early 1487? Or did rumours
of the survival of one of the Princes oblige
her to question her allegiance to Henry
Tudor? It is difficult to imagine her acting
against the interests of her daughter and her
grandson, Prince Arthur, in favour of an
uncertain rumour that one of her sons might
not have been killed in 1483 after all. But the
obscurity of the evidence, the preponderance
of rumour, and the reliance on biased
observers like Polydore Vergil, make it
33
impossible to get any closer to the true reason
for her isolation from the court.
Had the Princes been alive in August
1485, then we can be sure they would not
have survived for much longer under Henry
VII. Henry had the same ruthless political
pragmatism as did Richard in defending his
crown. Yet there is only the slenderest of
circumstantial evidence that they were not
dead by the close of 1483. And there is much
more circumstantial evidence that they were
dead by the end of September that year, as
Richard learned that he would have to face a
national rebellion and invasion from Brittany.
1. See the summary of the evidence in Lesley Boatwright’s paper for the Triennial Conference,
’Richard III as Suspect’ (Autumn Bulletin 2008).
Our Past in Pictures
Yorkshire Branch Banquet 1987
Photo: Geoff Wheeler
In 1987 the Yorkshire Branch Banquet was held in St Oswald’s Hall, Fulford, York. This is an
800-year-old Norman chapel converted into a medieval hall, furnished to look like an authentic
fifteenth-century manor house. Its owner, Roy Grant (third from left) organised medieval feasts,
and this was one of the most interesting venues the Yorkshire Banquet has visited.
Here, the top table are inspecting the fish course, in proper medieval fashion, before it is
served to the guests. From left to right: Elizabeth Nokes, the late Joyce Melhuish, Roy Grant, the
late Arthur Cockerill, Mary O’Regan, and two serving lads bearing the wonderfully-coiled fish.
The Yorkshire Branch hope to hold another Banquet this year (see p. 61).
34
Retrospective on the Quincentenary
of the Death of Henry VII
Part Two: Later Opposition to Henry Tudor
WENDY MOORHEN
B
ill Hampton was right when he wrote
that opposition to Henry Tudor’s
regime did not end in the months between
Bosworth and Stoke Field.1 In fact the
opposition continued throughout the reign
and Tudor’s biographer S.B. Chrimes
commented about the ‘long sequence of
plots, conspiracies and rebellions’ that might
displace his dynasty.2
Stoke Field was the culmination of the
fragmented plots and rebellions that had
taken place following Bosworth and which
began with an Oxford priest, Simonds,
taking a boy to Ireland and passing him off
as the earl of Warwick. He gained
recognition for the child from the
discontented Irish aristocracy which
included the earl of Kildare. The conspiracy
gained momentum and attracted the support
of several Yorkists, such as Richard
Harleston, the governor of Jersey, Sir Henry
Bodrugan, John Beaumont and Francis
Lovell, but most importantly King Richard’s
nephew and erstwhile heir, the earl of
Lincoln, who deserted Tudor and a
comfortable existence in England. Margaret,
Duchess of Burgundy, and her son-in-law,
Maximilian, King of the Romans, provided
the Yorkists with 2,000 mercenaries and the
Irish a rag-tail army. An invasion took place
on 4 June but failed. Although the numbers
of the rebel army swelled to 8,000, it was
insufficient to beat the 12,000-strong royal
army at Stoke in Nottinghamshire on 16
June. Lincoln was killed, and the boy-king
captured and sent to the royal kitchens and
known to history as Lambert Simnel. Tudor
had survived but this was not to be the
greatest military threat to his rule.
Four years later emerged another
pretender and one who was a great deal
more credible. Claiming to be the younger
son of Edward IV, Perkin Warbeck was
supported at various times by Charles VIII
of France, the duchess of Burgundy,
Maximilian, and James IV of Scotland.
From 1491 until his capture in 1497 he no
doubt caused Tudor to have many a sleepless
night. After making his first appearance as
the duke of York in Ireland, Warbeck went
to France but was forced to leave following
the Treaty of Étaples, and he spent the next
two-and-a-half years at the courts of
Margaret and Maximilian. There was
domestic support for Warbeck and across
England and Europe spies and counter-spies
wove a web of intrigue. In July 1495
Warbeck made his move and sailed to
England with a flotilla of 15 vessels. The
plan was to land in East Anglia, and raise
local support but the weather was foul and
the ships were blown down through the
channel and eventually reached the coast of
Kent at Deal.3 Only 300 men made landfall
but royalist troops were in the vicinity and
the rebels were massacred on the beach
though some survived and were captured.
The invasion had been compromised months
earlier when Tudor’s intelligence uncovered
the duplicity at the heart of his court, and the
major casualty was the king’s own stepuncle Sir William Stanley, the man whose
35
action at Bosworth had made Tudor king.
Warbeck abandoned the invasion and sailed
for Ireland and from there to Scotland where
he was welcomed by James IV. The
following September, the pair invaded
England but Warbeck had no stomach for war
and perhaps realised that to invade his ‘own
country’ aggressively, rather than to rally
support, was not a good idea. He stayed only
two days in England though James continued
the campaign for another two weeks, burning
and destroying towns. However, James
retained his ambitions of continuing the
campaign the following year, and whilst
Tudor concentrated on protecting his northern
borders more trouble was brewing, this time
in the west country.
In May a rebellion broke out in Cornwall.
A blacksmith, Michael Joseph, and a member
of the gentry, Michael Flamank, led a
rebellion of Cornishmen who were protesting
against the extortionate taxes raised to
support the Scottish war. They were joined
by just one peer, James, Lord Audley. The
rebels moved into Devonshire and then
Somerset, rallying men to their cause. By
early June, at least 15,000 men were
marching on London and Tudor’s mobilised
army was already committed to the northern
campaign. The king now faced the greatest
threat to his rule since the Battle of Stoke that
had taken place exactly ten years earlier.
Recruiting from the south of England not
affected by the rebellion and supported by his
nobility, Tudor was once again triumphant
and defeated the rebels at Blackheath. Had
victory gone the other way and the rebels
reached London we would then have one of
the greatest what-ifs for this period.
Fuensalida, the Spanish ambassador to
Margaret and Maximilian, commented ‘…
had the King lost the battle he would have
been finished off and beheaded …’.4
Meanwhile Warbeck was making plans to
leave Scotland, and on 7 September he landed
in Cornwall and a few days later he declared
himself King Richard IV at Bodmin. Men
rallied to the pretender’s standard until he had
some 3,000
4,000 men and he besieged
Exeter on 17 September. His success was
short-lived as Tudor had Warbeck caught in a
trap between the forces of the earl of Devon,
Lord Daubenay and the fleet under
Willoughby de Broke. He fled to Beaulieu
Abbey but quickly surrendered.
Initially under house arrest, Warbeck was
sent to the Tower following an escape attempt
from Westminster. In 1499 a further plot was
uncovered. Malcontents conspired to release
the pretender and the earl of Warwick and to
‘fire’ London but using the services of agents
provocateur Tudor was aware of the plot and
this gave him the excuse to rid himself
permanently of Warbeck and Warwick.
Resistance to Tudor’s reign, however,
came not only from the ‘great and the good’
but from less well-known supporters of the
Yorkist cause. Bill Hampton has already
mentioned John Sante, the abbot of
Abingdon, in connection with the Humphrey
Stafford conspiracy. Sante’s servant John
Mayne had apparently undertaken a mission
for the earl of Lincoln in 1487 and two years
later Sante was still supporting the Yorkist
cause when he attempted to free the earl of
Warwick from the Tower. The plot failed and
along with Maine, the abbot was executed.
Another ecclesiastic and conspirator
against Tudor was John Kendal, the English
Prior of the Order of Knights of St John of
Jerusalem,
who
supported
Warbeck.
However, he was involved in yet another
conspiracy – to murder the royal family by
poison. The poison was originally to be
obtained from a Spanish astrologer, Rodrigo,
but he proved unreliable and another
Spaniard, John Disant, was approached. Too
scared to come to England, Disant gave a
small box of poison to Kendal’s servant,
Bernard de Vignolles, in Rome. Disgusted by
what he was given, Vignolles threw the box
away but he became afraid, as his master
would be expecting the poison, so he
purchased a similar box, counterfeited its
contents and told Kendal that his life would
be in danger if he kept the box in his house
for more than a day. The second box was
disposed of and the plot faded away.
The new century brought a final threat to
Tudor. Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk,
was a nephew and cousin of the Yorkist
kings, and he picked up the mantle of
36
pretender left by Warbeck. In July 1501 he
fled England and was received at the court of
Maximilian, now the Holy Roman Emperor,
where he conspired against Tudor. However,
he did not endear himself to Maximilian, as
had his predecessor Warbeck, and his
machinations came to nothing though he was
attainted in 1504, along with Sir James Tyrell
who had already been executed on 6 May
1502 for his alleged complicity with Suffolk.
In the Treaty of Windsor, 1506, concluded
between Maximilian’s son Philip and Tudor,
it was agreed that Suffolk would be handed
over and he was duly imprisoned in the
Tower until he was executed by Henry VIII in
1513. Although not strictly a conspiracy
against the King during his lifetime, there is
an interesting footnote to Suffolk’s story. A
report was sent to the King of a confidential
conversation that took place sometime
between 1502 and 1506. During the conversation, following an illness of the king and
fears that he would not be ‘a long-lived man’,
there were references to discussions by ‘great
personages’ who speculated on the future and
some ‘spoke of Buckingham, some of
Edmund de la Pole, but none of them spoke
of the Prince of Wales’. One of the men
taking part in the conversation, Sir Hugh
Conway, mentioned the episode to among
others, Sir Anthony Brown, lieutenant of the
castle of Calais, whose wife, Lucy Neville,
daughter of the Marquis Montagu, ‘loveth not
the king’s grace’. The report continues that
once the king had departed this life, Lady
Lucy would be prepared to help her kinsman,
Edmund de la Pole, to enter the castle, and
presumably from there he could return to
England to pursue his claim to the throne.5
The above narrative is not exhaustive but
perhaps it will give members a feel for the
resistance to the Tudor usurpation. By the
time he died in 1509, Tudor’s new dynasty
had a secure foothold, partly due to the firm
and repressive policy he adopted after
Blackheath. However, the surviving Yorkists
had grown old and only memories could be
passed on to the next generation. With Henry
VIII, England moved into a new era, but not
necessarily a better one.
Notes and References
1. Spring Bulletin 2009, pp. 27-9.
2. S.B. Chrimes, Henry VII 1977, pp. 307-8.
3. Ian Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy 1491-1499 , 1994, pp. 108-12.
4. Ibid., pp. 166-7
5. Letters & Papers illustrative of the Reigns
of Richard III and Henry VII, edited by James
Gairdner, 2 vols, 1861-3, vol. 1, pp. 231-4.
Where was the Battle of Barnet fought in 1471?
Peter Hammond writes:
A new booklet has been published on this question: Reappraisal of the Battle of Barnet, 1471, by
B.Warren, (Potters Bar and District Historical Society, 2009), £2 plus p&p from Mrs Mabel
Hammett, 4 Heath Cottages, Heath Road, Potters Bar, Herts, EN6 ILS
The location of the battle of Barnet, fought on 14 April 1471 between the armies of Edward
IV and the Earl of Warwick is, like most medieval battles, not known exactly. Mr Warren, who is
a local historian, has lived near the site for some 60 years, and has studied extensively the records
relating to the area and recreates it at the time of the battle. He has located the chapel which we
know was erected after the battle and, partly on the basis of its whereabouts, has located the
battle rather north of the usual site. He may well be right in this although I rather doubt his
orientation of the battle lines as north south rather than east west. If Warwick had not lined up
across the road from London along which he knew Edward was advancing he was inviting a
flank attack as soon as Edward reached him. Anyway do buy this booklet and decide for yourself.
37
Depicting Richard as Founder
We are grateful to the Heraldry Society for allowing us to reprint this article ‘New Heraldic
Designs: Our Founder’ from their magazine Coat of Arms (NS Vol.6 no. 133 (1985) pp. 116118). In it, the designer, John Bainbridge, describes how he created the drawing we printed in the
spring 2009 issue of the Bulletin to illustrate the interview with Clive Cheesman by Peter and
Carolyn Hammond.
F
or some time before 1984 I had been puzzling over a suitable way to celebrate the
Quincentenary [of the granting of the College of Arms charter]. A heraldic painting seemed
appropriate but a trifle obvious. Something more imaginative was called for, but what?
It occurred to me that some form of representation of Richard III, as the sovereign who had
incorporated the College, would solve the problem. The question of what form this should take
presented a tantalising dilemma. The character of Richard is so hotly disputed that historians take
sides with as fervent a passion as any shown by the Houses of York and Lancaster themselves.
How could I depict the king without offending one or other of their sides? Indeed, what did he
look like? All the existing contemporary portraits I knew of were held to be either flatteries of a
deformed monster or gross distortions intended to defame a noble character.
The one thing that would be universally agreed upon was the magnificence of Laurence
Olivier’s portrayal. His, then, could be the model for the face and this should have the added,
heraldic, merit of being instantly recognisable.
Since business concerns of standing take great pride in displaying paintings of their founders
in board rooms why not the College? The controversial aspects of Richard’s character could be
expressed as interesting side lights, but subservient to his principal role. Immediately I had this
idea as the theme everything else fell relatively quickly into place. Initially I had thought of a
colour painting but I now felt that a line drawing on the lines of a Victorian steel engraving
would better combine the various elements I wished to include in a light-hearted manner but
without being too much of a caricature. Benefactors of the medieval period were often shown
holding models of their creations and the idea of drawing Richard holding the modern building
seemed a pleasingly anachronistic way of representing continuity.
I discarded the usual three-quarter length pose of the Victorian founder in favour of the
monarch enthroned. The pages at his feet are based on those depicted in the fifteenth-century
Froissart illustration of the Coronation of Edward IV as is the pattern of the flooring (but with the
addition of the white roses). For the background I decided upon the hanging tapestry and the two
bishops. When Richard was offered the crown at Baynard’s Castle he appeared to the people with
two ‘deep divines’ to demonstrate his piety as opposed to his brother’s lasciviousness. The
inscription on their copes is a direct quotation from Shakespeare’s play and contrasted with the
bishops’ appearance is intended to reflect the ambiguity of the king’s character .
Richard’s personal motto, Loyalty binds me, is copied accurately from a manuscript in the
British Museum which in their own hands has the signatures of Edward V, Richard (Gloucester
as he then was) and the Duke of Buckingham. I was particularly struck by the modern character
of Richard’s handwriting and have included the motto to emphasise the element of time. The
crown and sceptre are modelled on a Lambeth Palace MS of the period. The watch has caused
some bewilderment. It is meant partly to fit in with the concept of the founder. All Victorian
founders seem ostentatiously to sport watches. In Shakespeare’s play the question of time crops
up at a critical moment. Like the building it is anachronistic but is intended, in a whimsical way,
to reinforce the idea of the passing of time. The King’s badges are incorporated in the ornamental
frame. Two frivolous points: the drapery of the King’s robe melts into that of the bishop’s cope
and with Lowry’s five-legged dog in mind I’ve tried to get away with four three-legged lions.
38
Richard and Realpolitik
GORDON SMITH
T
here are two crimes of Richard III for
which there is still no adequate answer:
first, his seizure of the throne from his
nephews Edward V and Richard, Duke of
York, and second, their subsequent
disappearance, presumably murdered. The
second was extensively explored in our recent
Triennial Conference, now being reported in
the Bulletin. The first has been represented by
the recent debate between David Johnson and
Wendy Moorhen on why Hastings lost his
head, and in the winter 2008 Bulletin there
were also relevant contributions from Lynda
Pidgeon on Richard and the Woodvilles
(Wydeviles) and from John Ashdown-Hill on
the importance of Eleanor Butler, née Talbot.
Lynda Pidgeon makes a cogent case for
Richard’s co-operation with the Woodvilles. I
think that More’s accusation that Richard’s
grief was simulated, when his indifference to
the execution of his brother Clarence would
have suited More better, suggests at least a
belief Richard was upset by Clarence’s death.
This belief could have been embroidered to
include blaming the Woodvilles and
Richard’s distrust and hatred of them.
Leaving Clarence aside, however, Richard
may not have liked the Woodvilles. After
Edward IV married the widow Elizabeth
Woodville her relatives formed a WoodvilleGrey party at court, led by her son Thomas
Grey, Marquess of Dorset. It was opposed by
the other court party, led by Edward’s
chamberlain William, Lord Hastings. It seems
likely that nobles outside the court, such as
Richard and Henry Stafford, Duke of
Buckingham, would dislike the power of the
Woodvilles, but this does not mean there was
necessarily an alliance between Hastings,
Richard and Buckingham.
We have probably all had to work with
people we do not like. The fact that Richard
and others worked with the Woodvilles is not
a question of liking or disliking, but of
practical politics. Lynda asks: ‘Did Richard’s
actions in 1483 really require him to have a
longstanding hatred of the Wydeviles?’ I
think not.
But where does this leave the reasons for
people disliking each other? For example,
David Johnson claims the Woodvilles ‘held
Hastings
personally
responsible
for
encouraging much of the late king’s dissolute
lifestyle’. This claim hardly seems justified
when we find that Edward IV was also
encouraged by the Queen’s sons Dorset and
Lord Richard Grey and her brother Sir
Edward Woodville.
I sympathise with David’s view that the
‘assumption, following Edward IV’s death,
that the Lord Chamberlain was first of all
allied with the protector and then with the
Woodvilles … is fatally flawed’. There is no
evidence for formal alliances. David says,
‘Hastings constituted a powerful third force,
totally independent of both the Queen’s party
and the duke of Gloucester’. I would say
‘capable of being independent’. The practical
politics, however, turn out to be more
complex.
I agree that Hastings’ threat to withdraw
to Calais after Edward IV’s death shows his
‘unequivocal intention to confront the
Woodvilles with armed force … to defend his
threatened interests’. The result, however,
looks more like a compromise than that the
Woodvilles backed down. The Queen agreed
to limit the escort of the new boy king
Edward V from Ludlow to 2,000 men – this is
still a small army.
The compromise would seem to suggest
that Hastings was not the primary interest. It
was Edward IV’s brother Richard, whom he
had appointed protector of his son Edward V
in his will. Sources imply Hastings was allied
to Richard, and told him of the reduced
escort. Yet when Richard was joined at
Northampton by Buckingham, their combined
39
forces numbered 900, less than half the royal
escort. Even if Hastings were in correspondence with Richard, there were no
concrete results.
The escort under Anthony Woodville, Earl
Rivers, was clearly meant to meet Richard
and Buckingham at Northampton, but Rivers
had manoeuvred it to Stony Stratford, nearer
London. Richard and Buckingham might be
expected to set off down the road between
Northampton and Stony Stratford, and fall
prey to an ambush directed from the
Woodville manor at Grafton Regis along the
road. I have argued (Bulletin, Spring 2004)
that this was the Woodville plan, and that the
failure of this assassination attempt led to the
capture of Edward V. Richard alleged such an
attempt was made, and this would have
provoked hatred of the Woodvilles if it had
not been there before.
When news of the capture of Edward V
reached the Woodvilles, they bolted for
sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. Insufficient
forces gathered round them. Another force
coalesced in the City of London round
Hastings, who was certainly not then an ally
of the Woodvilles. Hastings is supposed to
have sent a message to the Queen via Thomas
Rotherham, Archbishop of York and Lord
Chancellor, that all would be well. Rotherham
also blurted out to her that if anything should
befall Edward V, they would crown his
brother York instead.
I have suggested (Bulletin, summer 2006)
that Hastings was seeking a rapprochement
with the Queen. This suggestion is the
opposite of Paul Murray Kendall’s view that
he was preparing London for the arrival of his
allies Richard and Buckingham. I claimed this
view fails because Kendall’s timings and
interpretations do not fit the situation.
Hastings called a meeting at St Paul’s to
rescue Edward V from Richard and
Buckingham, the aim of the Woodvilles, but
this aim was thwarted by the arrival in
London of Edward V and the two dukes.
Which side, I asked (Bulletin, summer 2007),
was Hastings really on?
David believes Hastings was his own
man, and plotted to assassinate Richard in the
Tower of London on 13 June and incriminate
the Woodvilles. But I think Wendy
Moorhen’s point that the arrests associated
with the plot cover both camps implies
Hastings and the Woodvilles were both
involved. Hastings apparently approved of
Richard and Buckingham, and this charm
offensive seems to have worked. On 10 June
Richard’s request for help to the city of York,
quoted by Lynda, mentioned only the
Woodvilles (‘the queen, her blood adherents
and affinity’). It seems that the arrest shortly
afterwards of John Forster, an associate of
both Hastings and the Queen, first apprised
Richard
of
Hastings’
involvement.
Westminster and the City were united, and
Richard was to be killed within Hastings’
sphere of influence. It is no wonder that
Richard had him summarily executed.
I find David’s arguments for the
emergence of Richard’s knowledge of the pre
-contract of Edward IV and Eleanor after
Hastings’ execution persuasive. Given that
after the execution Edward V was still in
Richard’s hands, Rotherham’s option of
crowning York instead was the only one still
open to Richard’s enemies. A plot to do so
would explain why Richard demanded the
surrender of York from sanctuary on 16 June.
There had to be some nominal reason why
York was legitimate while Edward was not,
and this could have led to the fact of the precontract coming out.
The pre-contract raises the problem of
whether any of the children of Edward IV and
Elizabeth Woodville could be eligible for the
crown, and this was the subject of Dr Ralph
Shaa’s sermon at St Paul’s Cross on 22 June.
If not, the throne was vacant. It seems that on
this basis the meetings of Lords, Commons,
and London citizens then elected Richard.
The crown was offered to Richard, who
reluctantly accepted.
I very much agree with John AshdownHill that Eleanor matters. Elizabeth’s mother
Jacquetta Woodville had a reputation as a
witch, so the charge that the marriage was
invalid because Edward IV was affected by
the sorcery of the bride and her mother seems
plausible, especially as the secrecy of the
wedding from the lords and the Church
suggests a wish to hide this impediment.
40
Richard could have used these arguments at
any time, but the charge that the king was
already married to Eleanor (the pre-contract)
when he wed Elizabeth was new.
It seems that only after the pre-contract
became public knowledge were there moves
to make Richard king, and his claim to the
throne rests on the pre-contract. ‘For if
Eleanor was not married to Edward IV’, as
John says, ‘then Richard III can and should be
dismissed as a usurper’. In place of a rebuttal
of the pre-contract argument we have suppression of documents, red herrings, and
attempts to belittle Eleanor and remove her
from history. Such behaviour is consistent
with the pre-contract being true, and therefore
Richard was not a usurper as far as the precontract was concerned.
But, more generally, was he a usurper at all?
The claims by Mancini that Richard was a
friend of Hastings and aimed at the throne are
questionable. The claims presume the charge of
usurpation, which could have been invented by
Richard’s enemies. There was a pressing reason
for invention by his enemies if, as it could be
argued, their refusal to accept Edward IV’s
appointment of Richard as protector led to the
calamitous events of April to June 1483, and
may even have placed Richard on the throne.
The invention spread during Buckingham’s
Rebellion in October and, after its defeat, with
the rebels to Brittany and Henry Tudor, and to
France and possibly Mancini.
So in talking of usurpation aren’t Ricardians
being anti-Richard?
Disastrous Regencies?
Peter Hammond has sent us this extract from ‘Reactions to the death of
Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales’, by Robin Eagles, Historical Research,
vol. 80, 2007, p. 353.
O
n 20 March 1751 Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son of George II, died suddenly. Since
Frederick’s own eldest son George (later George III) was still a minor at 13 years of age, it
was necessary to plan for a possible regency should the king die soon, and a Bill was introduced
into Parliament to set up a regency council. The regent was to be the king’s mother, Augusta,
Dowager Princess of Wales, but a prominent member of her advisory council was to be William.
Duke of Cumberland.
Cumberland was not popular, but more to the point in the minds of some was that he was the
young king’s uncle. A future young king needing a regency council apparently raised fears (not
to say hysteria) in some members of both the houses of Lords and Commons. For example Lord
Chesterfield, appealed to the Earl of Huntingdon, Francis Hastings, not to go abroad as he was
apparently planning to do, but to stay and fight the bill, reminding him of the terrible fate of his
ancestor William Lord Hastings at the hands of another royal uncle, Richard of Gloucester.
In the Commons much was made of the example of Richard III, one member alluding
specifically to the example of the princes in the Tower and Richard III and what he described as
similar disastrous regencies. The bill was still passed easily despite these dire warnings. It seems
unlikely that these noble and worthy members of parliament thought of the historical parallel
themselves because earlier in 1751 a pamphlet had been published that made a direct comparison
between ‘Butcher Cumberland’ and Richard III.
41
A Revised Date for the Dublin
Coronation of ‘Edward VI’?
RANDOLPH JONES
T
he coronation of the ten-year old
‘Edward VI’ is said to have taken place
on 24 May 1487 in Christ Church cathedral,
Dublin. The primary source for this date is the
earl of Lincoln’s attainder, passed by the
English Parliament in November 1487.1 Since
then, historians have accepted it without
question. Indeed, the quincentenary of the
coronation was celebrated with a lecture
delivered by Professor F.X. Martin in the very
same cathedral.2 However, a long forgotten
source, once located much nearer to the event
both in time and space, suggests that the
coronation was held three days later. Can this
be true?
The Red Book of the Irish Exchequer was
destroyed in the Four Courts fire of 1922,
together with much of Ireland's medieval
documentary heritage. Probably begun in the
reign of King John, it contained a wide
variety of material, both secular and religious.
It continued to be used right up until the reign
of Charles II. A full transcription was never
made, but its contents were summarised by
John Frederick Ferguson and published
posthumously in 1856. Ferguson mentions
that the Red Book contained a calendar, a
month to each page, in which the memoranda
of remarkable events, both local and national,
had been inserted. He also says that the text
of these had been published four years
previously by William Henry Black, secretary
of the Chronological Institute of London.3
Black, who was also Assistant Keeper of the
Public Record Office in London, examined
the Red Book in 1846. However, due to wear
and tear and the destructive effect of gall
water, he found some of the entries difficult
to read. He was also grateful to Ferguson for
many additions to the published edition of his
notes.4
Most of the memoranda concern the appointments and deaths of various officials on
the Irish establishment, particularly during the
reign of Edward I. However, what caught my
eye in particular was the following entry
recorded against 27 May: ‘(6 cal.) Coronation
of (erased) at Dublin. (?)’.
Although Black doesn't say so, I believe
this entry refers to the coronation of ‘Edward
VI’, usually known to history as ‘Lambert
Simnel’. There can be little doubt that ‘(6
cal.)’ stands for VI Kalendae Jun., which is
the Roman calendar’s equivalent of 27 May,
but, if this is the correct date, why has one
three days earlier gained such widespread
acceptance?
It is perhaps noteworthy that the date
given in Lincoln's attainder appears as the
‘.xxiiij. day of May’. Could this have been a
simple drafting error for ‘.xxvij.’? It takes just
as many strokes of the pen to write ‘xxvij’ as
it does ‘xxiiij’, and a ‘v’, not written properly,
could easily have been mistaken for two ‘i’s’.
However, it is conceded that the number four
was usually written as ‘iiij’ at this time, and
this form is repeated again in the very same
document.
On the other hand, there is a very strong
tradition that the coronation took place on
Whit Sunday. However, if the date in
Lincoln’s attainder is correct, this cannot have
been the case: 24 May 1487 fell on a
Thursday – Ascension Day to be precise. 27
May was the first Sunday thereafter, Whit
Sunday a week later.5 This Whit-Sunday
tradition is derived from a number of sources.
The first is the Annals of Ulster, which state
that ‘the son of the Duke ... was proclaimed
king on the Sunday of the Holy Ghost in the
town of Ath-cliath’. However, these annals
were compiled in Co. Fermanagh, far away
42
from English influence and deep in Gaeldom,
by the Irish clergyman Cathal óg MacManus
(d. 1498). It is unlikely that he was present in
Dublin at the time of the coronation and may
well have confused his feast-days. Indeed, it
is remarkable that he recorded the event at
all.6
The second is an entry copied by the
seventeenth-century antiquarian Sir James
Ware from a civic chronicle once kept in the
Dublin mayor’s office, but now lost. This
stated that during Jenico Marks’ mayoralty
(Michaelmas 1486 to Michaelmas 1487),
‘The young K was crowned in Xt church
Dublin on Whitson day’.7
Perhaps the third source is another entry
in the calendar of the Red Book, which Black
found on the very same page as the
coronation one, recorded against 21 May:
‘Memorandum, that in Whitsun week, A.D.
1523, there was a very great tide [fluctus] so
that in all the houses from Hamman Lane to
the bridge the river of Anilyff flowed before
and behind.’ This event is also mentioned in
another civic chronicle compiled in the late
sixteenth century, The Register of the ye
Mayors of Dublin, which states that the ‘great
floud’ occurred on Whit Sunday itself.8
What is perhaps significant is that Whit
Sunday fell on 24 May in 1523.
Is it possible that the text of the 1523
flood memorandum has some how become
confused with the immediately following one
on the Dublin coronation? According to
Black’s account, there were no other entries
between the two. It is also known that the Red
Book was used as a source of historical
information by a number of writers from the
sixteenth century onwards (e.g. Sir George
Carew). Unfortunately, due to the Red Book’s
destruction, we will perhaps never know.
Nevertheless,
assuming
that
the
coronation did in fact take place on Whit
Sunday, 3 June 1487, is this date feasible? It
seems unlikely, as Lincoln’s attainder
mentions that he landed with his army at
Furness, Lancashire, on ‘the iiij.th day of June
last past’. Although it was possible in the late
medieval period to transport an army across
the Irish Sea, and arrive on the other side on
the following day, the mechanics of moving
such a large number of men, together with
their equipment and supplies, militates
against such a rapid departure, unless careful
preparations had been made beforehand.
Large sea-going ships could not enter the
shallow River Liffey and any embarkation
could only have been made from one or more
of the neighbouring seaside ports – Dalkey,
Howth, or Skerries, all several miles away. It
would also have depended on favourable
weather. Although the coronation of their
nominal leader would have been a great
morale booster for Lincoln’s army, a
departure for England on the very same day
seems most unlikely.
Even so, it is probable that the Dublin
coronation did take place on a Sunday. All the
fifteenth-century kings of England, from
Henry V to Henry VII, were crowned on that
day. Even the ill-fated Edward V was
scheduled to be crowned on that day too. As
the earl of Lincoln had participated at the
coronations of both Richard III and Henry
VII, it is likely that, in this most public of
acts, he insisted on due form being observed.9
A suitable crown was borrowed from a
nearby church, taken from a statue of the
Virgin Mary. Before the act of coronation
itself, a sermon was preached by the bishop of
Meath, expounding the boy’s superior claim
to the throne compared to that of Henry VII.10
Afterwards, a formal procession was made
through the streets of Dublin, with the clergy
going before the new king, and the earl of
Kildare, the archbishop of Dublin, the lord
chancellor, the council, the nobility and the
citizens of Dublin following behind.11 Even
the fact that ‘king Edward’ was carried on the
shoulders of Sir William Darcy of Platten
doesn’t seem to have been the wildly
impetuous act that it is sometimes thought:
after his coronation in 1377, another ten-year
old boy, Richard II, was also carried shoulder
high from Westminster Abbey by his tutor,
Sir Simon Burley.12 Coins were also minted
in Dublin and Waterford in king Edward’s
name.
Therefore, in view of the above, it is
difficult to sustain the tradition that the
coronation took place on 24 May 1487. It is
also problematical that it occurred on Whit
43
Sunday, 3 June 1487. The alternative date
offered by the Red Book of Sunday, 27 May
1487, is therefore probably correct.
It only remains to explain why the name
of the person crowned in Dublin was missing
by the time Black examined the text.
At the parliament held at Drogheda in
December 1494 (‘Poynings’ Parliament’), the
following act was passed: ‘An act for the
Cancellinge and revocation of all recordes,
processe, pardons, or any such, done in the
name of the pretenced kinge, Latlie Crowned
in Irland. whosoever the[y] be do receave the
abovenamed ordinance Conceale or keepe the
same they so doinge after the proclemation,
shalbe adjudged traytors attaynted.’13
Although drastic action seems to have
been taken by some parts of the government
machinery to remove all traces of the
‘pretenced kinge’s’ reign in Ireland, the
Exchequer officials could not destroy the Red
Book itself, nor even remove a whole page
from the calendar, as it was a working
document. They therefore did the next best
thing and erased the name of the offending
person instead. By not removing the whole
sentence, we were once left with a contemporary record of a unique event. Thanks to
William Henry Black’s transcription in the
mid-nineteenth century, it was not lost
completely when the Red Book was finally
destroyed in 1922.
2. F. X. Martin. ‘The crowning of a king at
Dublin, 24 May 1487’ in Hermathena, 1988.
3. James Frederick Ferguson. ‘Calendar of the
Contents of the Red Book of the Irish
Exchequer’ in Proceedings and Transactions
of the Kilkenny and South East Ireland
Archaeological Society, 1854-55, Vol. III,
(Dublin, 1856), pp. 35-52.
4. William Henry Black. ‘On the Historical
Memoranda in the Black Book of the English
Exchequer, and in the Red Book of the Irish
Exchequer’ in Transactions of the Chronological Institute of London, Part 1, (London,
1852), pp. 25-35.
5. C. R. Cheney. Handbook of Dates for
Students of English History (C.U.P., 1996),
table 25.
6. B. MacCarthy, Annals of Ulster, Vol. III
(Dublin, 1895), pp. 315-7.
7. Bodleian Library, Oxford. Rawlinson MS,
B 484, f. 35v (National Library of Ireland
microfilm P1463.)
8. Dublin City Archives. Gilbert Library MS
8, f. 7.
9. Wendy Moorhen. ‘The Career of John de
la Pole, Earl of Lincoln’ in The Ricardian,
Vol. XIII (2003), pp. 347, 352.
10. Sir James Ware, ‘The Annals of Ireland
during the Reign of King Henry the Seventh’
in The Antiquities and History of Ireland
(Dublin, 1705), p. 6.
11. T. Crofton Croker, The Popular Songs of
Ireland. (London, 1839), pp 312-3.
12. J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen, Calendar of
the Carew Manuscripts Vol. 5, (London,
1871), pp. 188-9. Nigel Saul, Richard II (New
Haven and London, 1997), p. 26.
13. Agnes Conway. Henry VII's relations
with Scotland and Ireland 1485-1498
(Cambridge, 1932), p. 210.
References
1. R. E. Horrox (ed.), ‘Henry VII: Parliament
of 1487, Text and Translation’, in The
Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. C.
Given-Wilson et al., item 15. CD-ROM.
Scholarly Digital Editions, Leicester: 2005.
44
Miracle in Bedfordshire
LESLEY BOATWRIGHT
I
am at present helping to edit a Latin manuscript in the British Library (BL MS Royal 13 C
viii) which records 174 miracles attributed to the intercession of Henry VI. As I noted in the
Bulletin of summer 2007, this manuscript was commissioned by a dean of Windsor about 1500
and compiled from evidence given by people who had experienced such miracles, and reported
them at Henry’s shrine. The idea was to canonise Henry VI, but Henry VII would not pay the
necessary money, and Henry VIII broke with the Papacy before anything could be achieved.
When I spoke about these miracles earlier this year to the Beds and Bucks group of the
Society, I naturally looked for miracles that were said to have taken place in these two counties.
There were four in Buckinghamshire: a blind man was cured at Stony Stratford, a blind woman
cured at Buckingham, a boy fell out of a tree at Burnham Abbey and was, thanks to King Henry,
none the worse for it, and when a barrel of wine fell off a cart on its way to Aylesbury, and split,
King Henry saw to it that not a drop of wine went missing.
There was just one miracle in Bedfordshire, at Luton, when Walter Barkar was sent mad by a
sudden shock. People round him tried various ways of dealing with this, unsuccessfully, for three
days, until Walter called upon King Henry and was cured. He is described in the heading to the
miracle as Walter Barkar, a vallettus of M.N. Rotherham. Valettus is quite a difficult word to
translate. It can be ‘esquire’, ‘yeoman’, ‘groom’, ‘servant’, or simply ‘young man’. The general
idea seems to be a respect-worthy younger man who serves a more prestigious one. Who was
M.N. Rotherham? People did not, as far as I know, generally have two Christian names in the
fifteenth century, so he wasn’t, for example, Michael Norman Rotherham. I’ll come back to this
point when I have recounted the miracle.
This is what the miracle narrative says.
‘There was at that time in the service of a certain admirable and renowned man a vallettus by
the name of Walter, who had his dwelling within the borders of the county of Bedfordshire, in a
place whose name is commonly called Luton. That man, on the day before the feast of St
Matthew [21 September], namely on the Tuesday, about twilight, while he was walking
somewhere on his own, met three men who rushed at him in an unexpected, perhaps indeed
hostile manner, and he was struck with terror beyond measure, and ... stood rigid and stupefied,
so that, having completely lost the use of his reason, he thus became demented. Wherefore,
having laid aside all civilised behaviour, as one crazy and seized by a demon, wandering hither
and thither aimlessly, he had tormented himself not a little. Moreover, he also raged against his
innocent wife with very excessive and bestial frenzy, and attacked her with both verbal abuse and
blows, and harassed her with other dreadful injuries.
He listened to no admonitions from his friends or relations, and the more he was implored, or
the more mildly he was treated, the more ferocious the abuse he hurled at them, and threatened
and molested many. And so certain of the more sensible and well-disposed of his nearest and
dearest, when they by no means prevailed to tame him with any reproaches, or pacify him with
blandishments, laid violent hands upon him, trying in this way at least to curb him; and, so that
he should rage no further, and perhaps be a nuisance and a source of harm to themselves and
others, they held and fettered him, and also shackled him with iron manacles, confining him in
the stocks, and arrange to guard him safely until he should return to the same sky [i.e., recover
his senses].
45
Then, ... perhaps so that he should not be roused to greater insanity on account of the crowd
of spectators, they removed him from the stocks and shut him, still bound and chained, inside a
very secure hut, and left him alone, admonishing him and repeating to him over and over again
that he should call for the help and aid of glorious King Henry, a thing which they themselves
had meanwhile done. And he ... began, although in a confused voice, to shout in these words: 1
King Henry, come, help a wretched suppliant,
Good king, holy king, I beg, heal me.
And indeed now with the light of the next Friday coming, ... behold, what is indeed
miraculous to relate, suddenly the light of right reason is poured back into him, the strength of his
judgment is renewed and the scattered powers of all his senses gathered back. Indeed, he
immediately regained such sobriety of spirit, modesty of face and gesture, that not even before
[his seizure] was he more modest. ... For even then with loud lauding he praised God in his
servant Henry, and calmed down rejoicing. Wherefore, with all his friends wondering, and,
moreover, exulting in the Lord in their joy, he was at once released from his chains and allowed
to go free.
Then, thinking that the magnitude of such a great blessing should be remembered, he took
with him some neighbours of the more trustworthy sort, and on the next day (for he did not
believe that this should be put off longer) sought the sacred threshhold of the holy man, carrying
on his shoulders those very fetters with which he had been confined. By the showing of these,
and equally by the evidence of the men who came, he demonstrated the complete effect of divine
mercy there in his own self.’
Let us go back to M.N. Rotherham. It was tentatively suggested by previous commentators,
Ronald Knox and Shane Leslie (in their book The Miracles of King Henry VI, CUP 1923) that the
initials stood for Magister Noster, ‘our master’, and that Our Master Rotherham might be the
Thomas Rotherham who ended up as Archbishop of York, and died in 1500. The other book on
the miracles, by Paul Grosjean (which is entirely in Latin, even the title page and the footnotes,
Henrici VI Angliae Regis Miracula Postuma, Brussels, 1935) agrees with this suggestion, on the
grounds that yes, canons of Windsor could be described as magistri, ‘masters’.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of these eminent scholars to see if there was any
connection between Thomas Rotherham and Luton.
The Rotherham family were the lords of Luton manor. Thomas’s brother John, whose will
was proved in January 1493, described himself as dominus ville de Luton, ‘lord of the town of
Luton’. John’s son Thomas, who died in 1504, married Catherine, daughter of Anthony, Lord
Grey of Ruthyn. Both these men are buried in Luton church.
Archbishop Thomas Rotherham’s will is published in Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. IV, pp.
138-148. He leaves to Luton church ‘where my mother is buried, and my brother also’ a set of
vestments of grey [glauco] bawdkyn, worked with pheasants [fesanis] for a priest, deacon and
subdeacon; and one gilt chalice, with two cruets’.
Unfortunately Thomas was not one of those testators who name each servant when making
their wills, but he did take care of them. Each of his servants was to have half a year’s pay; those
wanting to live in his house were to be allowed to do so and have their keep for three months
while they looked for new masters. And each of them was to have a horse worth 20 shillings, or
20s. in cash.
When I gave my talk to the Beds and Bucks branch, they told me that Rotherham tombs are
still to be seen in Luton church.
1
. In the Latin, these words scan, so are to be taken as two lines of poetry, presumably composed
by the monk who wrote up the miracle.
46
Edward IV’s Precontract of
Matrimony: A Clarification
MARIE BARNFIELD
I
n her article ‘Edward IV’s Precontract of Matrimony’ (Bulletin, spring 2009) Alison Hanham
questions John Ashdown-Hill’s interpretation of the precontract (‘Eleanor Matters’, Bulletin,
spring 2008). Ashdown-Hill and Hanham differ in their understanding of the statement in Titulus
Regius that
‘Edward was and stood married and troth-plight to Dame Elianore Buteler ... with
whom the same King Edward had made a precontract of matrimony ...’
Ashdown-Hill had described ‘precontract’ as a legal term for ‘a marriage which actually took
place, and which preceded a subsequent (and therefore allegedly bigamous) second marriage’.
Thus, he argued, Titulus Regius declared that Eleanor and Edward had been wed. Hanham,
however, objects that ‘if the petition’s author meant to say that Edward had been married to
Eleanor, betrothed (“troth-plight”), and, before that, contracted to marry her, he was over-egging
his pudding.’
Leaving aside the fact that medieval law regularly over-egged its linguistic puddings, the
author of Titulus Regius did not mean what Hanham suggests. The word ‘married’ is
unambiguous. That the couple ‘stood troth-plight’ merely means they had exchanged vows,
whether in the future tense (a betrothal) or the present tense (a marriage: ‘and thereto I plight thee
my troth’). A precontract is not, as Hanham seems to suppose, any prior contract, or even a
written contract drawn up preparatory to a marriage. The scepticism, and perhaps confusion, of
Hanham and James Simons (Correspondence, Bulletin, spring 2009, p.51) regarding AshdownHill’s interpretation of this term is unfortunate because that interpretation is correct. The term
‘precontract’ has been defined as
an engagement entered into by a person, which renders him unable to enter into
another; as a promise or covenant of marriage to be had afterwards. When made
per verba de presenti, it is in fact a marriage, and in that case the party making it
cannot marry another person.1
Under medieval law, bethrothal vows followed by intercourse also constituted a marriage. The
purpose of the triple description in Titulus Regius was therefore to make absolutely clear that
Edward had not been free to marry Elizabeth Woodville because he had already married Eleanor.
Based on her misunderstanding of the term, Hanham proposes that ‘in the absence of any
substantial evidence’ we should abandon the notion that Titulus Regius was describing an actual
marriage, and instead countenance a possibility for which there is no evidence at all, i.e. that it
referred to a pre-nuptial contract drawn up by Edward’s and Eleanor’s fathers when they were
children. Hanham seems aware that this would not have constituted an impediment to the
Woodville marriage, but claims that ‘knowledge of some such agreement would furnish
sufficient ammunition for anyone who wished to argue that Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth was
invalid’.’
47
This is a mistaken view. The propertied classes were well aware that children were not bound
by their parents’ arrangements for their marriages. The Church outlawed forced marriages, and
upheld a minimum age of consent of fourteen years for a boy and twelve for a girl. Children who
pledged themselves in marriage before a priest had the right to renounce those vows after they
reached years of discretion (hence the clause in the Stonor-Rokes contract cited by Hanham,
voiding it should the boy and girl ‘dislike the marriage’ when they reached such years, and hence
the ability of the families’ subsequent quarrel to ‘put the marriage in doubt’).
Even had any such contract with York existed, Shrewsbury must have dishonoured it for
poorer pickings, as Eleanor married Thomas Butler before Edward had reached the canonical age
of consent. In so doing, Eleanor would have voided any childish vows exchanged with any third
party, leaving that party free to find another spouse: and indeed by the end of 1453 we find York
negotiating for Edward’s marriage to the Duke of Alençon’s daughter.
Acceptance by Parliament of a childhood arrangement as an impediment to a future marriage
would have both defied the Church’s definition of marriage as a consentual adult union and
threatened the legitimacy of members of other landed families, most notably Henry Tudor and
the offspring of Richard’s own sister Elizabeth (Suffolk and Margaret Beaufort having been
‘married’ as children).
To sum up, King Edward’s alleged precontract of marriage with Eleanor could only have
been entered into after Thomas Butler’s death, and this is what people at the time understood.
Commines, for instance, believed the alleged prior marriage to have occurred about twenty years
before Edward IV’s death, and to have been divulged to Richard by Bishop Stillington, who
said that King Edward had promised to marry an English lady (whom he named)
because he was in love with her, in order to get his own way with her, and that he
had made this promise in the bishop's presence. And having done so he slept with
her; and he made the promise only to deceive her.
Credence is given to Commines’ version by Henry VII’s treatment of both Stillington and Titulus
Regius, and by a note in Henry VII’s first Year Book naming Stillington as the author of the Act.
Deceived or not, troth-plight and bedded, Eleanor would have been Edward’s lawful wedded
wife.
1
. J. Bouvier, A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States, 1856
edition.
Editors’ note: we hope to have an article by Professor R.H. Helmholz on medieval marriage
law in a future edition of the Bulletin. In the meantime, Lynda Pidgeon, our Research Officer, has
produced a short bibliography on the subject:
Anne Crawford, ‘The King’s Burden? The Consequences of Royal Marriage in Fifteenth-Century
England’, in Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England, ed. Ralph A.
Griffiths, Gloucester, 1981
Conor McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature and Practice, Woodbridge
2004
R.B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England 1500-1850, London, 1995
Frederik Pedersen, Marriage Disputes in Medieval England, London, 2000
Michael M. Sheehan, ‘Marriage, Family and Law’, in Medieval Europe Collected Studies, ed.
J.K. Farge, Cardiff, 1996
48
Report on Society Events
Requiem Mass, Cambridge, 14 March 2009
On Saturday 14 March 2009, a congregation of some 50 members of the Richard III Society,
friends and visitors, assembled in the impressive neo-gothic church of Our Lady and the English
Martyrs in Cambridge for the annual Requiem Mass for King Richard III and Queen Anne
Neville. This wonderful church has the furnishings and proportions almost of a small cathedral,
and thus provided a most impressive setting for the solemn annual Requiem which was
celebrated two days prior to the anniversary of the death of Queen Anne.
The solemn high mass began with the traditional plainchant introit Requiem aeternam as the
celebrant, Fr. Christopher Back, attended by thurifer, crucifer and acolytes, processed beneath the
great Rood and into the sanctuary. Fr Back wore a black brocade chasuble, similar to those in use
in the fifteenth century, while on the altar burned the unbleached candles which, by ancient
tradition, are used at Requiem Masses.
Fr Back welcomed the Society on its first such visit to the church, and in his homily he spoke
of how strongly the great light of faith had burned in the Middle Ages, and of Richard’s own
faith, as evidenced by his prayers, his library and his recorded actions. It was very evident that Fr
Back had a deep interest of his own in the king and queen whom he was commemorating. After
the mass was over, both he and all the other staff of the church expressed once again their
pleasure in the Society’s visit, and the hope that we would come again on future occasions.
After lunch (own arrangements) some of the Ricardian visitors explored Cambridge
individually. Most, however, reassembled at the nearby Fitzwilliam Museum, where they visited
the medieval gallery (small, but nevertheless packed with treasures) and then explored the
exhibition ‘I turned it into a Palace’, which comprised artefacts from all periods, but included a
very impressive array of high quality medieval illuminated manuscripts, and a most splendid
fifteenth century tapestry from Tournai, in astonishingly good condition – the jewel-like colours
looking like new.
A very enjoyable day concluded in fitting style, with tea in the museum café.
John Ashdown-Hill
Queen Anne Neville Commemoration: St John’s Gate and Westminster
21 March 2009
On Saturday 21 March 2009, eighteen Ricardians gathered at St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, for a
guided tour. Our guide, Ann, was very knowledgeable and interesting. She explained that the first
Knights of St John were called Hospitallers because they ran a hospital for pilgrims in
Jersusalem. The hospital was supported by gifts and donations from across Europe. The land at
Clerkenwell was given to them in the twelfth century, and they built a monastery as an
administration centre to manage the collections of money and supplies from English donors, for
forwarding to the Holy Land. After the Knights of St John left the Holy Land they were based in
Malta until the British took over the island during the Napoleonic Wars.
The monastery, which was dissolved in 1540, was one of the last to be closed as Henry VIII
had been a pupil of the Prior. The buildings were not demolished but were rented out and used
for various purposes. As they fell into disrepair they were renovated or re-built until the present
square evolved and the Clerkenwell Road was built, which effectively divided the original site.
The gatehouse was used as an office by the Lord Chamberlain and it is thought that plays were
performed here for him to see before he licensed them, so it is possible that Shakespeare
performed here in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By the eighteenth century
49
the first floor had been converted into a tavern and was, for some time, run by the father of
William Hogarth.
The British Order of St John was founded in the 1830s, being inspired by the Hospitallers and
their aims of caring for people in emergencies. In 1888 Queen Victoria granted the order a royal
charter, and since then the monarch has always been Sovereign Head of the order. The current
Grand Prior is HRH Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester.
Having explained the history of the knights and the order, Ann took us upstairs, past paintings
of the trading and war ships used by the order and of knights on diplomatic embassies, to the first
floor Grand Hall, which is where large meetings and receptions are held. The whole building was
run-down when the Order of St John took it over at the beginning of the twentieth century, and
was damaged during WW2, but it has been restored to look as a Tudor hall might have looked,
with carved beams on the ceiling. Around the walls are the names and shields of all the Priors,
from the eleventh century, with a gap between 1540 and 1830, but giving a feeling of continuity.
The windows have modern heraldic glass and the splendid fireplace is carved with crosses of St
John.
Next we visited the Board Room, directly over the arch of the gatehouse. Its windows would
have given a splendid view of visitors approaching and the activities in the square below. It
contains pictures of members of the Royal Family, including one of Queen Victoria presenting
the charter, and of senior members of the order, well known military and political faces.
We then descended half-way down the western tower by a spiral staircase to a panelled room
which contained displays of memorabilia of the original Knights of St John, and antique
furniture. The furniture, and some beautiful ceramic spice jars, was mostly donated by people on
the island of Malta, who wanted to commemorate their association with the Knights of St John
by supporting the newly-founded order of St John. We then went down the rest of the spiral
staircase to the outside of the building. In the square we were able to see the elaborate carving on
the gatehouse itself and Ann pointed out how much the ground level had risen by showing us
what had been a door, but of which we could only see about the top third. We then walked across
the Clerkenwell Road to the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The original church was bombed in
WW2, and the only remaining medieval part is the undercroft. In the paved area outside Ann
showed us the outline of the church, marked by slate-coloured bricks. John Ashdown-Hill
reminded us that it was here, during Holy Week 1485, that Richard III formally announced that
he did not intend to marry his niece, Elizabeth of York.
The building above the undercroft has been restored, not as a church, but as a hall where
presentations and formal gatherings of the order take place. There is a dais instead of an altar,
and rows of seating, but it all retains a solemn atmosphere. What remained of the medieval
church walls was incorporated in the re-building, which gives a sense of continuity, and around
the walls the flags of the international orders of St John hang.
Then we went down into the undercroft which is retained as a church and is available for
weddings and baptisms for members of the order and their families. The remains of the cadaver
tomb of the last Prior have been transferred here from another City church, and there is a tomb of
a Spanish knight, with his servant, which was moved here from Valladolid when the church there
was refurbished. The windows are below ground, but are lit by artificial light and have coats of
arms of former Priors in the glass, which gives a pleasing effect.
While it is possible to visit the museum rooms on the ground floor of St John's Gate, the other
rooms and the church and undercroft are only accessible on a guided tour, so it was an
opportunity to visit another site which Richard III knew and visited himself. Our tour ended here
and we thanked Ann for her interesting talk and went out into spring sunshine in search of lunch
before going on to Westminster Abbey to remember Queen Anne Neville by attending evensong,
and laying a floral tribute at the modern monument marking her grave site.
Rosamund Cummings
50
Correspondence
Will contributors please note that letters may be edited or shortened to conform to the standards
of the Bulletin.
congratulate you on the splendidly simple and
clear Logge website which really whets the
appetite for the books. I have promised
myself I’ll purchase them later in the spring –
I tend to link sizeable purchases to things I
want to commemorate and I’ve got a
publishing moment in March that gives me
the excuse to buy the wills and, perhaps, the
York Civic Records edition. I think such
behaviour probably counts as eccentric on
several counts (only ‘several’? queries my
wife) but thank you for all your hard work
and I’ll really look forward to browsing and
reading the wills in full. Many thanks and
congratulations on the site and particularly on
the enormous achievement of all the work
that went into this vast project
There’s enough fiction in Shakespeare
From Chérie Stephens, St Ives, Cornwall
First of all may I say how much I have been
enjoying the Bulletin lately with all the
interesting articles and new developments. I
am a committed Ricardian; have been a
member of the Society for over 30 years and
studied Richard since I was 14, when I read
The Daughter of Time. That is one work of
historical fiction that I feel very happy to
endorse. It is a wonderful introduction to the
subject.
However, I regret I am no lover of
historical fiction and I feel very sad to see it
included in the spring edition of the Bulletin
as a regular feature. When one of our aims is
to educate people about Richard and his times
I do not feel it is appropriate to include works
of fiction which could be misleading and
could potentially erode our credibility as a
serious organisation. I do not feel either that
we should follow the modern trend of trying
to ‘popularise’ our subject. Fiction is fine for
those who have the talent to write it and those
who wish to read it. I may be in a minority
when I say that I have no wish to read it and I
did not read the item in question. Maybe it is
a debate that should be opened up within the
Society. I do not usually write to comment
but this is something I feel very strongly
about.
In support of my argument I can only say
that Rous, Virgil, More, Shakespeare et al.
were all ‘creative’ with their writing of history, and look at all the trouble that caused! I
rest my case.
I am not a killjoy, I love to read the amusing anecdotes and the Media Retrospective,
so keep up the good work.
The heir male
From Annette Carson, South Africa
May I ask a question in relation to Ian
Mortimer’s articles about Henry IV? I have
come across only one contemporaneous
report describing Henry as ‘heir male’ of
Henry III: An English Chronicle of the Reigns
of Richard II, Henry IV, etc., by J.S. Davies,
published in 1856. Since Dr Mortimer’s
argument hinges on these two important
words, can anyone tell me whether they occur
elsewhere in the records of Henry’s claim to
the throne?
The names that cheer
From Doug Weeks, Ashford
Looking through the publicity for a wellknown chain of pubs-cum-eateries, I was
pleased to note that their outlet ‘The Perkin
Warbeck’ in Taunton is now boasting its own
cider bar, so this is two good reasons for
visiting. We should perhaps recall that this
same establishment was ‘The Last Plantagenet’ plus ‘The High Cross’, near the
original site of the High Cross, across from
the White Boar Inn.
The splendid Logge website
From Ian Dawson, Leeds
I have been a ‘silent’ member of the Richard
III Society since the 70s, simply reading and
keeping up-to-date, but I thought I’d write to
51
will want to know whose blade killed so great
a lord.
The solution is swiftly to haul Hastings’
dead or dying body downstairs and behead
him for treason. That way, no individual is to
blame, it has become a matter of state and
there will be no coroner’s inquiry (as there
was, for instance, when the elderly Lord Mortimer of Chirk died as a prisoner in the Tower
in 1326). Since Hastings’ remains are quickly
bundled into a coffin or chest, there is no
request or suggestion from the Lord Mayor
that the body should be examined for dagger
wounds.
Of course, this scenario does not throw
any light on whether Hastings was guilty of
plotting against Richard, but maybe it can
explain why there could be no trial.
A fresh approach to Hastings’ death?
From Isolde Martyn, Sydney
Writing historical fiction is often a series of
light-bulb moments as you try to flesh out
real people and depict events. Dealing with
the famous White Tower meeting on Friday
13 June 1483 threw up an entirely new possibility. What if Hastings was already dead
when he was beheaded?
It is highly likely that this is a moment in
history when things just got out of hand.
Suppose during the argument and ensuing
kerfuffle in the council chamber, when the
soldiers rush in, Hastings is mortally wounded or killed? It’s embarrassing, unforeseen.
Questions will be asked. The Lord Mayor will
be on his way when he hears the news and
New Members
UK 1 January to 31 March 2009
Helen Bartlett, Ashford, Middx
Robert Binks, Bolton
David Bracegirdle, Coventry
Jennifer Chandler, Northampton
Peter Craig, Weybridge, Surrey
Jane Flynn, Northolt, Middx
Richard Foster, Stretton, Rutland
Lizzie Gould, Tonbridge, Kent
Malcolm Gregory, Carnforth, Lancs
Celia Herrmann, Hucclecote, Glos
Alysoun Hedges, Ely
Paul Johnston, Chessington, Surrey
Catherine Kelley, Bathgate, West Lothian
Richard & Ericka Munn, Brackley
Caroline Preston, Flackwell Heath, Bucks
Linda Redhead, Annery Kiln, Devon
Susan Rees, Harpenden, Herts
Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter, Devon
Richard Smith, Goring-on-Thames, Oxon
Ellis Spencer, Stockton-on-Tees
Joan Torode, East Marden, Dorset
Kate Treacher, Gloucester
G. Underwood, Leicester
Geoffrey Wallis, Consett, co. Durham
Helen Walsh, Horncastle, Lincs
Stephen York, St Ives, Cambs
Nower Hill High School, Pinner, Middx
Overseas 1 January to 31 March 2009
Nigel Dole, Sydney, New South Wales
Lisa Holt-Jones, Baddeck, Nova Scotia
Sandra Worth, Houston, Texas
US Branch 1 January to 31 March 2009
Kora Stoynova, Washington
Jennifer A.T. Smith, California
Louis Leslie, Maryland
Jemimi Fowlkes, Georgia
John James Diffley, New Mexico
Mr & Mrs Reid & Jewell Hausmann, NJ
Ben Schmidt, Pennslyvania
Barry K. Mills, Maine
52
The Barton Library
New Papers Librarian
Great news: we have a new Papers Librarian; her name is Gillian Paxton, she is an academic
librarian, soon to be an archivist. We will tell you more about the changes in the next Bulletin.
You can write to her at: 70 Grayrigg Drive, Westgate, Morecambe, Lancs LA4 4UL, or email her
at [email protected]
Non-Fiction Books
A new book to borrow: Edward IV by Hannes Kleineke (Routledge, paperback, 2009). The
reign of King Edward IV occupies a pivotal place in late medieval English history, marking the
transition from a medieval to a renaissance monarchy. The personality of the young monarch was
undoubtedly a factor in this transition, yet there has been much controversy over the king’s
character: was Edward a vain and self-indulgent playboy, more interested in his own pleasures
than the well-being of his kingdom, or was his life cut tragically short, thus preventing him from
fully establishing the ‘new monarchy’ now more commonly associated with his son-in-law,
Henry VII?
Other books in the pipeline, but not yet arrived are: Eleanor the Secret Queen by John
Ashdown-Hill (History Press), Richard III and the Death of Chivalry by David Hipshon (History
Press) and Richard III the Young King to be by Jo Wilkinson (Amberley Publications).
Do not forget that the Barton Library is here for the members and anything I can do to help
with studies, queries etc, just email me and I will do my best to help. If I cannot, I know a few
people to ask.
Novels
If members enjoyed reading the short story by Sandra Worth in the spring edition of the Bulletin
they may like to read one of her four full length novels that are in the Barton Fiction Library – all
are paperbacks, so not too expensive in postage. The first three novels form ‘The Rose of York
Trilogy’: Love and War (2006): the story of Richard of Gloucester and Anne Neville from 1460
until the birth of their son Edward. Crown of Destiny (2006): continues the story of Richard and
Anne, opening with Edward IV’s expedition to France in 1476, and on through the deaths of
Clarence and Edward IV, and ends with Richard accepting the throne of England. Fall from
Grace (2007) concludes the trilogy with the coronation of Richard and Anne and ends on
Bosworth Field; with an epilogue in 1503 when Elizabeth of York is looking back over the last
eighteen years as she is dying, soon after the birth of her last daughter. Sandra’s latest novel is
Lady of the Roses (2008): the love-story of Isobel Ingoldesthorpe, ward of Queen Margaret of
Anjou, and John Neville, Marquess Montagu, in a time of conflict and divided loyalties, 1456 to
1476.
Additions to the Audio-Visual Collection: Audio Tapes
BBC2 TV: Celebrity Mastermind: Philippa Gregory answers questions on Elizabeth Woodville,
the subject of her forthcoming novel The White Queen, due out in September this year.
BBC Radio 4: Lights, Camera, Landmark: looking at London film locations including Battersea
Power Station, scene of the Battle of Bosworth in the McKellen/Loncraine film Richard III
(1995).
BBC Radio 4: Being Prince of Wales: first of two episodes on the royal title holders; unusually it
avoids any reference to Richard and the Tower Princes, passing swiftly from Henry V to Prince
53
Arthur, unlike the 1969 TV programme (also available) to mark Prince Charles' investiture,
where narrator William Squire memorably declared that the Princes ‘took up residence in the
Tower, which they entered with some hesitation, and alas were never heard of again! When the
people began to wonder what had happened, their uncle Richard announced very solemnly, that
somehow or other they had died, and reluctantly accepted the fact that he would have to be king
himself’.
Finally, a recording of the March podcast from BBC History Magazine in which editor Dr David
Musgrove discusses with author David Hipshon the events leading to Richard III’s death at
Bosworth (see pp. 23-5). Kindly donated by Tim Tuggey, Reading.
Contact details for all the Librarians are on the inside back cover
The Western Australian Branch will be hosting the bi-annual
Australasian Convention from 9 to 11 October, 2009.
For further information and/or registration please contact
Helen Hardegen at [email protected]
or Jenny Gee at [email protected].
54
Future Society Events
Bookable Events
For Bosworth, please see page 7.
Visit to Crowland Abbey and Peterborough, Saturday 5 September 2009
The small fenland village of Crowland is, of course, the site of the great eighth-century
Benedictine Abbey of Croyland where the famous Chronicle was written. Sadly, all that now
remains of one of the largest religious foundations in England is a spectacular Norman arch and
the thirteenth-century west front, with the north aisle of the abbey church now used as the parish
church. Also of interest is a unique fourteenth-century triangular bridge which, now on dry land,
once provided a crossing over the confluence of three streams.
We hope to arrive in Crowland at about 11.30 am and will go straight to the Abbey. Lunch,
which is included in the cost of the trip, will be provided by the local WI and will consist of a
Ploughman’s Lunch, dessert and tea/coffee – and is very good value! We will leave Crowland at
about 2.30 pm for the short trip to Peterborough.
Peterborough is an ancient city; excavations have found habitation from 3700 BC, a large
Roman fortress and a seventh-century monastery. The magnificent Norman cathedral was built
between 1118 and 1258 and has a glorious thirteenth-century painted roof. Catherine of Aragon
is buried here, and Mary, Queen of Scots, was first interred here before her body was taken to
Westminster Abbey in 1612. The Norman great gate is outside the cathedral and the guildhall
dates from 1671.
Our coach will leave from London Embankment at 9.00 am and we should arrive back in
London between 7.00 and 7.30 pm. A pick-up can be arranged at Bromley for those who let me
know.
The cost of the trip is £26.50 per person, which includes cost of coach, driver’s tip and lunch
in Crowland. Please note that I have not included a donation to Croyland Abbey in the cost of the
trip; this will be left to members’ own discretion.
Please let me have a cheque for £26.50 per person by 7 August 2009. Cheques should be
made payable to ‘Richard III Society’, endorsed ‘Croyland’ and sent to: Marian Mitchell, 20
Constance Close, Witham, Essex, CM8 1XL. (Email [email protected] Tel: 01376
501984.
Norfolk Branch Study Day
Towton - Past and Present: Saturday 14 November 2009
Speakers: Mark Taylor, The Towton Battlefield Society ‘The Battle of Towton’; Dr David
Grummitt ‘Towton 1461 – the false dawn of the Yorkist Age’; Helen Cox and Mick Doggett,
‘Interpreting Towton through living history’ and Anthea Boylsdon, Bradford Archaeological
Department ‘The Towton Project: An Update’.
The day will start at 9.30 a.m. and finish at 5.00 p.m. The venue is The Assembly House,
Theatre Street, Norwich. Cost £22.
There are a few places left for this Study Day.
Please contact Ann Marie Hayek, 20 Rowington Rd, Norwich NR1 3RR or email:
[email protected].
55
Branch and Group Contacts
Branches
America
David M. Luitweiler, 1268 Wellington Drive, Victor, New York,
14564 United States of America. Tel: 585-924-5022.
E-mail: [email protected]
Canada
Mrs Tracy Bryce, 5238 Woodhaven Drive, Burlington, Ontario,
L7L 3T4, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii
Devon & Cornwall
Mrs Anne E Painter, Yoredale, Trewithick Road, Breage, Helston,
Cornwall, TR13 9PZ. Tel. 01326-562023.
E-mail: [email protected]
Gloucester
Angela Iliff, 18 Friezewood Road, Ashton, Bristol, BS3 2AB
Tel: 0117-378-9237. E-mail: [email protected]
Greater Manchester
Mrs Helen Ashburn, 36 Clumber Road, Gorton, Manchester, M18
7LZ.
Tel: 0161-320-6157. E-mail: [email protected]
Hull & District
Terence O’Brien, 2 Hutton Close, Hull, HU4 4LD. Tel: 01482
445312
Lincolnshire
Mrs J T Townsend, Westborough Lodge Farm, Westborough,
Newark, Notts. NG23 5HP.Tel: 01400 281289.
E-mail: [email protected]
London & Home Counties Miss E M Nokes, 4 Oakley Street, Chelsea, London SW3 5NN.
Tel: 01689 823569. E-mail: [email protected]
Midlands-East
Mrs Sally Henshaw, 28 Lyncroft Leys, Scraptoft, Leicester, LE7
9UW.
Tel: 0116-2433785. E-mail: [email protected]
New South Wales
Julia Redlich, 53 Cammeray Towers, 55 Carter Street, New South
Wales, 2062, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
New Zealand
Robert Smith, ‘Wattle Downs’, 61 Udy Street, Greytown, New
Zealand.
E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
Web site: www.richard3nz.org
Norfolk
Mrs Annmarie Hayek, 20 Rowington Road, Norwich, NR1 3RR.
Tel: 01603 664021. E-mail: [email protected]
Queensland
as New South Wales
Scotland
Juliet Middleton, 49 Ochiltree, Dunblane, Perthshire, FK15 0DF
Tel: 01786 825665 E-mail: [email protected]
South Australia
Mrs Sue Walladge, 5 Spencer Street, Cowandilla, South Australia
5033, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Thames Valley
Sally Empson, 42 Pewsey Vale, Forest Park, Bracknell, Berkshire
RG12 9YA. E-mail: [email protected]
Victoria
Hazel Hajdu, 4 Byron Street, Wattle Park, Victoria, 3128, Australia.
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site:http://home.vicnet.net.au/~richard3/index.html
Western Australia
Helen Hardegen, 16 Paramatta Road, Doubleview, Western Australia
6018, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://members.iinet.net.au/~hhardegen/
56
Worcestershire
Mrs Pam Benstead, 15 St Marys Close, Kempsey WR5 3JX
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.richardiiiworcs.co.uk
Mrs P.H. Pogmore, 169, Albert Road, Sheffield, S8 9QX.
Tel: 0114 258 6097. E-mail: [email protected]
Yorkshire
Groups
Airedale
Bedfordshire/
Buckinghamshire
Bristol
Croydon
Cumbria
Dorset
Mid Anglia
North East
Nottinghamshire
& Derbyshire
Sussex
West Surrey
Mrs Christine Symonds, 2 Whitaker Avenue, Bradford, BD2
3HL. Tel: 01274-774680. E-mail: [email protected]
Mrs Rose Skuse. 12 Brookfield Rd, Newton Longville, Bucks,
MK17 0BP Tel: 01908 373524 E-mail: [email protected]
Keith Stenner, 96 Allerton Crescent, Whitchurch, Bristol,
Tel:01275-541512 (in affiliation with Gloucestershire Branch)
E-mail: [email protected]
Miss Denise Price, 190 Roundwood Rd, London NW10
Tel: 0181 451 7689
John & Marjorie Smith, 26 Clifford Road, Penrith, Cumbria,
CA11 8PP
Mrs Judy Ford, 15 Sandon House, 643 Blandford Rd, Upton, Poole,
BH16 5ED Tel: 01202 624938 E-mail: [email protected]
John Ashdown-Hill, 8 Thurlston Close, Colchester, Essex,
CO4 3HF. Tel/fax: 01206-523267. E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.freewebs.com/r3midanglia/
Mrs J McLaren, 11 Sefton Avenue, Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE6 5QR Tel: 0191 265 3665. E-mail: [email protected]
Mrs Anne Ayres, 7 Boots Yard, Huthwaite, Sutton-in-Ashfield
Notts, NG17 2QW. E-mail: [email protected]
Robert Parsons, 403 Mile Oak Rd, Portslade-by-Sea, BN41 2RD
Tel: 01273 413696
Rollo Crookshank, Old Willows, 41a Badshot Park, Farnham,
Surrey, GU9 9JU. E-mail: [email protected]
Ancient and Medieval History Books
(3500BC-1600AD)
For a catalogue of secondhand fact and fiction send SAE to :
Karen Miller, Church Farm Cottage, Church Lane, Kirklington,
Nottinghamshire, NG22 8NA
57
Branches and Groups
London and Home Counties Branch Report
Pursuing its policy of seeking prestigious speakers, towards the cost of which the Branch has
kindly been given a series of donations, we will be hosting Julian Humphrys speaking on ‘How
to capture a castle’, and extend an invitation to all members of the Society who are able to do so,
to attend this event. It is on Saturday 13 June 2009, at our regular meeting place at the I.H.R.
(Institute for Historical Research) at 2.00 p.m. Full details of venue, timing, etc. available from
the Secretary, Elizabeth Nokes (email: [email protected] Tel. [voicemail] 01689823569)
Julian Humphrys read history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and, after completing a postgraduate year at the Polytechnic of North London, he qualified as a Blue Badge Guide,
specialising in the remarkable architecture and history of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.
He then joined the staff of Chelsea’s National Army Museum, where he worked for twelve years.
He has made numerous radio and television appearances. His knowledge of England’s castles
and battlefield is extensive and in 2001 he turned his attention to this aspect of our heritage,
developing and leading English Heritage’s Tours Through Time programme of short breaks and
guided visits to historic properties and battlefields. He is a regular contributor to BBC History
Magazine and is the author of a number of publications including Clash of Arms: Twelve English
Battles, published by English Heritage in 2006, and Enemies at the Gate: English Castles under
Siege, published in the following year. Copies of both titles will be available at the lecture. For
his illustrated lecture to the Branch he has provided the following abstract:
‘Developments in castle defences and the methods used to capture them have
gone hand in hand in history. In this entertaining overview of siege warfare in
medieval England Julian looks at how the two influenced each other over the years.
However he also shows how a desire to avoid the considerable time, expense and
damage involved in besieging a castle meant that such operations were usually only
undertaken as a last resort. For most commanders diplomacy and bribery were much
more popular options than storm and starvation and the operations in north-east
England following the Yorkist victory at Towton in 1461 illustrate this perfectly.’
Further Branch news covers the Branch AGM, held in March 2009, which saw a radical
change to the composition of the Branch Committee. Kitty Bristow retired after twenty-eight
years, and Diana Lee retired, after five years as Branch Treasurer. At the AGM opportunity was
taken to thank them both for their service to the Branch. The Branch Committee now comprises:
Howard Choppin, Chairman, Elizabeth Nokes, Secretary, Elaine Robinson, Treasurer, Joan
Cooksley, Margaret Stiles and Rosemary Waxman. The Auditor, Derek Barber, also retired from
post, and thanks were tendered to him.
Elizabeth Nokes
Scottish Branch Report: ‘Honour my Bones’
On Saturday 21 February the Scottish Branch hosted a series of illustrated talks by Dr John
Ashdown-Hill entitled ‘Honour My Bones’. The day provided a fascinating insight into John’s
various Ricardian research interests and reinforced, in my mind at least, his undoubted status as
the Society’s most progressive and innovative member.
John’s first talk, ‘My Late Lamented Uncle’, traced the history of Richard III’s remains from
burial in 1485 to the present day. The most important point to emerge was the near certainty that
Richard’s bones, despite folk lore to the contrary, lay where they were originally interred in the
church of the Greyfriars in Leicester. Happily the former site of the monastic church appears not
58
to have been redeveloped, and is now a car park belonging to Leicester Social Services. This, as
many members are acutely aware, opens up the exciting possibility of an archaeological
investigation. The importance and relevance of such a project was thrown in to sharp focus by
the subject of John’s second talk.
‘Finding the DNA of Richard III’ outlined the painstaking process by which John traced the
DNA of Richard’s family from Anne of Exeter through an all female line to a surviving twentyfirst century descendent. Not many people would have undertaken such a demanding task or
possessed the determination to complete it. There can be little doubt that this is research of the
utmost importance. Should remains be uncovered in Leicester the newly-traced DNA sequence
will confirm whether or not they belong to a member of Richard’s family. And given the location
of any discovery, a positive match can only mean we have found Richard III.
The third and final talk, ‘Eleanor’, discussed John’s new book on Lady Eleanor Talbot: ‘the
woman who put Richard III on the throne’. Once again this is an important work of scholarship.
Other books present the pre-contract controversy with a fairly large question mark, but John
argues from the outset that Edward IV’s marriage to Lady Eleanor Talbot is a fact. As Ricardians
we should be delighted that someone has at last devoted an entire volume to this crucial issue and
to bringing the somewhat obscure figure of Lady Eleanor firmly in to the spotlight.
Overall the event was a huge and highly enjoyable success. John is to be congratulated for the
manner in which he entertained and informed an enthralled audience. Each talk was accompanied
by a superb Power Point presentation and expertly elucidated by John’s patient commentary.
Special thanks should also go to Philippa Langley for organising such a memorable occasion
(including a delightful lunch at the picturesque Cramond Inn) and for allowing the event to take
place in her lovely home. Highly recommended!
David Johnson
Worcester Branch Report
As our Branch continues to grow we are pleased to welcome more people to our meetings and
are even more delighted when they choose to join, whether this be the Branch alone or the
Society as a whole. We just like to meet new people of similar interests and new faces usually
bring new ideas.
At the time of writing we are approaching our AGM and are in need of a new Programme
Planner although Joan Ryder, who is retiring from the post, has already arranged most of our
programme for 2009. All the other members of the committee are willing to stand again.
We enjoyed an interesting talk at our February meeting and Carol Southworth has written the
following report:
‘Telling Tales of Adulterous Queens in Medieval England from Olympias of Macedonia to
Elizabeth Woodville’ by Joanna Laynesmith at Inkberrow Education Centre on 14 February
2009. Dr Laynesmith began by explaining that by ‘telling tales’ she meant reporting scurrilous
and sometimes untrue gossip and rumour about medieval queens for political reasons or to show
the political consequences of adultery. She felt that there was often a lack of understanding about
the political role of medieval queens: they were far more than mere consorts and providers of
heirs, a theme of her recent book The Last Medieval Queens.
‘The importance of marriage to a king was that it allowed him to throw off any remaining
tutelage; his queen underlined his maturity and legitimacy and enabled him to father a recognised
heir. Losing control of his queen, therefore, through adultery or for any other reason, would
inevitably lead to disaster. Adultery was a factor in virtually all cases where a king lost his
throne. Dr Laynesmith gave many examples from the history of the medieval period and from its
legends and romances. In his sixth-century De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae Gildas drew
attention to the link between adultery and failing regimes, as did later writers, including William
of Malmesbury. The stories about Eleanor of Aquitaine were retold and exaggerated over the
years, whereas Isabella of Angoulême was accused only once and without foundation, but this
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accusation was a itself a comment on John’s poor kingship. The adultery of Isabella of France,
however, was not mentioned since it would have cast doubt on the paternity of the future Edward
III; she thus posed a threat to both her husband and her son politically. Margaret of Anjou, Henry
VI’s wife, broke all the rules of queenly behaviour, not least as a possibly multiple adulteress
whose husband suffered a total mental collapse as well as losing his kingdom. From the legends
and romances Dr Laynesmith spoke particularly about the Arthurian stories. Guinivere’s
adultery, first mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth, linked to her failure to produce an heir,
caused the destruction of the kingdom. Similarly Tristan and Isolde’s love affair led to the
destruction of the state. History and legend were linked when Malory told the story of Lancelot
and Guinivere in La Mort d’Arthur in 1469, the year when the accusations were made of Cecily
Neville’s adultery, which, if true, would have caused the bastardy of Edward IV.
‘Dr Laynesmith further emphasised the importance of queens by making the link back to
Homer, with kings owing their thrones to their wives. For example, some kings of Anglo-Saxon
England, like Cnut, married the widows of their predecessors. King’s mothers, whether or not
they were queens, could also be the subjects of ‘tales’. The legitimacy of both Richard II and his
supplanter Henry IV was questioned, as was that of Edward of Lancaster, Henry VI’s son.
Polydore Vergil stressed the role of Richard III to avoid the question of the illegitimacy of
Edward V, which was the basis of Richard’s claim to the throne.
‘”Tales” were used to attack queens and to fuel fears about foreign queens. These ‘tales’ were
rarely true, but were used to explain poor government or the collapse of a regime and to show
therefore that sexual sins would inevitably be punished.’
Our March meeting was at a new venue in Malvern that proved easy to locate and had good
parking facilities. Unfortunately the acoustics were not very good, which was a shame as
Geoffrey Wheeler had travelled a long way to be with us. However we were treated to a
whirlwind pictorial tour around the National Portrait Gallery 1973’, Richard III’ Exhibition as
Geoffrey related a wealth of information on each exhibit. Some of our members had attended the
exhibition and were very impressed with it.
Future programme
11 July: a guided tour of St Wulfstan’s Cathedral, highlighting the Norman remains of the
cathedral started in 1084 and Wolfstan’s connections. Our guide will be Christopher Guy,
Worcester Cathedral archaeologist.This is a follow on from our January meeting.
8 August will be our annual evening walk; this year we are visiting the lovely village of Knowle
in Warwickshire. This will be a 6:00 p.m. start and will conclude in a local hostelry.
12 September sees us on the Herefordshire/Monmouthshire border, where we will have a guided
tour of Grosmont Castle and a visit to the churches of Easton Bishop and Castle Frome.
Details of our programme can be found on our branch web site www.richardiiiworcs.co.uk or
contact our Programme Planner Joan Ryder 01384 394228, for further information. We are
always pleased to welcome friends and prospective members at any of our meetings.
Pat Parminter
Yorkshire Branch Report
Palm Sunday this year must have been one of the warmest on record recently, and those
Yorkshire Branch members who attended appreciated the beautiful spring weather at Towton
Hall, where the Towton Battlefield Society and other organisations held displays, re-enactments
and a short memorial service on the anniversary of the terrible battle which in effect confirmed
Edward, Earl of March, as king. It is also, of course, an opportunity for sales and publicity for the
Society and the Branch, and we were glad to make contact with several new and old names. One
sight which could well have been expected – but which was still rather arresting – was a long line
of lords, ladies and fighting men in their finery queueing to buy chips from a van. The famous
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Drunken Monk was also present, not with a tent of his own this time but selling his remarkable
brews in the barn. The ginger wine should have been available there in 1461: it would surely
have helped to guard against the freezing weather.
Linda Treybig will be bringing a group of our American Ricardian cousins (and perhaps as
well some not from the US, as happened last year) to Yorkshire this June. They hope to be at
Bolton Abbey on Sunday 21 June, Middleham on the 22nd and Conisborough on the 25th and
would love to meet up with local members if possible.
Our usual local programme of meetings continues this summer, including an evening trip to
Skipton on Monday 6 July, with supper. It will be the anniversary of King Richard’s coronation,
although the date is a coincidence this time. On Sunday 23 August the Branch commemorates
Bosworth and those who fell there with a short informal meeting at St Alkelda’s church in
Middleham. We meet for 2.00 p.m. but usually have lunch together in Middleham beforehand; if
you would like to join us, please contact John Audsley on 0113 294-2656 by 10 August.
Our Branch AGM will take place on Saturday 5 September at 1.30 p.m. at the usual venue,
Wheatlands Hotel, Scarcroft Road, York (just off the A64). Many of our members will be aware
that late December 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Branch, since some of
the people who became our very first members gathered at Sandal to commemorate the
quincentenary of the battle of Wakefield in 1960. Our Committee intends to mark this birthday
with some suitable event, and although there’s been some havering about whether this will be in
2010 or 2011, it will definitely happen! Do come along to our AGM, especially if you haven’t
before: there will be a chance to socialise after the business of the meeting, a very good tea and,
this year, a special feature on the programme. We hope to see you there. Subscribers to our
magazine will receive their booking form for tea as usual with their August newsletters; if you
are not a subscriber but live anywhere in Yorkshire you are also actually a member of the
Branch, and so are welcome to attend.
In the autumn we hope to hold a Branch banquet again, having been unable to do so in 2007.
Our new venue is the fourteenth-century Bedern Hall in York, just opposite the Minster. Many of
you will know this interesting and atmospheric building, once the lodgings of the Vicars Choral
of the Minster and now home to three of the city’s livery companies. We have booked our meal
for Saturday 24 October. Further details in our August newsletter, with a booking form. The
Committee hopes that many of our old friends will join us, and if you have never attended such
an event before, do consider it now.
Angela Moreton
In the next issue of the Bulletin:
Part Two of Helen Cox’s ‘Living the History: a Re-enactor’s Experience of the Fifteenth
Century. This is on the subject of campfire cookery and period sounds.
A report on the Scottish Branch’s Lecture Day in November 2008 (unavoidably held over from
this issue for various reasons including space).
An article on Elizabeth of York and her relationship to Henry VII, by David Baldwin, as part of
our retrospective on the quincentenary of Henry’s death.
A report on the Leeds Conference.
We hope also to have an article by Philippa Langley looking at the reputations that other
monarchs would have gained if they had reigned for 777 days the length of time that Richard
III occupied the throne.
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Obituaries
Anne Keighley, (22 July 1930 to 11 February 2009)
Anne Keighley, otherwise known as Anne de Bredesden or
Anne Lee, died, at her home in Competa, Malaga, Spain, on
11 February, after a long illness, which had affected her for
some years, but which she never let get the better of her: it
just meant she had to rest more between days of doing what
she wanted. Anne was a nurse by profession, had been a
nurse in the navy, and had travelled the world. I went with
her and another friend, Judith Eden, to see the
Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum, and while
queuing for entry, she was able to point out, ‘of course, I
saw it in Cairo’. Most of one’s friends are good for a few
lines in one’s address book: Anne’s varied addresses
rapidly spread to cover a page, then pages …
She was based for some time in Greenwich at the
Dreadnought Naval Hospital, was in Hertford, then, when
she married Dennis Lee, moved north, then returned south
and had three addresses in Southampton, before they retired to Spain, and settled in Competa,
where Anne cultivated her garden … her orchids, birds and dogs, and used her motor-cycle,
sometimes with hair-raising results, to travel down to the coast. That was not quite the end of her
journeying however, as she briefly moved to Sri Lanka, to help friends with a hotel there: when
this did not work out, she was able to return to Competa.
Anne and I go back a very long way: latterly, I had kept her up to date on Ricardian doings,
writing her long letters about Ricardian activities, visits etc., which she enjoyed, although
wishing she could still go on them, and collecting for her cuttings on any subjects that I thought
might interest her – Ricardian, medieval, Roman, orchids, the Cutty Sark. Periodically she
would telephone me and we would have long conversations – over the years I grew used to the
state of mind-blankness induced by her request to know what was new, thrilling, exciting …
Looking in the Society, and subsequently, by inheritance, the London and Home Counties
Branch, signing-in book for another purpose, I found our names – at first separate, and then
following each other. I stayed put, apart from a brief foray to library school, but she was soon
moving about the country. I well recall at one point she thought to set up home in a caravan on
Peel Island: this filled Joyce Melhuish with such horror, at Anne’s large, American,
misconception of the ease, or lack of, with which she could get down to London, to join in
Society activities, that she, Joyce, mobilised all her forces (and those who knew Joyce will know
exactly what I mean!) to prove to Anne that this was not a good idea. She contacted caravan
clubs, etc., to prove that caravans in a Peel Island winter were not a good thing. On that occasion,
Anne desisted.
After we had known each other for a few years, we decided to go on holiday together, and,
years before the Great Ricardian Coronation Progress Tour (of 1983, a.k.a. ‘The Yomp’), we did
our own tour, starting modestly with a visit to York and Yorkshire, using public transport. This
we followed up with a week long, countrywide tour, visiting Ricardian sites, with the great help
of Ricardian Britain. Anne hired the car and did the driving, I provided the navigation,
background information and hotel booking. The car became home to an eclectic collection of
souvenirs, including a small, detached, piece of Middleham Castle, (it was already detached,
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Anne assured me …) and a lively, personality-filled, Wensleydale cheese – well, it certainly was
by the time it arrived in London, a week later.
I never managed to get out to Spain to see Anne in situ, but I am very glad we did meet up,
for the last time, as it turned out, in April 2008, at Waterloo, for a long lunch and talk – although
the event was visited by Morton’s efforts in the travel department: on the first occasion on which
Anne tried to travel up from Southampton, a trackside fire outside Waterloo main line station
knocked out all the signalling, and she could not get further than Clapham Junction. Fortunately
she tried again the next weekend, and we did meet.
Elizabeth Nokes
Loraine Winsor, Sydney, New South Wales
The Sydney New South Wales Branch is sad to report the death of one of its long-time members,
Loraine Winsor. Although she lived some distance from Sydney and was unable to attend general
meetings, our contact with her was always valuable.
Her husband, Frank, sent us the following message: ‘Loraine was always a supporter of
Richard III, long before she joined the Society. One of her greatest pleasures was a visit to
Bosworth dudring our trip to the UK in 1999, and her excitement as she roamed the field, visited
the well and had her photo taken under the White Boar Standard was unforgettable. As Loraine’s
health deteriorated later, she never lost her enthusiasm for the aims of your Society and eagerly
awaited the delivery of her Ricardians and Bulletins. On behalf of her family I want to thank the
Richard III Society for the pleasure Loraine derived from her membership and wish you all well
with every success in the future.’
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Calendar
We run a calendar of all forthcoming events: if you are aware of any events of Ricardian
interest, whether organised by the Society – Committee, Visits Committee, Research Committee,
Branches/Groups – or by others, please let Lesley Boatwright have full details, in sufficient time
for entry. The calendar will also be run on the website.
Date
2009
Events
Originator
10-14 July
Long Weekend Visit
South Wales, based in Swansea
Visits Committee
23 August
Bosworth Visit
Visits Committee
see p. 7
23 August
Bosworth commemoration, St Alkelda’s
church, Middleham, 2.00 pm
Yorkshire Branch
5 September
Visit to Croyland Abbey
Visits Committee
5 September
Yorkshire Branch AGM, Wheatlands Hotel,
Scarcroft Road, York, 1.30 pm
Yorkshire Branch
3 October
AGM & Members’ Day
Staple Inn Hall, London
Secretary
9-11 October
Australasian Convention
Helen Hardegen
14 November
Norwich Branch Study Day: Towton
Past and Present
Ann Marie Hayek
2010
Visit to France
Visits Committee
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