Ricardian Bulletin - Richard III Society

Ricardian
Bulletin
Summer 2008
Contents
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From the Chairman
The Wills Index
Society News and Notices
New Members’ Survey
Who Do You Think You Are? Live
Media Retrospective
A Visit to Bruges by Sue and Dave Wells
News and Reviews
Meet The Historian: An interview with Dr Ian Mortimer
New Members
Proceedings of the Triennial Conference 2008: Part 1: Perspective
The Man Himself: by Annette Carson
Archaeological Excavations at Greyfriars, Leicester: by Chris Wardle
More Research - Tempting Diversions: by Toni Mount
Margaret of York - A Genuinely Scandalous Dispensation? - a response: by Mark Ballard
An Impromptu Debate
The Real Reason Why Hastings Lost his Head: some thoughts by Wendy Moorhen
Correspondence
The Barton Library
Report on Society Events
Future Society Events
Branches and Groups
Branch and Groups Contacts - Update
Obituaries
Recently Deceased Members
Calendar
Contributions
Contributions are welcomed from all members. All contributions should be sent to the Technical Editor, Lynda Pidgeon.
Bulletin Press Dates
15 January for spring issue; 15 April for summer issue; 15 July for autumn issue; 15 October for winter issue.
Articles should be sent well in advance.
Bulletin & Ricardian Back Numbers
Back issues of the The Ricardian and 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, 2008
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From the Chairman
I
’m writing this a few days after the Society appeared for the first time at the Who Do You
Think You Are? Live exhibition at Olympia, and what a success it has been for us! There was
a lot of interest from people who visited our stand, many new members were recruited and there
were some welcome initial sales of the Wills Index CD, and of course, we gained some significant positive publicity by just being there. (One of the new members lives just around the corner
from where I grew up, so we spent a few minutes reminiscing, as you can imagine.) My grateful
thanks go to all involved with this success, to Wendy Moorhen for organising everything, and
especially to Josephine Tewson for her absolutely sterling work on the Saturday. She was certainly our star attraction.
But that won’t be the end of it. Flushed with our success, next year we will be back at Olympia, while this year we will be at the Leeds Medieval Congress in July (see Jane Trump’s Low
Down for the background to this venture). In August we will be making our presence felt at Bosworth, utilising the portable stand that we purchased last year. If you are going to the battlefield
centre for the anniversary events be sure to visit. We are truly making our presence felt where it
matters.
The publication of the Wills Index is an important milestone for the Society. It is the culmination of over a decade’s work by the many members engaged in its compilation and is a credit to
them all. It will do much to enhance further the Society’s reputation amongst historians and researchers of all kinds. Again, my sincere thanks go to all those involved.
As you will see, we have another full issue, and it is no understatement to say that the Bulletin
just goes on getting better and better, and these are not my words, they are yours. We have the
first in what, I hope, will be a regular series of interviews, kicking off with a fascinating interview with historian Dr Ian Mortimer. Annette Carson contributes to The Man Himself and you
can read more about Annette’s views in her new book (see page 19 for details). We continue the
debate around Lord Hastings with Wendy Moorhen’s response to David Johnson’s recent articles. The triennial conference held in Cirencester provided some lively and thought provoking
talks and we are publishing shortened versions in the Bulletin. We start with Anne Sutton’s setting of the scene, and Livia Visser-Fuchs’s account of what people were saying about those two
princes on the other side of the channel. We also have Ken Hillier’s review of the whole weekend, which gives a real taste of what it was like to be there.
You will also get your 2008 Ricardian this month; a feast of articles and reviews providing
much challenging and informative reading. Can it really be five years since we launched our
journal on an annual basis with the festschrift edition honouring Anne Sutton’s twenty-five years
as editor? Indeed it is, and that means that, this year, we celebrate Anne’s thirtieth year as editor.
To repeat words spoken at the launch of the festschrift, ‘In a world where “dumbing down”
seems rife, The Ricardian has maintained and enhanced its high standards of scholarship and that
has been an invaluable asset to this Society’. This remains even truer today, so we salute Anne
again and may we hope that she will go on and on for many years yet to come?
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Looking ahead to the AGM and members’ weekend in York, I ask you to get your bookings
in for all the events. It promises to be a great weekend, especially with the opportunity to visit
Middleham, somewhere hard to get to when you don’t have your own transport.
At the moment, everywhere seems beset with bleak economic news , so let me finish with
some good news. The Society has its house well in order, it’s making good progress on many
fronts and the cause of good King Richard is prospering. I wish you all an enjoyable summer,
and for those south of the equator, a relaxing winter.
Phil Stone
The Wills Index
The Wills Index is the culmination of ten
year’s work by members of the Society and
the CD-ROM contains a tabular index to
over 28,000 testators of English wills and
testaments that have been published in serial
publications, books and other printed matter
from the eighteenth century to the year
2000. The criteria for the selection of these
published wills and testaments are that they
were either made by the testator or proved
by an English ecclesiastical court between 1
January 1399 and 24 March 1540. Included
on the CD is a tabular summary describing
the sources. There is also a leaflet to introduce the index, its sources and the conventions used.
Index to Testators of English
late Medieval and early
Tudor Wills and Testaments
1399 –1540 published in serial
publications, books
and other printed matter
between 1717-2000
The aim of the index is to enable the user to
ascertain whether a particular will, or part of
it, has been published and, therefore, making it more readily accessible to historians
and genealogists than an extant manuscript
copy stored in a remote archive.
You will need Microsoft Excel and Word
installed on your PC/MAC in order to view the
contents of the CD.
Richard III Society
The index is dedicated to the memory of four members of the project team who have sadly
passed away, Daphne Booth, Philomena Connolly, Philomena Jones and Marian Treagus.
The Wills Index is available from the Sales Liaison Officer. See inside back cover for contact
details. It is priced at £9.99 plus £1.50 for postage and packing. There is a reduced price of £7.99
(plus p&p) for those who participated in the Wills Index Project. Members who pre-ordered the
index at the Triennial Conference should now send their payment direct to the Membership Liaison Officer.
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Society News and Notices
Richard III Society Members’ Weekend & Annual General Meeting,
York, Friday 3 to Sunday 5 October 2008
Notice is hereby given that the 2008 Annual General Meeting of the Richard III
Society will be held on Saturday 4 October 2008 in The Merchant Adventurers’ Hall,
Fossgate, York YO1 9XD
The formal business of the meeting will include reports from the officers, the presentation
of the annual accounts of the Society up to 21 March 2008 and the election of the Executive
Committee for the next year. Exact timings for the AGM will be notified in the autumn Bulletin.
Nominations for the Executive Committee should reach the Secretary, Mrs Jane Trump, at
Gorsedene, Bagshot Road, Knaphill, Woking, Surrey GU21 2SF not later than Friday 19
September. All nominations must be proposed and seconded, and accepted in writing by the
member proposed.
Resolutions for the Agenda, proposed and seconded, should also reach the Secretary by 19
September.
If you intend to come to the AGM, please book your place by completing the booking form
in this Bulletin.
Call to Branches and Groups
If your branch/group wishes to make a report at the AGM, please let the Secretary know by Friday 19 September so that you may be included on the AGM Agenda. Reports can be made in
person by a branch/group representative or, for overseas branches/groups, if no local representative is to be in York at the time of the AGM, in printed form, 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.
Full details and logistics for the Members’ Weekend and AGM will be published in the autumn Bulletin but, in the meantime, if you have any queries, please contact the Secretary – address inside back cover.
Programme for Members’ Weekend
Friday 3 October: Drinks Reception at Barley Hall, Coffey Yard, off Stonegate
Wine and soft drinks with nibbles. A great start to the weekend and a pleasant way for members
to get together with each other before going into York to find dinner.
Cost: £5.60 per head.
Saturday 4 October: AGM & Members’ Day at The Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, Fossgate
Buffet lunch: Selection of 8 items, including sandwiches, savoury wraps and snacks, fruit and
desserts. Vegetarian choices are included.
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Cost: £12 per head – drinks will be sold separately on the day.
(Tea/coffee during the Members’ Day will be purchased on the day.)
Evening Banquet: 3 course dinner with lamb shanks for main course (plus vegetarian option of
spinach & ricotta cannelloni in tomato sauce – caterers to be notified in advance so please do
let me know if you wish to have this option) with Bucks Fizz on arrival before the banquet.
Wine, water and soft drinks included.
Dress code: flexible – black tie or lounge suits for men; cocktail dresses or smart-casual for ladies; medieval dress for those who wish to indulge.
Cost: £36.00 per head.
Sunday 5 October: Coach Trip to Middleham
Coach to Middleham to visit the castle. Drive on to Leyburn for free time to have lunch and explore Leyburn. Return to York for around 5 p.m. with drop-off at York Station for those travelling home by train.
Cost: £8.00 per head. (Entrance to Middleham Castle and lunch are not included and will be
paid for individually on the day.)
I do hope as many members as possible can make it to York for what promises to be a very
enjoyable weekend and a great way to transact Society business but, more importantly, for members from different areas to get together and catch up on each other’s news.
Unfortunately I have not had as many booking forms as I anticipated back so please can
I urge you to return your booking forms (to be found in this Bulletin) with payment as soon
as possible. I appreciate that October seems a long way off but, as an organiser, I need to
know numbers by early July to plan accordingly. Many thanks.
Jane Trump
Executive Committee – The Low Down
The EC have been busy pursuing many of the same projects
I covered in the last ‘Low Down’. This is how it goes. So
many projects are on-going and so many events have to be
prepared for months in advance – and the amount of organisation that goes into many of the PR events the Society is
now involved in is incredible. Wendy has been working
overtime to prepare for Who Do You Think You Are? Live
and using her extensive expertise to ensure the Society can
promote itself in the most effective manner. The EC feel
keenly that, if we are to take part in such events, the Society
must promote a professional image. At Who Do You Think
You Are? Live the Society promoted the Wills Index but as
importantly, it promoted itself with a view to encouraging
new membership. However, the Society is keen to gain kudos in both the popular and academic worlds and, to that
end, we are also taking a stall at this year’s Leeds Congress.
At this prestigious gathering of history academics we shall
showcase the forthcoming transcription of the Logge wills
and further promote the Society as a serious body of researchers. We also aim to sponsor a series of talks in the
2009 Congress and are at present looking into themes and
speakers. The EC have re-vamped the Society brochure to
reflect changes made since the last one was launched and we
will include it at the above two events and to ensure that it is
made available at all relevant locations and events going
forward. It would be wonderful if we could have a member
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The Society’s New Brochure
dedicated to overseeing this – any offers?
In my last ‘Low Down’, I mentioned that the EC had been looking into the reasons for attrition amongst members and had sent out a survey to relatively new members (within their first
year). We are delighted to say that, on the whole, people were happy with their membership and
what they received from the Society. However, the EC have taken on board comments and suggestions made and will be acting upon them. A full report is printed in this Bulletin.
The Members’ Weekend for 2008 in York is slowly taking shape and we are looking into a
speaker for the AGM. It is always difficult to anticipate numbers when arranging catering, which
is awkward when caterers expect confirmation of numbers very early, so, if you are intending to
attend the Members’ Weekend, please can you make the Society Secretary very happy by returning your form as soon as possible, even though the event may seem rather a long way off at present? My thanks go to those who have responded already.
Our Treasurer, Paul Foss, took a detour whilst out in Spain recently to visit the Richard III
College, the principal of which, James Berry is a member of the Society. Paul was very gratified
to discover that College pupils knew more about Richard and his times than he did. James is obviously doing sterling work. Wouldn’t it be grand if more UK colleges and schools covered the
fifteenth century so assiduously?
Finally, Richard III meets The Beano! Well, no, not exactly, but the Society has been approached by a company which produces Shakespeare plays in comic form and their latest project
is Richard III. They are keen to work with the Society to include facts on the historical Richard
in contrast to the dramatic character. This is encouraging. These books should appeal to the
younger generation so it will be a great way to introduce Richard III to students who may not get
to know about him from their history teachers and it is yet another example of people in the media approaching the Society for assistance. The website plus the persistence and hard work of the
PR team has been invaluable in bringing the Society to the attention of those people who are so
crucial to bringing Richard and his times to life for the populace. There is still much to be done to
persuade those in the media that the ‘revisionist’ version of Richard can be just as enticing and
entertaining as the ‘traditional’ version but we are definitely getting there.
Jane Trump
Membership Matters
There will be changes in the membership department later this year. When we took over the department in February 2006 it was an interim appointment until we were both retired. Wendy’s
retirement finally took place at the end of February this year and we will be re-locating permanently to France at the end of October.
Two members have agreed to take on the roles of membership manager and membership liaison officer and further details will be published in the autumn Bulletin.
In the meantime we will be writing to all UK members later in the summer to remind you
about the new subscription rates and that standing order forms will need to cancelled and new
forms completed.
Brian and Wendy Moorhen
St Edmundsbury Press
St Edmundsbury Press have been our printers for many years, first printing The Ricardian when
it was a quarterly publication and then the new-style Bulletin. Unfortunately the company has
now ceased to trade. The news came as The Ricardian and the Bulletin were in preparation and
the EC needed to find a new printer very quickly. After a selection process, Micropress Printers
of Halesworth, Suffolk, have been appointed. This has of course led to delay in the printing our
journals but normal service will be resumed for the autumn.
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New Members’ Survey
In January this year, a survey document was sent to all members who joined the Society between
January 2006 and September 2007, a total of 199, of which 49 were based overseas. The Executive Committee took this action with a view to seeking the views of new members on a number
of issues under the following headings:



Overall impression of the Society
Communication
Contacts
Scores were invited on various sub-headings with 1 being ‘excellent’ and 5 ‘poor’. Comments
were also invited on both specific and general matters.
As at May 2008, 51 responses had been received and a summary of these is given below.
Not all respondents answered all questions, hence not all of the numbers in the table add up to
fifty-one.
Many respondents added remarks, many of which were complimentary, and it is clear that
generally the Society is meeting most people’s expectations. Over 90% of people replying ranked
the Society as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’. The changes that have been made in recent months have
generally been received positively. Of course, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln – you can’t please
all of the people all of the time.
Some members commented on the work done by the ‘office staff’. We felt that we should
clarify that the Society has no staff and, both at national and branch level, relies on the work of
volunteers to get things done.
The low awareness of the e-newsletter is a matter of some concern and this will be examined
further. Any members wishing to receive the e-newsletter should provide their e-mail details to
Richard Van Allen (contact e-mail address: [email protected]).
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There were some specific comments or personal issues, which are being addressed by the
Executive Committee.
Comments were made about the difficulty in travelling to branch meetings or events and this
emphasises the need for high quality and regular communication via the Bulletin, branch newsletters or electronic media.
A small number of ‘new’ members were former members that had re-joined and their responses have also, in the main, been positive.
With any survey, there are bound to be contradictions; for example, there were several comments to the effect that the Society focused too much on Richard III and should widen its remit to
the medieval age to provide new members with more detailed information, or did not encourage
much ‘anti-Ricardian’ commentary. We contacted the research officer for her comments and she
responded as follows>
We are indeed a very focused Society with a specific mission statement. However, in order to study King Richard we cannot do so without understanding the times in which he
lived and we encourage study and research into the late medieval period. The policy of the
Bulletin team is to encourage articles which reflect this wider breadth whilst always trying
to ensure there is something specific to Richard. The events organised by the research
committee, similarly cover aspects of late medieval life, such as medieval women, art,
heraldry and religion (details of past events can be found on the website). The website,
whilst focusing on the activities of the Society, does carry an extensive section on King
Richard but it also has sections on the Wars of the Roses in general and the fifteenth century. We very much wish to expand the latter section and would welcome contributions
from members. The Ricardian carries a wide selection of articles based on original research as well as around thirty book reviews each issue, which keep members up to date
with recent publications relating to the fifteenth century.
With regard to not encouraging anti-Ricardian commentary, inevitably members tend to
be pro-Richard but any ‘party-line’ that we may have would encourage Richard to be
judged fairly and sensibly, in other words ‘warts and all’. Providing nothing is flagrantly
inaccurate members’ views are published in the Bulletin, for example The Man Himself
article published in the spring issue, which has attracted some support for the author’s
views.
We are pleased to say that there was no indication of any desire to establish a ‘fan club’.
The survey has been helpful in providing feedback to the EC about new members’ first impressions of the Society and we would like to take this opportunity of thanking all those who
took the time to complete and return the questionnaire and for the comments made. Society officers can be contacted by Ricardian members, old and new, using the details set out inside the back
cover of the Bulletin.
Thanks are due to Howard Choppin who designed the survey on the EC’s behalf.
Susan and Dave Wells
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Who Do You Think
You Are? Live
2-4 May, Olympia, London
SUE AND DAVE WELLS
T
his was the first occasion at which we had represented the Society as members of the Executive Committee. We were attending on the Saturday and approached the day with enthusiasm, but also with some trepidation – would we be able to do the Society justice at this high profile event in ‘selling’ its high academic and scientific achievements in connection with the Wills
Index and Logge projects and the DNA research into forward genealogy? There was no reason to
be concerned. In the event, we had a great day and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
The Who Do You Think You Are? Live exhibition was designed to follow on from the recent
BBC television series which traced the family history of celebrities. The exhibition contained
several hundred stands providing a variety of methodologies and information for both the amateur and professional genealogist and historian, together with historical and special interest
groups.
Celebrities such as Tony Robinson, Natasha Kaplinsky, Alistair McGowan and others spoke
in open theatre areas about their family history and these were particularly popular. We would
have liked to invite Tony Robinson to the stand to follow-on from his TV programme about
Cecily and the French archer but he was involved in presentations and interviews all day.
The highlight for the Society on the day we attended, however, was our very own celebrity,
Josephine Tewson. She was an absolute star attraction and visitors stopped and looked, and
looked again and finally came out with, ‘I know you, you’re on the telly aren’t you?’ Jo chatted
with the visitors, signed autographs and at one point even went into character as Elizabeth in the
popular TV series Keeping Up Appearances.
The show was essentially three exhibitions in one. The major section was devoted to family
history and genealogy, a military history section displayed some items of military equipment
including light munitions, a first World War tank and more modern machines for comparison and
finally, a small section devoted to archaeology with ‘finds’ on display.
There were family research stalls for many counties and the Yorkshire stand had some splendid white rose badges which, sadly, were only for use by their own representatives.
The Society’s stand was well located, immediately next to a herbal and fruit wine seller – who
offered regular free tastings! – and just round the corner from an Italian ice cream stand with
some delicious products, to which many of the team will be able to testify.
Our stand presented a very professional image and proved to be a good attraction to passersby, many of whom started the conversation with ‘he was much maligned wasn’t he?’ or ‘he had a
bad press’. So, maybe, the word is getting out at last. Others wanted to know what the Society
stood for and ‘what do you do?’ was a frequent question. We were all, of course, very happy to
answer at some length. This helped to sign-up a number of new members.
The wills index also generated a lot of interest and the CD-Rom was a popular seller, as was
Jeremy Potter’s Good King Richard? amongst those who wanted to read a little more about our
man.
Overall, the event was very well attended throughout each day. Clearly, historical and family
research is a very popular pastime. Whilst there were several areas where food and drink could
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be purchased and eaten, seats were at a premium and Sue’s dash for a free table at the Crush Bar
would have rivalled an Olympic sprinter.
All in all, we felt that the Society’s presence at this event was a very positive move in furthering our image and giving positive publicity to our raison d’être. We understand on the final day,
when approached by the organisers, Phil and other members of the EC decided we should sign up
again for next year’s show.
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Postscript from Sue and Dave: We were catching up on recorded programmes and watched
BBC’s ‘In Search of Medieval Britain’. The presenter visited Nottingham and Britain’s oldest
pub where she was shown basic brewing skills by Martin Gelling, who was the friar on the adjacent stand at the show. See picture on p. 10
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Media Retrospective
to catch a few winks and suddenly the ghosts
of all those people he has murdered on the
way to the throne appear to him: the little
princes, smothered to death; Clarence,
drowned in his favorite variety of wine;
Buckingham, Richard’s best friend, beheaded.
And so Buckingham’s ghost tells him, “dream
on, dream on, of bloody deeds and death” ...
‘Whereupon, of course, Richard wakes,
telling himself – and let’s condense things a
bit here, shall we? – “Alack I love myself.
Wherefore ... Oh no! Alas I rather hate myself
for hateful deeds ... My conscience hath a
thousand sev’ral tongues, and ev’ry tongue
brings in a sev’ral tale, and ev’ry tale condemns me for a villain ... There is no creature
loves me and if I die no soul will pity me.
And wherefore should they, since that I find
in myself no pity to myself?”
‘And there you have it,’ Price said. ‘My
kind of villain. And so why the blazes can’t
the eggheads and revisionists leave him alone
for all the rest of us to enjoy?’
From Karen M. Halstrom, Copenhagen,
Denmark
Human Monsters. The Definitive Edition, by
Michael H. Price and George E. Turner, Luminary Press, Baltimore, USA, 2007
As well as an informative chapter on the
1939 Rowland V. Lee film Tower of London
with Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, etc., the
Afterword ‘Vincent Price and the Villains
that still pursued him’ reveals that the actor
‘reserved a singular affection for Richard III’
when he played in the 1972 re-make of the
above film, but with notable reservations. ‘A
terrible thing has happened to poor Richard,’
he told interviewer Michael H. Price. ‘This
hideous little book called The Daughter of
Time, by one Josephine Tey, a mystery writer
who should have stuck to the perfectly respectable butler-did-it pot boilers, pretended
some years ago to have proved that Richard
III was a victim of one of the greatest hoaxes
in history, that he wasn’t a villain, oh, no, not
at all, that he was a nice guy. Eeh! Blamed it
all on those dreadful Tudors, who of course
were a pretty flawed lot in their own right, but
in fact rather put an end to Richard’s epic
trouble-making. A terribly influential treatise
– emphasis on the terrible.’ (Josephine Tey
often is hailed, backhandedly, as a mystery
writer for people who despise mysteries. In
other words: why bother? The Daughter of
Time concerns a police inspector who becomes fascinated by an official portrait of
King Richard III and concludes that such a
pleasant-looking man could never have committed all those dreadful deeds. As Vincent
Price put it on another occasion: ‘what a
crock!’
‘But before all these new-made geniuses
started to iron the kinks out of our mad Richard’s deliciously bad reputation, Shakespeare,
that extraordinary genius of so few short centuries ago, posed the question without prejudice: was Richard a villain or wasn’t he? Now
there’s an extraordinary scene in Shakespeare’s Richard III where – right on the eve
of the Battle of Bosworth – Richard is trying
From Geoffrey Wheeler
The Times Literary Supplement, 21 March
2008. ‘Tey Time’ by David Horspool, reviewing Nicola Upson, An Expert in Murder
(Faber).
‘There is nothing new in novelists paying
their literary respects to the authors of classic
detective fiction, writing in the approved style
as an act of homage to the masters. ... In An
Expert in Murder, Nicola Upson takes ...
golden-age crime novelist, Josephine Tey,
and attempts something slightly different
from, and harder than, pure pastiche. [She]
casts Tey as a character in a world with elements both from her own detective fiction,
and from the background to her work as a
playwright. As Gordon Daviot, Tey ... wrote
Richard of Bordeaux, one of the hits of early
1930s theatre ... The novel begins with Tey
travelling down to London from her native
Scotland to see the final performances [of
Richard of Bordeaux] ... A (seemingly)
chance encounter on the train with a young
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woman ... who is murdered at the end of the
journey, sets off the action ... There is much
to enjoy in the novel ... Nicola Upson knows
that much of the appeal of Richard of Bordeaux lay in its pacifist message, and her plot,
which turns on buried secrets from the First
World War, is overshadowed by forebodings
of a second. ... Josephine Tey may not be a
familiar enough figure to sustain a long series, but a sequel, at least, would be very welcome.’
nothing to link him with the murder of his
nephews ... Was he any worse than his contemporaries? Possibly not.
The Lancaster and York Stamps Unlike the
previous issues of covers depicting James
Bond and Working Dogs, the Royal Mail’s
Lancaster and York stamps attracted little
publicity in the UK press. The Sunday Telegraph (6 Feb) headlined ‘A Boy King Remembered’ under a postcard-size reproduction of the Edward V image, adding that he
only ‘reigned for two months, before, it is
believed, he was murdered by his uncle Richard III’. The Times (28 Feb), heralding
‘Stamps Deliver Heads of State’, printed a
full colour frieze of the set, but only a small
paragraph on their launch was reported in
‘The Daily Telegraph’.
Naturally, the specialist magazines gave
more prominent coverage. Stamp Magazine
(March 2008) devoted five pages to an article
by Cyril Parsons,1 ‘Golden Sovereigns’, a
thematic guide to the English monarchy on
stamps world wide. These included the notable Barbuda 1970s series, and those of St
Vincent (1977), both of which strove for
some authenticity by including modern artists’ versions of the Edward V figure that
appears in Lambeth Palace MS 265, and, in
the latter series as well, the Canterbury effigy
of Henry IV (see spring Bulletin, Correspondence, p.46). This issue of Stamp Magazine
also included two pages contributed by Julia
Lee on ‘Top Covers’, illustrating some of the
First Day Covers soon to be available (at least
two of which unfortunately featured anachronistic red and white roses, which also formed
the logo for the annual ‘Stampex’ exhibition,
Islington) and ‘GB Collectors’ on the same
issue, with the repeated assertion ‘Richard III
usurped his [Edward V’s] throne and probably ordered his murder’.
At least the texts printed in the various
Royal Mail packs and FDCs proved more
amenable. The preview (Feb 2008) booklets
had promised a ‘team of experts’ to ‘guide
you through the troubled times’ where ‘The
Houses of York and Lancaster were continually at war’. These experts were headed by
historian Bettany Hughes (more famous for
Daily Telegraph ‘Seven’ Magazine, 23 March
2008, by Sandi Toksvig
My partner comes from Lancashire and I am
often berated for failing to recall whether to
support white or red roses in the great War of
the Roses. I think it’s too long ago to take
sides, but the bit I like about this critical piece
of Britsh history is that the woman who led
the Lancastrians was French. It was today in
1429 that Margaret of Anjou was born. She
married Henry VI of England in Titchfield,
Hampshire, a place otherwise well known for
housing a branch of the Office for National
Statistics. ... Her son’s inheritance was threatened by Richard, Duke of York, and her husband was unable to do much except dribble,
so Margaret found herself in charge, literally.
She led the army at the Battle of Tewkesbury
on 4 May 1471. ... I like to think she wore her
armour with the kind of élan only a Frenchwoman might achieve. ...
Times 2, 3 April 2008 - ‘Last Night’s TV:
Andrew Billen reviewing BBC 4’s ‘Most
Sincerely: Hughie Green’:
‘A merciless portrayal (by Trevor Eve) …
like Richard III, Green was such a fascinating
monster that you hardly missed the lack of a
convincing psychological explanation’.
Time Out, 27 March – 2 April 2008 ‘Kings of
Convenience’ article on Shakespeare’s royal
characters by Jane Edwardes.
‘Richard, Edward IV’s youngest brother,
was a skilful commander and a master of
spin. Reports of his physical deformities are
said to have been grossly exaggerated and he
has some powerful supporters today who declared that he is much maligned and there is
13
her work on classical Greece and Rome,
though she did present Channel 4 TV’s
‘Seven Ages of Britain’ – AV Library 2004),
with, for the main presentation pack, Mike
Loades on armour and weaponry. Unfortunately the necessary constraints of limited
space led to over-simplification. The ‘Wars of
the Roses’ (with more unavoidable reference
to the floral symbols) was dealt with in 140
words, and rather more were devoted to the
section headed ‘The 100 Years War’. The
‘potted biographies’ were also minimal. Under ‘Edward V’ we read that Richard ‘ordered
the princes to the Tower of London ‘for their
own protection’. Within less than three
months [he] had the boys declared illegitimate and himself proclaimed king. The Princes in the Tower were never seen again.’ Richard’s own entry stresses that ‘he was a widely
respected figure of great influence’ but ‘he
used that position on Edward’s death to take
the throne’, and introduces the marvellously
ambiguous phrase ‘Once the little princes
were dealt with, Richard faced a further challenge’.
‘The Age of Lancaster and York’ stamps
also included the four-stamp ‘miniature sheet’
of Owain Glyn Dwr, Agincourt, Caxton and
the Battle of Tewkesbury, which unfortunately has to be added to the list of inaccuracies
perpetrated by this latest issue. The Victorian
engraving used for the 78p stamp originates
from an 1870s edition of a pictorial History of
England
and,
although
captioned
‘Tewkesbury’ there, is clearly derived from
the fifteenth-century Ghent MS illumination
of the Battle of Barnet.
For the official First Day Covers featuring
a fifteenth-century MS illumination of Richmond Castle, the text and biographies were
further abbreviated, from an average of 75
words for the Yorkist kings, to 50.
The limited edition ‘cachet covers’,
adorned with the heraldic Royal Arms and
calligraphy, mainly dealt with the history of
Westminster Hall, but the biographies, this
time attributed to Jim Davies, could well
demonstrate that often quoted (mistaken) assertion that ‘All we know of Shakespeare’s
life could be written on a postage stamp,’ as
that of Richard would certainly fit on the
commemorative example. It runs, in full:
‘The hunchback and limp are probably latterday fabrications etched forever by the pen of
Shakespeare. Richard died fighting bravely
against the Lancastrian forces of Henry Tudor
in the Battle of Bosworth. He was the last of
the Plantagenet line and the last king to die in
battle.’
1 Founder and member of the British Royal
Portraits Stamp Group. Details from the Hon.
Treasurer, Allan Rendle, 23 More Close, St
Paul’s Court, London W14 9BN [email protected]
From Annette Morgan, New Zealand
Stamp Magazine, April 2008, Letter of the
Month, by Graham Knight of Birmingham,
given the large heading ‘Bare-faced cheek of
commemorative sheets’.
‘With collectors already complaining in
their droves about Royal Mail’s greedy outpourings, its latest money-spinner is the best
yet, breathtaking in its bare-faced cheek and
arrogance. By offering its own version of
business customised sheets, the organisation
expects collectors to pay £13.50 for £3.40
worth of stamps which will never be used!
Not that we are surprised. After all, Royal
Mail recently stooped to the level of issuing a
stamp to commemorate Richard III, a vicious
thug responsible for the brutal murders of one
of his brothers, his two nephews and probably
his own wife.’
[Editors: the Society’s secretary, Jane Trump,
promptly wrote a letter to Stamp Magazine in
reply to this comment.]
From Pat Joseph
Discovering Kings and Queens, by D.E.
Wickham (Shire Books 1994)
The widely held opinion that Richard III was
a monstrous tyrant, deformed and a murderer,
is based on Shakespeare’s play, a political
work written during the reign of Elizabeth I.
Richard had been overthrown by Elizabeth’s
grandfather, the usurper Henry Tudor, and the
play was based on books written by Henry’s
supporters. It is known that Richard had been
extremely popular as Duke of Gloucester and
was greatly mourned at his death, particularly
in the North. He had been made king by ac14
clamation, whereas for Henry VII to be safely
enthroned the Princes in the Tower had to be
dead. It is arguments like these that lead many
people to see Richard III as the victim of a
remarkably successful Tudor campaign to
blacken his reputation.
... In the same year [1483] Richard stayed
at the Angel Inn in the High Street at Grantham, Lincolnshire. Despite late eighteenthcentury additions and a new name, the Angel
and Royal Hotel, part of the building is fourteenth-century, which makes it one of the
oldest inns in England. It is even said that
King John held court there in 1213. Its fifteenth-century stone front faces the market
square and a celebrated oriel window springs
from an angel corbel. The ‘King’s Room’ is
still pointed out, for Richard signed the Duke
of Buckingham’s death warrant here on 19th
October 1483.
... Ambien Farm, south of Market Bosworth, was the centre of the battle and one
may see King Richard’s Well, near which he
is said to have died. The battle ranged over
the slopes of Ambien Hill and, in the church
at Sutton Cheney, a brass plate has been
erected by the Richard III Society, a group
dedicated to clearing his name.
From Fiona Clark
Scottish Sunday Mail Magazine, 21 April
2008. ‘Supergrass’ ABC Glasgow.
‘Apart from opener Diamond Hoo Ha
Man, the band’s new material failed to capture the crowd’s imagination. … But during
old favourites … the crowd fed off frontman
Gaz Coombes’ energetic delivery. Yet it was
Richard III that stole the show.’
From Paul Moorhead, Sue and Dave Wells
Cartoon in the Daily Mail on 1 May. It depicts a typical horse-racing trackside scene
with the bookmaker and his list of runners
and riders on the chalkboard, and his assistant
relaying a phone call from a prospective
‘punter’, saying: ‘Richard III is on the line.
He wants to put his kingdom on Mr Frittata in
the third race”.
A Visit to Bruges
D
uring a recent visit to Bruges, we decided to try to look beyond the obvious (and well
loved) sights to find lesser known places of interest. As a result, we found ourselves outside the English Convent at 2 p.m. on a very quiet April afternoon wondering if we were in the
right place. It is situated very close to the windmills that overlook the embankment to the main
road and is in a residential area. There was no-one else around and the wonderfully domed
church seemed to have no entrance on the street. Moving along, almost whispering for fear of
disturbing the amazing calm, we found a small door in the wall with a notice board that confirmed that we were, indeed, in the right place and that the Convent was open to visitors at that
time.
We tentatively opened the door to find ourselves in a small courtyard. Another door had a
notice asking visitors to ring and enter. It led us into a small entrance hall. There being no immediate response, we were debating what to do next when another couple arrived and almost immediately a small hatch in the wall opened and a nun popped her head through. Now, as this was a
convent, we should have expected this but somehow we didn’t and the feeling that we had
stepped into another time-zone or dimension in space (yes, we are Trekkies) grew stronger.
The other couple spoke to her in Dutch and then we asked if we could see the Church. A
smiling yes and a few moments later another nun opened a gate in a grilled archway leading to
the interior.
15
Sister Francine was a charming French
lady with a good awareness of story telling
and a twinkle in her eye matched by a lovely sense of humour. She asked the Dutch
couple if it was OK to conduct the tour in
English although she could also speak
Dutch if necessary. They were fine about
English only. It is at times like these that the
general acceptance of English as a universal
language comes to the fore. We could never
imagine her asking us if it was OK to speak
only Dutch.
She then gave us a brief history of the
Convent. At the time of the Reformation,
many English nuns fled to the continent and
a large number found their way to the monastery of St Ursula in Louvain.
In 1609, because of the continuing influx, it became necessary to found an English monastery in that town. This was the
monastery of St Monica. By the late 1620s
the foundation was seriously overcrowded
and the decision was made to find another
site. In 1629, in Bruges, they founded the
Priory of Our Lady of Nazareth, now known
as the ‘English Convent’.
The present domed church was built in the 1730s in the baroque style. For many years its
domed appearance was unique to the region. The Sisters established a community school and
this led the site to escape the worst consequence of French rule during most of the eighteenth
century.
However, the community has seen troubled times, no more so than during the French Revolution when, in 1794, they were forced to flee. Most of the nuns obtained a passage to England
on a merchant ship designed for transporting grain and after a dreadful six-day crossing, they
disembarked in London. After some uncertain times, they were finally offered the house of a
recently deceased Sister and settled in Hengrave Hall in Suffolk. Following the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, the Sisters were able to return safely to Bruges and daily life in the convent was reestablished.
During these troubled times, the Prioress (1766 – 1807) was Mother Mary Augustina More,
an eighth generation descendant of Sir Thomas More. She brought with her a contemporary
portrait of Sir Thomas which still hangs in the church. Exceptionally, having explained our
interest to a rather bemused Sister Francine, we were allowed to take a photograph (no flash) as
no postcards were available.
Our visit was on the last day of our trip to Bruges and was a fitting conclusion with a surprising Ricardian connection.
Sue and Dave Wells
16
News and Reviews
’Tis the Season for Shakespeare and Richard III
It looks as if 2008, and going into 2009, is going to be a busy season for Shakespeare’s plays and
Richard III in particular. On the wider scene, the RSC staged Shakespeare’s history plays at the
Roundhouse during the year. These turned into: Richard II; John of Gaunt; Henry IV; Henry V;
Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou; Edward IV and of course Richard III.
It also appears that the BBC may be spending a lot of its budget over the next two years in
producing a run of Shakespeare’s plays, However, these will probably be the most popular ones
which will no doubt include Richard III.
Going further afield there are two festivals which will be staging Shakespeare’s Richard III.
Ludlow Festival
The first is being staged in the open air at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire in July. As part of the
performance the organisers have programmed a discussion on Richard III and our Chairman, Dr
Phil Stone, has accepted an invitation to participate.
Dates
June – Saturday 21: Monday 23 to Saturday 28: Monday 30
July – Monday 1 to Saturday 5
Our Chairman will be speaking on Thursday 3 July at two sessions to be held at the Feathers Hotel. The discussion is entitled ‘Richard III – a Bloody Tyrant’.
For further information and booking details see www.ludlowfestival.co.uk
Stamford Shakespeare Company
The second staging of Richard III is by The Stamford Shakespeare Company. This is another
out-door event, this time at the Rutland Open Air Theatre at Tolethorne Hall, Little Casterton,
Stamford, Lincolnshire.
Dates
July Tuesday 8 to Saturday 12 and Monday 21 to Saturday 26
August Monday 11 to Saturday 16 and Monday 25 to Saturday 30
(Wind in the Willows and Romeo and Juliet will be staged on the other dates.)
Prices
Monday/Tuesday £11.00: Wednesday/Thursday £12.00: Friday £14.00: Saturday £16.00
Box Office 01780 756133 or 763203 or Online www.stamfordshakespeare.co.uk
Richard Van Allen
Memory and Commemoration in Medieval England
Harlaxton 15-18 July 2008
The Harlaxton Symposium is an interdisciplinary gathering of academics, students and enthusiasts which meets annually to celebrate medieval history, art, literature and architecture through a
programme of papers selected around a chosen theme.
The Symposium, which began in 1984, was the brain-child of Dr Pamela Tudor-Craig, Lady
Wedgwood, and the host of the four-day conference has always been Harlaxton College in Lincolnshire, a delightful Victorian Baroque mansion which is now the British campus of the University of Evansville, Indiana.
Harlaxton has long been able to boast a strong participation by international scholars from
educational establishments as far afield as America and Australia. In recent years, the profile of
the conference has increased, and the high standard of papers delivered – as well as the varied
17
programme which always includes a conference dinner and an outing – creates a forum for
friendly intellectual debate which attracts people back to Harlaxton year after year.
This special symposium has two objectives: to celebrate the first quarter century of Harlaxton
symposia and, secondly, to explore how people and events were commemorated or memorialised
in medieval England. Invited speakers (including Professor Joel Rosenthal and Professor Derek
Pearsall) will reflect on how research and publication in their own field has developed over the
last twenty-five years. There will also be papers which consider the different forms that medieval
commemoration might take, and the ways in which memory was formalised: this might be in
glass windows, tomb inscriptions, naming patterns, books of hours, poems, chantry or college
foundations, chronicles, pageants and processions. We hope to be able to organise a trip to see
the chapel at Haddon Hall with its medieval glass, wall paintings and alabaster altar retable.
For further information see the web-site www.harlaxton.org.uk/2008.htm or contact:
Caroline Barron ([email protected])
Clive Burgess ([email protected])
St Mary’s Barnard Castle Appeal
Richard III was a particular benefactor of St Mary’s, Barnard
Castle, after he acquired the Lordship of the town in 1474 upon
his marriage to Anne Neville. Richard made a generous grant of
£40 to enable improvements in the church – the height of the
nave was raised with a new clerestory added, bringing light and
space into the church, the north and south aisles were widened,
and a new porch added, as well as a new chancel arch, complete
with Yorkist roses and sculpted heads of Richard and his brother Edward IV.
Still today there are evident signs of Richard’s interest and
concern for the church. A carving of Richard’s boar badge can
still be seen by the exterior east window of the south transept,
and in the north transept close by the font is a fourteenthcentury carved sculpture of St Anthony, supported by rampant
boars. The sculpted portrait heads of Edward IV and Richard still grace the chancel arch over the
nave. Now in the twenty-first century St Mary’s invites Ricardians to support a £½ million appeal. Envisioned are improvements that echo Richard’s previous alterations:
More space - a new organ has been situated at the west end of the church, freeing the south transept for the creation of a labyrinth and display space, that will speak of the church’s many historical links, including those with Richard III.
More light - as Richard’s clerestory brought new light to St Mary’s, so the south transept window will be brought to light for the first time in fifty years and a new lighting scheme created for
the church
A greater welcome - a new porch was created in Richard’s time; in the twenty-first century St
Mary’s will be able to enable access to St Margaret’s Chapel for private prayer, and offer hospitality with the creation of a servery in the new space at the west end of the church.
Richard wrote:
‘…to the Receivor of oure lordshippe of Barnardes Castelle … Forasmoche as we of oure
grace especialle have yevene and graunted towardes the building of the Churche of oure
blissed lady within oure said lordshippe the summe of xl li [£40]. We therefore wolle and
charge you that of thissues and Revenues commyng and growing of the same our lorshippe that shalbe due unto us at the Feste of seint Martyn in yeme next commyng, ye content and pay unto the Wardeyns of the said Churche the summe of xx li, and at the same
Fest in the yere then folowing othere xx li without delaye.’
18
You can give: through the church web site www.stmarysbarnardcastle.org.uk or by sending a
cheque or postal order to The Friends of St Mary’s Treasurer (Mr Peter Wise), 5 Mayfield, Barnard Castle, DL12 8EA. Cheques should be made payable to The Friends of St Mary’s. If you
pay Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax, do please ask the Treasurer for a Gift Aid form.
Teach life skills – not 1066
Here we go again, someone else wanting to delete history from schools curricula. This time,
however, it is the General Secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.
Dr Mary Bousted, addressing the recent ATL conference in Torquay, said that she believed
that teaching children ‘lifeskills’ was far more important than forcing them to memorise facts
such as the date of the Battle of Hastings. Dr Bousted demanded the abolition of most of the national curriculum and associated tests. She admitted that traditionalists would be annoyed by any
moves to reduce ‘rote learning’ but insisted that this had to be done to stop more children being
turned off education at an early age. Dr Bousted told the conference that the national curriculum
should be far more focused on the development of life skills and ways of working than whether
or not we teach the Battle of Hastings. However, when asked if a slimmed-down body of
knowledge should indeed include the fact that William the Conqueror invaded in 1066, she said
that she would have no argument against 1066 being included.
Does this mean that Dr Bousted is thinking about the teaching of ‘selective history’? This
would seem to have smack of censorship about it. Is this not the way that some of the more restrictive political regimes operate?
Regarding Dr Bousted’s comments about putting children off learning history, how many of
us were turned on to history as children, by history being well taught in school? It is interesting
to note the number of television programmes, films and books for children that centre on fantasy
and adventure themes when in fact history is one of the greatest adventures.
Richard Van Allen
A New Book about Richard III
A new book about Richard III is always welcome when it
promises a major reassessment of that king’s reign, and
Annette Carson’s Richard III: The Maligned King lives up
to its title. An analysis of the specific period 1483 to 1485,
the book looks set to challenge many comfort zones.
Annette Carson has been a Society member for over ten
years, but her original fascination with Richard III dates
from the Laurence Olivier film which sparked animated
discussions in history classes at school. Over the ensuing
years the Great Debate remained an abiding topic of reading and reflection; but she dates the start of more intensive
research from the advent of the internet, when source material became freely available for the first time on websites.
In recent years she feels there is a tendency for Richard’s reputation to come increasingly under attack, despite
no new evidence emerging to justify this trend. Almost every new book seems to trot out the old, tired assumptions,
whether by historians or popular writers; and every opinAnnette Carson
ionated TV history expert follows suit.
Given that so much scholarly work has been done, bringing to light alternative readings and
conclusions, Annette wanted to do full justice to specific topics thrown up by such work rather
19
than opt for a broader but shallower approach. Hence, although written in narrative form – and
320 pages long – the book concentrates purely on Richard’s reign.
For example: what caused the death of Edward IV? What was being plotted in Brittany in the
lead-up to the October rebellion, and what was the real nature of the negotiations for Elizabeth of
York to marry Henry Tudor? Why did Buckingham betray his king? Did Elizabeth Woodville
dabble in witchcraft? What might have happened to Edward V and his brother? What do we really know about Those Bones? And what were Richard’s actual intentions towards his niece?
Ricardians will be interested to know that in the process of tracking the activities of Henry
Tudor during 1483–1485, Annette uncovered a number of revealing facts which historians of the
first Tudor king prefer to gloss over.
The publishers, The History Press, are the new parent company that recently bought out Sutton Publishing along with imprints like Tempus, Pitkin, etc. More information can be found on
their website www.thehistorypress.co.uk.
RICHARD III: THE MALIGNED KING
Annette Carson
The History Press, June/July 2008, hbk, 320 pp., 27 colour plates, £20
A rejection of traditional assumptions about King Richard III
and a major reassessment of what really happened
when he came to the throne of England
Special Offer
POST-FREE in UK to Richard III Society members
Please quote membership number to [email protected]
Or call 01453 883300
20
Meet the Historian:
An interview with
Dr Ian Mortimer
I
an Mortimer was born in Kent, won a
scholarship to Eastbourne College in Sussex, and later read for degrees in history and
archive studies at the universities of Exeter
and London (UCL). For the period 1991 to
2003 he worked for a variety of archive and
historical research organisations, including
the Devon Record Office, the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and the universities of Exeter and Reading. He has BA,
MA and PhD degrees in history, and is both a
qualified archivist and a Fellow of the Royal
Historical Society. Awarded the Alexander
Prize by the Royal Historical Society in 2004,
he was made an Honorary Research Fellow at
Exeter shortly afterwards, and now lives on
the edge of Dartmoor with his wife and their
three children.
child I played a game of ‘hunt the Mortimer
family coat of arms’. At Wigmore Castle, the
seat of the medieval Mortimer family (which
my father erroneously believed was connected with us), I found a wonderfully neglected
overgrown ruin. It had a magical atmosphere
like Cair Paravel in the Narnia books. At the
age of eight I completed a school project on
the ‘Mortimers, Nevilles and Woodvilles’. At
twelve I was beginning to find the old DNB
entries on the medieval Mortimers somewhat
lacking and so applied for a British Library
Readers’ Pass in order to further my
knowledge. I was politely but firmly told to
re-apply when I reached twenty-one.
There are, I think two important points
underlying this experience. The first is that a
strong sense of the past and the continuity of
a culture is wound up in family life, and family identity. It is surprising how often the history-educating role of the family is overlooked, only to be remembered when a calamitous event takes place which we immediately know is going to be something we speak
about to our children and grandchildren. The
second is that historical ideas and conclusions
which develop outside the classroom tend to
be much more powerful than those taught
within it. Classroom history is very often history tied to an academic (or educational)
agenda. It is thus about evidence, analysis of
evidence, and the construction of an argument; it is not about the past. For my own
part, the very fact that I sympathised from an
early age with medieval characters – the Mortimers especially – who had been denigrated
by supposedly scholarly writers gave me a
real sense of the failure of academia to con-
When and how did your interest in history
develop?
When? In infancy. I grew up in a house
which, although a suburban semi-detached,
contained a number of relics of our family
over the previous two centuries. For example:
the ‘Bishop’s Throne’ – a Windsor chair given to the family by a bishop of Exeter in the
nineteenth century. Or a painting of the village where we lived in the eighteenth century.
Or engravings of the premises of the family
business, Mortimers’ Cleaning and Dyeing
Works, Plymouth, which we owned and managed from 1773 to 1933. Hence there was this
continual sense of the past – our past – all
around us.
This combination of wonder and familiarity with the past increased when I was taken
on days out. In every cathedral I visited as a
21
nect with reality. Naturally I wanted to do
something about it.
history for the sake of history. If history has
social meaning – if society is to embrace history as a form of self-knowledge – then what
we write about the past must be rooted in the
wider concerns of society, not in the relics
and documents which just happen to have
survived.
There has been much debate over the past
few years about the role and importance of
history in today’s world; as an historian
and writer how would you justify its relevance?
This is an immense question, with many
different angles. To answer it meaningfully, I
think you have to differentiate between the
types of history there are. Obviously, history
is not synonymous with the past; but nor is it
synonymous with the study of the past either.
Academic history, for example, is the study of
evidence relating to the past – not the study of
the past itself. Moreover, academic history
has particular constraints on its form – it must
eschew drama and emotion, for example,
even when describing historical events which
are essentially dramatic (e.g. a battle) or emotional (a love affair). Popular history, on the
other hand, might be little more than fine story-telling (although no one should underestimate the difficulty of telling a story well).
The values and roles of these two equally
demanding disciplines are very different. The
prime importance of academic history is in
education – not just of historians but of civil
servants and managers – for the very assimilation of historical information and the need
to produce an argument based on the evidence
available is a process which society depends
on in millions of social interactions every
day. The value of popular history is of a different nature. It allows us a view of society
over time. It brings us together in a shared
understanding of some aspect of the past – be
that a historical individual or a cause or an
identity. It gives us a sense of our place in
time, as well as our place in the world.
What I do think is common to both popular and academic history is the need for the
discipline to be rooted in the wider concerns
of society in order to have meaning. A historian who works out the exact causes of the
Hundred Years War and mutters the truth
privately to himself in a quiet corner might as
well be wrong. Someone who works out the
precise evolution of the bus ticket might as
well be talking to himself. You cannot ‘do’
As an academic historian, how do you view
the work of organisations such as the Richard III Society, particularly in terms of
what they contribute to historical research
and raising the popular profile of our past?
Let me state here quite clearly: I AM NOT
AN ACADEMIC! I do not teach. I do not
undertake research along lines dictated or
suggested by anyone else. I do not feel
obliged to follow any academic conventions
such as eschewing drama and emotion in my
writing. Indeed, I see it as a complement to
my writing when members of the public say
my book ‘reads like a novel’. Say the same
thing to an academic and it is tantamount to
saying his or her scholarship cannot be relied
upon any more than fiction.
I see myself as a writer who occasionally
brings scholarly research skills to bear on
difficult subjects. This sometimes gives my
books and articles an academic appearance.
Such non-academic contributions do have an
impact on academic history (such as my argument that the information underpinning the
announcement of the death of Edward II is
false, or that Richard II was definitely murdered by his cousin’s order). But much of my
work is structured for the sake of drama, or
enjoyment, or the understanding of a character or a situation.
I see the Richard III Society in much the
same role. Its great strength – and I do mean
great strength – is its ability to combine
scholarship and enjoyment, and to rise above
the cloying weight of academic history in the
wake of Geoffrey Elton. It can draw upon
members with scholarly skills to answer difficult questions with authority. It can encourage
academics to consider new and interesting
views on the past. But above all else it is interested in promoting history as an enjoyable
and inspirational intellectual activity.
Do you have a particular approach when
22
writing and researching historical biographies?
Sort of – but I’m not sure how interesting
it is. Researching and writing is not a spectator sport; few historians live interesting lives.
I have written on my website about how I
write about a battle – and how, with regard to
the actual writing of a battle, a bottle of whisky is as important a resource as the chronicles
and secondary works one draws upon for
facts. Otherwise everything I do is pretty predictable. I spend a week or two at the National Archives each year photographing all the
manuscript material I might need and copying
it on to a laptop. Digital cameras are probably
the biggest methodological change in the last
ten years, more important even than the expansion of the Internet. The day the British
Library allows scholars to use digital cameras
as freely as the National Archives does, I will
rejoice.
ing, and perhaps deserving, subject of your
sympathetic biography approach?
Yes, and yes, without a shadow of a doubt
in either respect. Anyone writing about Richard has to contend with a massive amount of
existing literature. The sheer weight of it is
remarkable, considering that Richard’s reign
was the shortest of any crowned king of England. Then there is the problem of the princes
in the Tower. Regardless of what you think
may have happened, something did happen
and we don’t know exactly what. But whatever it was, it was important. Thus the ‘hidden
history’ of this period means that there are
untouched, undiscussed pitfalls for any biographer of Richard. For unlike an academic
historian, who can simply say ‘we have no
evidence’ a biographer cannot simply say we
do not know what happened to Edward and
Richard. A historical biographer has to paint a
coherent and complete picture of his subject,
so to ignore the problem of the princes is to
ignore something of massive importance to
the king’s life (whether he was guilty of ordering their murder or innocent). I have to say
I am absolutely dreading that decision. Somebody is going to want to skewer me, either
way.
As for whether he deserves a sympathetic
portrait, surely every historical person does? I
think the end of my answer to the first question you asked is relevant here: everyone –
every historical character – has their own
point of view. When people tell me I am far
too kind to Henry IV in The Fears of Henry
IV I tell them that they are missing the point: I
did not set out to judge the man as good or
bad, guilty or innocent. The whole purpose of
my biography was to understand the man, as
far as possible, from his own point of view.
No one had ever done that before (athough
plenty of peple had written sympathetically
about Richard II, in the wake of Shakespeare). No doubt Henry himself would have
been even more fervent in explaining why he
did what he did – and his subjective position
is a valid point of view too. In my philosophy
of history the judgments by partially informed
students of the past living hundreds of years
after the events are meaningless. So what if
we denigrate Edward III and Henry V as war-
You have written about Roger Mortimer,
Edward III, and Henry IV, are currently
writing about Henry V and researching
Richard, Duke of York: the obvious question to ask is - will this lead you to Richard
III?
I hope that in four or five years’ time I
will be writing a book on Richard III, and that
it will be the sixth volume in my sequence of
biographies of important medieval characters.
I think of them collectively as a ‘biographical
history of medieval England 1300-1485’, for I
see a direct connection between Roger Mortimer’s successful challenge to royal authority
in 1327 (book one), Edward III’s reassertion
of strong kingship (book two), the power
struggle of 1397-1400 and the rebellions
against Henry IV (book three), the events of
1415 (book four) and the origins of the Wars
of the Roses (book five). Of course the events
of Richard III’s life fit into this pattern, with
meaning as well as resonance. However, I
would be rash to say yes for certain – four or
five years is a long time, and writing a whole
book about 1415 at the moment makes me
look at the events of 1485 as being far, far in
the future.
Do you see Richard III as being a challeng23
mongers? So what if we play up the fact that
they were both intelligent, considerate men
who secured domestic peace for England?
What is valuable and meaningful is to understand how a man faces and deals with the
challenges of his time. In that sense writing
about the two years of Richard III’s reign is
every bit as challenging as writing about the
fifty-year reign of Edward III, and one needs
to be just as slow to judge and as eager to
understand the character, whether you think
he was a malevolent murderer or a muchmaligned scapegoat.
includes The Greatest Traitor: the life of Sir
Roger Mortimer (2003), The Perfect King:
the life of Edward III (2006) and The Fears of
Henry IV, (2007 – paperback due out in June
this year). The Time-traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to
the Fourteenth Century is due to be published
in October. For more information visit
www.ianmortimer.com, where a fuller version of this interview can also be found.
Ian was interviewed by John Saunders of
the Bulletin Editorial Team. In the autumn
issue we will publish an article by Ian on the
Lancastrian claim to the throne.
Ian’s published work of interest to members
New Members
UK 1 January – 31 March 2008
Gail Bodily, Daventry
Patricia Buckley, Tunbridge Wells
Elizabeth Coleman, Kettering
Maria, Michael & Stephen Croft, Derby
Patricia Dale, Orford
Susan Greenwood, Norwich
Elizabeth Hitchin, Halifax
Emma Holland, Greenwich
Alison Holmes, Catterick
John Jackson, Stratford-upon-Avon
Steve Morris, Bristol
William Mortimer, Minehead
Richard & Mrs SR Painter, Guildford
Leah Power, Pwllheli
David Rich, Gorleston
Karen Sadler, Bristol
David Santiuste, Edinburgh
David Teale, Bolton
Ashley Tucker, Leeds
Doreen Ward, Oldham
Joe Young, London
Overseas 1 January – 31 March 2008
Donald Thompson, France
Ayako Otsuka, Japan
US Branch 1 January – 31 March 2008
Frederick Avansino, California
Ali Botein-Furrevig, New Jersey
Constance Bray, Georgia
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Beverly Case, California
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Geraldine Diaz, Indiana
Mark Eastin, Georgia
Terry and Laurie Goodell, Maryland
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Patricia A. Nace, Pennsylvania
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Judy Peterson, New York
Sean Pickett, Massachusetts
Sharon R. Powell, Texas
Ginney Pumphrey, Arkansas
Sarah Ross-Benjamin, Connecticut
Joyce Sleczkowski, Florida
John Sowerby, Florida
Ruth Ann Spencer, Massachusetts
24
Proceedings of the Triennial
Conference 2008: Part 1: Perspective
The Society will publish abbreviated versions of the talks given at the triennial conference held at
the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester in April this year. Part 1 covers the two opening papers presented under the overall title of Perspective and delivered by Anne Sutton and Livia
Visser-Fuchs. In the autumn issue we will publish the three papers covering the Suspects – the
dukes of Buckingham and Norfolk, Henry Tudor and his adherents and Richard of Gloucester.
The Protectorship of Richard of
Gloucester: the prelude to a murder?
ANNE F. SUTTON
T
he avoidance of hindsight and a strong
dose of commonsense are essential for
this investigation both of the protectorship
and the fate of the princes. The protectorship
introduces us to all the main characters, and
how they acted then can suggest how they
might have acted later. Only contemporary
sources for this narrative have been used: the
far from satisfactory Crowland Chronicle and
Mancini; the reliable Simon Stallworth and
the official records of the city of London.
This account leapfrogs through events to pick
out what seem to be the key points.
The matter of who in London communicated with Gloucester in the North is understudied. Hastings’ role in this should be questioned as well as that of Buckingham, and
other persons proposed. The complete control
by the Woodvilles of the council, the king and
the Tower was doubted by no one. But what
we know of the personalities and abilities of
Rivers and Dorset do not lead us to judge
them competent and sensible men. All the
characters in this story wanted to achieve a
position of influence next to the new king and
this dominated their actions.
A meeting was scheduled at the prosper-
ous borough of Northampton between
Gloucester and the king. When Gloucester
arrived he found the king had been taken on
to the small staging-post of Stony Stratford. It
can be suggested that Rivers wished to play
down the meeting: only the Woodvilles
should be seen in control of the new king in a
town of any importance. Rivers may have
thought of Richard as someone easily sidelined: the faithful brother who did as he was
told. At some point Rivers told his lieutenants
at Stony Stratford that all was well and
Gloucester only had 300 men; would he not
have counted his brother-in-law Buckingham
as in the Woodville camp? At Stony Stratford
Richard assumed control, made arrests and
dismissed the force of 2000 men under Rivers’ control.
At the news of Gloucester’s success, the
Woodvilles in London panicked and fled to
sanctuary – but only after failing to raise a
new army. Flight indicated guilt in the fifteenth century, as it usually does now.
Gloucester’s letters calmed London. The reception of the king was celebrated in the usual way by the city and he was lodged in the
place of the bishop of London. Parliament
25
was summoned for 25 June and the coronation set for 22 June. Mancini’s assertion that
Gloucester tried to secure the execution of
Rivers and co at this stage is inherently unlikely for he needed to conciliate the king and
stabilise the administration, not upset everyone. Men like Hastings were confirmed in
their posts, and oaths of fealty to the king
were taken on 19 May at the Tower by all the
lords present and read to the common council
of London on 21 May. The Mowbray inheritance undoubtedly came up for discussion
but should not be seen as ominous: a fairer
division of the estate could be made now Edward IV and Anne Mowbray were dead, and
the duke of York provided with another endowment.
Only on 10 June does the quiet break,
though this would only have been known to a
few of Richard’s circle. He wrote to the North
for men to oppose the Woodvilles’ plots. But
it was not they who were dealt with on 13
June, but rather Hastings, Morton, Rotherham
and Stanley. John Forster, official of the
queen and relative of Morton, was a key figure. Oliver King, also arrested, was another
old associate of Morton. Was Morton not
Hastings the key figure in this plot? Was
there a whole series of plots hiding within
each other and what part did the wife of Stanley play? Her objective was to bring her son,
Henry Tudor, home and negotiations with
Edward IV had reached a hopeful stage with a
marriage between Henry and one of Edward’s
daughters mooted. She then had to turn to
Buckingham and Gloucester to further her
scheme, and the marriage of her son became
an important item of barter with the Woodvilles from the moment that they were superseded by Gloucester as the controllers of the
new king. She was to be involved in a plot to
release the princes immediately after Richard’s accession with the support of an army
led by her son, the prospective husband of
their sister.
On 16 June the duke of York was handed
over by his mother and apparently no one
concerned suspected any designs by Gloucester on the throne; parliament and the coronation were postponed to give Gloucester over
four months to arrange a stable government.
The day after, however, the cancellations of
the elections of MPs were stopped: Richard
had decided he needed such an assembly to
acclaim him as king. Only now did he decide
that he had a clear field and he could take the
throne. He now canvassed support and took
advice on how Edward IV had achieved his
acclamation. The opinion of the city and its
merchants was no doubt reflected in that of
Mayor Shaa and his brother Ralph of Queens’
College who preached the sermon that announced the claim of Gloucester based on the
canon law regulations explained by Bishop
Stillington. After the sermon the scenario of
1461 was adopted with public assemblies and
an acclamation. Richard was king.
If Richard’s accession contained the murder of the princes, the scene was set and machinery in motion. As king Richard could
control the machinery and leave the boys
alive – he had been so slow and careful about
his final decision to take the throne, a similar
carefulness could have characterised his care
of the children. But his taking of the throne
changed the viewpoint of others: Margaret
Beaufort and her allies; the clever Bishop
Morton, once a Lancastrian exile; the ‘odd’
duke of Buckingham, a young man for whom
Edward IV had never found a use, but who
was now ‘every where’; and who else? The
boys were certainly at risk, but from more
than just Richard.
The best guide to sources is the chronology by Anne Sutton in The Coronation of
Richard III ed. Sutton and Hammond (1983),
and the best narrative by P.M. Kendall in his
Richard III, using his notes with his text
(1955).
26
Continental Rumours About the
Disappearance of the Princes and
the Accession of Richard III
LIVIA VISSER-FUCHS
W
hat did people outside England
‘know’ about the princes, their disappearance, and Richard III’s accession? What
information reached which part of the continent, and do these strands of information differ?
There seem to be three groups of
‘informees’: ordinary people, especially those
living along the North Sea coast, who had no
particular interest in politics; the men who
attended the meeting of the Estates General at
Tours in early 1484, who have their own hidden agenda; and those writing some time later.
The first group includes Caspar
Weinreich, a citizen of Danzig of the middle
sort, possibly a trader, a well-informed man
interested in grain prices and the movement
of ships across the Channel or the North Sea.
He wrote a short chonicle of the years 1461 to
1495, and probably had no access to written
sources, but wrote down events as he heard of
them. He says that Richard ‘had himself put
in power and crowned ... he had his brother’s
children killed and the queen put away secretly too’. Another writer, Jan Allertsz, recorder
of Rotterdam from 1455 till his death in 1489,
made extensive notes, mostly original, on
events in his lifetime. His information on
Richard III appears to have reached him soon
after Bosworth. He says, ‘after Edward’s
death he killed two of his brother’s children,
boys, or so he was accused. But anyway, they
were killed and he himself became king, but
he did not rule for long’.
Adriaan de But was a Cistercian monk at
the abbey of Ter Duinen in Flanders, 25 miles
west of Bruges and very much in contact with
that city. Great figures from the outside world
had visited the abbey, including Margaret of
York. De But says, ‘Edward [IV] ... died,
leaving two sons and four daughters by his
queen, Margaret [sic] ... But Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, brother to the deceased king, arrested the children and the queen and beheaded some people who opposed him and then
had himself crowned as the undoubted successor, and shortly after he departed for Scotland’. Niclas Despars, of Bruges, writing in
the early sixteenth century, says, ‘Duke Richard of Gloucester, dead King Edward’s brother, had himself crowned on 6 May, at London, by force. He was the third of that name
and the sixth of the red rose; he took his
brother’s two sons prisoner.’
With these writers must be put the Silesian knight Nicolas von Popplau, the best informed of these sources in that he met Richard himself in May 1484, and appears to have
liked him. He says, ‘King Richard ... they say
... killed King Edward his brother’s sons, so
that not they, but he was crowned. However,
many people say – and I agree with them –
that they are still alive and are kept in a very
dark cellar’. Thus the actual murder of the
princes seemed much less likely to someone
who had met Richard and talked with him
than to people on distant shores.
The men present at the meeting of the
Estates General at Tours were very different
in their outlook from the men listed above.
Their writings follow their own agenda. Guillaume de Rochefort (1433-92) was chancellor
of France, and presided over this meeting,
which had to decide how to rule the country
during the minority of the 13-year-old
Charles VIII; the meeting became a clash
between the partisans of the king’s elder sister, Anne de Beaujeu, who had been appointed regent by the dead Louis XI and was supported by the estates themselves, and the aristocratic party led by Louis d’Orléans, who
27
claimed that Charles was under Anne’s
thumb. De Rochefort, who famously mentioned the murder of the princes, was on
Anne’s side, and was rehearsing the general
French idea that the English were always killing their kings and handing over the crown to
another dynasty. They had done so 26 times,
he said, since William the Conqueror.
Another man present at Tours was
Philippe de Comines. It is important to remember that Comines was writing his account of Richard at a very trying and miserable period of his life, when he had every reason to hate kings in general. His influence
with Louis XI had been waning, and when
Louis died in August 1483 Comines found
himself without any protector. In an attempt
to maintain his influence he sided with Louis
d’Orléans, whose side eventually lost. When
Comines wrote this part of his memoirs six
years later, he had spent some years in prison.
He decided to praise parliamentary government, such as prevailed in England, and run
down his old master, Louis XI. For Comines,
there was not a single virtuous and admirable
prince – and Richard III’s actions were also
what one could expect from Englishmen. He
fitted Richard’s story into a section where he
discussed God’s punishment of bad kings. He
says, ‘[Edward IV] died of melancholy because the French marriage did not materialise.
Edward left two sons, the one prince of
Wales, the other duke of York. The duke of
Gloucester assumed the governance of the
prince, swore an oath of fealty to him and
brought him to London, pretending to plan his
coronation, but actually to bring the other boy
out of sanctuary. In the end, he had the help
of the bishop of Bath, who had been Edward’s chancellor before he was dismissed
and put into prison; when he was released he
told Gloucester that Edward had loved a lady
and married her – after he had slept with her –
while nobody was present but himself. The
bishop was a man of the court and never revealed this and helped to keep the lady quiet.
... Later Edward fell in love again and married
a widow with two sons, daughter of a knight
called Lord Rivers. The bishop revealed this
to Gloucester and helped him in his evil
plans; he had his two nephews killed and
made himself king; the two daughters were
declared bastards in full parliament ... He had
all the good servants of his dead brother
killed, if he could lay his hands on them ...
His cruelty did not last, for he was prouder
than any king of England had been in a hundred years, and he had the duke of Buckingham killed and kept a large army ready.’
The Norman prelate Thomas Basin had
been a member of an embassy of Richard,
Duke of York to Charles VII, concerning the
marriage of Richard’s son Edward to the
king’s daughter. In 1447 he was elected bishop of Lisieux; he was a councillor of Charles
VII of France, then supported Louis XI, then
turned against him and had to leave France;
he died in 1490 at the court of his friend David, Bishop of Utrecht. He seems to have accepted English rule in France as long as it
appeared legitimate and beneficent, and never
had any reason to trust any king of France. He
too was present at Tours in May 1484, and
wrote a detailed account of Richard III’s accession, which is not very well known, in
1483-4. I think he is the best source for what
was known at the Estates meeting and the
information that circulated among those present.
Basin’s words: ‘[Edward] left behind several children of both sexes and it would have
been reasonable if the eldest had succeeded
and, because he was a minor, that he would
be ruled by his uncle, the duke of Gloucester,
but as soon as the duke had the children in his
control he showed his true intentions towards
them. Their mother went into sanctuary at
Westminster. To squash all opposition he had
the Lords Rivers and Hastings removed, as
well as several other great men of the kingdom, and a little later he had himself crowned
in London. To justify his actions he appealed
to an ancient decree and custom by which the
children of the widow of the king, if she had
been married to someone else, could not succeed to the kingdom even if they had been
born in the kingdom and to the king. In this
case the mother had been married before, and
this husband was still alive when Edward
married her. However, at no time, not when
he married her, or after his coronation, or
while he lived was any rumour ever heard and
28
everybody thought she was the king’s legitimate wife.
‘Thus the duke assured that the crown
came to him, the only brother of the king. He
decided to call together a council in the Tower to hear what people thought about this matter. Lord Hastings who had been a counsellor
and friend of the late king spoke up freely that
on the faith he owed to God and to the late
king he could never allow such treason. The
duke then had the gates shut and Hastings
beheaded. Hastings’ relatives outside the
Tower clamoured for news and were shown
his head. The bishops of York and Ely, who
were also at the Tower and also refused to
submit, were imprisoned. Two sons of the
queen by her previous husband were also
killed, and the queen, it is said, was kept under strict supervision in a strong place.
‘The sons of Edward were put under
guard in the Tower. A group of about fifty
Londoners conspired together, hoping that if
they started to act the whole city would rise
up, but in reality nobody stirred and four of
them were beheaded. Whether the children
are alive or dead at their uncle’s order is not
certain but the second is most probable, for
with them alive the impostor would never be
safe from rebellion if they lived, considering
how prone the English are to rebellion and
factions.’
The group of men who attended at Tours
overlaps with the authors who wrote long
after the events. Robert Gaguin, in his general
history of France published in 1495, never
mentions Richard III; he regards the English
as perfidious and as a permanent menace; he
knows – like an amazing number of continental authors – about Clarence’s butt of malmsey. He went on an embassy to Henry VII in
1489, but there is never a word about the
princes or the battle of Bosworth. Considering
the great popularity of his book it is important
to realise that this was not a source on Richard III for later authors. Nor does Erasmus
mention Richard III, but a friend of his, Cornelius of Gouda, an Austin canon like Mancini, published a chronicle called The Division
Chronicle (because it is divided into divisions). Extensive research into his sources has
not revealed much about where he found his
contemporary history; he is said not to have
known much French and did not read Comines, for example. He says that Richard, ‘a
cruel man, ... made great efforts to get control
of the two sons, but they were in sanctuary in
London. He did get them through tricks and
promises, and they were put in the care of the
earl of Buckingham. Some say their uncle
killed them’ – he uses the verb versmachten,
‘to smother’ – ‘to make himself king, others
that the earl of Buckingham put them to
death, hoping to be king himself, because he
had heard a prophecy that a King Henry of
England would be very powerful, and he was
called Henry. Others say that Buckingham
killed only one child and spared the other
who was his godchild. This child, called
Richard, he sent out of the country. He went
to Portugal, then came to King Louis XI of
France and then to Margaret, his aunt ... the
boy was commonly called the White Rose ...
When the two children had disappeared the
duke of Gloucester made himself king ... and
had the earl of Buckingham executed as a
traitor. Buckingham’s heart was cut from his
body and given to be kissed [presumably to
Richard?] ... Many people were displeased
with the violence of this bloodthirsty king.’
Finally, two chroniclers at the Burgundian
court need to be mentioned: Olivier de la
Manche and Jean Molinet; both wrote quite
some time after the event. Olivier, who lived
and wrote from 1488 at Malines, where Margaret of York lived, does not mention Richard
III. Molinet, who died in 1507, was a great
admirer of Margaret of York ‘precious pearl
of England, flower of sweet-smelling beauty,
planted in this land and flourishing gloriously
in the garden of Burgundy’, but had no doubt
that her brother Richard was evil. It would
appear that the section on Richard was inserted in 1486 or 1487 between two sections on
the troubles of Maximilian in 1483. He says
Edward V was 14 years old, and calls the
younger prince George. ‘Richard, pretending
to be planning an invasion of France, gathered money and troops and arrived in London
on 23 June. The queen took her children to
Westminster. The people of Wales and relatives of Edward IV made a great effort to
crown the prince of Wales. The duke of
29
Gloucester prevaricated until the matter subsided. ... he put the princes in the Tower. ...
‘The elder son was sad and downcast,
realising how evil his uncle was; the younger
one was joyful and spirited, good at dancing
and games and he said to his brother, “My
lord, learn to dance!” but his brother said,
“We had better learn to die, for I think we are
not long for this world.” They were prisoners
for about five weeks and then Duke Richard
had then secretly killed, either starved in a
chest or suffocated with cushions. They were
buried in a secret place but later recovered,
after the death of their uncle, and buried with
royal ceremony.’
Buckingham, who ‘came to the Tower
that same day’, is mentioned as a possible
suspect, because he had a claim to the throne,
but there is no word of his rebellion, nor even
of his execution. Richard calls Edward’s eldest daughter to court to marry her to the dau-
phin, but makes her pregnant and has a child
by her. Messages were stuck on the doors of
churches accusing him of having killed his
wife because she was ugly. And he had his
mother come before the council and state
publicly that of her three sons only Richard
was legitimate, the others being sons of Franciscan friars.
In conclusion, three things must be said.
First, it is essential to report these foreign
rumours in full, to put them in perspective.
Second, the people in England were no better
informed than those in the Low Countries,
and what was being said was similar on both
sides of the Channel. Third, the story of the
murdered princes was too good to be forgotten. As with the media today, a nice bloody
story is not to be sneezed at. Once such a tale
is started, it will live, probably, for ever,
whatever we try to do about it: it becomes ‘a
convenient truth’ to many people.
30
The Man Himself
HOW RICHARD WAS
OUTMANOEUVRED BY
HENRY TUDOR
ANNETTE CARSON
I
under the late Edward IV. Margaret Beaufort
and her family were almost certainly involved
in this insurgency, as historians including
Rosemary Horrox agree.2 Why should this be,
if not because Margaret’s party had thrown in
its lot with the Woodvilles?
Nowadays we know all about Henry Tudor joining up with Sir Edward Woodville,
although the myth-makers of the subsequent
Tudor era had good reason to ensure Sir Edward’s pivotal role was eliminated from their
version of history. By the end of August 1483
the new Woodville-Tudor partners had persuaded their host, Francis II, Duke of Brittany, to equip an invasion fleet on their behalf.
Reports indicate that it was already being
prepared in the first half of September.3 No
contemporaneous document puts Edward V’s
disappearance earlier than this; the Crowland
Chronicle and Polydore Vergil’s Anglica Historia put it later. Obviously, therefore, the
cause which the duke believed he was supporting was the restoration of the deposed –
but living – boy-king. This timeline is reinforced by the duke of Buckingham’s spell at
the helm of the rebellion in the first half of
September, to be replaced by Henry Tudor
only after rumours were circulated that Edward V was dead.4
This, then, was the first subterfuge used
by the Tudors: ostensibly helping to restore
Edward V. I say ‘ostensibly’ because it is
scarcely believable that, if successful, they
had any intention of peaceably allowing
young Edward to occupy the throne. The
Woodvilles, for their part, would have regarded the recruitment of the Tudor family, espe-
n my new book, Richard III: The Maligned King, one of my assertions relates
to Richard’s fatal underestimation of just how
much of a threat was posed by Henry Tudor.1
Evidence clearly indicates that Tudor, his
family and their advisers, notably his mother
Lady Margaret Beaufort and her aide Bishop
John Morton, demonstrated the skills of consummate politicians throughout 1483-85,
presenting a different face and a different
argument in each new situation they encountered. For example, the catalyst that aroused
the exiled Tudor’s hopes of gaining power
and status after the death of Edward IV was
undoubtedly the arrival of Sir Edward Woodville to join him in Brittany in May 1483,
with two ships and vast amounts of treasure.
The seafaring Sir Edward had one objective in his sights: to ensure the coronation of
his nephew, Edward V, as a puppet child-king
under the control of the dowager queen’s
Woodville family. Such an outcome was
scarcely of personal benefit to Henry Tudor,
yet his advisers evidently counselled him as
to the advantages to be gained from appearing
to support the Woodville cause, especially
since one of its leaders had landed on his
doorstep replete with ships and money.
As events moved on in England during the
months of June, July and August, with the
boy Edward V now deposed and replaced by
Richard III, the Woodvilles’ initial objective
had to change. It metamorphosed into a
south-western uprising in favour of Edward
V’s restoration. At its root were disgruntled
office-holders of the now-defunct Woodvilledominated régime that formerly held sway
31
cially Henry’s wealthy mother (Margaret
Beaufort) and step-father (Lord Stanley) as a
huge coup for their cause. In return for gaining – as they believed – such heavyweight
support, they would have considered it a fair
price to offer Henry the hand of one of the
king’s sisters once he had helped Edward V
back to the throne. It is, by the way, surely
risible that any marriage contract was considered without such conditions attached.
Spreading the rumour that Edward V and
his brother had been killed was the next ploy
of the Tudor camp. The insurgents, whom
they were now manipulating, would readily
believe Richard III capable of such killing,
and could be stampeded into accepting Henry
Tudor as a ready-made contender for the
throne in place of the unloved Buckingham.
So Henry now presented himself to the rebels
as the new Yorkist candidate by promising to
marry the eldest surviving daughter of Edward IV, conveniently misrepresenting the
true nature of the contract that was discussed
with her mother. His Yorkist credentials were
further reinforced after the collapse of the
rebellion when, taking that rather glib promise at face value, refugee rebels gravitated to
him in Brittany.
Richard III, meanwhile, either discounted
Tudor or was unaware that he presented any
threat. We see this from Richard’s failure
even to mention Henry Tudor in his brief to
his ambassador, Thomas Hutton (although the
name of Sir Edward Woodville featured
prominently) when Hutton was sent to negotiate with Francis II in July 1483.5 Even in early 1484, with the insurrection safely snuffed
out, Richard in his Act of Attainder failed to
denounce Tudor as anything other than a
‘rebel’, in contrast to his later proclamations
repudiating Tudor as a claimant to the
throne.6
With hindsight, of course, we think of
Tudor as a pretender from the October rebellion onwards. It is significant, however, that
no chronicler mentions any manifesto by Tudor at that time, although the Crowland cleric
tells us that Buckingham issued one (now,
presumably, lost).7 Here we have another
example of the clever politicking of the Tudor
camp, avoiding commitment to any particular
cause in case a better one should come along.
The policy served them well, alien though it
was to the old-fashioned ethics of chivalry.
It was Richard’s own almost-successful
attempt to extradite Henry Tudor from Brittany that prompted the exile’s next volte-face,
when he threw in his lot with France. By then
his motley crew had been joined by the last
remnants of the Lancastrian faction led by the
earl of Oxford, recently escaped from prison.
The French now came up with a different role
for Tudor to play: he was to adopt a newly
invented Lancastrian pose as Henry VI’s son
and successor.8
Despite stories fed to Polydore Vergil
about Buckingham’s divinely-inspired notion
to unite the rival royal houses, with Henry
(Lancaster) marrying Edward IV’s daughter
Elizabeth (York), these can safely be classified as retrospective Tudor hogwash. In the
summer of 1483, when Buckingham allegedly
proposed the idea, Henry Tudor had not dared
to present himself as a scion of the house of
Lancaster: not only because he was descended from bastard stock, but also – more importantly – because he was entirely dependent
on Yorkist supporters who wanted no truck
with the Lancastrian dynasty.
Somehow, during 1484, Tudor’s persuasive advisers managed to win over most of
those very Yorkists so that they now accepted
the proposition of shedding their blood to
restore the house of Lancaster, in the person
of an heir they knew to be spurious. Perhaps
they understood that it was all a cynical ploy.
More likely, being committed to rebellion and
exile, they found themselves between a rock
and a hard place. The huge gamble that was
required of Henry by the French in claiming
the crown through his ‘father’ Henry VI is
underlined by the omission of any further
public reference to that once-crucial marriage
with Elizabeth of York. It is not surprising
that several prominent members of Henry’s
entourage, including some Woodvilles, were
disillusioned enough to desert him and accept
pardons from Richard III.
One would think such blatant imposture
would destroy his credibility. Yet amazingly,
Henry Tudor, posing first as supporter of Edward V, then as Yorkist-by-marriage, and
32
finally as pseudo-Lancastrian heir, managed
to hoodwink substantial numbers of people.
Little wonder that a candidate so evidently
willing to accommodate his backers would
also appeal to those disaffected magnates in
England who found their old powers of extortion curbed by Richard III, who had curtailed
their retainers and legislated protections for
ordinary citizens. Those who deserted Richard to support Henry would later learn to rue
their mistake.
In the end Tudor managed to present himself as all things to all people: king by right of
conquest, with the stamp of divine approval;
duke of Lancaster by the simple expedient of
awarding himself the title; and unifier of York
and Lancaster by virtue of taking a Yorkist
queen. Nevertheless, there was considerable
dissatisfaction on all three counts. Yorkists
were resentful of his repeated postponement
of Elizabeth’s coronation. Those who knew
their genealogy were well aware that legitimate heirs of Lancaster existed who were far
senior to him. And as for his so-called ‘right
of conquest’, there was outspoken opposition
in Parliament to this claim because, as many
magnates pointed out, they had actually handed him England on a plate.9
Although few historians acknowledge the
fact, Henry Tudor triumphed by means of the
sheer deviousness at which he proved so
adept throughout his life. It is one of the great
ironies of history that Richard III has been
cast as the master of dirty tricks and Henry as
the champion of rectitude. There can be no
doubt that the ideals of chivalry – valour,
fidelity, truth and generosity – were trampled
underfoot along with Richard III at Bosworth.
Notes
1. Annette Carson, Richard III: The Maligned
King (The History Press, 2008).
2. Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of
Service (Cambridge University Press, 1989,
1992), p. 169; Michael K. Jones & Malcolm
G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady
Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond
and Derby (Cambridge University Press,
1992), p. 125.
3. Ralph A. Griffiths & Roger S. Thomas,
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Sutton
Publishing, 1985, 1997), p. 102.
4. The Crowland Chronicle Continuations
1459-1486, ed. Nicholas Pronay & John Cox
(Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1986),
p. 163; Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia,
Books 23–25, ed. J.B. Nichols (1846), p. 188.
5. Griffiths & Thomas, Tudor Dynasty, p. 86.
6. British Library Harleian MS 433, ed. R.E.
Horrox & P.W. Hammond (Richard III Society, 1979-83), vol. 3, pp. 124–5.
7. Crowland Chronicle Continuations, ed.
Pronay & Cox, p. 163.
8. Michael K. Jones, Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle (Tempus, 2002), pp. 124–
5.
9. Sir George Buck, The History of King
Richard the Third, ed. Arthur N. Kincaid
(Sutton Publishing, 1979), pp.
87-89; Crowland Chronicle Continuations,
ed. Pronay & Cox, p. 195.
33
Archaeological Excavations at
Grey Friars, Leicester
CHRIS WARDLE
L
ast summer there was considerable fervour in some sections of the Richard III
Society as some members appeared to believe that the last resting place of Richard III
was about to be discovered. The reason was
that word had got out that a site on a Leicester street named Grey Friars was about to be
redeveloped, and there was to be an archaeological excavation before that happened.
Raphael Holinshed says that it incorporated
‘a picture of alabaster representing his person’. The use of alabaster for the monument
is a useful additional clue as to the location
of the grave within the friary. Alabaster is a
material that weathers rapidly when subjected to rain. This makes it even more likely
that Richard’s resting place was in the body
of the church.
Richard III’s tomb
In order to understand the reason for the fervour, members need to recall what is known
of the fate of Richard III’s body. Following
his victory at Bosworth, Henry VII entered
Leicester in triumph on 23 August, 1485.
One of his first acts was to place the deposed
king’s body on display, in order that there
could be no doubt that Richard was dead. It
is likely that Richard’s naked body was
shown on one of the gates of The Newarke, a
religious precinct that lay just to the south of
Leicester Castle. After three days the body
was taken down and given to the care of
Franciscan friars. The Franciscans, or Grey
Friars, had a friary on the southern side of
the walled town, and would probably have
buried him within their church, as befitted
someone of such rank. Without any endowment, however, there was probably nothing
other than perhaps a simple plaque to mark
the grave.
Some ten years after Bosworth, in July
1495, it appears that Henry VII moved to
correct this omission. Royal Commissioners
appointed a craftsman in alabaster from Nottingham, paying him £50 to erect monument
over Richard’s grave. There are no contemporary records of the nature of Richard’s
monument, but in his Chronicles of England,
Scotland and Ireland, published in 1577,
After the Dissolution.
Leicester’s Franciscan Friary was dissolved
in November 1538, and the subsequent fate
of Richard III’s remains is shrouded in mystery. There are no readily available records
of the immediate fate of the friary church
and other cloistral buildings. All that is
known for certain is that, shortly after the
Dissolution, the site of became the property
of Sir Robert Catlyn. There can be little
doubt, however, that in a prosperous town
such as Leicester there would have been a
ready market for stone from a dismantled
friary located within the town walls. Demolition of the stone buildings probably began
almost immediately. When John Leland visited Leicester, sometime before 1543, he
recorded that the friary ‘stode at the end of
the Hospital of Mr Wigeston’ and that ‘there
was byried King Richard 3’ (Vol. 1, p. 16).
Both of these remarks suggest that much of
the structure had been dismantled before
Leland’s visit.
The fate of the tomb of Richard and his
body after the church was taken down is
unclear. One local tradition is that Richard’s
body was removed from its coffin, carried
through the streets and cast into the River
Soar, but there is reason to doubt the substance of this story. The first recorded mention of it is only found more than 70 years
34
after the Dissolution, and there is no satisfactory explanation as to why, more than fifty
years after his death, Richard III would have
been so unpopular in Leicester. Moreover,
other local traditions speak of Richard’s stone
coffin variously as being in one piece, and
used as a horse trough at a local inn, or else
having been broken-up and placed on display.
It is impossible either to confirm or to
refute these traditions. Even the written accounts seem to be at odds. All that is known
for certain is that the Catlyn family sold the
site of the friary to Robert Herrick, a former
mayor of Leicester, and that Herrick built a
large house, Grey Friars, in the south-eastern
part of the friary precinct and probably retained most of the land as a garden. The two
sources that refer to Richard’s grave are The
History of Great Britaine by John Speed, the
cartographer, published in 1611, and a history
of the family of Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral, published at the
end of the eighteenth century. When John
Speed visited Leicester at the start of the seventeenth century he recorded that the site of
Richard’s grave was ‘overgrown with weeds
and nettles … and not to be found’. However,
it is reported that when Christopher Wren’s
father walked in the garden of Herrick’s
house in 1612 he was shown ‘a handsome
Stone Pillar, three Foot high’ erected for Robert Herrick and inscribed ‘Here lies the Body
of Richard III, some time King of England’.
eastern end.
This raises the question as to how much of
the precinct at Leicester would have been
occupied by the church and the cloistral
buildings. However, without either detailed
documentary or archaeological evidence we
cannot be certain where in the precinct the
church and the cloisters were located.
Apart from a vague report that burials
were found towards the western end of the
area of the former precinct in the 1740s, the
only clues come from what we know of Franciscan friaries elsewhere in the English Midlands. Franciscan friaries in this region tended
to conform to a standard basic plan, with a
church, which was invariably aligned on an
east-west axis, with a cloister, or cloisters, to
the south. Churches were normally long and
narrow, with a large nave at the west end, in
which friars would preach to the townsfolk.
There was usually a crossing at the east end
of the nave, with a crossing tower and with
transepts to north and south. To the east of the
crossing lay the chancel. The chancel would
have been reserved for the friars, and was
separated from everything to the west by a
dividing wall built to about head height.
The precinct of the Franciscan friary in
Lichfield, Staffordshire, was similar in area to
that of the Franciscan friary in Leicester. Unlike the example in Leicester, however, the
location and plan of Lichfield friary is reasonably well understood, as a result of a combination of good documentary evidence and
evidence recovered from a large excavation in
the 1920s, evidence which was confirmed in
the 1990s. At Lichfield the nave was 33 metres long x 18 metres wide, the chancel was
28 metres long x 17 metres wide, and the
main cloister (there was also a little cloister to
the south of the main cloister) was 24 metres
square.
Hence the principal buildings of the Lichfield friary only occupied a small fraction of
the total area of the precinct, the rest of the
area having been taken-up by a graveyard,
various outbuildings and extensive gardens.
There is no reason to believe the principal
buildings would have occupied a larger fraction of the precinct at Leicester.
Grey Friars House.
The Layout of the Friary.
Before considering to the findings of the recent excavation it is necessary to say something about what is known of the Franciscan
friary, and what happened to Grey Friars
House.
As well as there being no readily available
records for the Dissolution, there are few
known surviving documentary accounts for
the friary before the Dissolution. It is possible, however, on the basis of cartographic
evidence and existing property boundaries, to
work out the approximate extent of the friary
precinct. This appears to have been an area
roughly 180 metres long and 130 metres wide
at the western end and 70 metres wide at the
35
36
In the centuries following its construction in
the late sixteenth century for Robert Herrick
Grey Friars House passed though several
hands. During this time it declined in status
from being a house in single occupancy to
being sub-divided and occupied by tenants.
Cartographic evidence suggests that by the
early eighteenth century much of the land on
the street frontage had been sold off. In 1740
the eastern end of the former precinct was
sold and a new road, New Street, created
across the entire width of the site.
In 1776 Thomas Pares, the owner of a
hosiery company, purchased Grey Friars
House and the eastern part of the former precinct. Following the decline of his hosiery
business, in 1800 Pares founded a bank. The
offices of Pares’s Bank were established in
the north-eastern corner of the former precinct. During the succeeding decades Pares’s
Bank prospered whilst Grey Friars House
continued to decline. Thus Grey Friars House
was demolished in 1872, to make way for a
street on the western side of Pares’s Bank,
and in 1901 the original Pares’s Bank building was torn down to make way for a grander
bank building with a large domed banking
hall and ornately decorated exterior. This
bank is now a Grade II* Listed Building.
would result in unacceptable changes to the
fabric of the bank; however, the most recent
proposal has been approved. This entails the
conversion the ground floor into a restaurant
and the conversion of the upper floors into
flats.
The aspect of this proposal which led to
the archaeological excavation was the demolition of a single-storeyed extension built in the
1950s, and its replacement with a block of
flats. The block of flats is to be quite small,
measuring approximately 15 m. x 15 m. However, as it lies within the defences of Roman
Leicester, defences that were re-used in the
Middle Ages, and is believed to lie within the
precinct of a medieval friary, the developers
were required to appoint an archaeologist to
record the buried remains that might be destroyed by the erection of the flats.
This excavation got under way in the late
summer of 2007 and continued into the early
autumn. Members who anticipated the discovery of a medieval grave alongside clear
traces of a friary church will be disappointed.
The first archaeologically significant strata
were encountered some 1.5 metres below the
surface. These consisted of Roman deposits
which probably represented the remains of a
sequence of Roman structures. The only evidence that there might have been a church in
the vicinity came in the form of a fragment of
a stone coffin lid that was found in a postmedieval drain.
Whilst the absence of traces of a friary
church might mean that post-medieval disturbance has destroyed any medieval deposits, the assumption has to be that the friary
church lay elsewhere within the precinct. The
chances are that the Franciscan friars were
only given the site for their friary in the mid
twelfth century because it lay close to the
defences and was largely undeveloped at the
times. As noted above, the church and the
cloister, or cloisters, occupied a fraction of
the precinct, and much of the rest would have
been gardens. The excavation only examined
1.25% of the area of the former friary precinct.
The Archaeological Excavation.
Over succeeding generations Pares’s bank
was merged with larger banks, forming what
is now the NatWest Bank. The imposing
building, however, remained in use as a bank
until the late 1990s, when NatWest decided to
transfer their business elsewhere in the town
centre.
In 1990, members of the Richard III society placed a plaque on the west side of the
bank identifying it as the site of the Franciscan Friary. This, more than anything, probably explains why some members came to
believe the bank might mark the final resting
place of Richard III.
After the building became vacant various
proposals, were put forward for its use. Most
of the proposals foundered because they
37
More Research - Tempting Diversions
TONI MOUNT
I
am still researching the Physician’s Handbook, MS.8004, dated to 1454, at the
Wellcome Library in London. By the time
you read this, I will be coming to the end of
my second year of part-time study for my
MPhil by Research with the University of
Kent – just one more year left to go. The thesis is coming along nicely – I think so, anyway – but I needed to do more research into
other texts and manuscripts in order to broaden my knowledge of medical writing at the
time. So on 10 January 2008, I visited the
Wellcome Library again, this time to study
some late-fifteenth-century medical texts, in
order to make comparison with MS.8004, but
the mss contained some quite intriguing stuff,
not necessarily of a medical bent at all, and I
thought I’d tell you about some of the tempting diversions I’ve found.
I ordered up two mss that seemed reasonable candidates – MS.411 and MS.5650. Both
are random collections of fifteenth century
medical texts, bound together, probably for
the convenience of some long-forgotten librarian. MS.411 comes in a sad-looking binding, urgently in need of some expensive TLC,
the ancient leather shedding scraps at every
touch. It contains fourteen separate items,
some incomplete, some in Latin, others in
Middle English, dealing with topics as varied
as ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’ days to begin a sea
voyage or medical treatment, to a recipe for
roast whale. This last proved disappointing
though, the instructions simply say ‘skin it,
roast it and serve it forth’. I wonder how it
was put on a spit and who had a fireplace big
enough to cook it.
Tucked away on a page within a ‘boke of
Nativitees’ in MS.411/4 was an intriguing list
of memorable folk – no indications as to
whether it was a guest list for dinner or a list
of Christmas present recipients – headed by
the duke (yes, ‘duke’) of Northumberland.
The list goes on: erle of warwyk, my lorde
Ambros, my lorde Harry, syr John gayttes,
doctor saunders, doctor rydlie byschoppe of
London … At this point in my deliberations,
the fire alarm went and everyone had to evacuate the library which rather interrupted my
train of thought. However, waiting outside on
the pavement in the rain without a coat (left
behind in a locker), I mulled over the list –
wasn’t Ridley burned at the stake in Mary
Tudor’s reign? Was he ever bishop of London? Of course, the Tudors are NOT my period but if I could identify these people more
accurately, it might be a means of dating the
list, though probably not the ms itself, since it
appears someone was simply making use of a
blank piece of paper. However, it would suggest the book was ready to hand at the time
and that it was in the home of somebody well
up the social scale.
In this instance, the list could be dated to
within just two years: 1551-1553. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was promoted to Duke
of Northumberland by Edward VI in 1551
and his eldest son, also John, took the Warwick earldom at the same time. Ambrose and
Henry were the next sons in line – there were
also Robert, Queen Bess’s boyfriend, and
Guildford (or Guilford) who wed Lady Jane
Grey, but these two sons weren’t on the list.
Sir John Gates, whom I’d never heard of before, was close to the Dudleys and was executed for treason by Mary Tudor, alongside
the Duke of Northumberland, on 22 August
1553 – a good day to dispose of a Northumberland. Dr Edward Saunders was a judge
who served into the reign of Elizabeth I and,
yes, Dr Nicholas Ridley was Bishop of London from 1549 until 1553. He was burned at
the stake in Oxford in 1554, along with Bishop Latimer, two of the many Protestant martyrs of Mary’s troubled reign. Nothing to do
with medieval medicine, I know, but I
38
thought I’d tell you about this as an example
of how useful a list of names could be as dating evidence – and to show how easy it is to
be tempted away from your intended avenue
of research.
Before the summer term ends, I have to
present a portfolio of work done so far which
must include a 10,000 word essay that will
later become part of my final thesis. I have
chosen to write my essay on the ‘Pilgrimage’
section of MS.8004, the description of a journey from London to Jerusalem, reckoned in
this case to be a unique inclusion in a medical
handbook. In order to make comparisons, I’ve
studied a number of other pilgrimage texts
from the late fourteenth to the very early sixteenth century, to see how their chosen routes
to the Holy Land might vary and whether
they tended to visit the same sacred sites
when they got there. My subject may be medieval medicine and my favourite topic English late medieval history but I’ve had to take
up medieval European and Palestinian geography and hagiography in order to make sense
of the pilgrimage. Take ‘Jarre’ for example.
All the pilgrimage writing in MS.8004 tells us
is that it is somewhere on the journey after
Venice and before Corfu and that while
you’re there, you can see the body of ‘Sancte
Symond’ and at ‘þe mynster of Sanct Nicholace is a fayr pilgrimage to Sanct Anastasse
whych wasse att þe byrth of our lord Jesu
Criste’. Jarre could be anywhere along the
Adriatic coasts of either Italy or the Balkans. I
began by looking in the most obvious place –
Google maps – but nowhere seemed to exist
with a name remotely like ‘Jarre’, though I
tried numerous spellings: Iarre, Iara, Jara,
Jerra … nothing. So I tried looking up the
saints’ names on the Roman Catholic website
of saints.1 Here I found a few Sts Simon but
none were buried around the Adriatic and all
the Sts Anastasius were popes, so they couldn’t have been at Christ’s birth. However, St
Anastasia has her feast day on 25 December,
so I reckoned she was probably the saint in
question, and she was said to be buried, according to the website, at some entirely unpronounceable place. There was no mention
of her being at ‘Jarre’ but I decided to investigate the Croatian coast, rather than the Italian,
if only because I can’t pronounce half the
place names there. So I searched the Croatian
tourist board website,2 looking for Anastasia’s name … and found it and nearly booked
a holiday while I was at it. St Anastasia is
buried in St Nicholas Cathedral in Zadar,
known to the Italians as Zara … no wonder I
couldn’t find it spelled with a ‘J’. The place
apparently has connections to St Simeon – the
guy who went up the pole and stayed there,
not Simon, so that solved another little mystery. The Croatian website also made it possible to identify ‘Arogose’ as Dubrovnik since
this town was formerly known as ‘Ragusa’.
My knowledge of Balkan geography, history
and architecture must have improved tenfold,
from nothing to a rough idea at least.
What I think this shows is:

Historical research can’t be done in isolation, ‘interdisciplinary’ is the word.

It may require a bit of thinking ‘outside
the box’ with some guesswork and luck
thrown in.

The internet can be amazingly useful.
But research can be frustrating too. My
main source for comparison of the ‘Pilgrimage’ section of MS.8004 is a book written
by William Wey, a priest and tutor at Eton
who went on three pilgrimages, his first being
to Compostella in 1457 and the second to
Jerusalem in 1462. His writings, printed by
Wynkyn de Worde at Westminster in 1498 as
Informacon for Pylgrymes unto the Holy
Londe, describe a third journey, also to Jerusalem, in which the route taken is very similar
to that described in MS.8004, as are the descriptions of many of the sites visited in the
Holy Land itself. Sometimes the wording is
identical. Did Wey copy from MS.8004? Did
Wey and the author of MS.8004 copy from
some common source? Or was the ‘Pilgrimage’ section of MS.8004 added later than
the date of 1454 at the front of the ms and
possibly copied from Wey’s original ms? 3
The trouble arises in dating Wey’s last pilgrimage. He mentions a specific date on his
third journey: Saturday 14 July. So I checked
the Handbook of Dates4 and the 14 July was a
Saturday in 1464, 1470, 1481, 1487 and 1492.
E Gordon Duff, a Victorian historian who
produced a facsimile of Wey’s printed book
39
in 1893,5 says Wey must have made this third
pilgrimage after 1470, though he doesn’t say
why, but the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography entry for Wey6 says he died in
1476 and had ‘retired’ by c.1467. This makes
1464 or 1470 the only possible dates for
Wey’s second trip to Jerusalem, yet no source
that I’ve found so far suggests Wey went anywhere in those particular years. I wonder
why?
So the research goes on …
Notes
1.http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01453a.h
tm
2.http://www.croatia.hr/English/Destinacije/O
pcenito.aspx?idDestination=197&idProperty=
16
3.MS Bodley 565, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
4.Cheney, C.R., Handbook of Dates, Royal
Historical Society, London, 1991.
5.Duff, E. Gordon (ed.), Information for Pilgrims, Oxford & London, 1893.
6.Summerson, Henry,’William Wey’, Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.
40
Margaret of York: A Genuinely
Scandalous Dispensation?
- A Response
MARK BALLARD
S
o far as I can judge them, I have generally found Marie Barnfield’s arguments in
relation to the marriage dispensation between
Richard and Anne Neville persuasive.1 But
her speculations in the spring 2008 Ricardian
Bulletin (pp. 35-36) that the terms of the dispensation of 17 May 1468, allowing the marriage between Charles the Bold of Burgundy
and Margaret of York, point to previous sexual liaisons on the bride’s part seem to me to
rest on shakier ground. Barnfield’s case appears to depend on a relationship in affinity
having already arisen between them through
Margaret being regarded by the Church as the
widow of a previous sexual partner, one who,
moreover, was related by blood to Charles.
But, being previously unmarried, she could
not be a widow.
Their first dispensation, authorised, according to Peter D. Clarke’s recent EHR article,2 by the cardinal penitentiary on 24 November 1467, was intended to absolve the
parties from the impediment of consanguinity
in the third and fourth degrees. This was
(pace Barnfield) quite correct. Charles and
Margaret were third cousins, both being
great-great-grandchildren of Edward III and
Philippa of Hainault (Margaret being descended from them through both her parents),
which made them related in the fourth degree
of consanguinity. This was within the prohibited degrees, and was mentioned because their
closer relationship – as second cousins
through Edward’s son John of Gaunt – was
on one side only: Charles being descended
from John of Gaunt’s first wife Blanche, and
Margaret from his third wife, Katherine
Swynford.
I have always supposed that the relationship in affinity between Charles and Margaret, which the effective dispensation of May
1468 excused, arose through these two marriages of John of Gaunt. One of the prohibited
relationships in Roman law was between
step-mother and step-son, and the Church
adopted its definitions of affinity relationships, but then extended them by applying the
civil law’s computation of consanguinity (i.e.
by degrees) to those relationships. While the
fourth Lateran Council of 1215 suppressed
certain impediments in affinity, it is my understanding that a relation between stepmother and step-son remained a bar to the
marriage of their descendants up to the fourth
degree of the collateral line, unless specifically absolved; and that it would also extend to
preceding generations within the prohibited
degrees. So by this extended definition, it
would be prohibited for Charles the Bold to
enter a marriage with his own step-mother,
his mother’s step-mother, or his grandmother’s step-mother, Katherine Swynford;
and while any such union with the latter
would plainly be absurd, a marriage between
him and a descendant of that relation, such as
Margaret of York, would also remain within
the prohibited degrees, and obviously not be
absurd at all.3
There were problems with Charles and
Margaret’s first dispensation, but they were
perceived to be ones of form and not of substance. As with other marriages of the period,
it is worth considering that providing declaratory letters were obtained, a dispensation
could be valid without mentioning every prohibited degree of relationship between the
41
parties, so long as it mentioned the closest.4
There is not space here to speculate on what
the formal problems may have been, nor to
explain why I believe the French attempts to
lobby the pope had absolutely no effect on
either dispensation. But two other factors may
have led Marie Barnfield into her interpretation.
Firstly, Scofield,5 in relating the circumstances in which the second dispensation was
accorded, depended on A.B. Hinds’ calendared version of a letter of Tomasso Portinari
of 8 April 1468.6 I believe her conjecture was
coloured by the rumours of intrigue which
originate not in the original (or, rather, surviving contemporary copy),7 but in Hinds’ rather
too free, and misdated, translation. Scofield
suspected George Neville, archbishop of
York, to be responsible for the intrigue, as she
knew from a passage in William Gregory
that he had seemed to be currying favour with
the papal legate – though maybe in regard to
other matters. (Uncharacteristically, she also
seemed to confuse the papal legate, Stefano
Trenta, with the envoy who brought the first
dispensation to London).
Secondly, the dispensation sought for the
marriage between George, Duke of Clarence,
and Isabel Neville may have been a fairly hot
issue for the Neville family when Charles and
Margaret sought theirs, but I doubt it was
proceeding simultaneously at the penitentiary,
so this is a further argument against the effectiveness of Neville meddling in the latter.
Clarence’s dispensation was granted on 14
March 1469, not 1468.8 I have not seen Dugdale’s transcription in the Bodleian of the lost
original grant. But the original’s dating clause
cannot have been worded, ‘Datum Rome apud
sanctum Petrum pridie Idus Martij Anno
1468 7 Edwardi quarti’, for what would Edward IV’s regnal year be doing in a papal
charter? ‘7 Edwardi quarti’ was presumably
Dugdale’s interpolation; and if so, he interpolated wrongly. 14 March in Edward’s seventh
regnal year would have fallen in 1467, whereas a day before Easter in 1468 must be inter-
preted in new style as 1469. This is the date
accepted by Michael Hicks in his Oxford
DNB article on Clarence, which brings it appropriately closer to Clarence and Isabel’s
actual marriage on 11 July 1469.
Some members of the London and Home
Counties Branch will have heard me attempt
(in a talk in 2004) to explain why Stefano
Trenta overcame his previous reluctance to
provide Charles and Margaret with their effective dispensation in May 1468. I am hoping my account will shortly be published, but
those who are curious can meanwhile refer to
my 1992 Oxford D. Phil. thesis, AngloBurgundian Relations 1464-1472, for my
views have not greatly changed since the appearance of Peter Clarke’s EHR article.
Notes
1. Ricardian Bulletin, Spring, Summer and
Autumn 2006, and ‘Diriment Impediments,
Dispensations and Divorce: Richard III and
Martrimony’, The Ricardian, xvii, (2007), pp.
84-98.
2. Peter D. Clarke, ‘English Royal Marriages
and the Papal Penitentiary in the Fifteenth
Century’, English Historical Review, cxx,
(2005), pp. 1014-1029.
3. P. Bib, ‘Affinité’, in Dictionnaire de droit
canonique, ed. R. Naz, (Paris, 1935-65), i, pp.
271-281.
4. G. Oesterle, ‘Consanguinité’, in Dictionnaire de droit canonique, iv, pp. 232-244, at
p. 244.
5. C.L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, (London, 1923), i. p. 457.
6. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts
existing in the Archives and Collections of
Milan, 1385-1618, ed. A.B. Hinds, (London,
1913), pp. 122-3.
7. Reproduced in Carteggi Diplomatici fra
Milan Sforzesca e la Borgogna, ed. E. Sestan,
(Fonti per la Storia d’Italia, Rome, 1985-7), i.
pp. 234-6.
8. As in M. Barnfield, Ricardian Bulletin,
Summer 2006, p. 55, and ‘Diriment Impediments’, p. 89n.
42
An Impromptu Debate
The Bulletin Editorial Team anticipated responses to David Fiddimore’s article in the spring issue and it seemed appropriate to include them together and to ‘resurrect’ our Bulletin debating
section. We will be pleased to receive any further correspondence from members.
ness and arbitrariness in his executions of
Rivers and Hastings – we rightly condemn
Henry VIII for such tyranny, yet allow it in
Richard. Maybe the executions were necessary for self-preservation, but his actions
seem to have alienated a large part of the
body politic and meant that throughout his
reign he was never able to establish widespread acceptance of and acquiesence in his
rule. Lancastrians had become reconciled to
Yorkist rule under Edward IV, and, had he
lived longer, would doubtless have continued
to support the regime and his successors. But
something happened to change that, and deny
Richard the same level of support and trust.
As king, only Richard bore the responsibility
for that.
And I have to say that his treatment of
Rivers and Hastings is not inconsistent with a
decision to remove his nephews from the scene – but here we are into the realms of speculation. We simply may never know what happened to them. DNA analysis of ‘them bones’
would surely help establish if they could be
those of the Princes or not. I for one would
wish that the Society pressed for a further
analysis as this is one clear area where we
could easily add to our knowledge of this
mystery. After all, even if analysis showed
that they were both male, were related to each
other and were of the royal blood it will not
prove how they died; but if they turned out to
be female, or not related, or had no royal
DNA then we would be some way along to
disproving the calumny of which Richard
stands accused by so many.*
As Mr Fiddimore points out, Richard’s
reign did have some successes and redeeming
features, but, weighted against the fact that he
could not retain his throne in the face of de-
From Chris Ward, via e-mail
As a long-standing member of the Society,
may I say how much I enjoyed the latest Bulletin, both its new look and content. But I
wanted to comment specifically upon the article by David Fiddimore. I suspect you will
receive a lot of correspondence on the article,
and that most of it may take issue with it. I
have to say that I found it a very challenging
and refreshing article. Too often in the past I
feel that the Society has avoided having a
proper debate about our controversial hero.
Indeed, at times there is a blind and sometimes childish devotion to the man as if he
had no faults at all.
To be a medieval king meant being harsh
and ruthless – I for one sincerely doubt that
Richard can have been as saintly as some
would have him. And indeed, for me part of
the attraction is his flaws and the uncertainty
and, yes, the possibility, which we surely
must allow, that despite our hope and belief
that he cannot have been the black villain
portrayed by Shakespeare and history, he just
might have been.
But back to Mr Fiddimore’s argument that
Richard’s reign was not a success. I fear that
on reflection he is correct. His was one of the
shortest reigns in English history. His actions,
whatever their motives, and whatever the
truth behind them, caused the downfall of the
Yorkists and indeed the Plantagenets. Whatever we may wish to believe about what actually happened, it is hard to deny that his actions in that fateful spring and summer of
1483 were directly responsible for the end of
the Plantagenet dynasty. He signally failed to
command sufficient support and loyalty
across the kingdom to prevent rebellion and
invasion and defeat. He displayed ruthless43
termined active and passive opposition, I fear
that Mr Fiddimore’s assessment of the reign
as a failure is the correct one.
Despite this assertion, I remain a loyal and
committed Ricardian. My Richard is no plaster saint; he is a man, with flaws and weaknesses, with strengths and beliefs, and as one
of the central figures in, for me, the most fascinating period of English history, he will
always command and inspire fierce loyalty
and fierce condemnation. The Society’s aim
is to promote research into the life and times
of Richard III, and this should include the
publishing and debating of opinions that are
not necessarily those held by the majority of
members. For if we degenerate into a group
of people who want to hear nothing bad about
our hero, then we do him a great disservice.
Loyaulté me lie!
who I feel strongly only took the crown because he felt it was his duty to do so after
Stillington’s disclosures. I also feel that he
lost the final battle, that he should have won,
because he had reached the stage where he
was weary of it all, and felt that if God was
on his side he would prevail.
So: thank you for the continued high level
of excellence of the Bulletin. It seems to go
from strength to strength. And my thanks to
all in the Society who work so hard to bring
such as impressive publication to us armchair
members.
From Anne Sutton
Mr Fiddimore is clearly feeling as depressed
as anyone else who thinks too much about
modern politicians and how they are presented in newspapers and on television, and about
the entertainment fantasies of Ian McKellan
and his director on the theme of Shakespeare's version of Richard III. The solution is
to stop thinking about events and persons of
over 500 years ago in terms of the fixations
of modern media. We have no one around
today with whom to compare a king with the
power, responsibilities, conscience and piety
of a Richard III. To understand Richard III
and his times it is necessary to give oneself a
hard course of reading the records and
thoughts of the time: read Harleian Manuscript 433, the calendars of patent rolls, some
constitutional ideas (e.g. as explained by S.B.
Chrimes), the wills of ordinary persons of
which plenty are in print already and the Society is shortly to print the Logge Wills; then
progress to Richard’s personal possessions
and understand what he read and thought
about in The Hours of Richard III and Richard III's Books. Ignore other people’s opinion
and absorb the detail, and positive thinking is
the guaranteed result .
From Paul Moorehead, via e-mail
I joined the Society many years ago after
reading Paul Murray Kendall. Since then I
have been a very passive member. However,
the past two issues of the Bulletin have
sparked me off into a more proactive mode.
Why Hastings lost his head got me going in
the winter issue, and this, coupled with David
Fiddimore’s article in the spring issue, really
aroused my interest and sent me scurrying off
to re-read Geoffrey Richardson’s The Deceivers and Secret History Part II, by R.E. Collins. I have long held the opinion that Richard’s tragedy started well before his reign,
and some of the lack of support he received
during his reign was because he did not read
men very well as Lord of the North. I am
thinking particularly of Percy’s laggardly
progress to Bosworth in particular. I liked
David’s coupling of modern politics with
Richard’s situation. Gordon Brown fits the
mould well, as stepping up to being king is
not easy, and did not sit lightly on Richard,
*Editors: The re-examination of the bones is an issue that is raised on a fairly regular basis by
members. The current situation is that the authorities, represented by the Dean of Westminster,
are unwilling for a re-examination to take place, though the ultimate decision rests with HM The
Queen as the Abbey is a ‘royal peculiar’, i.e. under her personal jurisdiction. The Society has
approached the Dean within the last few years and permission was refused. We also understand
Continued on p. 63
44
The Real Reason Why Hastings Lost
His Head: Some Thoughts
WENDY MOORHEN
I
n the winter 2007 and spring 2008 issues
of the Bulletin David Johnson made a startling accusation against William Lord Hastings, which he believes explains Richard’s
action in summarily beheading the former
chamberlain on 13 June 1483. Does David’s
hypothesis go far enough? A number of questions need to be considered. If Hastings had
planned to murder the protector and then
blame the Woodvilles, how would this be
squared with Edward V in the months and
years to come? What would Hastings’ role
eventually become when the boy-king did
reach maturity and rule for himself? What
would have been his feelings towards the man
who had slandered his family in order to protect his own position? With the protector out
of the way, the Woodvilles damned for his
demise, who is left to protect King Edward in
the summer of 1483? Could the former chamberlain have taken the self same route as
Richard of Gloucester and declared the king
illegitimate and taken the throne for himself?
After all, Hastings was probably a second
cousin once removed to Edward IV and the
protector and the blood of Richard II’s possible heirs, the Mortimers, flowed through his
veins.1
Such hypotheses are, of course, speculation, the stuff of Shakespearian drama and
novels. David Johnson, however, is to be applauded for providing us with an innovative
explanation of the events at the beginning of
June 1483. Unless entrenched theories are
challenged, history cannot develop. There is
no evidence to support David’s theory other
than Hastings own swift execution. However,
a lack of hard evidence is not uncommon in
our Ricardian studies! We have to look at
what data is available to us and try to interpret
it into useful information that in turn provides
explanations for the actions of the characters
in our real-life drama. The truth may well lie
in the grey area between the black and white
actions of a wronged protector/usurper and a
murderous baron/loyal royal servant.
Much of what David writes I have no
quarrel with. It is, however, with the relationship between Hastings and Woodvilles that I
first have cause for concern when he writes
that after examining Mancini, Crowland and
Virgil, ‘it [is] abundantly plain there could
never have been the slightest possibility of
any such alliance’ between Hastings and the
Woodvilles. Almost every writer on the subject of this family treats them as a complete
entity, without any allowance for dissention
amongst their ranks, and implies that each
member of this clan is equally disliked or
hated or mistrusted. This is, of course, possible but considering the size of this family,
some seven or eight sisters and five brothers
plus spouses, children etc. it seems rather
unlikely. We certainly have evidence of Hastings’ enmity towards Rivers and Dorset but
the former is in custody at the time under
review. What of Hastings relationship with
the queen? It is highly probable that Elizabeth
Woodville came to Edward IV’s attention
through the offices of the Chamberlain when
she enlisted his assistance in her attempt to
gain a settlement of lands from her in-laws.
Could she not have retained some regard for
him? Historians have suggested she hated him
due to the tough marriage negotiations between their families but eventually a marriage
did take place, between Hastings’ stepdaughter, Cecily Bonville, and Dorset.
Mancini believed Queen Elizabeth hated Hastings for leading her husband astray yet it
seems strange that the Queen should single
out Hastings as the sole object of her wrath
when her brother and eldest son were party to
the king’s infidelities. Despite the propaganda
45
about their much vaunted hostility Queen
Elizabeth was a pragmatic lady, and if she
was able to come to an agreement with Richard in 1484 and emerge from sanctuary could
she not have come to an agreement with Hastings in 1483? After all, she would merely
have been emulating her predecessor, Margaret of Anjou, who came to an accommodation
with the Kingmaker over ten years earlier.
David writes how Richard was confirmed
as protector for the longer haul, i.e. until Edward V reached his ‘ripeness of years’ and
that he would not relinquish his office immediately after the coronation. Hastings appeared to accept this situation. He speculates
that it was the emergence of Buckingham that
upsets the status quo. Undoubtedly Hastings
would have been perturbed at the ‘meteoric’
rise of the duke, especially as he would have
been privy to any legitimate cause why Edward IV restricted the duke’s public role.
However, it had always been King Edward’s
policy to have magnates control regions of the
country. Hastings’ own sphere of influence
was, of course, the Midlands, with Richard
and the earl of Northumberland in the north,
the Stanleys in the north-west, and so on. It
was sound policy not to have any one overmighty subject as in the days of the Kingmaker. The arrest of Rivers and Edward V’s promotion to king had left a void in Wales which
needed to be filled and although Richard’s
grants to Buckingham seem excessive I doubt
that Hastings thought he was a candidate to
have received them himself. To some very
small extent the grants redressed the balance
after Hastings was granted the Honour of
Tutbury after the fall of Clarence, a grant
which, it could be argued, should have gone
to Buckingham.
It cannot be contested that the government
was fracturing by late May, with two cabals
led by Richard and Hastings. No doubt Hastings did feel marginalised but was this sufficient to plot the murder of Richard and Buckingham for purely personal gain? And so to
the conspiracy, or should I write conspiracies? David suggests there were two, the first
fermented by the Woodvilles and which became known to Richard, who reacted on 10
June requesting help from the north. Could
the Woodvilles possibly act on their own and
without support from some members of the
Council? Rivers and Sir Richard Grey are in
gaol, the Queen and Dorset are in sanctuary
and Sir Edward out of the country. We are
then presented with the idea that Hastings was
probably aware of the Woodville conspiracy
but then devised one of his own in a very
short time-frame and enticed his colleagues
Morton and Stanley into his machinations on
13 June. Yet again Richard learned of the
plot. The protector must have had a pretty
cool intelligence agency at his disposal.
The venture was high risk, but the stakes
were high. However, would the wily, clever
and self-preserving Morton and Stanley be
drawn into something so dangerous merely
for Hastings to re-establish his pre-eminence,
and literally at the notice of an hour or two? I
would suggest that the traditional history
makes far more sense. A plot was indeed conceived, with Hastings, Morton and Stanley as
the ringleaders, supported by Oliver King and
John Forster, and developed during the first
days of June. The plotters had learned that
Stillington had revealed his secret to Richard,
a scenario not discussed by David. As the
king’s mother, the Queen had to be made
aware of what was happening and drawn into
the conspiracy. The survival of Edward V’s
kingship was the prize and who else but his
father’s most faithful supporter would commit
himself to this end? And this is the crux of the
matter. Everything we know about Hastings
screams out his loyalty and it is possible that
Hastings did have murder in his heart when
he learned that Richard was in possession of
this information and might seek the ultimate
office – his concern would have been for the
honour of his dead sovereign’s reputation and
the future of his sons. Certainly we can dismiss Sir Thomas More’s fanciful description
of a Hastings as a ‘gentle knight’. Hastings
was a hard-headed, tough nobleman who was
not afraid to fight for what he believed was
his right but would he really have gone beyond the pale and stooped to common murder, displaying a pettiness and petulance that
is totally out of character? I think not.
Continued on p. 62
46
Correspondence
Will contributors please note the letters may be edited or shortened to conform to the standards of
the Bulletin
Richard in a Florence Restaurant
From Sandra Love, via e-mail
I thought I would write to you about a surprise encounter my husband John and I had
with Richard III while we were in Florence
last year.
We went on holiday to Italy and after a
long day’s travelling we arrived at Florence,
where we were going to spend four days. As
it was late, we decided to leave our hotel,
which was just south of the Ponte Vecchio,
and have dinner at the first reasonable restaurant we came across. We turned left out of the
hotel and walked along a narrow road running
parallel with the River Arno. After a couple
of minutes we came across a restaurant, read
the menu in the window, and decided that this
was where we would eat that evening. On entering, we felt we had stepped back in time –
the high brick walls, the dark furniture, the
paved slabs on the floor and the candles on
the tables. It was very busy but yes, there was
a table for two, in the alcove. As the waiter
led us towards it we could not believe our
eyes. There on the wall of the alcove was a
portrait of Richard III! What was he doing
there?
After a really delicious meal we asked the
owner the reason why this English king was
on the wall of a restaurant in Florence. He
took us into the street, and pointed up to the
second floor. There, attached to the wall and
sticking out into the street, was a painted metal white boar. The restaurant was called Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco – the White Boar
Restaurant.
I can thoroughly recommend the food and
the atmosphere there. I gather it is best to
book – we were very lucky to get a table. The
address is: Osteria del Cinghiale Bianco, Borgo Sant’ Jacopo 43, Florence (tel. 055-215706).
Rescued from a junk shop
From Sally Henshaw via e-mail
When, browsing through my Bulletin, I arrived at page 15, I thought – ‘I know that picture’ – and then realised it hangs on my study
wall. On my painting it states it was engraved
by William Ridgway, and that it is from the
painting by N. Gosse of Paris. The title is the
same as you mentioned, with ‘The Sons of
Edward IV parted from their mother’ in capitals on the top line, and underneath, in a
smaller font, ‘By Richard Duke of Gloster,
June 16th 1483’. I rescued it from a junk shop
many years ago. I also have a similar one of
the wedding of Richard, Duke of York, and
Anne Mowbray.
Richard’s responsibility
From Jill Davies, Bexhill-on-Sea
On a point arising from the Cirencester Conference, concerning Tony Pollard’s analogy
of the deposition of the Princes and the dethronement and murder of Richard II, I do not
agree that Richard III can necessarily be held
responsible for the possible murder of the
Princes. The two cases are very different.
The Princes were children, and they were
Richard’s nephews. I agree with David Baldwin that, even in medieval times, people did
not necessarily murder other people because
they were ‘inconvenient’, especially if the
person concerned had a genuine religious
faith. Richard III took the throne because of
political necessity. This is a vastly different
motive from the wilful intention of murdering
his nephews.
Also gaolers can, on occasion, be bribed
by outsiders, and there have been instances
where it has proved surprisingly easy for
agents with a motive to obtain jobs as prison
warders, with access to even high-profile prisoners.
47
The Barton Library
After holding an auction of non-fiction books last year we have decided to put some duplicate
novels up for auction this year; there are lots of old favourites and some classic Ricardian fiction
on offer. If you want to remind yourself what the novels are about, check in the printed fiction
catalogue (copies available from Anne Painter) or look at the Barton Library section of the Society’s website.
Postal book auction: fiction
Here is a selection of novels that are surplus to requirements, on offer to the highest bidder. All
books are in reasonable condition, unless described otherwise. I should like to raise at least £2.50
for each hardback and £1 for each paperback. Each book will be sold to the member who puts in
the highest bid for it. In the event of identical bids, the winner will be the bid received first.
Please send your bids to me: Anne Painter, Yoredale, Trewithick Road, Breage, Helston,
Cornwall, TR13 9PZ or e-mail them to me at: [email protected] to arrive before Friday 19
September 2008. If you wish to be reassured that I have received your postal bid(s) please enclose a stamped addressed envelope. Please do not send any money now.
The successful bidders will be notified by post or e-mail, and the cost of postage added to the
invoices. I regret that I shall not be able to write to everyone who puts in a bid so if you do not
hear from me it will mean that your bid was unsuccessful.
Finally, in the past some members put bids in by stating ‘one pound higher than the highest
bid’, I feel that this is not really fair, so could I respectfully request members not to do it. Thank
you.
Abbey M.
Abbey M.
Abbey M.
Anand V.
Baer A.
Barnes M.C.
Bird H.
Bowen M.
Carleton P.
Edwards R.
Edwards R.
Edwards R.
Evans J.
Fairburn E.
Fairburn E.
Farrington R.
The Warwick Heiress
Blood of the Boar
Brothers in Arms
Crown of Roses
Medieval Woman
The King’s Bed
The Last Plantagenet
Dickon
Under the Hog
Some Touch of Pity
Fortune’s Wheel
The Broken Sword
The Divided Rose
The Rose in Spring
White Rose Dark Summer
The Killing of Richard III
Farrington R.
Farrington R.
Irwin F.
Irwin F.
Irwin F.
Irwin F.
Jarman R.H.
Jarman R.H.
The Traitors of Bosworth
Tudor Agent
The White Queen
The White Pawn
The Winter Killing
My Lady of Wycherley
Crown in the Candlelight
The King’s Grey Mare
48
1 Hardback & 3 Paperback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback & 2 Paperback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback & 4 Paperback
1 Hardback & 3 Paperback
3 Hardback & 3 Paperback
3 Hardback
2 Paperback
1 Paperback
1 Paperback
1 Hardback
4 Hardback, (1 fairly poor condition)
& 1 Paperback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
6 Hardback
Jarman R.H.
Jarman R.H.
Lindsay P.A.
Lofts N.
Lofts N.
Palmer M.
Palmer M.
Peters E.
Plaidy J.
Potter J.A.
Rathbone J.
Sedley K.
Tannahill R.
Tey J.
Wilson S.
Wilson S.
Wilson S.
Wilson S.
We Speak No Treason
Courts of Illusion
Princely Knave
The Lonely Furrow
The Home Coming
The White Boar
The Wrong Plantagenet
The Murders of Richard III
The Reluctant Queen
Trail of Blood
Kings of Albion
The Goldsmith’s Daughter
The Seventh Son
The Daughter of Time
Wife to the Kingmaker
Less Fair than Fortunate
The Queen’s Sister
Lady Cicely
2 Hardback & 2 Paperback
1 Hardback
2 Paperback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback & 3 Paperback
3 Hardback & 1 Paperback
1 Hardback (fairly poor condition)
2 Hardback
3 Paperback (fair to poor condition)
1 Paperback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
5 Paperback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
1 Hardback
Additions to the Audio-Visual Collection since January 2008
Audio
BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week: Sian Thomas reads an abridged version of Alison Weir’s biography of Katherine Swynford (five parts). Also from the same series The King’s Glass, the story
of the glazing of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, read by Sam West in five parts, together
with an interview with the author by Andrew Marr on Start the Week.
BBC Radio 4: Making History: Alison Weir analyses the contradictory character of John Tiptoft,
Edward IV’s Earl of Worcester, ‘ruthless butcher’ or ‘Renaissance humanist nobleman’?
Visual
Channel 5 TV: Russell Grant’s Postcards visiting Tewkesbury Battlefield and Abbey as well as
the Kingmaker 1471 exhibition at Warwick Castle.
BBC 2 TV: William Marshall: the Greatest Knight. Although principally an exploration of the
twelfth-century figure, the programme contains scenes of medieval mêlée tournaments. Also
available is the BBC 2 TV 1987 programme on the same subject produced to coincide with the
Royal Academy Age of Chivalry exhibition.
Channel 4 TV: The Real Knights of the Round Table: Tony Robinson and the ‘Time Team’ investigate the Windsor site of Edward III’s Round Table building.
BBC TV East Midlands: Inside Out on the latest research into the Bosworth Battlefield site, including interviews with Peter Foss and Glen Foard of the Battlefields Trust (kindly donated by
Richard Smith).
Middleham Castle – a Royal Residence: DVD produced and narrated by John Fox (for full details
see pages 19-22 of the spring 2008 Bulletin).
To borrow any items: please contact Geoffrey Wheeler. His details are on the inside back cover
of the Bulletin.
49
Report on Society Events
England’s Greatest Mystery – A Late Medieval Whodunnit
As I turned, tired from my long journey, into the entrance of the Royal Agricultural College, I
noticed with nostalgia some rustic peasants hoeing by the side of the drive. Alas, I was mistaken
in my weariness – they were but fellow Ricardians bending down to pick up their cases. Yes,
tempus fugit: I was about to be caught up in the splendid trappings of the Society’s Triennial
Conference. I reminisced – Durham, Canterbury, Oxford, York, Cambridge – intellectual powerhouses one and all.
Now – Cirencester? In fact, we were based at the first agricultural college in the Englishspeaking world, with the splendid motto ‘Practice with Science’. Granted a Royal Charter by
Queen Victoria in 1845, its President since 1984 has been Prince Charles. Would the ‘appliance
of science’ solve a 525-year-old mystery (or should that read 523-year-old?).
I soon succumbed to the splendid Gothic surroundings – even the manciple had a coat of
arms on the side of his waggon (a Citroen, I believe) – a sheaf of wheat between two rampant
rams engorged. Finger posts pointed to delights such as the Garden House Farm; only the one to
the Mechanisation Department jarred with the medieval ambience. Later, in the gloaming, 1842
easily translated into 1442 as I crossed the courtyard below the tower. The tithe barn perhaps did
not live up to its name, but the wassailing and remembrance of times past within its walls ensured
a ‘Happy Hour’ at the end of the first day. A fox lay contentedly curled on the bar’s roof, oblivious to the ribaldry below.
Learned exposition followed learned exposition: Anne Sutton on ‘Setting the Scene: April to
July 1483’; Livia Visser-Fuchs on ‘Continental Response to the rumour of the murder of the
50
Princes’; four ‘suspects’ – the dukes of Buckingham and Norfolk, Henry Tudor, and Richard III
– were forensically fingered by Anne Crawford, Sean Cunningham and Lesley Boatwright respectively; Peter Hammond and Bill White were in charge of ‘The Remains’ of the day – one
couldn’t move in the Tower for fear of treading on bones, it seems.
I leave the lecturers themselves, in future Bulletins, to share with you these musings on
‘England’s Greatest Mystery’. I can but recall a few trite observations: a room which doubled as
a sauna for the first few talks; a microphone which steadfastly succumbed to the laws of gravity;
a multicoloured skull which seemed to take on a life of its own and bring back memories of the
great Eric Morecambe. I resolved never to suffer from histiocytosis or stafne cysts; and, in future,
to check the contents of all urns before use. Suffice to say, the grey cells were consistently stimulated. Enough to occasion at least one dream of being chased through Colchester by a mad-eyed
master bricklayer.
Ken Livingstone might be famous for his ‘bendy buses’ – our Society has its ‘Wendy buses’
– on time, comfortable and extremely skilfully driven down lanes that seemed impossibly narrow. On Saturday afternoon we visited Fairford Church, famous for its twenty-eight stained glass
windows. No other parish church in the land has retained a complete set of late medieval glass.
The plan of these windows illustrates the Christian faith as in the pages of a picture book and we
were privileged to have two excellent local guides to show us round. Since 1986 there has been a
programme of restoration of the windows by the Barley Studio in York. We arrived at and left
the delightful village of Chedworth in a downpour – luckily the genuine and informative welcome by Annette Seymour, a Ricardian who lives there, and the delightful exposition of his craft
by 82-year-old stonemason Peter Juggins, more than made up for this. Whether or not the five
stone corbels gazing down on us portrayed Henry Tudor, Elizabeth of York, the Duke and Duchess of Clarence and Saint Andrew or not, the smile (or was it a crack in the stone?) from
‘Elizabeth’ warmed our inner selves.
Then it was back to prepare for the Conference Dinner. It was held in the Ken Russell Room
– surely not named after the erstwhile film director of The Devils and more recently short-term
occupant of the Big Brother House 5? The gathered throng had arrayed themselves, not in medieval accoutrements for the disports of a Barley Hall, but with the rather more sober jackets and
ties and demure dresses of the twenty-first-century. Food, like the Tudors, is an acquired taste;
but this gastronome for one thoroughly enjoyed the repast and the ribald company (led on our
table, I must opine, by the revered Chairman of our august Society). The Editor of the Ricardian,
no less, capped the evening by bravely auctioning with apposite aplomb a collection of knicks
and knacks. Bargain Hunt presenters beware.
On the morrow, we reassembled to learn whether either,
or both, of the Princes had survived the ministrations of their
uncle or other persons unknown.
If I followed the various arguments correctly – Edward V may
have died either of suffocation by
his doctor or from a botched escape bid; or he might have been
crowned by the Irish, who, unfortunately, kept getting his name
wrong. Richard of York, meanwhile, may have ended up at Colchester studying the finer points
of bricklaying. As for the mysteriSociety Auctioneer: Anne Sutton
ous ‘good little John’, Margaret of
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Burgundy’s surrogate son who occupied quarters later called ‘Richard’s room’ at Binche – who
knows? We thank Gordon Smith, Ann Wroe and David Baldwin for their fascinating input.
The concluding ‘Debate’, after contributions by Jennie Powys-Lybbe and Lesley Boatwright,
was ably comparèd by Tony Pollard, who did a passable imitation of Kilroy-Silk in his attempt to
aggravate the audience.
Considerable gratitude must be paid to the indefatigable Wendy Moorhen who, as Research
Officer, was responsible for the smooth running and general excellence of the weekend. We look
forward eagerly to her next tour de force – the York study weekend in 2009.
Ken Hillier
Benedictus Qui Venit: the Clare Requiem
To remember King Richard and Queen Anne in a way that they would have understood, in a fitting historical and religious context, is a poignant experience. So it was with the Society’s annual
Requiem Mass held this year at the Augustinian Priory of Clare in Suffolk, a place with rich and
deep connections with the House of York and its descendants.
The journey for most of us began in London. It was grey and overcast leaving the capital.
This augured badly for the rest of the day; certainly Cleopatra’s Needle to our right on leaving
the Embankment pointed forlornly upwards, perhaps remembering the bluer skies of ancient Heliopolis. But as we left the city’s outer fringe and entered the flat lands of Essex the elements
became more benign, and a dry and temperate day seemed more assured. En route there was the
traditional comfort stop at an inevitably soulless motorway services. Out of Essex we dropped
down into the Stour Valley and the county of Suffolk, the land of the southern people, lay before
us.
First stop in the county was the church of St Mary’s Chilton on the outskirts of Sudbury, and
on the edge of a modern industrial estate: a rather sad juxtaposition. Nonetheless on entering the
church the modern world slipped away and a more ancient one became apparent. This church is
now redundant, which always sounds such a harsh term, but it is in the charge of the Churches
Conservation Trust, and well loved by those who still care for it. One of these was our guide to
the church, Val Herbert, who used to live in the nearby Chilton Hall. The church has latefifteenth-century alabaster tombs for members of the Crane family, which rather resemble those
of the de la Poles at Wingfield.
Sudbury itself, a pleasant enough market town, had much to offer: Gainsborough’s birth
place, three fine churches, and streets with elegant Georgian facades. However for most of us its
restaurants were of more immediate concern; for it is true that Ricardians always give the appetite priority over sight-seeing, although of course we usually try to satisfy both.
On then to Clare and its priory. We know its importance in the history of the House of York,
as Michael Jones explains in his book Bosworth – The Psychology of a Battle. Affront the main
priory building a noticeboard rather movingly tells us ‘founded 1248 – suppressed 1538 – restored 1953’; a tribute perhaps to the retention of faith over the centuries and certainly a riposte
to Tudor dissolutionist tendencies. It is a remote and gentle place, and whilst much is now open
to the skies, it nevertheless retains a sense of its importance as a place of history and faith. The
House of York was directly descended from the de Clare family through the Mortimers. Amongst
the ruins of the old priory, in what was once the chapel of St Vincent, lie Joan of Acre (a daughter of Edward I), Lionel, Duke of Clarence, and his wife Elizabeth de Burgh; all ancestors of
Richard and Anne.
The Requiem Mass took place in the priory church which is dedicated to Our Lady of Good
Counsel and was celebrated by Father Bernard Rolls, the Prior of Clare. He entered the chapel to
the sound of the entrance antiphon sung in Latin plainchant by the choir, admirably led by John
Ashdown-Hill. The Mass was to be spoken and sung in English and Latin, with a touch too of
Greek. In his homily Father Bernard spoke of his early years living near Burgh-by-Sands in
52
Cumbria where Joan of Acre’s father died in 1307 and he recalled Joan’s life, her strong character and the fact that she was not afraid to defy her powerful father. He told us about the relevance
of historical truth and, alluding to the Easter story, the triumph of life over death and the importance of praying for the dead and remembering them. And that was why we were there at
Clare to honour the memory of Richard and Anne and their royal ancestors buried in the priory
grounds; and, in the words of the antiphon, to ask ‘requiem aeternam dona eis’: grant them eternal rest.
Following the requiem we processed to the grounds of the ruined medieval priory and laid
baskets of flowering plants at the spots where the tombs of Joan, Lionel and Elizabeth once
stood. The flowers would later be planted in the priory grounds, to complement the roses given
when the Society last visited in 2004. The sites of the tombs are near to the plaque the Society
provided in 2002 to commemorate the three burials. It was particularly apt to commemorate Joan,
since she had died in childbirth at Clare in 1307, a few months before her father’s death. We
were therefore close to the seven-hundredth anniversary. She was certainly a feisty lady.
There was opportunity to explore the grounds further, for there are many features that are
worth seeing; in particular the shrine to Our Lady of Good Counsel, housed in one of the oldest
parts of the priory dating from fourteenth century. The shrine has a relief of the Mother of Good
Counsel based on the original fresco at Genazzano near Rome. Then it was time to retire inside
for refreshments kindly provided by the priory. It was a fine spread and in a relaxed atmosphere
we enjoyed the tea, the selection of cakes and much good conversation before the departure for
London and other parts.
Our thanks to all those involved in the organisation of the day; to Dave Perry for keeping the
coach in order and on time; to Father Bernard for his hospitality and of course to John AshdownHill; the ultimate mastermind of it all.
John Saunders
53
Future Society Events
Bookable Events
Bosworth 2008
Sunday 17 August 2008
This year our one-day visit to Bosworth comprises the traditional service in Sutton Cheney
Church, and visit to the Battlefield Centre, including tea. This year we 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 August 22 1485.
 Displays featuring the alternative theories regarding the site of the battle and setting out the
latest archaeological surveys, results and artifacts 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 human occupation.
In addition to the exhibition, it will also be possible to visit the Medieval Village, [‘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 and many more
buildings are planned, including a church, barn and other workshops.’] and to walk the Battlefield Trails. The Summer Medieval Festival and Battle Weekend will be taking place during the
weekend of 16 - 17 August. For more information see http://www.bosworthbattlefield.com/index.
htm
We hope that as many members as possible 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 e-mail: [email protected].
Programme
09.15
Coach departs Embankment Underground Station (Embankment exit) 09.15 sharp
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 plough
man’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
17.45
Coach leaves Bosworth for London, arriving circa 20.15
Members attending independently on the day may book for such elements of the day as they
wish:
54
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
London Walk
Saturday 6 September 2008
We propose a walk through the part of London Richard would have known well. We hope to pay
a visit to St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate. Crosby House, where Richard once lived, stood adjacent to the church which contains the tomb of Sir John Crosby, who built the house.
Val Alliez will be our guide and will lead us through the City Streets pointing out places of
particular interest to us. At Guildhall we hope to visit the Great Hall. The Crypt and Old Library
will not be open to us because there is a wedding reception in the afternoon.
We will then visit the St Paul’s area.
We hope to meet at Liverpool Street Station, Bishopsgate exit, to start the walk at 10.00 a.m.
The cost will be £5.50 per person; this is part Guide’s fee and part donation to St Helen’s
Church. Numbers are restricted to 30 persons. Please see the booking form in the centre pages.
Kitty Bristow
Norfolk Branch Study Day
Saturday 15 November 2008, The Assembly House, Theatre Street, Norwich
Inspirational Monarchs, Inspirational Leaders?
Programme
09.30 Coffee on arrival
09.55 Welcome to the study day
10.00 Edward I and Military Leadership, by Prof. Michael Prestwich, University of Durham
11.00 Coffee
11.30 Edward III and Inspirational Leadership, by Dr Michael K. Jones
12.30 Lunch Break
14.00 Contrasting styles of Kingship: Henry IV and Henry V, by Dr Michael K. Jones
15.00 Tea
15.30 The Lion and the Boar, Brothers in Arms - Edward IV and Richard III, by Dr Phil Stone
16.30 Question and Answer session
17.00 Vote of Thanks and Close
Cost £22.00.
Please see booking form in centre pages. Contact Mrs A. Hayek, 20 Rowington Rd, Norwich
NR1 3RR e-mail [email protected]
Annmarie Hayek
Reminder and Late Bookings
Thaxted and Saffron Walden
Saturday 19 July 2008
There are still places available for this trip. Please see details and booking form in the spring Bulletin or contact Carolyn West, 6 Seaforth Court, Admirals Walk, Hoddesdon, Herts EN11 8AD,
tel 01992 414248, e-mail: [email protected].
55
Branches and Groups
Gloucester Branch Report
Our programme has already provided some really enjoyable talks. In February Dr James Clark,
Senior Lecturer in Later Medieval History from Bristol University spoke on ‘Late Monasticism
and the Dissolution’. James has written many books on the subject and was able to convey a very
comprehensive overview of the culture of the monastic movement and the political climate which
devastated the foundations during the dissolution. The question-and-answer session which followed proved extremely helpful in opening up various topics of particular interest to members.
Our next talk ‘The Kingship of Henry VII’ was given by Professor Ronald Hutton, also joining us from Bristol University. Professor Hutton has a wide range of interests and is a regular
contributor on television programmes, particularly on the English Civil War. Again, the talk was
both impressive in content, highly original and thought-provoking. Delivered with some very
welcome humorous interjections, it prompted a long question-and-answer session which was
much appreciated by the attendees.
The Bristol Group have also held two recent meetings. Marcus Palmen provided a powerpoint presentation on Benozzo Gozzoli. This featured an overview of Gozzoli’s life and work followed by a more in-depth look at ‘The Procession of the Magus Gaspar’ from the Chapel of the
Palazzo Medici Ricardi, Florence. Marcus had completed extensive research on the background
and detail of the work to produce a very informative and superbly illustrated talk. The next meeting took the form of an informal discussion on ‘Favourite Castles’. Always a popular format, the
group, on a somewhat chill winter evening, enjoyed a cosy, relaxing evening discussing various
medieval strongholds and viewing photographs taken during much sunnier times during the
warmer months.
Thanks entirely to Marcus Palmen we now have our own Gloucester Branch website up and
running. As Marcus has emphasised, we do need to ensure the content remains topical and is regularly updated with new articles and photographs so, hopefully, the Branch membership will provide a steady supply of items for Marcus to include. May I also take this opportunity to thank
John Ashdown-Hill for circulating details of the website to Society members by email – much
appreciated, John. I do hope many Society members will have a look at the website and, perhaps,
give us some ‘feedback’.
Forthcoming events:
Saturday 5 July
Friday 11 July
Saturday 11 October
Branch Meeting. The grandchildren of Henry VII. Informal
discussion.
The Donnellys, 18 Treelands Close, Leckhampton [01242 238790]
Bristol Meeting. Shakespeare in the park: All’s Well That Ends
Well. Gala Night presentation from the exquisite private gardens of
Hazelbury Manor, Box, near Bath. Picnics from 6.30. Play begins at
8.00. £20 per ticket from Ruzi Buchanan. A special experience!
Branch Meeting & AGM. Talk by Dr Rosemary Horrox. ‘Richard III
and Parliament’ at Emmanuel Hall, Leckhampton
Keith Stenner
Lincolnshire Branch Report
The first event of the new season was a real treat. Joe David was a very interesting speaker and
brought lots of slides and memorabilia to illustrate his talk, ‘The Tower Within’. Tactfully he
skated over the Bloody Tower and the mention of the Princes and gave us a marvellous insight
56
into his life as a Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London. In November we visited Castle Howard, which was decorated for Christmas. The decorations were beautiful and there were plenty of
eating sites with homemade produce – very palatable. The weather was favourable so we were
able to enjoy the beautiful grounds too. The Christmas Dinner was a huge success. This was held
at The King’s Hotel in Grantham. It was well attended and the food and service was excellent,
thus bringing 2007 to a close.
2008 began with the members’ evening in January. Jean gave us a superb slide show on
‘Historic Royal Ghosts’ and then encouraged members to tell their own ghostly experiences.
There were some really spooky stories. Richard and Maureen Wheeldon won the prize for the
best story, with their account of a ‘time slip’ at the George in Southwark. In February we were
very pleased to welcome Dr Phil Stone who gave us an excellent talk on ‘Falcon, Fetterlocks,
Flowers and Fotheringhay’. The talk was very entertaining and the quality of Dr Stone’s slides
was much remarked upon. February also saw thirteen members visiting Stratford to see Richard
III. Unfortunately it was done in modern dress with henchmen carrying machine guns and RAF
Tornadoes flying over the Battle of Bosworth. Richard was also shown proof of the princes’ murder by Tyrrell’s mobile phone!
The March meeting had to be altered at the last moment due to a family crisis for the speaker,
but Rowena was able to step in at the last minute and saved the day. Her talk on four notable medieval women was excellent and her research into the lives of Abbess Hilda of Whitby, Julian of
Norwich, Margaret of Scotland and Marjorie Kemp was superb. The second Saturday in April
saw members speeding up the Great North Road to visit three contrasting churches at Kingstonupon-Hull. Included in this was a guided tour of the city, which was extremely interesting. Hull
is a fine city, with some excellent museums and historic landmarks. Free time after lunch saw
many of us visiting ‘The Deep’ – a truly memorable experience.
So there you have it – an up to date account of our exploits. Our motto ‘when your feet hit the
floor keep running’ has certainly proved true so far. Watch this space!
Marion Moulton
London and Home Counties Branch
Following the Annual General Meeting of the Branch in March 2008, the Branch committee consists of: Acting Chair, Kitty Bristow; Vice-Chair, Howard Choppin; Secretary, Elizabeth Nokes;
Treasurer, Diana Lee; Comittee members, Joan Cooksley and Elaine Robinson.
Would all Branch members please note that it has been decided to discontinue publication of
‘The Crosby Chronicle’, and the next mailing you receive from the Branch will therefore be the
August Newsletter, available on the Bosworth visit or by post shortly thereafter. This will carry
news of the forthcoming meetings, and reviews of past meetings, along with the usual administrative notices. Members who would be prepared to receive the Newsletter by e-mail are most
welcome to contact me with their current e-mail address.
Elizabeth Nokes, Secretary
Mid Anglia Group Little Wenham Visit
On Sunday 6 April eleven intrepid members of the Mid Anglia Group met at the Bypass Nursery,
Capel St Mary, Suffolk beneath a large blue and white golf umbrella, flying the white rose of
York (see picture). It was snowing. We then drove in convoy across a nearby field to reach Little
Wenham, which is now so little that it scarcely exists at all.
At Little Wenham we were greeted by the sight of the wonderful thirteenth-century manor
house, built of flint, dressed stone and large, early medieval white bricks by Hubert de Muchensy
between 1260 and 1280. The manor house, which is sometime called Little Wenham Castle, is, in
fact a perfectly preserved castle-in-miniature. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was the
residence of the Debenham family, hence the reason for our visit. Gilbert Debenham esquire was
57
a member of the council of the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, and his son, Sir Gilbert Debenham,
served Edward IV and Richard III. Sir Gilbert accompanied the exiled Yorkists to the Low Countries in 1470, and was one of the two knights sent ashore at Cromer by Edward IV in 1471 to
reconnoitre. Sir Gilbert may have fought for Richard at Bosworth. Certainly Henry VII deprived
him of all his offices in autumn 1485. Despite a subsequent pardon from the Tudor monarch, Sir
Gilbert later lent his support to Perkin Warbeck, for which he was attainted and all his lands confiscated.
The manor house is not open to the public, so we had to be content with an outside view.
However, we had the key of the neighbouring church (now redundant), and were able to explore
the interior. The church is a single-celled building built at the same time as the manor house. It
had a stone rood screen until about 1820, when sadly the upper portion was pulled down. Fortunately however, the unusual and rare thirteenth-century font, which was thrown out at the same
time, has been found, restored and reinstalled.
The church has a number of thirteenth-century murals. Opposite the door, as usual, was a
large painting of St Christopher, now somewhat fragmentary. However, the Virgin and Child, on
the north side of the altar, and the painting of St Margaret, St Catherine and St Mary Magdalene,
on the south side, are both well preserved. Against the south wall of the nave is a large fourteenth-century tomb of an earlier Gilbert Debenham, which doubled as the Easter Sepulchre before the Reformation. Immediately before the altar is the fine brass of Sir Gilbert Debenham’s
sister and heiress, with her husband, Sir Thomas Brews (another Mowbray retainer). This couple
was allowed to buy back the Debenham family estates by Henry VII for £500, after Sir Gilbert
Debenham’s death.
The church was fascinating, but authentically medieval in being totally devoid of heat or
electricity. So, as the snow flurries continued, the hardy Mid Anglian Ricardians drove back
across the field to the Bypass Nursery, where all enjoyed a delicious tea – while keenly debating
how it was that the chairman’s slice of chocolate cake was twice as big as anyone else’s.
John Ashdown-Hill
58
New South Wales Branch - Richard III at Bundanoon
The NSW Branch mini conference held on the weekend of 11-13April in the Southern Highlands
was an outstanding success thanks to the hard work in getting it together by Secretary Julia Redlich. A good crowd of Ricardians, some members and friends, others interested parties, travelled
from all points of the NSW compass. Robyn and Sarah Goldfinch had travelled for five hours
from Hunter Valley after researching our website. Sarah is specialising in Richard III for her
Higher School Certificate this year and I am sure that she now has plenty of material to complete
her studies. Kevin saw to that!
We all gathered in the comfortable lounge of the Bundanoon Hotel and, after, the welcome
from Nancy Sparrowhawk, we were treated to a viewing of a marvellously produced DVD of
Middleham Castle, as it is today and how it might have looked when Richard and Anne lived
there.
The break for morning tea gave us the chance to buy raffle tickets and find bargains at the
Bring and Buy table. Then we heard some great talks given by Dorothea Preis on Medieval Gardens, Kevin Herbert on The Rise and Rise of the Nifty Nevilles and Carol Gerrard on Medieval
Soldiery. Excellent speakers with interesting subjects as always, with well-chosen illustrations.
After lunch there was a lively discussion on recommended Ricardian reading, with several
book reviews from Gillian Laughton, Babs Creamer (who sent her best wishes from the UK),
Dorothea Preis, Denise Rawlings and Johanna Visser. Then we heard a talk on Royal Bastards
delivered by Julia Redlich, always an entertaining topic as there are so many of them – including
the portrait of the final one using the strictly Australian meaning of the word.
Afternoon tea followed, then the raffle draw. There were some lovely prizes including the
cover of special Ricardian stamps from a limited edition, some Battle of Bosworth wine, and the
bottle of port, donated by Julia after winning it in the Heraldry Australia raffle in January.
A Meet the Press session followed, moderated by Carol Gerrard, with Ann Chandler as Princess Elizabeth of York in the ‘hot seat’ facing a gruelling inquiry from the panel of Margaret
Beaufort (Judith Hughes) the Duke of Norfolk (Kevin Herbert) Princess Cecily (Christena Dawson), Elizabeth Woodville (Margaret Shaw), Bishop Stillington (David Chandler) and Prince
Richard, Duke of York (Dorothea Preis).
Finally we had the results of the quiz that had been handed out at the beginning of the day
(those who have been trumped by Kevin in days of yore will be relieved to know that as a contributor to the questions he wasn’t allowed to enter). And the winner, with an almost perfect
score was David Chandler.
Sadly, a few members had to journey home that evening due to prior commitments, but those
who stayed on (some dressed in their medieval finery) had dinner at the hotel. On the Sunday
morning more members departed for home, but others took advantage of the offered bus trip to
Fitzroy Falls, retail therapy in Berrima, and a delightful lunch on the veranda at Helen and Allan
Byrne’s tranquil property (and B&B) at Bundanoon.
Then it was back to the Bundanoon Hotel to pack our bags for home after a magnificent
weekend.
Llieda Wild
West Surrey Group Report
A short report of recent happenings with our Group. In November, we were delighted to welcome John Saunders at Rollo’s house where he gave us a comprehensive talk on the background
of our Society, with a power point presentation of some amazing photographs of earlier days and
of people and events familiar to long-standing members, telling us of people whose dedication to
Richard III’s cause has laid the foundation for our now world-wide Society, which we hope will
eventually bring about, via education, a different impression of this much-maligned king. We
very much hope that John will visit us again later this year to tell us more.
59
December saw our now much looked-forward-to Christmas lunch, at a new venue this year,
the Lobster Pot near Farnham. This sounds like a seaside location but there were no sea breezes,
waves or lobster pots but a very pleasurable occasion, enjoyed by about 24 members and partners. Sadly, this was also a farewell to Pat Hibbs and her family, who shortly afterwards moved
to Malvern (where, I am happy to say, she has joined the Worcestershire Branch). We shall all
miss the exciting medieval events which have taken place in her lovely garden during the past
few summers. Adieu, Pat, but we all look forward to visiting you in the not-too-distant future.
At our AGM in January, Richard our treasurer once again reassured us that our funds are still
in the black. Many suggestions were made for this year’s programme. Among them, we still have
hopes of visiting Bruges, although the Gruthuyse Museum – our main objective – seems to be
permanently undergoing refurbishment. We shall see! Another trip we plan to make in May is to
visit Newport to see the medieval ship which was dredged from the mud when foundations for
the new Civic Centre were being laid. It is now undergoing restoration and is occasionally open
for viewing by the public. We have planned a weekend visit to Stamford in August to see the
open-air performance of Richard the Third at Tolethorpe Hall, with possibly a look at Crowland
Abbey while we are so near. For July we are exploring the possibility of having a table at our
local Medieval Fair at Losely House (the home of the More-Molyneux family, descendants of
Thomas More). Watch this space for further news on these events.
In February we had another power-point presentation (this age of technology is marvellous,
isn’t it?) This time Dr Roger Joy, Chairman of the Katherine Swynford Society, spoke to us
about this fascinating lady, who, as John of Gaunt’s mistress (although later his Duchess) produced the Beauforts, thorns in the sides of the Yorkists during the Wars of the Roses.
Early in March we reviewed Geoffrey Richardson’s book The Deceivers and his theory that
Margaret Beaufort, Thomas Stanley and John Morton were cunningly responsible for many of
the events that led to Richard’s downfall. Like many other theories, it sounds very plausible.
What do other Ricardians think?
At the very end of March we had a reunion with Pat, when she joined five of us for a full and
enlightening weekend at the beautiful Madingley Hall, Cambridge, for a series of seven lectures
by Dr Rosemary Horrox on ‘The Yorkists’. Dr Horrox explained the making of the Plantagenet/York/Lancastrian dynasty from the convoluted lives of the sons of Edward the Third until its
demise at Bosworth. She is a splendid and patient tutor and there was no question asked that she
was unable to answer fully and in great detail. This was a brilliant finale to our winter programme.
Renee Barlow
Worcestershire Branch Report
The first three meetings of the year have been some of the most interesting we have had recently.
Following on from Greta Lacey’s talk in January we were very pleased to welcome John Ashdown-Hill to Worcestershire. He treated us to a fascinating afternoon talking about ‘Eleanor Talbot – Lady of the Pre-contract’. The talk was supported by slides and the questions afterwards
reflected our interest in his subject. It was good to see some prospective new members at this
meeting too.
In March we spent a really enjoyable afternoon with Rebekah and Graeme Beale. They were
both resplendent in their costumes and Rebekah had prepared a super array of medieval foods for
us to sample. Graeme had set out his display of everyday items of a bowman, and other household things. We had chosen to have this meeting in the medieval barn that is now St Nicholas
Church Hall in Worcester and this proved to be an excellent setting for the display. Rebekah’s
talk was entitled ‘Richard Duke of York’ and was very informative. He came over as a very
strong but moral character and it showed where the better side of Richard III’s character had
come from. It was enlightening to hear that there is some evidence that Richard and Cecily were
together the night before he left for France and therefore Edward was probably not illegitimate.
60
Graeme described his life as a bowman and demonstrated items from his display. The arrowheads looked lethal and he told us that the soldiers would dip them in to dreadful things to make
them spread diseases among the opponents. They both described their costumes in great detail,
and the items they would carry on their belts. After the talk we enjoyed tasting the food and very
good it was too. The Brie Pie and Lentern Slices were probably the most popular. The kale soup
was a little less appetising, especially cold!
We are now looking forward to a summer of equally good outings and hoping for a little less
rain than last year.
Forthcoming events:
14 June
A visit to Warwick with Ralph Richardson to see the Beauchamp Chapel,
Sheldon Chapel and Warwick Museum.
12-13 July
We will be representing our Branch at the Tewkesbury Festival with a sales
stall, displays about the Branch and information about the Battle of Tewkes
bury.
9 August
An evening visit to Kings Norton Grammar School, following up on our
January talk.
A few of us will also be at the Three Battles Event at The Guild Hall in Worcester in April.
This is a new joint venture by the various societies who promote and re-enact the battles of
Tewkesbury, Evesham and Worcester, and we have been invited to have a display stand for our
branch.
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
The Branch had a busy day at Towton Hall on Palm Sunday and members saw several of the
events with which the Towton Battlefield Society commemorated the battle of 1461. It was much
colder than last year but not quite as arctic as in 2006, and we did good business on our stall.
May I draw members’ attention to some new items of Branch merchandise, which first appeared at Towton but are already proving popular. Short-sleeved white T-shirts in good-quality
cotton and bearing a design of the White Boar are available from Pauline Pogmore: further details from 0114 2811715 or [email protected]. Adults’ sizes cost £5.99 and children’s
£3.50. Further designs are being considered, including the Sun-in-Splendour and King Richard’s
royal arms in full colour.
On St George’s Day, 23 April, the new Towton Battlefield Society Visitor Information Centre
was due to have its grand opening. It is situated in the grounds of the Crooked Billet pub, on the
road past Saxton to Towton village and Hall. In the field just opposite stands Lead chapel. The
Centre will display photos and information about various Wars of the Roses battlefields, not only
Towton, and about the TBS itself. It will be staffed on the third Sunday of every month from 11
a.m. to 3 p.m., or by appointment with Mr Mark Taylor (01302 882488 or [email protected].
uk), and at other times the key can be obtained from the Crooked Billet. Admission is free but
donations to the TBS are welcome.
On Sunday 8 June we have a choice of two events to attend, and I hope to report on these in
the autumn Bulletin. One is the all-day living history event at Manor Lodge, Sheffield, previously
referred to (spring Bulletin p.61), and the other is the Yorkshire Archaeological Society trip,
which this year goes to Howden Minster and Cawood castle in the East Riding. In connection
with this, I understand that the YAS are organising a trip later this summer to Harewood castle
near Leeds, which is the site of an ongoing archaeological survey by Ed Dennison Associates.
61
You may remember that the castle was the subject of our Branch lecture in 2006; public access to
the ruins has not been allowed for many years, so a chance to visit is welcome. For more information, please contact Janet Senior at the YAS on 0113 245-7910.
The Branch’s Bosworth commemoration will take place on Sunday 24 August at 2 p.m. at St
Alkelda’s church, Middleham. As usual those attending hope to meet for lunch in Middleham
beforehand, and all members and friends are welcome. Please contact our Chairman Ralph Taylor on 01274 545202 if you would like to join us, or come to the church for 2 o’clock. Our commemoration is informal: following a reading of King Richard’s prayer, an arrangement of white
flowers is placed below the window dedicated by the Richard III Society in the 1930s. We were
glad to see some new faces last year and hope that some more of you will pay a first visit to Middleham on this day.
Our AGM is scheduled for Saturday 6 September at 1.30 p.m. (sharp!) at our usual venue,
Wheatlands Hotel, Scarcroft Road, York. Again, do consider coming along if you haven’t yet
done so: the more input we have from members into future Branch events, the more successful
these should be. So even if you have a particular grouse about the Branch, come along and tell us
(politely). A booking form for tea at the AGM should go out with our August Newsletter.
Angela Moreton
Branch & Group Contacts - Update
New Zealand
North East
Mid Anglia
Western Australia
Worcestershire
Robert Smith, ‘Wattle Downs,’ 61 Udy Street, Greytown,
New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected] or
[email protected] Web site www.richard3nz.org
Mrs J. Mclaren E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.freewebs.com/r3midanglia/
Web site: http://members.iinet.net.au/~hhardegen/
Web site: www.richardiiiworcs.co.uk
Continued from p. 46
To succeed Hastings once again needed to
work with the Woodvilles, as he had on numerous occasions before. Certainly Hastings’
own political survival was at stake but I believe he had the strength of character to take
responsibility for his actions, which he felt he
could justify, and would not have cast the
blame on the Woodvilles.
The events of 13 June 1483 were a tragedy because with Stillington’s secret disclosed,
it was a no-win situation between Hastings
and Richard. They been friends and comrades
for all of Richard’s adult life and Hastings
paid the ultimate price because Richard could
not countenance Hastings’ loyalty to what he
considered a flawed cause. He expected no
better from the other conspirators and his
contempt for them meant their mere imprisonment.
1 There has been much discussion on a medieval genealogy website regarding Hastings
possible royal descent. Whilst further research would be useful, I would still support
the view that he was descended from the
Mortimers.
The background to the life and career of Lord
Hastings together with a detailed study of the
events leading up to 13 June 1483 are covered
in ‘William, Lord Hastings, and the Crisis of
1483: An Assessment’ by Wendy EA Moorhen, The Ricardian, September 1993 pp. 446466 and December 1993, pp. 482-497.
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Obituaries
Peter Ryan
The New South Wales Branch is very sad to report the death of Peter Ryan, briefly chairman in
the 1980s and long time member. He died from a heart attack at the age of 54. Peter was a librarian at Sydney City Council for over 35 years and author of City Info. He also ran the library service for borrowers who were housebound. His great love was the theatre and he was an actor
with the Genesian Theatre for most of his life. For many years he played Santa at the Sydney
Opera House. Our branch remembers him for bringing along some of his actor colleagues and
helping us put on scenes from Shakespeare's Richard III (as well as more kindly scripts). We also
treasure the memory of his beautiful voice reading the lesson at a Bosworth service in St Andrews Cathedral. He was a genial, amiable man and his many friends will miss him greatly.
Isolde Martyn
John Stapley
John was the husband of Shirley Stapley, a founding member of the Devon and Cornwall Branch.
He passed away on 18 April this year after a courageous fight against cancer. Over the years John
supported Shirley’s work for the branch, accompanying her on visits and providing the transport
to get her to meetings. He was well liked by all branch members and will be very much missed.
We extend our sympathy to Shirley and her family.
John Saunders
Recently Deceased Members
Miss Joyce Davis, Aviston, Nottinghamshire
Mr Douglas Coyne, Gloucestershire (an obituary will appear in the autumn Bulletin)
Dr Kenneth R Green, Cottingham, East Yorkshire
Mrs H Kingston, Sapcote, Leicestershire
Miss Iris Woolford, Chelmsford, Essex
Continued from p. 44
that the Queen is not prepared to sanction a further examination of the bones at the present time.
Whilst the situation is frustrating from our point of view, it is one that the Society needs to accept. However, it should be noted that whilst the DNA of the bones could be compared between
the two sets of bones to establish a filial relationship it would also be necessary for them to be
compared to a close family member to establish that they were the sons of Edward IV. The DNA
could be compared with that of their father or mother, but it would then require the disturbance of
tombs at St George’s Chapel Windsor. An alternative would be to compare the bones’ DNA with
a direct female descendant of the Woodville family, i.e. of Jacquetta, Countess Rivers, aka Duchess of Bedford and John Ashdown-Hill is leading a project to trace the mitochondrial DNA
through the direct female line of Jacquetta’s family. John was successful in finding a latter day
descendant of Cecily, Duchess of York (in connection with his researches on Margaret, Duchess
of Burgundy) but he has yet to establish the DNA of a Woodville descendant. We wish him every
success with his research.
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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 Lynda Pidgeon have full details, in sufficient time for
entry. The calendar will also be run on the website, and, with full details, for members, on the
intranet.
Date
Events
Originator
16 - 27 June
The Ricardian Rover, Travels with Richard III
American Branch
7 June
Visit to Fotheringhay and Nassington
Visits Committee
21 June
East Midlands Study Day, Peasantry, Gentry &
Nobility, Leicester
East Midlands
Branch
19 July
Visit to Thaxted and Saffron Walden
Visits Committee
17 August
Bosworth Memorial Service and Visit
to Battlefield
Visits Committee
6 September
London Walk
Visits Committee
4 October
AGM in York
Jane Trump
15 November
Norfolk Branch Study Day, Inspirational Monarchs,
Inspirational Leaders
Norfolk Branch
6 December
Scotland Branch Lecture, Edinburgh
Scotland Branch
13 December
Fotheringhay Carol Service
Phil Stone
14 March
Annual Requiem Mass, Church of Our Lady
and the English Martyrs, Cambridge
John Ashdown-Hill
27-29 March
Study Weekend in York
Wendy Moorhen
10-14 July
Long Weekend Visit
South Wales, based in Swansea
Visits Committee
2008
2009
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