A MEDIEVAL POTPOURRI

Titulus Regius. Now in the National Archives.  Photo thanks to thehistoryofengand.co.uk

Titulus Regius was the Act of Succession that confirmed Richard III’s title to the throne.  With many thanks to Annette Carson for this following guest post which explains in great depth why Henry VII’s repeal of the Act did not have the effects generally assumed.    Annette was a member of the Looking for Richard Project that found the king’s grave and  has written a number of books on Ricardian subjects including the excellent Richard III: The Maligned King,  Richard Duke of Gloucester as Lord Protector and High Constable of England,  Richard III: A Small Guide to the Great Debate and a new translation of Domenico Mancini: de occupatione regni Anglie with copious notes.

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For several years now I have found myself raising a sceptical eyebrow at the generally repeated assertion that Henry VII’s repeal of Titulus Regius in 1486 ‘automatically legitimized’ (or worse, ‘re-legitimized’) [1] Elizabeth of York, her brother Edward V and the other offspring of Edward IV. [2]

         From what I knew of the common law in England, it had no provision to de-bastardize offspring that were adjudged as born of adultery or other illicit liaisons. The Church, desiring to hold fast to its control, had reason to incentivize marital transgressors to return to the fold, so canon law sometimes afforded ways in which their children could be made retrospectively legitimate. But any such decision of the Church was no automatic passport to override the common law, which jealously guarded its sole jurisdiction over inheritance rights. ‘Automatic’ was not a concept that would apply where bastardy was concerned.

         I was particularly uncomfortable with the idea that, if the bastardy was somehow revoked, then by the same token the lawful election, coronation and reign of King Richard III was equally revoked. After all, the words titulus regius indicate that the purpose of the Act of Succession of 1484 was to confirm and ratify Richard’s royal title.[3]

         However, seeing that my research energies were concentrated, as ever, on Richard III himself, I left these ideas untested. But I have always had a firm view on that other debatable matter of ‘de-bastardization’, King Richard II’s 1397 Act of Legitimation for the Beaufort clan. We are on safer ground with terminology here, as ‘legitimation’ has a specific legal meaning: rendering legitimate by decree or enactment, i.e. by means of an instrument that sets out its intentions in writing. Unlike Henry VII, at least with Richard II’s de-bastardizing you know where you are (though many writers of history have got it wrong – see later).[4]

         To return to the repeal question, my aim here is to examine what was the result in law of Henry VII’s repeal process, and whether it had any effect in practice on the matter of the bastardy. I have now given this a fair amount of time and formulated a counter-argument to the general assumption of the repeal’s effect, based on what I believe to be recorded facts and established legal precepts. As ever, with new research comes the unwelcome situation that one would wish to have done it before publishing a book like Richard III: The Maligned King, but I hope to incorporate this into future editions.

         I should here recapitulate how the bastardy of Elizabeth and her siblings came about. In summary, Edward IV had secretly wed Lady Eleanor Talbot, daughter of the renowned Earl of Shrewsbury, a few years before he secretly took to wife Elizabeth Woodville in 1464. And Eleanor had been living at the time of the king’s second marriage … which, being bigamous (as well as clandestine), was never a legal marriage and hence their children were illegitimate. And Edward had died without taking steps to regularize the situation. The government of the realm in June 1483 was faced with verifying this web of secret relationships and determining whether Edward’s heirs, being illegitimate, could succeed to the throne. Their verdict was that bastardy barred them from inheritance, and Richard Duke of Gloucester was duly petitioned to take the crown as Richard III. These circumstances were rehearsed, reaffirmed and ratified in January 1484 in Titulus Regius.

         As I see it, Henry VII’s action of repeal was similar to other stratagems by that king and his government when they collaborated in fudging an inconvenient issue, so that an impression was created which they then cultivated as fact.[5] In this case the king’s inconvenient issue was that he was a virtual unknown who had lived abroad for the past 14 years and whose army had unexpectedly won a battle. He could command little unreserved support as an individual, but could cultivate a wider support base, bringing in Yorkists, if he committed to marrying Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the house of York.

         There is much that I must leave out in order to concentrate on this single topic. So I will content myself by saying that Henry Tudor played to entrenched objections about the previous government’s decision to set aside Edward IV’s offspring from the succession. Whether their objections arose from loyalty or self-interest or plain ignorance of weighty matters of state, the men who held them looked to have that hated decision of 1483 overturned by Henry Tudor. His chosen method of repealing the Act unread appeased their sensibilities while avoiding actually reviewing the case and rebutting it.

         I hardly need to emphasize that illegitimacy wasn’t a major social stigma among royalty and nobility, and of course a king could marry a bastard if he chose; indeed, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York five days before the repeal was enacted. So her bastardy as a bride was not a barrier. In England, the primary consequence of illegitimate birth was, put simply, the inability to inherit lands or titles. Henry Tudor had already disinherited her upon his winner-takes-all seizure of England together with Elizabeth as his wife. Nor had her illegitimacy diminished the royal status and courtesies she continued to enjoy after 1483.[6]

         This should adequately dispose of the idea that Henry Tudor ‘couldn’t marry Elizabeth unless he rendered her legitimate’; nevertheless he was certainly invested in bolstering his weak claim to be a royal prince by marrying a royal princess. It will be recalled that owing to this very weakness, to get support for his royal pretensions in 1483 from the pro-Edward V rebels in Brittany, he had promised them he would marry Edward IV’s daughter. In fact, in 1484 he even had the presumption to obtain a papal dispensation for that marriage! Both these moves were undertaken after she had already been judged illegitimate. However, although he was invested in marrying her regardless, the one thing he couldn’t ignore was the constituency who had rebelled against the disinheriting and deposition of Edward V on grounds of bastardy: they demanded something be done about it. And they very probably included his bride’s mother. As he made clear to his justices in 1486 (see Appendix), it was the Act ‘that declared bastards the children of Edward IV’ that he needed to repeal. Of course the justices well knew, as did the Lords Spiritual and Temporal who would be required to sanction the repeal, that the laws of the Church had bastardized them, not the laws of man. Which Henry VII’s legal advisers also knew perfectly well.

         There must have been lengthy conferences lasting way into the night, chewing over legal processes. Obviously there was concern as to what the effect would be on Elizabeth’s siblings, particularly her disappeared brothers, the princes Edward V and Richard of York. I leave aside the view that they were long dead, which Henry Tudor showed no sign of believing, and which was certainly not held universally, as witness the healthy support gained by pretenders claiming their identities. Even had he and his advisers been so stupid as to bury their heads in the sand over the princes, there were other living siblings to remember, including several sisters with husbands and/or potential husbands, not forgetting their heirs.

         There is little doubt in my mind that the new king’s advisers assured him repeal was the best course because it would be purely cosmetic, and that if anyone affected should claim they had been legally rendered legitimate, it would be a simple matter to disabuse them. At any rate he decided to go ahead, and his first step was to call together the justices of the Exchequer Chamber on 23 January, the first day of the Hilary Term and first day of Parliament.

         The report in the Year Book[7] shows the tone of domination by Henry VII that was set for this meeting, which has been recorded in various printings and manuscripts since the 16th century, many having differences in wording. By comparing a selection of variants I have determined a reliable text taken from 1555 which is reproduced in my Appendix. The report opens, significantly, with the statement that the justices were ‘taking direction’ from the king (pristerount son direccion) [modern French grammar did not apply to Law French]. From this flowed subsequent comments, i.e. that the Act was too scandalous to be re-read, with the justices closing their eyes to all its contents save nine words quoted from the opening of the petition section (‘the bill’) for the purpose of identification.

         They then assisted Henry VII in framing his decree of repeal to Parliament, including a prohibition against anyone else reading the Act. Every copy must be removed from the records and destroyed by fire, upon pain of imprisonment. This was a deliberately obfuscatory process for the justices to collude in; but they were evidently given no option to deliberate among themselves as the Act of Repeal was presented to Parliament straight after their session that very day.

         The way Henry Tudor declared his will to his justices stated that the 1484 Act ‘qui bastard les enfants’, was to be repealed. The fact that its original enactment had been to ratify Richard’s title as King of England was not even mentioned, which confirms that his key priority was to shut down the bastardy problem: the only references to Richard III in the repeal were to identify the Act and its date. Since Tudor and his lawyers were probably the only people who had actually read the Act during the past two years, I would argue they knew Richard’s title was unassailable anyway. This was clearly behind the decree that it should not only be repealed but repealed unread by anyone.

         As to his excuse that its contents were too scandalous, this was obviously a subterfuge: the Act contained over 2,000 words, yet the words referring to the bastardy amounted to just 202 (which historian Charles Ross went so far as to describe as ‘a kind of afterthought’!).[8] The king’s aim, of course, was a cover-up. Whatever debate was allowed would be confined to his magnanimous intentions towards Elizabeth of York. By preventing access to its contents he could lead his blindfolded Parliament to acquiesce in the fiction (a) that his purpose was simply to revoke the bastardy of his bride, and (b) that this was in fact achieved.

         Henry VII’s actual achievement was merely to annul and remove the written parliamentary record that confirmed and reasserted the decisions taken by the government in June 1483. His process sidestepped having to apply any legal test to examine whether the grounds for those decisions were as scandalous as he alleged. I am sure he realized that, if tested, they would be upheld. This is evidenced by his reaction to the Lords in Parliament, reported in the Year Book, when some of them declared that the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Robert Stillington, was responsible for the Act and demanded he be brought in to answer for it. This the king immediately refused, saying he had pardoned the bishop and did not wish it (though some bishops in the chamber were against this decision).[9]

         From this identification of Stillington, perhaps we can now put an end to further doubt that the bishop was the chief witness to testify to Edward IV’s secret first marriage: not only from the above evidence, but from the Crowland Chronicle, and in greater detail from the memoirs of Philippe de Commynes who asserted that Stillington had been present (he would have been a mere canon at the time). The arrest of Stillington was one of Henry Tudor’s first orders after Bosworth, and he hounded the terrified bishop the length of the country until he found and imprisoned him. The eventual pardon was issued on grounds of ill health, though it mentioned nothing of any involvement in the petition or the Act.       

The governmental decisions of June 1483

We may be sure the evidence sworn by Bishop Stillington would have been tested thoroughly in June 1483 by the Council and the Three Estates (including the Lords Spiritual – the archbishops, bishops and other clergy) in whose hands lay the governance of the realm.

         Although many historians with traditional views have reserved the right to disbelieve his testimony, it was never refuted at the time and nor has it been since. We may therefore reserve the right NOT to disbelieve it, unless provided with evidence explaining how this prodigious alleged lie was contrived: i.e. a secret first marriage to a named individual from among the leading nobility of the realm. Not only did Elizabeth Woodville fail to denounce any of this, even after Richard’s death, but neither did Lady Eleanor’s relatives even mention it let alone repudiate the evidence, whether after Eleanor’s death, or Edward IV’s, or Richard III’s.

         Had Stillington’s testimony been perjured, it would have been perjury in the most public and disgraceful way possible from one of England’s foremost bishops, who had been close enough to Edward IV to have enjoyed the office of Lord Chancellor for several years (and received no special mark of favour after the denunciation).

         In terms of the law this was a case of precontract, i.e. an existing marriage being a legal impediment to a later marriage.[10] Cases like this, with the concomitant bastardization of the offspring, were not unusual in view of the surprising informality with which a binding sacrament of marriage could be undertaken by a couple in complete privacy. Hence the Church’s insistence on banns to prevent secrecy, which Edward IV violated with both his known marriages.

         In this area Professor Richard Helmholz is our best and most accessible authority.[11] For offences against the Church there were often ways open to high-placed individuals to set aside the implications: e.g. Edward IV might have had his first secret marriage annulled. Further, the Church itself recognized an inherent unfairness when the consequences of invalid liaisons led to the offspring suffering deprivation, and there were routes available (upon application) to have their bastardy set aside. However, in Edward IV’s case there were two insurmountable obstacles, even in the malleable reckoning of the Church: first, he had died without making any such suit to Rome, and second, it wouldn’t have been granted after 1464 because of the calculated secrecy of his second ‘marriage’ which placed the situation beyond redemption.

         In the common law courts, when legitimacy/illegitimacy needed to be determined, a case would typically be adjourned while referral was made to a bishop for adjudication under canon law. On receiving a judgment, proceedings were then resumed under common law and questions of inheritance decided, over which the Church had no jurisdiction. Interestingly, Helmholz points out that by the 1480s the practice of referring bastardy cases to the ecclesiastical courts had been largely abandoned on the Continent, and was by no means universal in England; so those who queried the jurisdiction of a lay court were somewhat behind the times. Of course, when it came to inheritance of the throne of England there was no higher tribunal to determine this urgent question than the Three Estates of Parliament.

         In June 1483, within this legal framework, there had been a process which consisted in four parts, all of which posterity has seen fit to lump into a single (usually disparaged) decision.

     * First, the King’s Council of the Protectorate was presented with evidence by Bishop Stillington, almost  certainly around 9 June,[12] to the effect that in the eyes of the Church Edward IV’s Woodville ‘marriage’ had been invalid and its offspring were illegitimate. Under the common law such illegitimate children were barred from inheriting anything. With a succession crisis on hand, it must now be resolved urgently and definitively whether an  illegitimate child could ascend the throne, with all the attendant risks of a tainted dynasty.

*     Second, this would certainly have been put to the foremost experts in canon and secular law and matrimonial litigation. The Council deliberated over this for 8–10 days, eventually deciding on 17 June that the problem was serious enough to postpone Edward V’s coronation and Parliament until November. The Three Estates of Parliament were now gathering in London in response to writs to attend the session (25 June) which was to have followed the scheduled coronation (22 June). The dilemma was duly remitted to the Three Estates during this period (the week of 16 – 21 June).

*     Third, a verdict of illegitimacy barring Edward V from succeeding to the throne was reached in this forum (which included the Lords Spiritual) by 21 June, and sermons to that effect were authorized to be given on Sunday 22 June in the usual public places.

*     Fourth, the Parliament/quasi-Parliament/Three Estates assembled officially, probably on the previously summoned date of 25 June. During this assembly they drew up a written summary of the case and their agreed verdict,[13] which they used as the basis for their next decision, i.e. that an untainted successor for the throne must be chosen, and that person was Richard of Gloucester. They framed a petition to be presented to him next day, 26 June.

 It can be seen from this time-frame that the succession problem had been thoroughly examined by leading representatives of the government. Because it had momentous implications, the full case and the verdict needed to be formally adopted and recorded in writing by the quasi-Parliament on 25 June[14] before a replacement for Edward V could be considered. This latter process required discriminating between possible heirs, of whom Edward Earl of Warwick was a leading candidate by male primogeniture as well as Richard Duke of Gloucester. Once the decision was reached that Warwick was barred by his father’s attainder, all these points were incorporated to form the major part of the petition handed to Richard, which was later inserted into the overall Act Titulus Regius.[15]

A test of the quasi-Parliament’s proceedings

To test the robustness of these proceedings in 15th-century parliamentary terms, we must establish whether this deliberating body (Council + quasi-Parliament, as constituting the government) carried lawful authority when not sitting in conventional form of Parliament.

         I have accordingly sought earlier historical parallels, because lawful authority at this time should be understood to mean precedent.  E.g. I would point to irregular decision-making in the recent Lancastrian past, particularly that in 1399 when the manufactured abdication of Richard II was recognized and Henry of Bolingbroke made king.

         Then in 1422 the King’s Council, on its own authority, revoked Henry V’s provisions for a regency for his son and instead established the office of Protector and Defender of the Realm. And later, when Henry VI fell into a catatonic state in 1453 and took no part in proceedings, the Parliament took decisions into its own hands by appointing (and subsequently re-appointing) the Duke of York as Protector and Defender while rejecting claims by the queen to govern on her husband’s behalf.

         As recently as 1460 there was the case relating to the disinheriting of Henry VI and his son. Members of the parliamentary establishment shamelessly hid behind a succession of excuses not to involve themselves in determining the rightful inheritance of the crown, when the Commons, justices and law officers couldn’t be seen for dust. The Lords alone constituted the adjudicators on the rights of the incumbent king ‘by thauctorite of this present parlement’, unlike the proceedings of 1483 when all members of the Three Estates were represented.

         In awarding the succession to York in 1460, the verdict of the Lords, acting alone, was accepted and implemented as the just outcome. This provides a very useful pointer to the thinking in 1483. Crimes, in English Constitutional Ideas in the 15th Century, attributes the acceptance of York’s claim to the irresistible magnetism of primogeniture: ‘... belief in royalty as conferred by birth was far too strong, far too ancient …’.[16] The Duke’s argument was that his ancestor Lionel, Duke of Clarence, was by birth an elder son of Edward III, compared to the incumbent junior Lancastrian line which descended from a younger son. Given this context, we should ask what would have been the verdict if Lionel had been an elder but illegitimate son? If we were to apply to Lionel’s birth the circumstances of Edward V’s birth, would the Lords have admitted York’s claim?

         Chrimes, who subscribed to the traditionally jaundiced view of Richard III prevalent in the 1930s, sourly admitted that under the precedent of 1460 it might be possible to obtain a title ‘by procuring the bastardization of the alleged heirs’; his references to the precontract case suggest that he views it as a pretence, while offering no evidence for this view. Indeed he does not discuss the quasi-Parliament’s judgment of June 1483 except to observe that it continues the growing concept of looking to the Three Estates as the ultimate authority.

Titulus Regius: recapitulating and reaffirming the decisions of 1483

By November 1483 the postponed Parliament had to be delayed again when the October rebellion (‘Buckingham’s Rebellion’) had to be quelled, so it was not until January 1484 that the Act known as Titulus Regius was presented by the Three Estates to the Three Estates, now reassembled in form of Parliament. Here the petition was resurrected and reproduced as the central part of the instrument recapitulating and endorsing Richard’s succession. The underlying aim was to seal it with this Parliament’s official imprimatur, which now served to remove any lingering doubts. The very wording of these comments makes it clear that the Act is confirmatory, not sui generis.

         Chrimes’s comments on the Act of Succession are instructive. The pre-existing election of Richard III was ‘ratified’ in the Act: ‘The election was said to have been made by the three estates out of parliament, and the parliament [of 1484] merely confirmed’ this extra-parliamentary proceeding. ‘There was no allusion to a title by parliamentary act’ [my emphasis], in fact the original description of the Act called it ‘a recapitulation’ of his title.

         This has been my argument all along. The Act known as Titulus Regius did not create or legislate Richard III’s entitlement to the throne, it was a ratification and reaffirmation of the status quo. Therefore Henry VII’s repeal of the Act did not annul Richard’s pre-existing title, nor did it rescind the legal grounds that underlay it.

         Although Titulus Regius is itself too lengthy to be quoted in full, we should at this point discuss what the Act says and how it describes its purpose.

*  It opens with the statement that before the coronation of ‘oure Souveraign Lord the King’, a parchment roll [the petition to accept the crown] had been presented to him containing certain articles.

*  It had been presented on behalf and in the name of the Three Estates of the Realm comprising many and divers of the lords and nobles and notable persons of the commons in great multitude.

*  Since that same body [in June 1483] had not sat ‘in fourme of Parliament’, certain doubts, questions and ambiguities had arisen in the minds of some people. Hence, to the perpetual memory of the truth …

*  ... ‘bee it ordeigned, provided and [e]stablisshed … now by [authority of] the same Three Estates assembled in this present Parliament’ (my emphasis) that the purport of the petition ‘… bee ratifyed, enrolled, recorded, approved and auctorized’, for the removal of dubiety …

*  … with the result that everything specified [in the petition] ‘be of like effect, vertue and force as if all the same things had been so affirmed … in a full Parliament’.

* The contents of the petition are then set out: ‘To the High and Myghty Prince Richard Duc of Gloucester’ etc. The petition ends ‘… to the comforte and gladnesse of all true Englishmen.’[17]

*  After this the Act continues: ‘… the Right, Title and Estate’ enjoyed by King Richard are just and in accord with the laws of God and Nature and the Customs of this Realm; however, it is recognized that ‘the most parte of the people of this Lande’ are not sufficiently learned in those laws and customs, so that the truth and right may not be clearly known to all and may consequently be questioned.

*  Knowing that any declaration of truth or right made by the Three Estates assembled in Parliament ‘removeth the occasion of all doubts and seditious language’, therefore, at the request and by assent of the Three Estates re-assembled in this present Parliament [i.e. the same people who created the petition in the first place] ‘bee it pronounced decreed and declared’ that King Richard was and is undoubted king ‘as by lawefull Elleccion, Consecration and Coronacion’.

The remainder of the Act pronounces that the throne is vested in King Richard ‘and after his decesse in his heires of his body begotten’. It is crystal clear, therefore, that its purpose is to set the seal of this Parliament on a matter that has already been debated, decided and put into effect several months earlier by the same Three Estates (themselves), whose re-assembly in 1484 now desires to banish any lingering doubts. It’s hard to see how the thing could be any clearer.

The Tudor king’s repeal process

In terms of our centuries of interaction between Parliament and the courts, particularly since England is underpinned by such a large body of common law, it is recognized that Parliament does not legislate in a vacuum. Laws enacted or repealed sit within a vast body of existing law, so it is necessary to introduce specific legislation (and/or make adjustments) to cover any gap or conflict created by a repeal. If nothing of this sort is done – and when Titulus Regius was repealed no associated legislation was enacted – the position simply reverts to what it was immediately before the rescinded Act originally came into force (January 1484). At the time immediately before Titulus Regius was enacted, the proceedings relating to bastardy, disinheritance and lawful succession by male primogeniture had been legally determined and Richard III had been crowned king and reigned for half a year.

         We may compare the extraordinary repeal process adopted by Henry VII with the proper parliamentary procedures today, which would require the Act to be read in Parliament, its repeal agreed, annotated with the date and then archived. I cannot vouch for normal parliamentary practice at the time of Henry VII’s usurpation, but at least some of the latter processes would have been required, if only the reading of the Act that was to be repealed.[18]

         In short, all Henry VII’s repeal achieved was to rescind the 1484 Act’s endorsement of Richard’s pre-existing legal succession. The decisions that led to it, including the bastardy determined by the Council and quasi-Parliament in June 1483, were already a fait accompli and had been legally acted upon: Henry VII’s repeal was incapable of annulling them.

         To the best of my knowledge no trace of either Church or lay process of law relating to the case of Edward IV’s offspring is recorded in 1485/1486. Nor is there any record of the issue of their bastardy being raised or discussed or debated in the Tudor Parliament. It cannot be claimed, therefore, that the stated intent of Parliament in agreeing to the repeal was to ‘legitimize’ Elizabeth of York. In the Rolls of Parliament there is merely a declaration that this was ‘a false and seditious bill of false and malicious contrivance’:

… The king … wills that it be ordained, decreed and enacted, by the advice of the … lords spiritual and temporal and the commons assembled in this present parliament, and by authority of the same, that the said bill, act and ratification [Titulus Regius], with all the details and consequences of the same bill[19] and act, for its false and seditious contrivance and untruth, be void, annulled, repealed, cancelled and of no effect or force. And that it be ordained by the said authority that the said bill be cancelled and destroyed, and that the said act, record and enrolment be taken and removed from the roll and records of the said parliament of the said late king, and burnt and entirely destroyed. And moreover … that any person who has any copy or remembrance of the said bill or act shall bring them to the chancellor of England at the time, or destroy them entirely in some other way, before next Easter, upon pain of imprisonment and of making fine and ransom to the king at his will, so that all the things said and rehearsed in the said bill and act may be forever out of memory and forgotten. And moreover, be it ordained by the said authority that this act, or anything contained it, be not harmful or prejudicial to the act establishing the crown of England on the king and the heirs begotten of his body. …[20]

The above is a very thin basis for repealing an Act of Parliament, and contains more obfuscation and bluster than argument relating to its supposed harmfulness. Nor does it at any point refer to the bastardy of Edward IV’s offspring or the intention for this to be revoked. Clearly it was desired to give this impression, which those with a vested interest would certainly have encouraged. But it was a false impression. The bastardization of Edward IV’s offspring had been determined long before the Act that confirmed it.

         For Henry VII this repeal was quite simply a matter of political policy: it looked good and cost him nothing. It was a piece of sleight of hand designed to appease Yorkist sensibilities, typical of Henry VII’s chicanery as mentioned in footnote 5 above.

Papal assistance

Right from the start, Henry Tudor had benefited hugely from soliciting Pope Innocent VIII to his cause, almost certainly thanks to Bishop John Morton who probably directed Tudor’s political decisions. The only genuine route open to him, had he cared enough to set aside the bastardy of his wife, would have been to order re-examination of the original evidence of the precontract. But if he had hoped to obtain a different outcome thereby, he would have needed the pope to disavow the judgment of a prominent bishop (Stillington) and the Lords Spiritual of the Three Estates, for which unimpeachable grounds would be needed. The Church would not be interested in arguments such as ‘too convenient for Richard III’.

         Under prevailing canon law His Holiness couldn’t airily set aside the bastardy of the Woodville children. And however deeply in the king’s pocket Pope Innocent might be nestled, there was no prospect that he would do battle for this newly crowned king who could give no guarantee how long he would occupy England’s throne. 

         It is widely thought that Pope Innocent declared Elizabeth of York legitimate. This is not so. The pope issued two letters at the relevant time, the first on 2 March 1486, which was the standard papal dispensation (a mere 200 words) for impediments to her marriage with Henry VII:

… The pope, therefore, at the petition of the said king Henry and Elizabeth, who is the eldest daughter and undoubted heiress of the late king Edward IV, and of the said prelates, etc., hereby dispenses them, notwithstanding the said impediments, to contract marriage, cause it to be solemnized and celebrated, without banns, as shall please them, even in a time prohibited by the Church, consummate it, if it shall please them, and remain therein, the offspring thereof being hereby pronounced legitimate. …[21] 

The phrase ‘undoubted heiress’ was a description the pope chose to enter into his document, but it was irrelevant to the purpose in hand.[22] Elizabeth was addressed as the eldest daughter of Edward IV, but of course a bastard daughter was still, in law, a daughter. Whether she was ‘undoubted heiress’ meant precisely nothing in any legal sense in this document, since such matters were beyond the Church’s expertise and jurisdiction, i.e. matters for English law which always had the final say on inheritance. Indeed, to be described as an heir did not signal that one was legitimate: it was not uncommon for a bastard to be made an heir or heiress, for example, by settlement within the family.

         This dispensation was clearly not sufficient for the insecure Henry VII, whose agents at the Vatican were soon busy persuading Pope Innocent to issue a Papal Bull whose sole purpose was to keep him and his Tudor dynasty on the throne in every possible circumstance. One such circumstance was even if Elizabeth died and he remarried (so much for any heritable rights of hers!).The Bull was issued on 27 March, but nothing in it touched on Elizabeth’s legitimacy. There were two references to her, the second comprising three words (‘the said Elizabeth’). Here is the first:

… Pope Innocent VIII … By the Counsel and consent of his College of Cardinals approveth confirmeth and establisheth the matrimony and conjunction made between our sovereign lord King Henry the seventh of the house of Lancaster of that one party and the noble Princess Elizabeth of the house of York of that other party with all their Issue lawfully born between the same …

This was merely an acknowledgement of Elizabeth’s courtesy title and again conferred no rights of legitimacy: she was by now queen consort, and it was customary to use the term ‘prince’ for members of royalty. The Tudor influence was evident in its wording which, like that of the dispensation, conspicuously repeated Henry Tudor’s spurious claim to the title of Lancaster.

         Of course Henry VII did have another recourse had he wished to de-bastardize his wife, which would have been to replicate Richard II’s Act of Legitimation in 1397 for the bastard Beaufort offspring of John of Gaunt.

         At this point it would be useful to explain Henry VII’s heritage. He was in fact a great-grandson of one of that bastard Beaufort clan who had been legitimated by Richard II. But they had been legitimated in name only. King Richard’s edict gave them no rights of inheritance; so they and their heirs had no claim on the succession to the throne, which Henry IV took care to make clear in writing in 1407. And being from a bastard line, they and their heirs had never been scions of the house of Lancaster either: Henry VII’s claims were a sham.

         Despite Pope Innocent’s embarrassing eagerness to bolster the Tudor regime, His Holiness could do nothing to annul Elizabeth’s bastardy, just as Pope Boniface IX had found no way to annul the bastardy of the Beauforts in 1396, though many writers of history have assumed he did.[23] Sometimes a bastardy was just too notorious.

         So Henry VII could have emulated Richard II, though this would inevitably have called to mind his own ancestor’s bastardy and disqualification from the succession. It would also have necessitated his admitting his wife’s pre-existing bastardy in a very public way, and cancelling it by royal edict alone, when he himself had been ‘royal’ for just four months. Furthermore, any such decree of legitimation placed before Parliament would either have to legitimate all her siblings too, as Richard II had done for all the Beauforts, or explain (again in a very public way) why he had excluded them, which could have opened up some unwelcome complications. Small wonder that he chose not to follow this route.

Outcomes for the Missing Princes

Speaking of unwelcome complications, where did the missing princes stand after the repeal? This is where it’s mistakenly assumed that it ‘automatically rendered them legitimate’. Obviously this did not happen, any more than it happened for their sisters, but the position was far more nuanced for the princes. Thanks to ingrained ideas of male primogeniture these brothers were regarded as very special, and as vessels of the royal blood even though still illegitimate.

         When Edward V lost his place in the succession in 1483, Richard III had represented the appropriate successor of senior legitimate royal rank and proximity within the royal family. But circumstances had undergone a somersault when Richard was defeated by a Tudor interloper who seized the throne, usurping the established bloodline. His bold pre-invasion claims of hereditary right failed to feature in Parliament’s assent to his sovereignty in 1485, and the age-old passage of the crown to the nearest male relative had been overturned in favour of a line prohibited from inheriting it. The crown had effectively became a prize to be won in battle by whoever could defeat the present incumbent.

         So when two pretenders to Henry VII’s throne came along at the head of armies in the 1480s and 1490s, claiming the identity of the two missing princes, loyal Plantagenet adherents were free to espouse their cause: for them, even an illegitimate son of the blood royal possessed a status far superior to the Tudor intruder. Hence there were no caveats among those who supported them. Their lineage was known and respected, and when they showed themselves willing, they became the chosen challengers leading the charge.

         Indeed when the first such pretender appeared, challenging in the name of King Edward, pre-eminent among the lords who supported him was the Earl of Lincoln who would have been the senior heir of the legitimate Plantagenet line. But Edward V had been prepared and groomed for kingship, and at one time recognized as king. He had lacked a coronation in 1483, but that could be supplied in 1487 when he was crowned in Dublin.

         This is not the place to go into details about the pretenders’ credentials, but there was remarkable evidence that some of the highest in the realm, and in European realms, staked their lives and fortunes on the return of Edward V and Richard of York, for whom it was enough that Plantagenet blood flowed in their veins. Not only did Thomas More remind his readers that some people believed they had outlived Richard’s reign, but also Vergil and Bacon noted common reports that they had been ‘conveyed secretly away and were yet living’; indeed Bacon added that the memory of King Richard ‘still lay like lees at the bottom of men’s hearts’.

APPENDIX

Year Book 1 Henry VII Hilary Term Plea 1 fol. 5v

Richard Tottel printing of 1555 transcribed and translated by Annette Carson, 26.2.2024

Note that for clarity, two extracted passages have here been rendered in bold with inverted commas. The first being the opening address of the petition (referred to as the ‘bill’) as contained within Titulus Regius, and the second being the opening sentence of Henry VII’s repeal.

Translation

All the Justices in the Exchequer Chamber, on the first day of the [Hilary] term, by the king’s command discussed the reversal of the bill and Act that bastardized the children of King Edward IV and Elizabeth his wife. The Justices took the king’s direction, for as much as the bill and Act were so false and slanderous that they would not wish to rehearse the matter, nor the effect of the matter, save only insofar as that Richard, formerly Duke of Gloucester, and then in fact not by right King of England, had made a false and seditious bill to be put before him, which begins thus:

“Pleaseth it your Highness to consider these articles ensuing etc.”,

omitting any further rehearsal … which bill afterwards in his Parliament held at Westminster was confirmed and authorized etc.

“The King, at the special request and prayer of his Lords Spiritual and Temporal and the Commons assembled in this present Parliament, and by the authority of the same, wills that the said Bill, Act and Record be annulled and utterly destroyed, and that it be ordained by the same authority that the same Act and Record be taken out of the Roll of Parliament and be cancelled and burnt, and be put in perpetual oblivion. Also the said bill with all the appendancy etc.”

And this was the consideration of the Justices, that they rehearsed no more of the matter, so that the matter might be and remain in perpetual oblivion for the falseness and shamefulness of it. And if any part of the speciality [= that which is specified] of the matter had been rehearsed in this Act, then had it [= it would have] remained in remembrance always, which was thought by all persons that it should in no wise be, etc.

Note that this is the policy.

Note likewise that it [the repealed Act] may not be taken out of the record without an Act of Parliament for the sake of the indemnity and jeopardy of those having the records in their keeping, the which was assented, and for all discharges the authority of Parliament is required.
And that very day this was read in the Parliament Chamber before the Lords and the Judges; and the Lords thought well of this and would grant it. But there was a move by some of them that it would be good practice for whoever had made this false bill to reform it, and they said that the Bishop of B. made the bill, and the Lords would have him in the Parliament Chamber and have him answer for it. And the King said that he had pardoned him and for that reason he no longer wished it.

Note the king’s constancy.
And some bishops were against this, etc.

Transcription

Toutes les Justices en lescheker chamber primo die Termini par le commaundement le roy comminerunt pur le reversell del’ bill & act que bastard les infantes le roy E. 4. & Elezabeth son femme. Et pristerount son direccion, pour ceo que le bill & lact fuit cy faux & slaunderous que ils ne voill’ reherse le mater, ne l’ effect del’ mater, mes tantsolement que Ric jadz Duc de Glouc’ & puis en fait & nient in droit roy dengleter’ fist un falx & Seditious bill’ pur este mis a luy que commence sic;

“Pleaseth it your highness to consider these articles ensuing, &c.”

sauns pluis rehersell  ,  whiche byll afterwarde in his parliament holden at Westminster was confirmed and auctorised, &c.

“The Kyng at the special request and praier of his Lordes spirituall and temporal and the comons of this present parliament assembled, and by the auctoritye of the same, that the said bil act and recorde, be adnulled and utterly destroyed & that it be ordeined by thesame auctorite, that the same act and record be taken out of the rolle of parliament & be cancelled & brent & be put in perpetual oblivion & also the said bil with al the apendancye, &c.”

& this was the consideracion of the Justices that thei rehersed no more of the matter, that the matter might be and remain in parpetual oblivion for the falsenesse and shamefulnes of it, & if any part of the specialtie of the matter had bene rehersed in this acte, then had it remained in remembrance alwaie, whiche was thought by al parsons that it should in no wise be, &c.
Nota icy bien le policy. Nota enseint, que il ne puissoit este pris hors del record sans act del parlement pur le indemnite & jeopardie de eux que av’ les recordes en lour gard’ qux fuero’t(?) assente a ceo, & purs toutz discharges il fuit par auctoritie de parlement.
Et mesme le jour ceo fuit lie en le parliament chamber devaunt le seigniours & l’ Juges. Et les seigniours pensoint bien de ceo & graunteront a ceo. Mes fuit move per ascun del eux que serra bon order, que cesty que fist ceo faux bil refourmera ceo, & disoint que le evesque de B. fist le bill, & les seigniours voillont aver luy in le parliament Chamber pour aver luy responder a ceo.
Et l’ roy disoit que il aver luy pardon & pur ceo il ne voilt’ puis fair’ a luy qo’ nota constancia regis, & quidam episcopi fuerunt contra ipsum, &c. 

[1] I am unable to guess the exact legal meaning of these terms.

[2] Of course for those involved, the date was January 1485; I am using the New Style dating system.

[3] My preference is for the term ‘Act of Succession’ rather than ‘Act of Settlement’, the latter being the title given to the Act of 1701 enacted to ensure England’s crown was settled exclusively on Protestants.

[4] See my article on the subject at https://annettecarson.com/content/ item 19.

[5] Examples include the spurious predating of his reign and associated Acts of Attainder, and legal shenanigans to curb the right of peers to be tried by peers. Compare also the wholly unlikely aliases invented for the pretenders who challenged his throne. And in terms of propagandizing Richard III’s ordering of the murder of the so-called ‘princes in the Tower’, Francis Bacon averred that it was Henry VII who ‘gave out’ the allegation recorded by Thomas More (unsupported by any historical record) that James Tyrell confessed to the murder on Richard’s orders. This king was also the first of those Tudor monarchs who cynically broke their own promise of safe-conduct when it suited them.

[6] Under the reign of Richard III the royal house of Portugal was happy to offer her the hand of their Duke of Beja.

[7] Court of Exchequer Chamber Year Book, 1 Henry VII, Plea 1 of Hilary Term. Appreciation to Professor David Seipp, Boston University for his advice and for kindly supplying the 1555 version; also to David Johnson for supplying a number of papers at my request.

[8] Richard III (Eyre Methuen, 1981), p. 90. Ross failed to take into account the training of mediaeval lawyers in the techniques of rhetoric, where the clinching argument is saved till last.

[9] Lords Spiritual listed as absent included Canterbury (the elderly and unwell Bourchier) and Bath &Wells (Stillington of course), Salisbury, Carlisle and St Asaph; according to W.E. Hampton, Henry VII excluded his political opponents: The Ricardian, Sept. 1976. It is intriguing that some of those present dared to disagree with Henry VII’s refusal to bring in Stillington for questioning. Many of these clerics had been among the Three Estates who believed and endorsed the grounds for the bastardization in June 1483: one would imagine it was better for them to have remained silent … unless they still believed their colleague and thought the case should be re-examined?

[10] The term ‘precontract’ is widely misunderstood. The ‘contract’ refers to the previous marriage, not a betrothal or a piece of paper with signatures on it. A marriage could be concluded by the two parties exchanging simple words, or by the promise of marriage if this was followed by consummation (as in Lady Eleanor’s case).

[11] ‘The Sons of Edward IV: A Canonical Assessment of the Claim that they were Illegitimate’, Loyalty, Lordship and Law (Richard III & Yorkist History Trust, 1986), pp. 91-103. See also Helmholz, ‘Bastardy Litigation in Medieval England’, American Journal of Legal History 13 (1969) pp. 360-83.

[12] See Simon Stallworth’s report of meeting, Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483, ed. C.L. Kingsford (1919), ii, pp. 159–60.

[13] Bracton emphasizes the need for clearly specified reasons for an allegation of bastardy to be recorded, owing to the dichotomy between the Church and secular courts: Bracton de Legibus et Consuetudinae Angliae, ed. G Woodbine, trans. S.E. Thorne (4 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1968-77), IV p. 285.

[14] We may be confident that the vast majority of those originally summoned for 25 June were present. Though postponed on 17 June, it had been too late to prevent the arrival of myriads of planned attendances at both coronation and Parliament, and Mancini (p. 67) reports their large numbers. It appears one or two writs of cancellation went out but their issuance was soon stopped.

[15] These distinct processes should never be conflated. The governing bodies of Council and Parliament (and their lawyers) knew exactly the established legal and judicial procedures they had to follow. But posterity has been denied the assistance of any surviving government records in piecing these events together: see for example the wide divergence of reports of what was said in the sermons of 22 June: collated in Carson, Richard III: The Maligned King (The History Press, 2013, 2023) pp. 117–20. What is certain is that Edward V was proclaimed illegitimate and his succession set aside. Exactly what was said by the preachers about Richard replacing him is open to debate.

[16] CUP, 1936, pp. 29–32.

[17] The full text can be found online, an accessible version being on Wikipedia. Note that although it would have incorporated an accurate recapitulation of the petition, it need not have repeated every word of the original (which is no longer extant). Quite likely witness testimonies were omitted or put into annexures. 

[18] Ex informatio House of Commons Library, 14 February 2024, with acknowledgements also to Sandra Pendlington.

[19] A more confusing translation gives ‘all the circumstances and dependants of the same bill’; either way this catchall phrase is supposed to mean ‘all the contents and implications of the bill’ (see also footnote 17 above.

[20] ‘Henry VII: November 1485’ 18. [23.] in Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson et al (Woodbridge, 2005), British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/parliament-rolls-medieval/november-1485 [accessed 25 January 2019].

[21] 1485/6  6 Non. March (2 March) St Peter’s, Rome. (fol. 412r) in Calendar of Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain and Ireland: Vol. 14, 1484-1492, ed. J.A. Twemlow (London, 1960).

[22] Henry Tudor had already presumed to obtain exactly the same dispensation in a furtive manner in 1484, concealing his and Elizabeth’s names and antecedents; not the slightest attention was paid by Rome, in the granting thereof, to whose heir or heiress they were. Such matters were extraneous to Rome’s sole interest which consisted in taking statements of kinship and making the marriage possible.

[23] Contrary to popular assumption, Pope Boniface IX did not retrospectively render the Beauforts legitimate in the eyes of the Church when their adulterous parents eventually married. His apostolic letter explicitly states that he declares legitimate any offspring ‘received and to be received from this marriage’ [of Gaunt and their mother]: prolem ex hujusmodi matrimonio susceptam et suscipiendam (my emphasis). The Beauforts were born before their parents’ marriage.

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The last charge of King Richard III.   It is possible that it was during this charge that Sir Robert Brackenbury fell, alongside his king. Painting by  artist Graham Turner  

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‘Of all Richard III’s Northern Lieutenants few were more closely
associated with the defence of his crown and his realm than was Robert
Brakenbury. None rose from more modest beginnings — and none has come
down to us with a name less tarnished’. So wrote the late historian,  W E Hampton,  in his article for the Ricardian Bulletin. 

The name Robert Brackenbury of Selaby (b? – d.1485) is well known to those familiar with the times known to us as the Wars of the Roses but unfortunately not for the right reason.  He is one of the individuals that Sir Thomas More mentioned in his History of Richard III – a scurrilous  and damaging  attack on the king –  which frankly bears similarities to a daft novelette with Richard emerging as something akin to a Pantomime baddie but nevertheless not to be missed if you are in  need of a laugh or two.   Compared to others Sir Robert escaped More’s malignant and spiteful pen rather lightly.    According to More, he,  as Constable of the Tower, refused to obey the order of the murderous king to exterminate his two nephews, Edward V and Richard Duke of York,  at that time, to all intents and purposes, still living at the Tower.   He was merely accused of supplying the priest that, alone and unaided, dug up and removed the corpses of the murdered boys from deep in the ground beneath a great heap of stones to somewhere else more appropriate – a place that was conveniently forgotten when the priest promptly expired – probably from exhaustion.     More had at that point already lost any vestige of credibility he may have had due to his over the top vitrolic descriptions of Richard beginning with his birth. which he described as difficult, being born ‘feet forward – as men be borne out of it –  and ‘fully toothed‘  and causing his poor mother ‘much ado’ blah blah.  Richard was also at birth ‘ever froward‘ later developing a crook back, was malicious, wrathful, envious, cruel and would not hesitate to kiss those he was planning to kill!   More obviously never warmed to Richard.   But onwards and to return to the dastardly plot which involved our Sir Robert.   While the newly crowned Richard was at Gloucester he sent one John Green to London with the letter and credentials, as mentioned above, to be delivered to Sir Robert instructing him to eliminate the two young sons of Edward IV.  Green interrupted Sir Robert while he was kneeling at prayer ‘before our Lady in the Tower‘ to deliver the king’s letter, surely the most inappropriate setting for the deliverance of a death warrant of young children.   More loved to add these little snippets – earlier he had Richard, then duke of Gloucester,  wittering on about strawberries –  possibly believing they added credibility to a story so full of holes and absurdities it led Horace Walpole (1717-1797) to note in his Historic Doubts that ‘It is difficult to crowd more improbabilities and lies together than are comprehended in this short narrative’ (1).   The upshot was, according to More, Brackenbury stoutly refusing to do any such thing ‘though he should die therfor‘ (2)  Richard,  More gratuitously informs us,  heard the news of Sir Robert’s refusal to exterminate the two boys while sitting in a domus necessary – i.e. a privy –  yes I know! you really couldn’t make it up only in this case the sainted More did.   Strangely it didn’t occur to Richard, who was obviously highly miffed at the refusal,  to then exterminate Sir Robert,  who was now in on the dangerous secret that the king was actively seeking to murder the two sons of the late Edward IV!  Which seems strange.  Even stranger still was the fact that in August 1485 Sir Robert was amongst those who answered Richard’s call and made his way to Bosworth to fight for his king and in Sir Robert’s case, die for him.  I will return to Bosworth later.

What do we know about Sir Robert?  He came from a high status family who were known in the Durham area as early as the 12th century.  He was the younger son of Thomas Brackenbury of Denton, Durham, although his date of birth is unknown. Rosemary Horrox suggests that he entered the service of Richard Duke of Gloucester c.1477 and by 1479 he was the Treasurer of Gloucester’s household and one of his feoffees.  Later his ‘prospects were transformed by Gloucester’s accession in 1483′ (3).    Although Sir Robert does not appear to have attended Richard’s coronation very soon after he was awarded the position of Constable of the Tower for life as well as that of ‘master of the mint and keeper of the king’s exchange in the Tower—one of relatively few northerners to receive major office in the south so early in the reign’ (4).   This position – which but a short time earlier had been held by the executed Lord Hastings –  would have proved highly lucrative for Sir Robert bringing with it the sum of £100 per annum.  Alongside it he was given ‘the keping of the lyons in the said Towre of Londone for terme of his lif with the wages of xij d. by the day for himself and for the mete of every lyone and leopard vj d. by the day’.   A slew of other appointments followed including the keeping and stewardship of all the king’s Forests in Essex and Constable of Tunbridge castle (5).   In modern parlance, Sir Robert was on a roll.  The power and privilege did not go to his head and change him as it does some men and he has come down through the centuries as being a thoroughly good egg.   Richard also gave several Kentish manors including  the glorious Ightham Mote – then known simply as the Mote – to Sir Robert after it was removed from Richard Haute following his attainment for his involvement in the 1483 rebellion (6). 

Lovely Ightham Mote, Kent.  Gifted to Sir Robert Brackenbury by Richard III. Photo with thanks to Katie Chan. wikipedia.org.

Thus it can be demonstrated that far from being a stranger to the king he was at that point already held in high regard and trusted and one would think that Richard would have been fully aware as to how he would react to an order to murder children.  More failed to give us the source of his information although we can hazard a guess.  

Recently Philippa Langley has pointed out in her book The Princes in the Tower that it’s highly plausible that Sir Robert accompanied one of the princes to Calais in November 1484.  In the Canterbury City Archives there are references in November 1484 for payments for an allowance for wine and leavened bread for ‘the Lord Bastard riding to Calais‘ followed by an entry for a pike and wine for ‘Master Brakynbury Constable of the Tower of London’ on his return from Calais at about that time ‘from the Lord Bastard’ (7).  This is intriguing because of Sir Robert’s close interaction with both the princes during their stay at the Tower.  It has been suggested that the Lord Bastard was Richard’s illegitimate son, John of Pontefract/Gloucester,  but that is debatable.   John was never a lord and indeed Richard referred to him in a grant as ‘our dear bastard son, John of Gloucester’.  Also Sir Robert’s familiarity with the princes would make it highly likely he would be thought a suitable chaperone for one of them rather than as a chaperone for John of Gloucester.

BOSWORTH

‘Also by often messengers and letters (Richard) commandyd Robert
Brakenbury, lyuetennant of the towr of London, to coome to him in all haste,
and to bring with him, as felows in warr, Thomas Burshere and Gwalter Hungerfurd whom he had in suspicion They,  perceiving that King Richard had
them in jelosy,  because they wold not be brought to their enemy agaynst ther
willes, forsaking Robert Brakenbury a lyttle beyond Stony Stratford, went away
to therle Henry in the night season’…  Thus wrote Polydore Virgil in his English History (8).   At Stony Stratford, while en route to Bosworth, close to the Woodville stronghold at Grafton Regis and just 50 miles away from Leicester,  Sir Robert was deserted by some of his companions including Walter Hungerford – who had been heavily implicated in the Buckingham plot but pardoned by Richard – and Thomas Bourchier (9). He too could have joined them but remained steadfast and true. According to the Great Chronicle of London ‘that nygth Kyng Rychard lost much of his people for many Gentylmen that had good Countenaunce with Mastyr Brawyhyngury, than Lyeutenaunt of the Towyr, and hadd ffor many of theym doon Rygth keyndly, took thyr leve of hym ln guyvyng to hym thanks ffor his keendnesse beffore shewid, and exortid hym to goo wyth theym.  ffor they fferid not to shewe unto hym that they wold goo unto that othyr party, an 500 departid levyng hym almoost aloon’ (10). 

As a ful welbeloved Squier for oure body,  later Knight for the Body,  Hampton suggests that Sir Robert’s place would have been at Richard’s side and thus he may have been in the king’s last heroic charge.    According to C Markham it was one of those that had deserted Sir Robert at Stony Stratford  –  Walter Hungerford  – who dealt the blow that killed him – ‘the traitor . . . who slew the grey-headed old warrior‘ –  and who was later knighted after the battle (11).  

Following swiftly on from his death Sir Robert was attainted and his land forfeited in the first parliament of Henry Tudor.  This attainder was reversed in 1488 in favour of his two daughters, Elizabeth and Anne while ‘the Bastard Sonne of Sir Robert‘  would only inherit if in the event of the deaths of the two legitimate daughters they left no legally begotten heirs.   Little is known about this son but it’s likely he was the Robert Brakenberie of Langton – which was nearby to Selaby, one of Sir Robert’s properties – who died in 1548.  In his will Brakenberie requested that his ‘writched and sinfull bodie to be buried within the parish churce of Gainforthe besides my father‘.  Katherine Brackenbury, sister of our Sir Robert who had died on the 25 July 1485, had been buried at Gainford and this may indicate that this too was the burial place of her brother which was alluded to be the case by the Reverend Prebendary Trollope, writing in 1870 (12).  Certainly other later Brackenburys chose to be buried there instead of, as was usual,  at Denton.   It would be comforting to think that after his death at Bosworth the Brackenbury family had succeeded in recovering Sir Robert’s body and laid him to rest with care, respect and love.  Bravo Sir Robert!

*Chronicle of Calais (Camden Society I846). Richard Turpyn.

1. Richard III The Great Debate p.90. Editor Paul Murray Kendall .
2. Ibid p.102 
3. ODNB. Brackenbury, Sir Robert (d.1485) knight. Rosemary Horrox.
4.  ibid.
5.  p.p.166.210.250. vol.1 Harleian Manuscript 433
6. Harleian Manuscript 433 p.166.  Edited by Rosemary Horrox and P W Hammond. See also Historic Canterbury. Ightham Mote, Sevenoaks. T.Machado 2007.
7. The Princes in the Tower p.81. Philippa Langley.  Source Peter Hammond and Anne F Sutton. Research Notes and Queries. Richardian Vol.5.no.72 march 1981. p.319: Chamberlain Accounts City of Canterbury, Michaelmas 1484.
8. Polydore Vergil. English History (Camden Society, 1844), pp. 219-220.
9. Richard III p.382. Paul Murray Kendall
10. W E Hampton 
11. C. Markham, Richard III (1906), p. 156.
12. Memorials of the Wars of the Roses p.50. W E Hampton.

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‘The Passing of Eleanor’ –  artist’s impression of the funeral cortège of Eleanor of Castile watched over by her grieving husband, Edward I.  Artist Frank Salisbury, 1910 (1).

‘Pray for our consort, who in life, we loved dearly, and, dead, we do not cease to love….’

Edward Ist in a letter to the Abbot of Cluny, France,  4 January 1291….

Queen Eleanor (birth name Leonor de Castilla) died on Tuesday 28 November 1290 ending a marriage that had lasted for thirty-six years. They had married in November 1254, when Edward (1239-1307) was 15 and Eleanor (1241-1290) 13.  Their political story can be found elsewhere, and, not wanting to destroy the ethos of this part of their story,  I won’t go into it here only suffice to say that personally,  and fortunately,  for them, an enduring love grew between them, and they would go on to produce a massive brood of 16 children although the majority of them would sadly predecease their parents.

While travelling northwards Eleanor became too ill to continue the journey and was taken to the manor house of Richard de Weston at Harby in the parish of North Clifton on the Trent, Nottinghamshire.  I would love to know more about this man who was, presumably,  minding his own business when the royal cavalcade descended upon him complete with a dying queen.  However I appear to be going off on one of my tangents and so back to the royal couple.  I have been unable to ascertain whether Edward and Eleanor were travelling together when she became too ill to continue and they diverted to Harby or whether the king was further north and travelled back south to Harby when news reached him of his ailing queen.   The consensus is though that he was present at her bedside as she breathed her last,  as well as the local priest, William de Kelm and the Bishop of Lincoln, Oliver Sutton (2).  Eleanor appears to have been ailing for some time with payments in her privy purse accounts for various syrups as well as a special silver vessel which was probably to store them in.  Eleanor was struck down by a low fever which was probably the quartan fever (a form of malaria) she had contracted in 1287 although it has also been suggested she may have suffered from consumption.  Edward perhaps laid low with grief remained at Harby for several days although of course it would have taken some time to arrange a suitable hearse and the other minutiae necessary for what would have been an extremely gruelling journey for the king.  Was it during these first sad days the plan begun to form in Edward’s mind to erect crosses to commemorate every place that his late wife’s body rested overnight on her last journey to the final destination of Westminster Abbey?  I will return to Harby below.   Whenever it was is unrecorded but other than that there is an absolute wealth of information out there covering the ‘Eleanor Crosses’.  Ah thought I, writing this post is going to be a doddle!  There are even plain and simple maps –  for those of us who are not proficient map readers –  which showing the  12 stopping points in a nice straight line on the A1 which was then called the Great North Road.  This prima facie makes perfect sense for surely the sad cortege would have wanted to get from A to B by the easiest route not via the scenic one.     How puzzling though –  warning bells begun sounding in my bonce – that  if the journey took twenty-one nights and a cross was built at every place where the coffin rested overnight there are only twelve of them? (3).   Anyway onwards… These stopping points were, we are reliably informed,  as follows:  Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Hardingstone nr Northampton, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham, Westcheap (now Cheapside)  and Charing (now Charing Cross).   Three of these places still have their crosses up until today.   This is one post that shouldn’t prove  too onerous and what’s not to like – I shall be finished by tea time!   However I had hardly begun when I happened upon an intriguing comment by Charles A Stothard (5 July 1786 – 28 May 1821) which threw a spanner in the works.    Now Stothard was a remarkably gifted English antiquarian draughtsman who knew everything but everything there was to know about ancient monuments.  He made it his lifetimes work to meticulously record and describe medieval monuments as they were in his time and while many of them still retained some of their original colouring and gilding.    His artworks are all contained in a beautiful book –  The Monumental Effigies of Great Britain – which I cannot recommend highly enough.  

 Charles Stothard’s drawing of the effigy of Eleanor, Queen of Edward Ist. Edward the Confessor’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey.

But to get back to the Eleanor Crosses.  In his book Stothard made the statement, which oddly has been overlooked in most accounts written about the Crosses, that despite historians only noting twelve crosses there were actually fifteen – three of them having been omitted by ‘some authorities’.   By gad!  Could this be correct?  Having unequivocal faith in Stothard I was delighted to come across Bob Speel’s excellent blog wherein he reinforces Stothard’s statement pointing out that : ‘There seem to have been up to 15 such (overnight) stops, and the precise route of the procession and the number of crosses is not certain.  (Yikes!) They have been supposed to be at Hardeby, Lincoln, Newark, Leicester, Geddington, Northampton (Hardingstone), Stony Stratford, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham, Cheapside, and Charing by Westminster. An alternative account supposes Stamford and Grantham itself rather than Newark and Leicester, and Woburn has also been suggested’.    So if all of these above mentioned  places were indeed actual overnight stopping points then you would have your fifteen crosses ..bingo!  There is also some confusion as to whether one or two nights were spent at some destinations – for example Stamford, Hardingstone (on the outskirts of Northampton) and Geddington (4).   So let’s begin by taking a look at the three places that Stothard stated (and also mentioned by Bob Speers) had Eleanor Crosses but are omitted from the regular and accepted list:

HARBY/HARDEBY –  As mentioned above, while journeying northwards Eleanor’s condition deteriorated so much she had been taken to the manor house of Richard de Weston at Harby.   It does seem a little strange Edward would have omitted Harby, the very place where his wife died,  from the list of places to be given a cross although in all fairness it has to be mentioned that he did have a chapel built there.  Did he think that would suffice or did he, as Stothard says, install a cross there too? Interestingly in the heart of this small village is a road by the name of Cross Lane.  This could merely indicate it was the area where four roads merged or could it be in recognition of a cross that once stood there – cross roads being, in the main, the very place an Eleanor Cross would be erected. The absence of the remains of a cross should not imply that there never was one.  Many of the other crosses have left nothing behind – not a single pebble – as evidence they were ever there.    If we remember that the Eleanor Crosses were standing crosses i.e. completely free standing then it can be seen that given the will, when demolished,  these crosses could easily disappear without a trace and eventually from memory.

The area where Richard de Weston’s manor house stood at Harby, Nottinghamshire. View from behind the church.  Picture Minster Lovell with its close proximity to the church to give an idea of the appearance of the manor house..

NEWARK, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE –  Newark is on what was known then as the Great North Road – now the AI – and lying being betwixt Lincoln and Grantham would have made a perfect overnight stop.   Newark being 18 miles from Lincoln and approximately 14 miles from Grantham would surely have been an easier route for a large cumbersome funeral procession than a 25 mile journey from Lincoln to Grantham on what may possibly have been not such a good road.   Also Newark had a castle –  a convenient place for the king to stay.  To strengthen this theory is the fact that there is indeed an ancient cross at Newark  known as the Beaumond Cross although the true identity of the cross has become  muddled over the centuries.  This cross has now been removed from its original site at a once important road junction in 1965 and now stands  in Beaumond Gardens.  Historic England – in a not too well researched article – does say that it has been suggested that it is an Eleanor cross but then strongly veers towards the tradition and ‘recorded evidence‘  that it was erected by the widow of John Beaumont, First Viscount Beaumont, following his death at the Battle of Towton in 1461.  To be honest this is nonsense – as well as baffling  – as a minimum amount of research leads you to early 20th century Nottinghamshire historian Thomas Blagg F.S.A. who recorded that the area  ‘has been known as Le Beaumond from time immemorial being so named in a deed as early as 1310 and the first documentary mention of the cross itself – ‘Beaumond Crosse’  – hitherto discovered in a deed of 1367′ (5).    Furthermore Viscount Beaumont actually fell at the Battle of Northampton in 1460 not Towton, which was where his son fought,  so excuse me if I do not find said ‘recorded evidence‘  (which is what by the way?) confidence inspiring.  I have also been unable, so far, to find any connection with Viscount Beaumont to Newark with his estates being in the main situated in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire.   Further strong arguments for the cross being an Eleanor Cross or incorporating parts of an Eleanor Cross have been made by another late 19th century Nottinghamshire historian, William Stevenson. who makes no bones about dating the cross to the 13th or early 14th century.  Describing the monument as ‘Having survived the town sieges during the Civil war, to becoming an object of profound interest in the 20th century, with photography as an aid brought to bear upon its probable or close date of erection’.  Stevenson goes on to describe the cross as : ‘ A good and even an elaborate example of Edwardian English Gothic architecture, or when that art was at its best; this broad term dates from the first year of Edward I (1272)—to the last of Edward III(1377).  However the cross we have today may not be the original one in its entirety as the Cross was repaired in 1778 when a plaque was added stating ‘This cross, erected in the reign of Edward the Fourth (1461-1483), was repaired and beautified from the town estates A.D., MDCCCI.’    However he further explains that ‘this Edward IV date was singled out from time on the assumed evidence of a Lord Beaumont who was wrongly supposed to have been a local celebrity, and wrongly stated to have been killed at the battle of Towton Field, 1461. This error crept in from a desire to date the cross, with nothing but its popular name to work upon, which may only have been a descriptive one—’the fair-mount’ – of the ground thereabout. We first hear of the local name Beaumond in a deed dated 1310, and incidentally of the cross, itself in 1367′   Additionally he notes that the Bishop of Lincoln who officiated at Eleanor’s funeral owned either Newark castle or a substantial property in the area which would have offered suitable accommodation for the king (6).  However perhaps Historic England have not come across the Blagg or Stevenson articles nor indeed happened upon Charles Stothard.  And thus, dear reader are legends born – which is both tragic and annoying in equal measures.  Historic England further describes the Beaumond Cross as having the socle (i.e. plinth) and shaft of a medieval cross (there’s a clue!) with the shaft containing a robed figure who they think may be a saint or Christ but that may be just sheer guesswork on their part as the figure is extremely worn.

Artist’s impression of Beaumond Cross, Newark, Nottinghamshire.  Artist Joseph Paul (1804-1807).  Newark Town Hall and Art Gallery.

LEICESTER –  This prima facie seems a bit more difficult to explain.  But is it?  Approximately 39 miles to the west of Stamford which is deemed by many  to be the next stop after Grantham, it begs the question if Stothard was correct in that Leicester did have an Eleanor cross,  why would the cortège swing out so far westwards instead of continuing on the more direct route via today’s A1 then known as The Great North Road.  Well it transpires there were strong reasons for not taking that most straightforward route.  Bearing in mind we are talking about winter months here it is known that ‘Great North Road south of Stamford, particularly where it crossed the Nene and Ouse valleys, was often impassible in wet weather, while the western diversion, though longer, kept to higher ground’ (7).

This begs the question was the funeral cortege after its arrival at Stamford unable to continue its journey southwards due to flooding?  Or was it always King Edward’s intention to travel westwards to Leicester for some reason now lost to us. Certainly Leicester with its castle and fine abbey would have provided suitable stopping point for the royal party.  If so the route taken could have been via the A47 even then an ancient road having been in use since Roman times.  The Great North Road could have been rejoined  later also via the A47 and thence on to Geddington.

 We will return to Stamford below but first to return to Leicester.  It is known that there was indeed a stone cross in the 13th century where the High Street met with Highcross Street.  This junction became known as High Cross.  A cross today stands in Jubilee Square which is topped by a column which is said to be from the High Cross that was built in 1577.  This cross which has been moved several times in its lifetime may have replaced the 13th century cross and could the more ancient cross have been an Eleanor Cross as Stothard said?

This covers the three extra places said by Stothard to have had Eleanor crosses.  If only he had left us his sources!   However now to return to the accepted journey…

LINCOLN

The funeral cortège left Harby and travelled the seven miles to Lincoln.  There on Sunday 3 December the sad procession reached St Catherine’s Priory, Lincoln where Eleanor’s body was eviscerated and embalmed.  Her viscera was interred in the Chapel of St Mary in Lincoln Cathedral and her body and heart recommenced the journey to London.

The cross to mark her first resting place was erected in 1292.  It stood outside the city walls to the south at an important road junction by St Catherine’s Priory until it was destroyed some time during the English Civil War (8).

Drawing of the tomb of Eleanor of Castile d.1290  in the Lady Chapel, Lincoln Cathedral c.1631. Artist William Sedgwick.  Credit with thanks to the British Library.  Destroyed soon after this drawing was made in the English Civil War.   

All that remains of the Lincoln Eleanor Cross today are the lower folds of Eleanor’s gown(9).  

STAMFORD, LINCOLNSHIRE

The cross is recorded by two 17th century eyewitness accounts as having stood about half a mile outside of the town on a hill on the left hand side of the Great Chasterton road that run north of Samford. As to why the cross stood outside of Stamford may be the visual impact of the cross standing on top of a hill.  Imagine it!

‘In the hill before ye into the towne stands a lofty large cross built by Edward I in the memory of Eleanor whose corps rested there coming from the north.  Upon the top of this cross these three shields are often carved: England: three bends sinister: a bordure (Ponthieu): Quarterly Castile and Leon’ (10).

 ‘Near unto the York highway,  and about twelve score paces from the town gate, which is called Clement Gate, stands an ancient crosse of freestone, of very considerable fabric, having many ancient scutcheons or arms insculpted in the stone about it as the arms of Castille and Leon quartered, being the paternal coat of the King of Spain, and divers other hatchments belonging to that crown, which envious time hath so defaced that only the ruins appear to my eye, and therefore not to be described by my pen’ (11). 

Some remains of the cross – Purbeck marble with a rose carved on one of its surfaces –  have been discovered in the garden of Stukeley House.  In the 18th this house  belonged to William Stukeley, a noted antiquary who claimed to have found the remains of the cross in December 1745 on Anemone Hill on the Upper Chasterton Road.  The cross is believed to have been destroyed between 1646 and 1660 by Parliamentary forces (12).

GEDDINGTON (Northamptonshire)

The cortège arrived in Geddington on the 6 December.  No doubt bitter sweet memories overcome Edward for the royal couple, said to have both enjoyed hunting,  had spent  happy times in the hunting lodge there and had last stayed there as recently as September of that year.   Eleanor’s coffin would have rested in the parish church,  St Mary Magdalene,  while Edward spent the night at the hunting lodge.   The Geddington cross is the finest of the three surviving crosses. Poignantly the shaft of the cross rests on a base that resembles a tombstone giving the impression that the cross is growing out of Eleanor’s tomb. The shaft itself  is decorated with an abundance of roses perhaps in a nod to Eleanor’s love of gardens.  Further up the shaft are three beautiful, although damaged, statues of Eleanor portrayed as a young queen.

Base of the cross.  Note the roses on the shaft.  Photos thanks to English Heritage.

Photos thanks to English Heritage. 

HARDINGSTONE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

The position of the cross,  one of the three survivors,  outside the town suggests that Eleanor’s coffin rested overnight at nearby Delapré Abbey. Several carvings of books – the pages of which may have had prayers engraved upon them –  adorn the cross which may be a nod to Eleanor being an avid collector of books.  The mason was John of Battle and cost just over £100.  

Carvings of books and heraldic shields still on the cross today.  Photo thanks to english-heritage.org.uk

Delapré Abbey shown in a Ordnance Survey map of 1897.  The Eleanor Cross is shown on the road to the south of the Abbey.  Map with thanks to an interesting blog  A London Inheritance. 

The worn but still lovely statues of Eleanor have miraculously survived the centuries.  Another nice photo from  A London Inheritance. 

STONY STRATFORD, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

The cortege reached Stony Stratford on Saturday the 9th December.  John of Battle and his team also built the cross here but this time in the High Street itself.   Today a plaque commemorating the cross can be found marking the spot. Presumed to have been destroyed in the english Civil War. 

WOBURN ABBEY, BEDFORDSHIRE

It is thought that Edward may have left the party at this point to travel to St Albans where a new bishop was being elected.  This cross was also built by the industrious John of Battle and his team.  The precise site of the cross is now lost but it’s known that the funeral party stayed at the Cistercian Abbey of Woburn overnight.  Woburn Abbey would later become a victim of the Dissolution of the Abbeys.

DUNSTABLE, BEDFORDSHIRE

On Monday II December the cortège travelled a short distance of just 9 miles to Dunstable Priory still without the king.  It is recorded in the Priory’s archives that

‘When the body of Queen Eleanor passed through Dunstable, it was placed in the middle of the marketplace, with a reliquary on top, until the Lord Chancellor and the nobles who had gone there chose an appropriate place where they would later erect a cross of admirable size. … and our prior sprinkled holy water to bless the chosen place (13).

Depending on what account you read some confusion exists over whether only the bier stood in the market place while the coffin was placed before the altar of the Priory church or whether the coffin was left at the market place for a short while before being taken to the church overnight or did the coffin plus bier spend the whole stay in the market place.  However I find it really difficult to believe that the Queen’s coffin was left in the market place for even a short period of time so we can swiftly discount that option (14).   Needless to say it was once again John of Battle, in 1291,  who built the cross which was described by William Camden a 16th century antiquarian as being decorated with the heraldic arms and statues of Eleanor.   Destroyed by Parliamentary forces in 1643 the site is marked now by a plaque.

ST ALBANS

It was here that on the 12 December Edward and the cortege reunited.   They continued to the Abbey where the chronicler recorded:

‘When her body … approached St Albans all the abbey, solemnly dressed in albs and copes, went out to meet it at the church of St Michael on the edge of the town. From there her body was taken to the choir of the church, before the high altar. That whole night it was honoured by the entire abbey with great devotion, with services and holy vigils.

The cross which was built facing the abbey was once again the work of John of Battle – his fifth – at a cost of about £100.  As intended the cross became a focal point with various events taking place including the rebellious folk who in 1381 burnt muniments taken from the Abbey and later read out their short lived charter of freedom. It was here also that the “heretical” books of the Lollard Walter Redhed of Barnet were burnt after he recanted in 1426/7.  It is reported that, in 1643, the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire read a Royal Proclamation from the steps of the Eleanor Cross, advocating the raising of Trained Bands. He was arrested by one Captain Oliver Cromwell for his pains (15).  

The cross  – of which no images have survived – was in a perilous state by the 17th century until no more than a stump remained which was ordered to be removed in by the town authorities in 1701.

WALTHAM CROSS

 Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. Engraving by George Vertue after a drawing William Stukeley.  Published by the Society of Antiquarians of London 1721.

As the crosses neared London so they grew more grander and the cross at Waltham echoed this being constructed in 1291-92 by master masons Roger of Crundale and Nicholas Dymenge while Alexander of Abingdon created the statues of Eleanor at a cost of just over £110.

Nearing the end of their sorrowful journey and reaching London the crosses become even more splendid and the costs rose steeply from what seems to be on average £100 to £300 for the one raised at Cheapside.

CHEAPSIDE, LONDON  The cross built in 1290 – which stood on Cheapside street between Friday Street and Wood Street –  became a focus point for celebrations and civic pageantry. Races were begun from there as well as jousts held there in the reign of Edward III.  Perhaps its most notable event was upon Henry V’s victorious return from Agincourt 1415 when he was greeted at Cheapside Cross by a choir of maidens dressed in virginal white (16).  

Stow tells us that  in 1441 the Lord Mayor, John Hatherley, gained permission from Henry VI to rebuild the cross which ‘being by length of time decaied –  to reedifie the same in more bewtifull maner, for the honor of the citie‘.  The new cross was completed in 1486 after being  ‘newe gilt all ouer‘

‘A caveatt for the citty of London, or, a forewarninge of offences against penall lawes’. Artist Hugh Alley 1556-1602.  Cheapside Market c.1598.  The Eleanor cross,  regilded all over,  can be seen to the left.

Described by Stow in 1598 as being ‘of old time a fayre peece of work‘ but by the beginning of the  17th century Sugden recorded the cross ‘had fallen into a very ruinous condition‘.  Far from  being  saved again the writing was on the wall and the end came when it was demolished by Parliamentary solders on the 2 May 1643 accompanied by drums beating,  trumpets blowing and ‘multitudes of cappes‘ thrown in the air.   

CHARING –  A hamlet in the 14 century.  The original cross –  which was the most expensive costing £600  – was built by Richard and Robert Crundale between 129I-3.  Now replaced by an equestrian statue of Charles Ist,  the cross stood just to the west of the modern copy of it that stands outside Charing Cross Station. 

Detail of Charing Cross from Civitas Londinium.  1561. Artist Ralph Agas  London Metropolitan Archives (City of London)

There would also be a second smaller tomb in London which was erected in the  church of the Dominican Black Friars, where Eleanor’s heart was buried, and where the heart of her son, 10-year-old prince Alfonso, who had died on the 19th of August 1284, had been previously interred (17).  

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The two princes as shown on the jacket of Philippa Langley’s book ‘The Princes in the Tower’.

Here is a link to Philippa Langley’s blog – Revealing Richard III –    with an up to date appraisal of the investigations so far led by Philippa aided and abetted by her team of researchers.  Bravo!  Many of you reading this will no doubt have already heard the podcast, followed by the documentary and hopefully been led to buy the book – The Princes in the Tower – which details with great clarity the story of Edward V and his brother Richard duke of York who have become known, thanks to Tudor (and modern) historians, as Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.  

I will add no more to this post – but shall leave it to Philippa.  However I think I cannot miss adding the words spoken by John Dryden (1631-1700) which is on the home page of the Revealing Richard III blog and which are sadly all too true – marvellous stuff!

‘We find but few historians, of all ages, who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what they deliver to the public, by which means a falsehood once received from a famous writer, becomes traditional to posterity’.  

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SIR HENRY BODRUGAN; A LINK TO RICHARD III, EDWARD V, COLDRIDGE AND THE DUBLIN KING

A PORTRAIT OF EDWARD V AND THE MYSTERY OF COLDRIDGE CHURCH Part II A Guest Post by John Dike.

The Links That Bind; Reappraisals; Richard III, Edward V, the Herald’s Memoir, Coldridge/John Evans, Sir Henry Bodrugan, Thomas Grey and Gleaston Castle.

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WAS LAMBERT SIMNEL A TUDOR HOAX

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Richard duke of York. Wigmore Abbey Chronicle and Brut Chronicle.  Special Collections Research Centre, University of Chicago Library. 

As an ardent and unwavering follower of the ‘Coldridge Theory’  – see my earlier posts here and  here  – I was absolutely delighted to come across this article by historian Dr J L Laynesmith published on the Richard III Society Research blog.    Dr Laynesmith has written several books on medieval queens and noblewoman including a wonderful biography on Cicely duchess of York.   The article is regarding a medieval manuscript that has come to Dr Laynesmith’s notice which includes portraits of both Richard duke of York (b.1411-d.1460) and his wife Cicely Neville, duchess of York (b.1415-d.1495).  Moreover these portraits appear to be attempts at genuine likenesses and not the usual generic offerings.  What jumped out at me was the remarkable resemblance of the duke to his young grandson, Edward V – whose portrait can be seen in a window at Coldridge Church, Devon.  The story – and theory – has been told elsewhere and remains, at this date, unproven although highly plausible.  However perhaps one of the most frustrating arguments against the theory are those that dispute the portrait in Coldridge Church is that of the young Edward V despite its identification by medieval glass experts including Chris Brooks and Martin Cherry (1).    For example  members of one ‘Ricardian’ forum have insisted it is a Victorian portrait of Edward the Confessor despite the fact that he is usually portrayed as an elderly man.  However the uncanny similarity between the portrait of Richard duke of York in the Wigmore manuscript and the portrait of  Edward V in the Coldridge window is – I believe – yet another indication that the window is indeed that of the young Edward V and therefore adds strength to the theory – which I live in hope may one day be proven.

Lets look at the portraits again :

Unfortunately the top of the duke’s head is badly faded but he would have been wearing a ducal coronet.  He carries a staff of office whereas the young king carries a sceptre. The duke is depicted as a mature man in which appears to be a ‘warts and all‘  likeness with its faint hint of a double chin.   Of course the Coldridge portrait is of a young lad – but still bears a strong resemblance to his grandfather especially around the mouth and eyes.  In fact when you look at it you can visualise the young man with the passing years gradually morphing into the older man portrayed in the manuscript.    I just absolutely love it…

Richard duke of York.  Wigmore Abbey Chronicle and Brut Chronicle.  Special Collections Research Centre, University of Chicago Library. 

 Edward V.  St Matthew’s Church, Coldridge, Devon.

To guage the skill of the artist who drew the portrait of Richard duke of York let’s take a look at the accompanying portrait of his wife, Cicely Neville.  Here she is shown as a young woman, her long hair flowing.  Compare this to the lovely portrait of Cicely as a maturer woman in the Luton Guild Register.

Cicely Neville from the Wigmore Abbey Chronicle and Brut Chronicle.  Special Collections Research Centre, University of Chicago Library. 

I think the similarity of the two ladies in these portraits is very apparent and demonstrative of the skills of both of the medieval artists who executed them.  Both portraits seem to have brought out the serenity of a lady who went through much trauma and heartache. I shall leave it to you, Dear Reader, to make your own mind up….

The portrait in the window at Coldridge is on the cusp of being restored and conserved for future generations by medieval glass experts.

A bolshie looking, fire breathing, dragon from the manuscript. Wigmore Abbey Chronicle and Brut Chronicle.  Special Collections Research Centre, University of Chicago Library. 

1. The Prince and the Parker: a speculative essay on the Evans chantry glass at Coldridge Devon. The Journal of Stained Glass Vol. XXVI.  Brooks and Cherry.

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SIR HENRY BODRUGAN; A LINK TO RICHARD III, EDWARD V, COLDRIDGE AND THE DUBLIN KING

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The Links That Bind; Reappraisals; Richard III, Edward V, the Herald’s Memoir, Coldridge/John Evans, Sir Henry Bodrugan, Thomas Grey and Gleaston Castle.

THE MYSTERIOUS DUBLIN KING AND THE BATTLE OF STOKE

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WAS LAMBERT SIMNEL A TUDOR HOAX

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Kirby Muxloe Castle at sunset.  Unfinished – the builders laid their tools down on hearing about the execution of William, Lord Hastings.   Photo with thanks to crazyaboutcastles.com

Kirby Muxloe Castle lies in a ruinous state in the Leicestershire countryside, the unfinished project of William, Lord Hastings (c.1430-1483).  Hastings was the epitome of a successful and powerful  15th century lord but as with other nobles of those turbulent times, success run cheek by jowl with downfall, dishonour, betrayal and death.  Hastings interesting life is well documented elsewhere and I want to concentrate more upon Kirby Muxloe Castle.  However to tell the story of the castle it’s necessary for a brief summary of Hastings life to be told too.

Hastings had been raised within a staunch Yorkist family, his father, Sir Leonard Hastings (d.1455), having been a retainer of Richard, duke of York (1411-1460) father of Edward IV and Richard III.  He first begun his rapid ascendancy to power and fortune after the Battle of Towton, fought on the  29 March 1461, where he was knighted on the field.  Soon after as a mark of the closeness between him and Edward VI he was made Chamberlain of the royal household and in 1462 he was further rewarded with the granting of ‘full power to receive persons into the king’s grace at his discretion‘.  Grants and lands removed from defeated and disenfranchised Lancastrians enabling him to support  his new status were swiftly bestowed upon him.

Stall plate of William Hastings, St Georges Chapel Windsor. Drawn by the late Geoffrey Wheeler

Manticore badge of William Hastings c.1470

He seems to have been blessed with the trait of being able to run with the hounds and play with the foxes as he managed to stay on friendly terms with his brother-in-law,  the great Richard Neville,  earl of Warwick,  known later as the Kingmaker, after Warwick become disenchanted with Edward IV.  Rosemary Horrox suggests that Warwick  may have seen Hastings as ‘the acceptable face of Edward’s court circle, but it is certainly not evidence that Hastings had supported the earl’ (1).  Indeed when Edward went into exile in the Low Countries Hastings accompanied him, thus strengthening even more the bond between them.  Hastings extraordinary power and privilege stemmed from this closeness to the king and was known and commented upon at the time,  a servant of the Pastons observing ‘what my seyd lord Chamberleyn may do wyth the Kyng and wyth all the lordys of Inglond I trowe it be not unknowyn to yow, most of eny on man alyve’ (2).

No doubt this may have added to the tensions between Hastings and the Queen, Elizabeth Wydeville, and especially  her elder son, Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset,  who was married to Hastings step-daughter, Cicely Bonville.    Edward would later, on his deathbed and aware death was fast approaching, plead with his bosom pal Hastings and stepson, Grey,  to put their differences behind them and work together for the benefit of Edward’s young son Edward jnr who was on the cusp of becoming the next king albeit still underaged and vulnerable.  Edward died comparatively young aged 42,  his death appearing to come out of the blue for some and the cause of which is still a mystery.   Mancini said that it was Hastings, no doubt alarmed at the appalling thought of his enemies, the upstart and voracious Wydevilles getting it all,  who was said to have ‘reported‘ via letters and messengers to Edward’s brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, warning him of their shenanigans and urging him to make haste to London and to ‘exact retribution’.     Gloucester,  having been warned,  took swift control of the situation and with a minimum of bloodshed took up his role of Lord Protector as set out in the late king’s will.   Croyland Chronicler reports Hastings ‘as bursting with joy over this new world‘ (3)   The rest is history and the mystery of why Richard had Hastings removed from a council meeting at the Tower of London and beheaded on the 13th June 1483 remains unclear and can only be speculated upon.  After Hastings death Richard dealt kindly with his widow, Katherine Hastings nee Neville,  sister to the Kingmaker and thus Queen Anne Neville’s aunt, allowing her the custody of her deceased husband’s land and heir (4).    He waived the customary Act of Attainder promising to be a ‘a good and gracious soverain lord‘ and not ‘suffering theim (Hastings family) to be wronged ne entreated contrary to our lawes” (5).   He also granted permission for Katherine’s husband to be buried close to his late friend and king in St Georges Chapel, Windsor,  as requested in Edward’s will.  She would later request to be buried in the lady chapel of St Helen’s church at Ashby de la Zouch.

The Western Tower with the Gate House to the left,  With thanks to Bobrad @flikr for photo.

But to get to Kirby Muxloe. On the 17th April 1474 Edward IV had granted Hastings, by then a very wealthy man,  licence  to fortify with walls and battlements four of his properties plus enclose large areas of land to create hunting parks around them, one of these properties being Kirby Muxloe (6).  An earlier medieval manor house had already stood on the site but I have been unable to ascertain what condition it was in when building  of the castle commenced.  It’s most likely that whatever the condition the intention would have been to demolish it at some stage as completion of the castle neared its end.  Indeed its known that some repair work was carried out on the old house while building of the new castle was taking place.   The foundations of this earlier house can still be seen today.  It’s an indication of Hastings fabulous wealth that he had not completed Ashby de la Zouch, intended to be his main seat, before work commenced on Kirby Muxloe in 1480.  The plans were for a rectangle courtyard surrounded by a moat  with a tower at each of the four  corners.   The gatehouse and one tower were nearing completion when news reached the builders of Hastings execution.    This must have thrown the workmen and craftsmen into disarray and some of their number immediately downed tools at that point although Hasting’s widow  Katherine doggedly continued the work on a much smaller scale until finally giving up altogether the following summer.

Hastings had employed master mason John Cowper who trained as an apprentice in the building of Eton College.  It is from Eton that Cowper would have come across the  method of bricklaying known as ‘diaper work’ – patterns made from dark bricks built into lighter brickwork – and used it in the design of the walls at Kirby Muxloe.  The initials WH (although not the initials of his wife – really Sir William!) the maunce, or  sleeve,  from his coat of arms, a ship and a jug are among designs incorporated into the diaper work.   Cowper was  also familiar with Tattershall Castle and may have based the gate house at Kirby on Tattershall’s great tower.  All that now remains of what would have been a massive gatehouse is its base.  The remains of a wooden bridge that led to the gatehouse and drawbridge were discovered in 1911 and are now preserved in the  moat.   On entering through the gate  two rooms are to be found, both with fireplaces, one of them likely intended as a porters lodge.     Two spiral staircases, both made of brick lead to the first floor with rooms containing  fireplaces, latrines and windows.  The floors above were never completed.

Example of the diaper work at Kirby Muxloe.  

Six towers were intended, four at each corner and two midway in the perimeter walls.  The surviving foundations of these towers can still be seen.  The West Tower is the only complete tower to survive, square in shape and comprising of three floors, a spiral staircase and latrines.

Luckily the building accounts for the castle have  survived.  They were written in a mixture of Latin, French and English by Hastings’ steward Roger Bowlett.  So we know that a Flemish man called Antony Yzebrond in charge of the manufacturing of the huge amounts of bricks required was paid 10d a week, a man called John Powell was paid for redirecting a brook to feed the moat, another man, Hugh Geffrey, was employed building a cart track for the carriage of stone while John Peyntour was sent to gather crab apple trees to be used as grafting stock.  Whether these gentlemen were present when the shocking news arrived of the demise of their master we will disappointingly never know.    After Katherine gave up her valiant attempt to complete the building work, Kirby Muxloe was abandoned the following year, used as farm buildings for a  while before being finally given up to the elements.

Gatehouse with replacement wooden bridge…

It is interesting to compare the metaphoric rise and sudden cataclysmic fall of Hastings to that of the subsequent fate of Kirby Muxloe.    It’s still unclear as to what exactly led to the execution of Hastings.   Did he betray Richard?  If so who in turn betrayed him?   Catesby perhaps?  Was he perhaps bitter that he was not given the awards he had hoped for by Richard –  an entirely different kettle of fish to his brother Edward –  as he observed instead of his own, the rise and rise of the astonishingly inadequate Buckingham?  Or was it that Richard blamed him for keeping the precontract between Edward and Eleanor Butler nee Talbot a secret from him – a secret that was the catalyst for the fall of the House of York?   Nevertheless it’s sad to reflect that if Hastings had but survived those initial tricky days his presence at Bosworth alongside Richard III may well have led to a completely different outcome.

William Hastings, first Baron Hastings signature..

Intriguing doorway in the gatehouse leading to what was possibly intended to be a porters lodge.

I give a massive thank you to John Goodall and his most informative Guidebook on Ashby de la Zouch and Kirby Muxloe.  Also to Rosemary Horrox for her article Hastings, William, first Baron Hastings to be found on the Oxford DNB.

1. Hastings, William, first Baron Hastings Rosemary Horrox Oxford DNB
2. Paston Letters 1.581
3. Croyland Chronicle Continuations
4. Hastings, William, First Baron Hastings (c.1430-1483).  ODNB September 2004.  Rosemary Horrox.
5. The Kingmaker’s Sisters – Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses p.112. David Baldwin.
6. License to crenellate: ‘Although never mandated by the monarchy nor a common practice until after 1200, applying for a license to erect a castle or to fortify a standing residence indicated not only that the applicant had the self-confidence to approach the king, but also demonstrated that he possessed the financial and personal status that came with the ability to build a castle. For many lords, receiving the license to crenellate was accomplishment enough, so they felt no urgency to complete the process with an outlandish expenditure of money that could result in bankruptcy. Just having the royal license proved they were qualified to move in the circles of the rich and famous and that the monarch recognized their social status’. Lise Hull Kirby Muxloe Castle – Quadrangular Glory in Brick and Water.

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Ashby de la Zouch Castle – Home to William Lord Hastings

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Arms of Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset (c.1455-1501). Wikipdia.

Well, well, well.  What can I say about Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset (c. 1455–1501)?  A member of the voracious Wydeville/Woodville family he lived through the tumult of the Wars of the Roses, at one time ending up in a bit of a pickle after managing to irk a  suspicious Henry VII and for which he spent some time in Tower of London but with remarkably good luck managing to die in his bed in 1501.  Husband to the extremely wealthy Cecilia Bonville,  (c.1460-1529) suo jure Baroness Bonville and Harrington, with whom he had a massive brood of children.  I will return to this marriage below. My favourite portrayal of him was in the mavellous 1972 BBC broadcast  ‘Shadow of the Tower ‘in which he was portrayed as a peevish, whinging and truculent medieval Billy Bunter.  But what was he really like? Has he been dealt with unkindly by history while actually possessing a capacity for bravery or was he just basically inept? And was the family motto a ma puissance (according to my power) appropriate in his case or perhaps a tad ambitious? Or was he merely multifaceted as so many people were and still are? 

He was the elder of the two sons that Elizabeth Wydeville (c.1437-1492) had with her first husband Sir John Grey (c.1432-1461).  Sir John would die fighting for Lancaster at the second battle of St Albans on 17 February 1461.    With his mother’s amazingly fortuitous second marriage to Edward IV, Thomas and his brother Richard would eventually gain a large brood of half brothers and sisters the most famous of which were, of course,  Edward V and  Elizabeth of York.   His grandmother Jacquetta of Luxembourg (b.1415-1472) was from high status noble stock – being the daughter of Pierre, Comte de St. Pol  She had been married at 16 to the much older, extremely rich and powerful John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, a brother to Henry V.  Her husband dying quite soon after their childless marriage she promptly married Richard Wydeville,  clearly a love match with him being a mere knight and  way below her social status.  The couple married without permission from Henry VI,  for which they would later be issued with a massive fine.  Some sources say this fine was later rescinded but presumably if it was ever paid it would have been done so by Jacquetta as she was the one with the dosh.  Richard, with his new wife,  returned to England to live  – probably at Grafton –  ancestral home of the Wydevilles.  There they raised their children including the daughter who had the luck of turning the head of a young testosterone loaded Edward IV who would please himself as to whom he would marry , unwisely as it transpired,  for the marriage turned out to to be the rock that the House of York foundered upon. But back to Thomas…..

PERSONAL LIFE

Astley Castle, Warwickshire.  Marital home to Sir John Grey and Elizabeth Wydeville later Queen of England, parents to Thomas Grey.  It’s unclear whether Thomas Grey was born at Astley but he would most certainly have spent much of his childhood there. Photo Astley Parish Council.

Thomas’ place of birth is unknown.  John Ashdown-Hill suggested it was somewhere in London although it also seems likely it may have at Astley Castle, Warwickshire –  think more fortified manor house than ragged castle – ancestral home to the Grey family.  He has been described by the historian T B Hugh as a man of ‘mediocre abilities as well as ‘shifty‘ who managed to attain his position solely through his mother marrying a king rather than via pluck or ability although it is true he had a vague connection to Edward I (1).  It should however in all fairness be remembered that Vergil, writing c.1513, described him as vir bonus et prudens (good and foreseeing) although it should also be remembered that Vergil was prone to sometimes speaking a load of old cobblers  – well quite frequently to be honest (2) .  Now while I have no wish to cast aspersions on the integrity of Polydore Vergil it would serve us well to remember that history is written/dictated by the victors – in this case Henry VII’s fan club i.e. Morton, Foxe, Bray and Urswick and thus Vergil’s account should be viewed with some caution. For those who wish to read more about Vergil’s reliability click here. and here.

Once Elizabeth Wydville had become queen she sought to make advantageous marriages for her children and for her eldest man cub she succeeded in doing so in 1466 when Thomas married Anne Holland (c.1455-c.1474),  the daughter and heiress of Henry Holland,  duke of Exeter and whose mother was Edward IV’s sister,  Anne of York (1439-1476 ).  It has been said that this marriage, which took place in October 1466,  exacerbated the already simmering fury of Richard Neville, later known as ‘The Kingmaker’,  after a proposed marriage between his then infant nephew and male heir, George Neville (I465-83) and Anne Holland was scuppered in order for her to marry Thomas (3). 

Shortly prior to this Richard Neville had already been outraged over the clandestine marriage of the king and Elizabeth Wydeville,  the ensuing secrecy of which had left him looking foolish as he had,  oblivious to the true situation,  carried on in his negotiations for a French bride of suitable rank for Edward.  Warwick would get his revenge in 1469 when he managed to execute a couple of Wydevilles, Thomas’ grandfather and uncle,  Richard and John Wydeville.  

Sadly Anne was to die aged 18 and childless.  Nothing daunted another marriage and another great heiress soon loomed on the horizon and in 1474 Thomas, aged 19 married 13 year old Cecilia Bonville.whose stepfather was none other than William Hastings, first Baron Hastings (c. 1430–1483).

It was through Cecilia that Thomas would gain the vast estates that had come to her via her grandfather William, Lord Bonville (c.1392-1461) as well as the Harrington barony.  Didn’t he do well?  And no doubt stepfather – Edward IV –   breathed a massive sigh of relief as his stepson became self sufficient.  However the Bonville marriage would bring Thomas head on in collision with Cecilia’s stepfather, the formidable William Hastings, first Baron Hastings (c.1430-1483) who had risen to dazzling heights because of his close friendship with Edward IV.  Possibly this caused a few headaches for Cecilia who may have felt as if she was stuck between a rock and a hard place.   Nevertheless Cecilia’s and Thomas’ marriage would prove to endure successfully if the number of children the couple produced is anything to go by.  Casting that aside though it has to be said that Thomas was far from a faithful husband and it’s recorded that one of the reasons he fell out with Hastings was over a mistress/mistresses, which I will return to later.

There is also some reason to believe that he had an affair with Lady Anne Stonor nee Neville, wife to Sir John Stonor and daughter of John Neville, Marquess of Montague – brother to Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.  Perhaps fortunately for him both Neville brothers were dead at this time haven fallen at Barnet in 1471.   The newly wed Anne Stonor’s behaviour does seem rather strange when she hastened to Thomas’ home,  Taunton Castle, immediately after her marriage in late 1481 to Stoner,  where she remained for several months, presenting her husband with a son nine months later (4).   Furthermore it would seem that Thomas had taken a shine to yet another of Montague’s daughters because there is also the intriguing bequest made in the will of his daughter Elizabeth, Lady Scrope of Masham (d.c.1518) when she bequeathed a bed to an illegitimate daughter of Thomas:   ‘Mary, daughter in base unto Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset my bed that my Lord Marquess was wont to lie in….’ (5).  Now far be it for me – as I’ve said before – to cast aspersions – but it does indeed sound a tad dodgy.  Anyway onwards….

Besides rumours of possible liaisons with Montague’s daughters there are also statements by the chroniclers of the times that both Thomas and his stepfather-in-law, Hastings,  shared the same mistress i.e. Elizabeth/Jane Shore née Lambert.   Following the coronation of Richard III in 1483 the Great Chronicle of London recorded that ‘Shortly afftyr (Richard’s coronation) was a woman namyd Shoore that before days, after common fame, the Lord Chambyrlayn (Hastings) held, contrary to his honour, called to a reconnyng ffor part of his goodys & othyr thyngys…and she lastly as a common harlot put to opyn penaunce’.   Following on from this on the 23 October 1483,  in a public proclamation issued by Richard III,  Thomas was denounced in the following words:  ‘Thomas Grey, late Marquess of Dorset, not fearing God, nor regarding the peril of his soul, hath devoured, and deflowered many maidens, widows and wives, and holding the unshameful and mischievous woman Shore’s wife in adultery. ‘ (6). 

 POLITICAL AND MARTIAL LIFE

Thomas fought – for York obviously – at the battle of Tewkesbury in May 1471 where it has been suggested by some sources he was in suspiciously close proximity to Prince Edward of Lancaster when he met his demise.  He was soon after  ‘created earl of Huntingdon on 14 August 1471, a dignity which he subsequently resigned before he became a marquess’ (7).  He was also present on Edward IV’s French expedition in the autumn of 1475.  He  would also later benefit from the death/judical murder of George, duke of Clarence in 1478 and it has been said that he treated George’s son, the young tragic Edward Earl of Warwick,  with undue harshness during the period he was his ward.

Nowhere did the differences between Thomas and Hasting become more apparent than in the aftermath of Edward IV’s unexpected death in April 1483.   These differences according to Mancini had arisen on account of the mistresses they had abducted or seduced from each other besides of which, in any case,  Hastings loathed the entire (Wydeville) family on account of the marquess (8).  Whether this is the entire crux of the matter or just part of it is now lost to us.   According to Mancini the dying king had sought to reconcile the pair of them, both of whom were dear to him.  It’s easy to imagine the rising panic the king may have felt as he realised his death was imminent and he was leaving his kingdom to a young and extremely vulnerable heir,  the 13 year old Edward,  who would need all the support he could get –  not two snarling egotistical nobles at each others throats.

Immediately following Edward’s death the Wydevilles, galvanised into action, sought to gain control of the person of the new king, Edward jnr,  who was living at Ludlow Castle, then in the Welsh Marches but now in Shropshire.   As mentioned above according to Mancini, Hastings already detested the Wydevilles and it has been suggested that it was he, now thoroughly alarmed at the direction things were heading,  and in an attempt to put a brake on their schemes,  who wrote to Richard, duke of Gloucester,  to warn him of their shenanigans.   Perhaps he even  repeated the utterance of Thomas, his dangerously deluded son-in-law,  who perhaps lacking the ability to read a room, announced to a probably stunned Council that they –  the Wydevilles –  were ‘so important that even without the king’s uncle, we can make and force these decisions..’ (9).   Oh dear. ….   Unfortunately for Thomas and his mother, Gloucester deftly managed the situation and after arresting Anthony Wydeville, earl Rivers, now the male head of the Wydeville family and his nephew, Richard Grey,  at Stony Stratford,  proceeded to London with the young king under his care.   When news of Gloucester’s impending arrival reached London,  Thomas, abandoned the Tower of London,  of which he held the control of, but not before secretly removing ‘great quantities of the (late) king’s treasure out of it‘ (10).  He joined his mother, her youngest son Richard of Shrewsbury and several daughters when they scurried out of Westminster Palace and over the road into sanctuary at Cheyneygates, the Abbot’s house in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.   Cheyneygates far from being the hell on earth described by Virgil, as per usual over egging the pudding,  as an ‘asylum‘ and ‘this earth’s sole refuge for the poor, for bankrupts, and for rascals‘  would have actually been the height of luxury.   If we look into the future we will see that in 1487 Elizabeth would take a 40 year lease on Cheyneygates something she would have hardly have done if it was the awful dump as described by Virgil.

 Artist’s impression of the Abbot’s house known as Cheneygates, in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.  It was here that Thomas Grey joined his mother and half siblings in sanctuary.  

But I’ve gone off on a tangent here and back to the story…. Once more Elizabeth Wydeville found herself in sanctuary and this time through her own ill thought out plots.  We will never know how different things would have turned out if she had but remained openly at Westminster to greet her son Edward V and his uncle Richard Duke of Gloucester upon their arrival.   What had she to fear?  Richard is well known for his kind treatment of women, including the wives of traitors such as Katherine, Lady Hastings as well as Henry Tudor’s mother, Margaret Beaufort,  whose plotting was a major contributing factor to his later downfall and death in 1485.  Unfortunately for many of the participants in this story the Wydeville family, described by Thomas More as the proud and haughty kindred of the Queen chose the warlike route which led to ruination and death for so many including Thomas’ nemesis, William Lord Hastings and a bloody and dreadful day at Stoke where the York dynasty was extinguished forever.

Elizabeth Wydeville  whose first husband was Sir John Grey, father to Thomas and his brother Richard Grey.    Spent her last years in Bermondsey Abbey after one plot too many…..’Royal Window’ North Transcept, Canterbury Cathedral.

Edward IV.  Indulgent stepfather to Thomas Grey.  In a deadly complication, Thomas and  Edward’s closest friend, William Hastings, stepfather in law to Thomas would fall badly fall out  with fatal results. ‘Royal Window’ North Transcept, Canterbury Cathedral.

Thomas did not remain for long in sanctuary and it has to be one of the high points in his life – where he most certainly earned a couple of kudos – when he managed to make his escape after thwarting the guards set up around the precincts of the Abbey.  Mancini describes the search made on the orders of Gloucester when it was discovered Thomas had made his escape:  ‘On the supposition he was hiding in the near vicinity, he (Gloucester) set armed men with dogs to surround the mature crops, as well as the newly planted and woodland areas, seeking him out by the most closely hemmed in encirclement in the manner of huntsman, but nowhere was he discovered (II).  A letter written by Simon Stallworth describes how the goods of Thomas were taken wherever they were found: Wher so evyr kanne be founde any godyse of my lorde Markues it is tayne (12).   Dangerous times for Thomas who then recklessly joined the Buckingham rebellion.

 Henry Stafford duke of Buckingham.  For reasons unclear rebelled against Richard III with fatal results – for himself.  Thomas Grey unwisely joined Buckingham’s rebellion although he escaped and survived.  Buckingham – quelle surprise  – got the chop. A rather ridiculous creature – whom Richard III shocked at his duplicity named him the ‘most untrue creature living’.  An 18th century etching.  Possibly from a lost original?

Following the collapse of the rebellion he made his way to Brittany to join forces with Henry Tudor.  Croyland Chronicle described how in the immediate aftermath of the failure of the rebellion,  King Richard proceeded with the whole army towards the western part of the kingdom where all his enemies had taken up their positions.  Overcome by fear at this terrible arrival, the Bishop of Exeter, Peter Courtney, as well as Thomas Marquis, of Dorset, and various other nobles of neighbouring districts, who had conspired in the rebellion, or as many of them as could find shops in readiness, took to the sea, and finally landed on the desired shores of Brittany.     Lucky Henry! Upon reaching Brittany it appears Thomas got a bit lost  – if Virgil’s narrative can be trusted –  as Henry,  possibly initially pleased to hear of his arrival – obviously he had never met him –  sent some of his followers to guide Thomas to him.

Of course we know that the coronation of Edward V never took place.  The story is well known of how it was revealed that his father, Edward IV,  prior to ‘marrying’ Elizabeth Wydeville had been married to another woman, Lady Eleanor Butler/Boteler née Talbot daughter to John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury (c. 1387–1453) also known as the Great Talbot.  Thus according to the canon law of the times, his marriage to Elizabeth Wydville was invalid as needless to say,  no-one, not even a king,  could be married to two women at the same time.  Whether this came as a shock to Thomas we will never know.  Had there been a point earlier where Elizabeth Wydeville felt it prudent and necessary to enlighten Thomas upon the truth of the matter which was that the ‘marriage’ between her and the late king had never actually existed?  Or was it unnecessary for her to spill the beans as Hastings, his hostile stepfather-in-law – had already spitefully informed him – perhaps in a moment of pique – as you do? It surely has to be very likely that Hastings was aware of the dangerous truth considering his close friendship with best buddy Edward IV.  Anyway the cat was well and truly out of the bag and the crown was offered to Gloucester by the Three Estates which he duly accepted becoming King Richard III.  The situation with Elizabeth Wydeville remaining in the sanctuary of Cheyneygates remained unchanged for some months until in early March 1484 she finally made her peace with Richard III.  This led not only to her departure from sanctuary but also writing to Thomas, who was then in Paris,  advising him to return home and that Richard would treat him well.  An indication  of Richard’s goodwill and genuine willingness to reconcile with Thomas was his name being omitted from the proclamation against the rebels made in June 1485 despite being formerly attainted by Parliament in 1474. This extraordinary volte-face by the ex-Queen was conveniently explained away by Vergil,  who as already mentioned had a strong propensity for waffling,  as being a consequence of her being a woman: for thus her sex is a changeable animal’.    Ah…silly me.  There was I thinking Elizabeth’s actions were due to her knowing that one or even both of her princelings were still alive.  However, Thomas must have thought it a brilliant idea as Vergil described how he left Paris furtively by night, and hastened to Flanders. As soon as the earl (Henry Tudor) and the other English nobles found this out, they were deeply disturbed and requested (King) Charles’ permission to retrieve this man from wherever he was, because he was party to their plans. This they were readily granted, and they began to scour all the highways. But Humphrey Cheney was best at scenting the trail of this runaway, and followed the marquis straight to the town of Compiègne, and was so successful at persuading him that a little he returned to his comrades’

Whether Thomas’ return was the result of gentle persuasion, more forceful means i.e. dragged by his ankles or entirely of his own free we will never know.  Tellingly when Henry Tudor departed France to invade England Thomas was one of those chosen to be left behind in Paris as surety for the repayment of  a loan made to Henry by the French Government in order to finance his invasion.  Only when Henry was firmly ensconced on the throne-  albeit now and again troubled by various pretenders  – was Thomas ‘redeemed’ and  finally able to return home in November 1485.  Once home his attainder was reversed and much of the properties confiscated by a hacked off Richard III were returned to him but although he regained his wealth the same could not be said of the political power he had enjoyed under Edward IV.   I will return to this later.

KING HENRY VII.  Not someone it was wise to get on the wrong side of.  Nevertheless historian T B Pugh was of the opinion that Henry treated Thomas Grey with ‘wisdom and restraint’.  Unknown Netherlandish artist c.1505.  National Portrait Gallery.

Sources say that after a council meeting at Sheen in February 1487 where the Yorkist rebellion of that year was being discussed things took a serious and dramatic down turn for both Thomas and his mother.  In an attempt at appearing loyal to Henry, Thomas attempted to bring his forces to join those of Henry in East Anglia.   But Henry had learned a useful lesson at Bosworth when he had such a narrow escape after nervously watching Sir William Stanley sitting upon the fence prevaricating until the very last minute.  Henry ordered the Earl of Oxford to arrest Thomas and clap him in the Tower of London until the rebellion was over and it was considered safe for him to be allowed wander around freely.  His protestations of innocence were batted aside and he was advised, as Vergil puts it, that if he were a friend (as in truth he was) he would scarcely take amiss this small indignity for the sake of his own safety.  Perhaps Henry, a wily man, had not been able to get to the bottom of Thomas’ plotting.  However he saw no need to delay punishing Elizabeth Wydeville who was promptly sent to live out the rest of her days in Bermondsey Abbey.  after being, as Vergil would put it ‘mulcted of all her possessions.‘ It seems Thomas was never able to gain the trust of Henry again as can be seen by him having to take an oath in 1492 before Henry’s French expedition that he would not commit treason, or conceal acts of treason of which others were guilty. This seems rather odd that as late as 1492 Henry felt it necessary to warn Thomas to behave and not get embroiled in treasonable acts or with anyone else involved with them.    Was this because they both knew about the man known as John Evans who was living at one of Thomas’ properties,  Coldridge, Devon, and is now being speculated as being the very much still alive adult Edward V living there incognito? Was Edward sent to live at out of the way Coldridge with an agreement reached by Richard III and his mother and had she managed to enlighten Thomas to this fact and that is why he made a brave attempt to return home to England? And did they both wait until the time was ripe to incite a rebellion whereby Henry Tudor would be turfed off the throne and a young Plantagenet put back on it?  Of course at Stoke all would go pear shaped and their venture failed.   But here’s the thing!  Because should these speculations hit the nail on the head, then far from being a dolt, did Thomas manage to pull off one of the biggest hoodwinks in history.  The successful secreting away of one of Edward IV’s missing sons enabling him to live out his life in peaceful incognito –  a secret that has sustained up until this very day.

Pugh opines that Henry  showed wisdom and restraint in his treatment of Thomas and possibly indeed to his half brother Edward V if he did indeed live out his life as John Evans.  Did he maybe actually like Thomas who was after all his brother-in-law?  Just a teeny bit? He did, after all kindly allow him to take part in the crushing of the Cornish uprising in 1497. 

LIKENESSES

Likenesses are few and far between of Thomas.   In fact I could find none. However here, and in the interest of having a little fun, are some stills from The Shadow of the Tower broadcast by the BBC in 1973.  The late marvellous James Maxwell played Henry Tudor while Leonard Gregory played Thomas.   The pained face of Henry, as Thomas declares he is innocent, completely innocent! says it all really. I do like to think that the BBC casting department got it absolutely spot on in this instance:

Henry Tudor – “What does the idiot want? ….”

Thomas – “I’m badly used Your Grace and I’m innocent…”

Thomas “I have done nothing – nothing  – for what cause have I done to offend the king?”

Thomas “I am Your Grace’s brother…..!”

Henry “Take him to the Tower…you’ll be safer there Thomas and I’ll know where to find you when rumour makes up its mind…’

Thomas ” Nooooooooooo! not the tower….urgh! ‘

Priceless.  However back to reality….

CONCLUSIONS

Thomas died at his London home on the 30 August 1501.    I have been unable to ascertain where this house stood which is strange because it must have been a significant building.  Perhaps Cecilia was with him as he breathed his last.  He was one of the fortunates of the time who having been deeply involved with the often horrific and bloody occurrences of the Wars of the Roses still managed  to die in their beds.  His will requested that he be buried in his chapel at Astley Church, Leicestershire.  Which was what happened.  His grave and monument are lost today although Cecilia’s monument has survived although not in its original position.

‘My body to be buried in my College of Astley, in the County of Warwick, before the image of the blessed Trinity, in the midst of my closet in the said College.  I will that my executors shall cause one hundred masses to be said for my soul in every of the four Orders of Friars in London, and that at the time of my burial c marks to be distributed in alms to poor people.’

He also requests prayers for his dead parents, stepfather – to whom he owed so much – and touchingly for his first wife, the young Anne Holland who had died so many years previously at just 18 years old:

‘Also I will that the hospital of Lutterworth, in the county of Leicester,  of my patronage,  be appropriated to the Dean of my College of Astley, to the intent they, the  said Dean  and his brethren shall, specially pray for the souls of King Edward the fourth,  Queen Elizabeth, his wife, my mother, as  likewise for the souls of my father,  and of my wife, my own soul, and for all Christian souls‘ (13).

So what should we make of Thomas?  A sometime hero? Or vain and untrustworthy? Perhaps none of these or a combination?  I will leave that to you Dear Reader to draw your own conclusions…..

1. .Oxford Dictionery of National Biography. Grey, Thomas, first marquess of Dorset T B Pugh.

2.  Anglica historia. Polydore Vergil

3. What might have been: GeorgeNeville,Duke of Bedford1465-83— his identity and significance.  M. A. Hicks.

4. Memorials of the Wars of the Roses p.  W E Hampton.  See also relevant letters in the Stonor Papers relevant to the stay of Anne at Taunton.

5. Testamenta Vetusta Vol.2. p.p.587.588.  Ed.Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas. See also Memorials of     the Wars of the Roses. W E Hampton. 

6.  I have taken this from the late Arthur Kinkaid’s wonderful edition of The History of King Richard the Third.  It is also contained in the Cal.Pat.Rolls 1476-85 p. 371. Foedera Vol.XII,p.204. Richard III p.503. Paul Murry Kendall.

7. .Oxford Dictionery of National Biography. Grey, Thomas, first marquess of Dorset T B Pugh.

8. Mancini. Translation by Annette Carson p.51.

9. The History of King Richard III. Buck. p.247.  Arthur Kinkaid edition.

10. Mancini.  Translation Annette Carson.

11. Ibid..

12. The Stonor Letters and Papers p.159.  Ed.Christine Carpenter.  Letter from Simon Stallworth to Sir William Stonor dated 9 June 1483. 

13.Testamenta Vetusta Vol.2. p.442.

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Tomb of Anne St Leger and George Manners, 11th Baron de Ros of Helmsley.  Note the brass plaque in the background dedicated to her parents, Anne of York and Sir Thomas St Leger.  Photo with thanks to humphreysfamilytree.com

‘Here lyethe buryede George Maners knyght lord roos who decesede/ the xxiii daye of October In the yere of our lorde god Mi Vc xiii and ladye Anne his wyfe dawghter of anne duchesse of exetur Suster unto/ kyng Edward the fourthe and of Thomas Sentlynger knight/ the wyche anne decessed the xxii day of apryll In the yere of our lorde god MiVc xxvi on whose souls god haue mercy amen’

Because there are several Annes – as well as a couple of Thomas’ mentioned in this post, I will in the interests of lucidity refer to them by their surnames throughout.

Anne St Leger (1475-1526) was the daughter of Anne of York (1439-1476) and Sir Thomas Leger (c.1444-1483) thus she was niece to two kings – Edward IV and Richard III.  Anne St Leger’s mother died, presumably from complications following childbirth, a few weeks after giving life to her daughter at Ulcombe, Kent, one of the St Leger properties while her father would be executed in 1483 after he had rebelled against her uncle, Richard III.    The death of her mother meant that she became the Exeter heiress despite her having not a soupçon of Holland blood running through her veins.   The crux of this rather irregular situation was that her mother’s first husband was Henry Holland,  Duke of Exeter (1430-1475) – an unhappy ‘marriage’  –  not surprising when you consider his atrocious reputation.  This ‘marriage’ – following a long separation – was eventually annulled which according to the canon law of the time meant that it had never actually existed.  Following upon the separation and annulment, in 1462 and 1465,  Anne St Leger’s mother was granted the whole of her ex husband’s Exeter inheritance for life, all his goods as well as a slew of properties (1).  This was where it paid dividends to have a king as a brother, particularly Edward IV, who had a rather cavalier attitude towards other peoples inheritances.  Think the Mowbray inheritance!  In 1475 Henry Holland,  quelle surprise,  came to a sticky end – or rather a wet one – having ended up in the English Channel after managing to  fall – somehow – from a ship returning from France.  Perhaps we should not be too surprised at this ‘accident’ when we recall that also present on board was none other than Sir Thomas Leger –  who it has been speculated was at the time the lover of Anne of York  –  by then of course, Henry’s ex ‘wife’.   Still far be it from me to cast aspersions and as it has been suggested that it was actually Edward IV who had ordered Henry’s death, instructing the sailors to toss him overboard like a piece of old jetsam, it’s probably only fair that the buck should come to stop with him.  Thus, it would later transpire,  that both of Anne of York’s brothers would be instrumental in passing the death sentence on both of her husbands.  Another one of history’s quirky little coincidences.  

Anne of York’s first marriage being annulled (rather than merely divorced) had left her free to marry again.  Which she did.  In what was without question a love match she and Thomas St Leger were promptly married, unsurprising, when as  mentioned above, they are believed to have been lovers prior to her marriage being declared void.    Anne and Thomas would become parents to a daughter whom they named Anne and who this story is about.    Confusingly this was Anne of York’s second daughter named Anne.  Her first daughter,  Anne Holland, had been fathered by Henry Holland and had recently died aged about 18.   Anne Holland had been married to Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, Queen Elizabeth Wydeville’s elder son by her first marriage.  I will return to this point below.

Sadly the marriage of Anne of York and Thomas St Leger was but of short duration when in January 1476 she followed her ex husband, Henry Holland, to the grave just a few months after his rather convenient watery and presumably unlamented death.  The infant Anne St Legar, following the death of her mother,  became the Exeter heir despite, as mentioned above, completely lacking a blood line to the Dukes of Exeter and riding roughshod over the rights of the true heir, Ralph Neville, later third earl of Westmorland (2).  Later Thomas St Leger would plan to marry his young daughter to Queen Elizabeth’s Wydeville’s grandson, the son of the Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, mentioned above,  who had been married to her deceased half sister, Anne Holland (3).   Please keep up at the back Dear Reader…..   Anyway…. in 1483 possibly in preparation for this proposed marriage the Exeter inheritance was divided by an Act of Parliament between Queen Elizabeth Wydeville’s  (yes! her again) younger son by her first marriage, Richard Grey, and the rest to Anne St Leger who was, remember,  about to become a Wydeville bride – a win win situation for the rapacious queen and her equally voracious family (4).

These plans were rudely interrupted in 1483 by the unexpected and inconvenient death of Edward IV.  Thomas Grey after a short stint in sanctuary wisely made a swift exit from England legging it over to Brittany to join  Henry Tudor.   However Thomas St Leger, clearly made of sterner stuff,  stayed put and become embroiled in the Buckingham rebellion.  The failure of these two enterprises proved to be the death knell for Thomas St Leger and he was executed after he was captured at Exeter in 1483 when a fed up Richard III refused his brother-in-law a pardon.  A large chunk of the Exeter inheritance was then passed to the  Stanley family and upon the death of Richard III at Bosworth in 1485 yet a further chunk was given by Henry VII to his mother, Margaret Beaufort.  And thus the Holland/Exeter inheritance was lost.

Anne of York and Sir Thomas St Leger.  Anne St Leger’s parents.  Plaque in the Rutland Chapel, St George’s Chapel, Windsor.  This plaque now on a wall  would once had been situated on the floor possibly above a burial vault.  

However,  there was for little Anne St Leger life after lost inheritance, and when she was about 14 she married George Manners 11th Baron de Ros/Roos (c. 1470 – October 1513).  George who was born at Etal Castle, Northumberland,  came from prestigious stock his parents being Sir Robert Manners and Eleanor de Ros.   It’s likely that George and Anne spent the majority of their married life at the magnificent Helmsley Castle in Yorkshire – a property that came to him via his mother’s de Ros holdings.    Would it not be gratifying to think that this marriage developed into a happy union after all the machinations of the adults in her life to marry her to suit their various selfish ends? By the time Anne St Leger reached adulthood the turbulence of the period known as the Wars of the Roses had passed.  As a result the later adult life of Anne St Leger appears to have not been quite so eventful as that of her mother, perhaps not a bad thing, and little is therefore known about her except she and George would go on to have a large brood of children.

However tempus fugit and George would fight in the French campaign of 1513 with fatal results.  Depending on what version of events you read he may have died at Toutney in France either of wounds received at sometime during the siege of Tournai or succumbed to the dysentery that according to Edward Hall’s Chronicle cut a swathe through the English ranks.

According to another version George managed to return to England before he finally succumbed and was buried at Shoreditch – then in Middlesex but now in London.  Whichever version is correct George must have certainly been buried in England because in the fullness of time his body would be disinterred and taken to St George’s Chapel,  Windsor,  where he would be reburied next to Anne following her death in April 1526   His will written on the 26 October 1513 had requested that ‘my body to be buried next unto the place where I shall happen to die, or elsewhere, at the discretion of my executors’ (5). 

Today their effigies lie on top of their wonderful alabaster monument in the Rutland Chantry Chapel – formerly known as the St Leger Chapel founded by Sir Thomas St Leger in memory of his wife Anne of York.   George’s feet rest on a rather perky looking unicorn, now missing his horn but still,  nonetheless, incorrigibly cheerful, peering around at his master whose helm is adorned by a peacock.  Either side of Anne’s feet are two pudgy little dogs – signifying faithfulness – their collars are adorned by bells – both who are playfully chewing on their mistress’s mantle (6).  Click here to read more about the chapel.

George Manners and  Anne St Leger’s effigies atop their monument.  English alabaster.  The Rutland Chapel,  St Georges Chapel, Windsor. Photo Lady Shirley@Flikr.

One of the little dogs nestling at Anne’s feet, his collar adorned with bells, chews upon his mistress’s mantle.  Photo stgeorges-windsor.

Glorious St Georges Chapel, Windsor.  Anne St Ledger, her husband and parents all lie at rest in the Rutland Chapel in the north transcept.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that Anne St Leger’s later life would appear to have been rather uneventful compared to say that of her mother or aunts.  But wait! This is not the end of her story….. It is now thanks to Anne’s descendants, via Catherine,  one of her daughters,  that the remains of  Richard III have been identified.

In 2004 the late John Ashdown-Hill painstakingly tracked down Anne’s thirteenth great grand-daughter Joy Ibsen – who was astonished to learn about her illustrious bloodline.   The discovery would enable the perfect mitochondrial DNA match to be made between Richard III and Mrs Ibsen and would be vital in identifying the king’s remains found at Leicester in 2012 on the site of the Grey Friars friary.   You can read more about the DNA analyses of both the skeletal remains and living relatives of Richard III  here.

Anne and George according to what source you are reading had between 8-11 children.  Below are the eight listed on peerage.com including last but not least Catherine, the daughter mentioned above,  who played such an important role in the tracing of Richard III’s DNA.

If you have enjoyed this post you might

Marriage in Medieval London And Extricating Oneself Only You Couldnt;

The Sisters Neville & Isobel, Duchess of Clarence and Queen Anne Neville, Daughters to the Kingmaker.

THE SIX SISTERS OF WARWICK THE KINGMAKER

ANNE MOWBRAY DUCHESS OF NORFOLK. CHILD BRIDE OF RICHARD OF SHREWSBURY; ONE OF THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER & HER REBURIAL IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

CECILIA BONVILLE, MARCHIONESS OF DORSET c.1460-1529; AN INTERESTING LIFE

CICELY PLANTAGENET; NOT SO FORTUNATE AS FAIR.

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