The Hollow Crown: The Wars of the Roses and the Rise of the Tudors (42 page)

1
Paston Letters
, V 45–6

2
Croyland Continuations
, 438

3
‘Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire, 1470’, 18, in K. Dockray (ed.),
Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV
(Gloucester, 1988)

4
Ibid., 10

5
CSP Milan I, 1467, item 146

6
Paston Letters
, V 83

7
Warkworth, 11

8
Croyland Continuations
, 462

9
Ibid.

10
Blacman, 41

11
CSP Milan I, 1471, item 210

12
‘The Arrival of King Edward IV’, 4, in Dockray (ed.),
Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV.
Bolingbroke, of course, claimed to be returning from exile in France in 1399 to claim his usurped right to the duchy of Lancaster.

13
Ibid., 7

14
Ibid., 10

15
Cited in Ross,
Edward
IV, 166

16
A. Scobie (ed.),
The Memoirs of Philip de Commines, Lord of Argenton
(London, 1877) (hereafter ‘Commines’), 200

17
A. Thomas and I. Thornley (eds),
The Great Chronicle of London
(London, 1938), 215

18
Ibid.

19
Letter from Margaret of York, printed in Wavrin,
Chronicles and Ancient Histories of Great Britain
, III 211

20
J. Bruce (ed.),
Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV in England and the Finall Recouerye of His Kingdomes from Henry VI
(London, 1838), 17

21
Ibid.

22
Croyland Continuations
, 464

23
Bruce,
Arrivall of Edward IV
, 19–20

24
Ibid.

25
Ibid.

26
Commines, 201

27
Scofield,
Edward IV
, I 579–60

28
Bruce,
Arrivall of Edward IV
, 20

29
Von Wesel’s letter of 17 April 1471, translated and reprinted most recently in H. Kleineke (ed. and trans.), ‘Gerhard von Wesel’s Newsletter from England, 17 April 1471’ in
The Ricardian
16 (2006)

30
Ibid., 10

31
Ibid. The Neville brothers were granted a decent burial by Edward: their bodies were removed to Bisham Abbey to be laid to rest near their father, the earl of Salisbury.

32
Letter to John Daunt, quoted in P. Hammond,
The Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury
(1993), 81

33
Croyland Continuations
, 465

34
CSP Milan I, 1471, item 216

35
Bruce,
Arrival of Edward IV
, 28

36
Ibid.

37
Croyland Continuations
, 466

38
Bruce,
Arrivall of Edward IV
, 28–30, for all that follows, unless indicated

39
Warkworth, 18

40
Croyland Continuations
, 466

41
Ibid., 467

42
Blacman, 44

43
Bruce,
Arrivall of Edward IV
, 38

44
Warkworth, 21

45
W. St John Hope, ‘The Discovery of the Remains of King Henry VI in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle’ in
Archaeologia
(1911), 541

46
CSP Milan I, 1471, item 220

47
Ibid., 39

48
Croyland Continuations
, 467

1
Robbins (ed.),
Historical Poems
, 148

2
H. Ellis (ed.),
Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History
(London, 1844), 154–5

3
Griffiths and Thomas,
Making of the Tudor Dynasty
, 86–7. Bad weather marred the Tudors’ crossing of the Channel.

4
Foedera
, XI 714, quoted in M. Hicks,
Edward V: The Prince in the Tower
(Stroud, 2003), 57–8

5
Paston Letters
, IV 298

6
The Black Book, or
Liber Niger Domus Regis Edw. IV
, is printed in
A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Household etc.
(London, 1790), 15–86

7
See D. Starkey, ‘Henry VI’s Old Blue Gown: The English Court under the Lancastrians and the Yorkists’ in
The Court Historian
, 1999, passim but especially 20–4

8
The weak and sickly Herbert earl of Pembroke was deprived of his title in 1479, when it was given to Prince Edward, and Herbert was forced to accept a demotion to the earldom of Huntingdon.

9
Had Warwick died a natural death, his brother Montague would have inherited the Neville patrimony; the daughters would have received the rest. Since Montague also died in battle against the king, and was posthumously convicted of treason, the entire Warwick inheritance came into royal hands.

10
Carpenter,
Wars of the Roses
, 187

11
Ibid., 193–4

12
R. Buckley et al., ‘The King in the Car Park: New Light on the Death and Burial of Richard III in the Grey Friars Church, Leicester in 1485’ in
Antiquity
87 (2013), 536

13
Poppelau, quoted in Mancini, 136–7

14
Colvin,
History of the King’s Works
, I 499–500

15
Or, in the more famous, more modern rendering given by the King James Bible, ‘The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.’ Psalm 23:1. For a detailed excerpt of Rotherham’s speech to parliament, PROME January 1478, items 1–3

16
Romans 13:4

17
In order to force Clarence to relinquish lands for redistribution to, among others, Gloucester, Edward had been forced to issue a general act of resumption in the parliament of 1473, excluding Clarence from a long list of persons exempted. For full details of the Clarence–Gloucester land feud, see Hicks,
False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence: George Duke of Clarence 1449–78
(Gloucester, 1992), 111–27

18
The details of the Twynho case are contained in the petition by her ‘cousin’ (probably her brother-in-law) Roger Twynho, who applied for and received a royal pardon on her behalf in 1478. One John Thursby was also hanged at the same proceedings on the equally specious charge of having murdered Clarence’s son Richard. PROME January 1478, item 17; Hicks,
False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence
, 137–9

19
Croyland Continuations
, 478

20
Ibid.

21
PROME January 1478, appendix 1

22
For a discussion of the malmsey wine story, see Hicks,
False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence
, 200–4

23
Romans 13:2

1
Commines, I 397

2
Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 164

3
Griffiths and Thomas,
Making of the Tudor Dynasty
, 88–90

4
Commines, I 251

5
Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 164–5

6
Ibid., 135; J. Lewis (ed.),
Life of Dr John Fisher
(London, 1855), II 269

7
M. Jones and M. Underwood,
The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby
(Cambridge, 1993), 58–9; MacGibbon, Elizabeth Woodville, 108

8
Jones and Underwood,
King’s Mother
, 61, quoting Westminster Abbey Muniments doc. 32378

9
Croyland Continuations
, 483

10
Commines, I 264

11
Vergil’s pen-portrait was consistent with every other in also praising the king’s ‘wit’, ‘high courage’ and ‘retentive memory’, his diligence, his tendency to be ‘earnest and horrible to the enemy [ but] bountiful to his friends and acquaintance’ and his fortune in war. Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 172

12
Mancini, 66–7

13
Thomas Basin, quoted in Scofield,
Edward IV
, 365

14
R. Gottfried, ‘Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth-Century England’ in
Journal of Economic History
36 (1976), 267–8, notes cases of influenza in the fifteenth century, ‘although it was not particularly virulent until 1485’.

15
Mancini, 70–1

16
W. Crotch,
The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton
(London, 1928), 39

17
BL MS Sloane 3479, f. 53v

18
Ibid., 69

19
Croyland Continuations
, 485

20
Mancini, 74–5

21
Gairdner (ed.),
Letters and Papers
, I 4

22
Croyland Continuations
, 487

23
Mancini, 82–3

24
Croyland Continuations
, 487, although the author writes with
hindsight and may well be influenced here by his knowledge of subsequent events

25
Great Chronicle
, 230

26
Croyland Continuations
, 488

27
C. Carpenter (ed.),
Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483
(Cambridge, 1996), 416

28
Croyland Continuations
, 489

29
Mancini, 90–1

30
For a level-headed discussion of the arguments over Edward V’s (and Edward IV’s) supposed illegitimacy, see Hicks,
Edward V
, 163–6

31
Mancini, 96–7

32
Croyland Continuations
, 489

33
Noted by Mancini 104–5: the English were well known for their fondness for cryptic prophecies of this sort.

34
A. Sutton and P. Hammond,
The Coronation of Richard III: The Extant Documents
(Gloucester, 1983), 77–9, 294–5

35
Great Chronicle, 233

1
The
Great Chronicle of London
, 234, reports sightings of the boys during the mayoralty of Sir Edmund Shaa, which ran from Michaelmas 1482 to Michaelmas 1483, although the chronicler misdates this by a year, and subsequently garbles the sequence of events between the disappearance of the princes, the death of Queen Anne, Buckingham’s rebellion and Richard’s apparent plan to marry Elizabeth of York.

2
Horrox and Hammond (eds), BL Harleian MSS 433, III 2

3
Ibid., 234

4
Mancini, 92–3

5
Ibid.

6
Ibid.

7
The
Great Chronicle
dates public rumours of their disappearance to ‘after Easter’, a date we can deduce to be 18 April 1484. But see n. 3 to chapter 18 for concerns over the chronicler’s dating of events during this period.

8
The remains found during that excavation are now kept at Westminster Abbey. They were tested, very inadequately, in 1933 in an attempt to determine cause of death. For a discussion, see P. Hammond and W. White, ‘The Sons of Edward IV: A Re-examination of the Evidence on Their Deaths and on the Bones in Westminster Abbey’ in Hammond (ed.),
Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law
(London, 1986), 104–47. Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey oppose further tests being carried out on the remains. A recent e-petition to HM Government requesting DNA analysis on the remains accrued only 408 signatures (
www.thepetitionsite.org
).

9
For the welter of grants to Buckingham, which effectively gave him power over the whole of Wales and the western marches, see Horrox and Hammond (eds), Harleian MS 433, II 3–4

10
As set forth in
Titulus Regius
, PROME January 1484, item 5

11
Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 200 (‘circumspection and celerity’) and 226–7. The analysis of Richard’s skeleton and teeth performed in Leicester in 2012–13 confirmed his spinal deformation and worn molars.

12
Croyland Continuations
, 490

13
Commines, II 64

14
Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 197

15
As described in the act of attainder passed posthumously against Buckingham, PROME January 1484, item 3

16
E.g. Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 192–3

17
Or to borrow the delicious phrase of Carpenter,
Wars of the Roses
, 212, ‘he was a worthless man, and probably few lamented his passing’.

18
Griffiths and Thomas,
Making of the Tudor Dynasty
, 102–5; Jones and Underwood,
King’s Mother
, 62–3

19
Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 199

20
Ibid.

21
A. Raine (ed.),
York Civic Records
(Wakefield, 1939), I 83

22
L. Gill,
Richard III and Buckingham’s Rebellion
(Stroud, 1999), 68

23
Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 202

24
PROME January 1484, item 5

25
Croyland Continuations
, 496

26
Text printed in P. Hammond and A. Sutton,
Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field
(London, 1985), 151

27
See ibid., 151–2

28
PROME January 1484, item 21

29
PROME January 1484, item 27

30
R. Horrox,
Richard III: A Study of Service
(Cambridge, 1989), 325–6

31
A few entries from Prince Edward’s accounts are printed in Hammond and Sutton,
Richard III
, 174–5

32
Ibid., 497. A tomb at the church of St Helen and the Holy Cross in Sheriff Hutton may be that of Edward, although another tradition holds that he was buried at his birthplace in Middleham.

33
Edward of Middleham was Richard’s only legitimate son. He had two, and possibly three illegitimate children: Sir John of Pontefract, captain of Calais; Katherine Plantagenet, who married William Herbert in 1484, but died a few years later; and, possibly, a boy called Richard Plantagenet, who was born around 1469 and died in December 1550, having lived his life anonymously as a London bricklayer. The eighteenth-century antiquarian Francis Peck recorded a family legend he had heard about Richard Plantagenet: before his death he supposedly claimed to have been an observer at Bosworth and to have been presented there to his father the king on the night before the battle. The story is unproveable, but a tomb to Richard Plantagenet lies in the ruined church of St Mary’s in Eastwell, Kent.

34
Horrox and Hammond (eds), Harleian MSS 433, III 124–5

35
Ibid., III 190

36
Croyland Continuations
, 499. There is evidence, albeit difficult and inconclusive evidence, to suggest that Elizabeth was aware of Richard’s intentions and may even have been considering them favourably. This has most recently been discussed by Weir,
Elizabeth of York
, 130– 8, who concludes after some consideration that ‘there is no evidence as to [Elizabeth’s] true feelings for Richard III’.

37
Paston Letters
, VI 81–4

38
Ellis (ed.),
Polydore Vergil
, 204

39
Commines, II 64

40
Great Chronicle
, 237