The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (2 page)

10. Happy times. A young man welcomes his lover to the bath;
outside there are couples and musicians.
Bilderhandschrift des
15 Jahrhunderts
(detail from plate 15a).

11. Flemish carrack by an artist known as WA, believed to have
been drawn around 1460. It shows the design and rigging of
contemporary ships.

12. The Protector is offered the crown by the citizens. John
Leech’s view of the event in
The Comic History of England
(1879).

13. Sea fight. Two ships come together with English archers on
the left and crossbowmen on the right.
The Beauchamp Pageant
(plate XXXVI).

14. Gentle activities. Four scenes: crossbows in the butts, hawk
ing with a lover, judging and book work.
Bilderhandschrift des
15 Jahrhunderts
(detail from plate 12a).

15. Cavalry. Mounted men-at-arms and soldiers on the move
with two trumpeters.
Bilderhandschrift des 15 Jahrhunderts
(plate 52c).

16. A ship under sail. A
nao
, or typical sailing ship of the period.
Libre del Consolat y dels Fets Maritims
(Barcelona, 1502 edition).

17. Siege of a city. On the left is the Earl of Warwick instructing
a gunner with a breech-loading cannon on its wooden bed;
below is a ship with its cannon. English soldiers are above the
town with their bills; the defenders are around the town.
The
Beauchamp Pageant
(plate XXXVII).

Illustrations have been selected to provide a contemporary depiction of the
activities of the period.

(1) The woodcuts are from E. Hodnett,
English Woodcuts 1480–1535
(Oxford
University Press, 1935), and Caudall,
Wood Engraving
(London, 1895). The
Spanish woodcuts are from J.P.R. Lyell,
Early Book Illustration in Spain
(1926).
The Flemish carrack was reproduced from R. and R.C. Anderson,
The Sailing
Ship
(1926).

(2)
Mittelalterliches Hausbuch. Bilderhandschrift des 15 Jahrhunderts
, ed A.
Essenwein (‘Medieval House Book. 15th-Century Illustrated Manuscript’)
(Frankfurt: Heinrich Keller, 1887). The book is a facsimile of an original
fifteenth-century text with engravings (by ‘JP’) of 19 illustrations and 28
drawings. The first edition was published in Leipzig in 1866 and a second in
Paris in 1885. The engravings show a range of lively and graphic illustrations
of military and social scenes. The majority probably date from the 1470s or
1480s and are the work of one draughtsman; however, some are the work of a
sixteenth-century hand and the technical drawings (not reproduced here) are
probably by a third; some show cannon of a type illustrated by Dürer in a 1518
engraving. Only a part of one engraving has been previously reproduced in the
UK: plate 24 of
The Battle of Towton
by A.W. Boardman.

The illustrations were presumably selected from the collection of Melchior
Goldast (1570s–1635), ‘an industrious but uncritical collector of documents
relating to the medieval history of Germany’. He may have had some drawings
improved.

I am grateful to Professor Jonathan Osmond and Professor Ralph Griffith
for giving me their views on aspects of authenticity and to James Holloway
(Director of the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland) for his opinion on the
engravings.

(3)
Pageant of the Birth, Life and Death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, K.G.
1389–1439
(British Museum, facsimile, published 1914) (hereafter referred
to as
The Beauchamp Pageant
). There are interesting illustrations in the
Pageant
.
Beauchamp was the father-in-law of Warwick the Kingmaker. The
Pageant
consists of 53 fine line drawings depicting the chief events of Earl Richard’s
life. The artist is an unknown Englishman who was commissioned, it has been
assumed, by the Countess Anne, Earl Richard’s daughter and the Kingmaker’s
widow, who died in 1493. While the
Pageant
is supposed to depict the Earl’s
life and times, it was drawn between 1485 and 1490 and actually depicts the
costume and armour of that period.

(4) H. Talhoffer,
Fechtbuch aus dem Jahre 1467
(Talhoffer’s Martial Arts Manual
[literally ‘fight-book’] from the Year 1467) (ed Gustav Hergsell, Prague,
1887). A manual of close-quarter combat with some 260 drawings illustrating
techniques of fighting with most weapons. The six drawings reproduced are
for the poleaxe practice (see p 31). The three on the left show: (i) the combat
ants poised to thrust and strike; (ii) the man on the left deflects the thrust and
is set to hook his opponent behind the knee; (iii) having parried a blow to the
legs the man on the right hooks his opponent’s neck to pull him to the ground.
The three on the right show: (iv) combatants with their axes locked in a bind;
(v) from the bind the man on the right traps his opponent behind the arm and
pushes; (vi) the right-hand man breaks the bind and uses his butt to jab his
opponent in the stomach.

(5) G.A. A’Beckett,
The Comic History of England
, illustrated by John Leech.
Wood engraving, 295 (London: Bradbury, Agnew, 1879).

 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A number of distinguished historians have written on the period and I 
have been fortunate in being able to use their work. They are, prin
cipally, S.B. Chrimes, R.A. Griffiths, M.A. Hicks, R. Horrox, J.R.
 
Lander, A.J. Pollard, C.D. Ross and J.S.C. Bridges. Some earlier books and
 
manuscripts have been of particular interest:
 
The Crowland Chronicle
,
The History
 
of Richard III
 
by Thomas More, Mancini’s account of the usurpation of Richard
 
III, Bacon’s
 
History of the Reign of Henry VII
, the Harleian Manuscript, together
 
with parts of Hall, Commines, Vergil, Molinet, Bernáldez and Hakluyt’s
 
voyages. In addition I have used
 
L’expédition d’Edouard Wydeville en Bretagne
 
by de
 
Beauchesne and Prescott’s
 
The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella
. The
 
other books I have used are listed in the bibliography.