The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (36 page)

22.
Calendar of State Papers of Milan
, 177/133 (23 October 1469).

23.
The Chronicle of John Hardying
, ed H. Ellis (1812).

24. Sir John Fortescue (1394?–1476?), chief justice under Henry VI and loyal
Lancastrian. One of his principal works was
De Natura Legis Naturae
, which
distinguished absolute from constitutional monarchy. He also wrote
De Laudibus
Legum Angliae
for the young prince, from which this excerpt is taken. Translated
and edited by S.B. Chrimes,
Henry VII
(London: Eyre Methuen 1972).

25. J. Warkworth,
Chronicle of the First 13 Years of the Reign of King Edward IV
, ed J.O.
Halliwell (London: Camden Society, 1839). The captain of
The Trinity
, John
Porter, certainly helped as he was rewarded with a royal annuity of £20. J.S.
Davies,
History of Southampton
(London, 1883), reports that Anthony and his
officers were given a celebratory dinner by the town.

26. Painter,
William Caxton
, p 113. The quotation is from the prologue of ‘De
Amicitia’.

27. ‘Hearne’s Fragment’, in J.A. Giles (ed),
Chronicles of the White Rose of York
(1834),
p 28.

28. A ship dated at 1467–68 has been found preserved in the mud of the Usk at
Newport. She is clinker built with heavy oak planks, around 25 metres long and
had, amongst other things, stone cannonballs aboard.

29. Edward III fighting the Spaniards (24 June 1340). See Sir John Froissart,
Chronicles of England, France and Spain
(London: Routledge, 1874), vol. i, p 198.

30. Actually it was
Bishop’s
Lynn; it did not become
King’s
Lynn until the Reformation.

31. ‘Easterling’ was a general term used to describe people who came from the east,
i.e. the Baltic, the Hanseatic League and Scandinavia. (Holinshed: ‘used by the
English of traders or others from the coasts of the Baltic...because they lie east
in respect of us’.)

32. The London chronicler was scandalized by Henry’s appearances in the same
old blue coat, months apart in 1470–71, and his square-toed (farmer’s) boots.
M.R. James (ed),
John Blackman’s Memoire of Henry VI
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1919), p 36.

33. Thomas Fuller,
Worthies of England
(1662), p 155.

34. Duke Charles was descended from Philippa, one of John of Gaunt’s daughters,
who had married King João I of Portugal. One of their daughters, Isabella,
married Philip of Burgundy, so Charles was a Lancaster cousin; however, he was
married to King Edward’s sister, Margaret (of York).

35. Painter,
William Caxton
, p 42.

36. Commines,
Memoirs 1461–1483
, pp 115–16.

37.
Historie of the Arrival of Edward IV
, ed J. Bruce (London: Camden Society, 1838).

38. Casualties were estimated at 1,500, with over 10,000 arrows used. C.L.
Scofield,
The Life and Reign of Edward IV
(London: Longman, 1923), vol. i, p 581.

39. An archer’s pay was 6 pence per day and there is a record of one complete
‘harness including ostrich feathers’ costing £6-16s-8d (1,640 pence), i.e. nine
months’ pay. Warwick’s probably cost much more.

40. A typical dagger of the period has a thin tapering double-edged blade around
12in (30cm) long.

41. G.E. Cokayne,
The Complete Peerage
(London: St Catherine’s Press, 1910).

42. During the dodge and chase round Gloucestershire, divisions of both armies
camped in the Iron Age fort at Little Sodbury. Queen Margaret spent the night
of 29 April in the manor house there and King Edward was there on the nights of
1 and 2 May.

43. Oman,
The Art of War in the Middle Ages
, p 412.

44. A recurring theme in medieval romances is of a knight going on a crusade, or
joining either the Templars or the Hospitallers, because they felt the need to atone
for a sin of some kind or they were hopelessly enamoured of an unobtainable
lady. There were also vows made publicly in response to an idea, for instance
Duke Philip of Burgundy at the Feast of the Pheasant in 1454 to go crusading.
Alternatively it could be, and this probably was, a vow made as part of a bargain
with God, such as that which Charles the Bold made when there was a night
attack on his lodgings. He swore he would walk 30 or 50 miles to give thanks at a
particular shrine if his life was saved. It was, he did (R. Vaughan,
Charles the Bold
(Longman, 1973), p 161).

45. On one occasion they had reached the walls of Tangier itself and were set to
make a surprise attack; the scaling ladders were up but so many wanted the
honour of climbing first and the argument became so loud and prolonged that the
Moors were alerted – with disastrous results.

46. Tangier remained Portuguese until Catherine of Braganza brought it to England
as part of her dower when she married Charles II. The English abandoned it in
1683 and corsairs (pirates) took possession.

47.
Archaeologia
, vol. xxvi, p 280.

48. Record of Bluemantle Pursuivant in C.I. Kingsford,
English Historical Literature in
the Fifteenth Century
(Oxford, 1913), p 382.

49. The visitor was Louis de Gruthuyse, the Burgundian governor of Holland.
In September 1472 King Edward repaid him for his help in the hard times by
making him Earl of Winchester and giving a lavish party when he came over on
a diplomatic mission. The events were recorded by Bluemantle Pursuivant (
ibid
.,
pp 386–7).

Chapter 4. Princes and Peers

1. The works of M. Hicks, R. Horrocks and D.E. Lowe have been very helpful
for this chapter, while Kirk’s monumental
History of Charles the Bold
, Vaughan’s
biography and Philippe de Commine’s
Memoirs
have been particularly useful,
together with
The Practice of English Diplomacy in France 1461–71
by Edward Meek,
for the European dimension.
James III
by N. Macdougall has provided much on
the Scottish issues.

2. ‘Dub’ comes from
adouber
which originally meant to equip a man with martial
arms. The knight-to-be would dress in a chamois leather undercoat, a chain-mail
shirt and his plate armour, which would probably be a new gleaming suit made
for the occasion.

3. Royal revenues came from land ownership, customs duties, land trusteeship and
confiscation, as well as more imaginative ways such as ‘first benevolence’, paid
by the rich in lieu of military service. Parliament only raised money for war.

4.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV
, vol. ii, p 339.

5. For instance, the Earl of Pembroke was 14 when he took part in the great
expedition of 1475; in 1417 the son of Sir John Cornwall, at 13, swam across the
Seine with his father to make a bridgehead at Pont d’Arche; when Henry V made
his call up in 1415, men-at-arms had to be ‘at least 14 years of age’.

6. D.E. Lowe, ‘Patronage and Politics: Edward IV, the Wydevills and the Council
of the Prince of Wales 1471–83’,
Board of Celtic Studies
, 29 (1981), p 568.

7. Louis de Bretelles (or Bretaylle) crops up several times in this history. He was
sent by King Edward to Spain in the summer of 1462 to provide intelligence
on its rapidly changing politics. Previously he had performed ‘valiant deeds’ in
France under the great Talbot in the campaign of 1452–53. He was used for a
number of diplomatic missions. He fought, after Anthony, in the tournament
with the Bastard and his Burgundians – against Jean de Chassa – on foot on the
Saturday and mounted on the Sunday.

8. H. Cust,
Gentlemen Errant, Being the Journeys and Adventures of Four Noblemen during
the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
(London: John Murray, 1909), pp 86–7.

9. A plum job for many of us, responsible for the national supply of wine which
included licensing imports and collecting duty payable on the cargoes.

10.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV, 1467–77
, p 417.

11. Thomas More,
History of King Richard III
, ed R. Sylvester (London, 1963), p 15.

12. A marriage treaty was signed on 26 October 1474 for Prince James, the Scots heir
and Princess Cecilia. Her dowry was 20,000 marks, to be paid in instalments
over 17 years.

13.
Calendar of State Papers of Milan
, p 193.

14. King Edward’s objective in taking his army to France is unclear and different
views obtain: C.D. Ross believed there was an aggressive war plan, while J.R.
Lander believed it was an essentially defensive expedition. It was probably
opportunist to start with and then became driven by domestic momentum.

15. Clarence and Gloucester each took 1,000 archers and 120 lances, Norfolk and
Suffolk each 40 lances and 350 archers, Northumberland 60 lances and 250
archers. The wages for the expedition for the second quarter (three months)
were £32,015-13s-10d.

16. The muster roll in
Edward IV’s French Expedition of 1475
, ed F.P. Barnard (College
of Arms; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925). In this period a ‘lance’ was the
smallest cavalry unit and consisted of five men: the man-at-arms, a squire, a
page and two mounted archers. The ‘lances’ in this expedition may not have had
their complement of mounted archers.

17. Olivier de la Marche (
Mémoires
, vol. ii, p 266) says that Louis de Bretelles was ‘in
the service of Lord Scales’.

18.
Medieval Pageant: Writhe’s Garter Book
.

19. J. du Clercq,
Mémoires sur le Règne de Philippe le Bon, Duc de Bourgogne
, ed de
Rieffenberg (1835–36), vol. iv, p 7.

20. Sir Robert Neville to Lord Wenlock, in J.F. Kirk,
History of Charles the Bold
(London: John Murray, 1863), p 169.

21. Jean de Troyes,
The Scandalous Chronicle
(London, 1856). It is disappointingly
short of scandal.

22. Commines reported how King Louis was hugely entertained by a recent arrival
from the Burgundian court who mimicked Duke Charles flying into a rage at the
mention of King Edward. The Duke stamps, shouts a string of expletives and
finishes up saying that Edward’s name is Blaybourne, as his father was only an
archer. It was the Milanese ambassador who reported the Garter incident.

23.
Calender of State Papers of Milan
, pp 217, 219, 296.

24. Francis Bacon made the observation about Henry VII’s expedition of 1492, but
Henry was only following in his late father-in-law’s footsteps.

25. Commines,
Memoirs 1461–1483
, p 179.

26.
Ibid
., p 279.

27.
Biographie Universelle
(Paris, 1854), vol. xxv.

28. C. Ady,
History of Milan under the Sforza
(Methuen, 1907), pp 261–4.

29. In the late fifteenth century Milan stretched from the border of Padua to the
border of Piedmont and the Trevisan March.

30. Boccaccio developed the writing of the short story (
novella
) to a fine art in the
fourteenth century and the following two centuries were the golden age of the
Italian novella which, in turn, gave many a plot to the Elizabethan dramatists.

31. Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84) had been a Franciscan monk. He is described by James
Lees-Milne,
St Peter’s
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967), pp 128–9, as astute
yet simple, an ecclesiastical scholar of renown, a patron of learning and art but
inordinately profligate of money. He built the Sistine Chapel, founded St Luke’s
association of painters and re-established the Vatican Library.

32.
Paston Letters
, no. 369.
Calendar of State Papers of Milan
, p 324.
Venetian Papers
, p 136.
Vatican Regesta
, vol. DCLXV, Sixtus IV, 221. Lords ‘Scroop and Hurmonde’
were with him.

33. P. Spufford,
Handbook of Medieval Exchange
, pp 316, 320–1.

34. San Michelle in Isola, the Scula di San Giovanni Evangelista and a number
of palaces were under construction, the façade of San Zaccaria had just been
completed, as had a major rebuild of the Doge’s Palace. In the sixteenth century
the arsenal is recorded as building up to 100 ships a year.

35. J. Wullschlager, ‘Arts Review’,
Financial Times
, 19 May 2006.

36. Mauro Lucco,
Antonello da Messina, L’Opera Completa
(Silvana, 2006). Antonello
worked in Venice 1475–76.

37. C.R. Clough,
The Duchy of Urbino in the Renaissance
(Varorium Reprints, 1981), p
211.