A Papal Grant to ‘Richard, Duke of York’ in 1494

Mid 16th C. sketch from Receuil d'Arras identified in 18th C. inscription as 'Pierre Varbeck' (Image: Public Domain)

For much of the 1490s Henry VII’s security was dogged by the claims of the most widely supported Yorkist claimant to his throne. It was as Richard, duke of York, the younger son of Edward IV last seen with his elder brother in the Tower of London in the summer of 1483, that this young man made his claim; but it was as Perkin Warbeck, the son of a Tournai boatman, that he was hanged at Tyburn in 1499 and it is as Perkin Warbeck that he has generally been known to history. The discovery by the Missing Princes team of the ‘Gelderland document’ (Gelders Archief, 0510/1549), in which the recently emerged York provides an explanation for his disappearance and survival, has reignited interest in the question of the claimant’s true identity.[1] His foreign supporters (of whom the most committed were the Princes’ aunt, Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, and her stepson-in-law Maximilian, archduke of Austria and King of the Romans) hailed him as Richard, duke of York, but not so King Henry VII and his allies. The Vatican’s support for King Henry was of long standing and has always appeared to have held secure, therefore it is a little surprising to see that, on 21 May 1494, as Maximilian was slowly preparing the way for the young man’s attempt to oust King Henry from his throne, the bishop in charge of the apostolic office of the Penitentiary accorded him an official grant in the name of Richard, duke of York.

The Papal Penitentiary performed a double function. Chiefly, as its name suggests, ‘it was the department of the Roman Curia which dealt with the sins reserved to papal absolution’, but it also ‘issued letters which conferred an increasingly wide variety of dispensations and graces on their beneficiaries.’[2] The indult granted to ‘the nobleman Richard, duke of York’ falls into the latter category and was first brought to the world’s attention in 2008 by Peter D. Clarke, who provided the following translation of the text:

Rome [at St Peter’s], 21 May 1494. The nobleman Richard, duke of York, [requests] that the pope grant him a licence that he may have a portable altar with due reverence on which he can have masses and other divine offices celebrated in fitting and decent places by his own or another suitable priest without prejudice to another’s right and in the presence of himself and his domestic familiars and that the pope grant him littere confessionales in forma ‘Fervens’ too. Fiat de speciali Iul. episcopus Brethonoriensis regens (= approved under a special papal mandate by Julianus de Matteis de Vulterris, bishop of Bertinoro, regent of the penitentiary i.e. the cardinal penitentiary’s deputy).[3]

The original Latin text was later published by Clarke and his colleague Patrick Zutshi in their three-volume calendar of the English and Welsh entries in the Penitentiary’s fifteenth-century registers.[4]

 

This young man had first identified himself as the Duke of York whilst in Ireland in 1491, and in the following year he had spent some time at the French court until the treaty agreed with England at Étaples had forced him to seek the protection of the Duchess Margaret in the Low Countries. It was probably at about this time that his personal statement, preserved in the ‘Gelderland document’, was issued. During 1493 he remained on the continent, supported not only by Margaret but also by Maximilian, who in August succeeded his father as Holy Roman Emperor. In November, the new emperor took the young man with him to Vienna where, early in 1494, he sought to raise loans ‘for the young king of England for the conquest of his kingdom’. Indults for portable altars were often sought by the wealthy in preparation for an extended journey, and this case seems to have been no exception as in May 1494 ‘the nobleman, Richard, duke of York,’ would have been preparing to return with Maximilian to Flanders.

The Vatican official who approved this grant was Giuliano Maffei, Bishop of Bertinoro from 1477-1505 and Archbishop of Dubrovnik in modern-day Croatia  from 1505 until his death in 1510.[5] By 1494 Bishop Maffei had been the Penitentiary Regent for over a decade; most of the business that had passed through his office during that time had been unremarkable, routine requests from priests, scholars and minor gentry, but the indult to Richard, duke of York, was not the first politically sensitive request that the bishop had conceded. On 27 March 1484, for instance, he had granted to Henry ‘Richemond’ and Elizabeth ‘Plantageneta’ a dispensation to marry despite being related by consanguinity in double fourth degrees (i.e. being third cousins).[6]

It will be noted that, while the first of these two politically contentious dispensations facilitated the cause of Henry Tudor, the second, issued almost exactly ten years later, acknowledged the right of Henry’s new dynastic rival. It may well be that Bishop Maffei was persuaded that the new claimant was indeed who he said he was because in late 1493 and early 1494 this good-looking young man was appearing at his best: sumptuously dressed, well-spoken and, in a nutshell, ‘fort gorgias’. [7] He charmed those who met him at Maximilian’s court and no alternative identity than the one he claimed had as yet been made public. But the papacy’s primary concern was for the interests of the Catholic Church, and so the blood claims of the various contenders for the English throne are likely to have carried less weight in Rome than the support they were deemed likely to be able to provide the Church. Unfortunately for the House of York, in 1485 Richard III’s fugitive enemy, John Morton, bishop of Ely, had spent some time in Rome where he seems to have made a very favourable impression. After Morton’s delayed return to England following Henry’s victory at Bosworth, Pope Innocent had shown himself remarkably keen to intervene in English domestic affairs, not only issuing several ratifications of Henry and Elizabeth’s new marriage dispensation (granted by a visiting legate in January 1486), but even going so far as to forbid any of Henry’s subjects from stirring up fresh tumults in the realm ‘under pain of excommunication and the greater anathema.’[8]

 

Pope Innocent, like his immediate predecessor Sixtus IV, had been desperate for the rulers of Christendom to resolve their disputes in order that they might participate in a crusade to liberate Constantinople from the Turks, and it may well be he had been persuaded that this union of Lancaster and York really could put an end to civil strife and place England’s military capacity at the service of Christendom.[9] The existence of the papal Bull anathematizing rebels against Henry VII had severely hampered Yorkist efforts to raise the country against him, and although Pope Innocent had died in the summer of 1492 without any sign of support from England for a crusade, the new pope, Alexander VI, had shown no inclination to change course. In May 1495, a year after the issue of this indult, Margaret of Burgundy was to send a lengthy and impassioned plea to Pope Alexander to withdraw this Bull in order – so she argued – that Richard, duke of York, could reclaim from his sister and her husband the throne that was rightfully his own.[10] But the Duchess Margaret’s plea was to fall on deaf ears, as did a number of similar pleas that she addressed to Henry VII’s Lord Chancellor John Morton, now cardinal archbishop of Canterbury, who responded cannily to the Duchess Margaret’s assurances that her protégé truly was the son of Edward IV: ‘But indeed he is not reputed the son of King Edward in this kingdom.’[11]

It has been assumed that a second petition to the Pope sent four months after Margaret’s by the Emperor Maximilian was also ignored because no response to it survives, but just possibly it bore some fruit because in 1497, as he made his bid to take Exeter, the claimant (now publicly identified in England as Perkin Warbeck) is said to have ‘published certain apostolic bulls affirming that he was the son of King Edward and that he meant to coin money and to give money to all.’[12] Or perhaps these bulls were simply further dispensations from Rome issued to him, with no political intent, under the same name in which he had requested them.

 

 

Sources and Further Reading

Ian Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy 1491-1499 (Stroud, 1994) 

J.-A. Buchon, ed., Chroniques de Jean Molinet, 5 vols., vol. V (Paris, 1828) 

Peter D. Clarke, ‘English Royal Marriages and the Papal Penitentiary in the Fifteenth Century’, EHR, vol. 120, no. 488 (2005) 

Peter D. Clarke, ‘New evidence of noble and gentry piety in fifteenth-century England and Wales’, Journal of Medieval History, vol. 34, no. 1 (2008) 

Peter D. Clarke and Patrick N. R. Zutshi, Supplications from England and Wales in the Registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary, 1410-1503, 3 vols., Canterbury and York CIII-CV (Woodbridge, 2012, 2014 and 2015) 

CMP: Allen B. Hinds, ed., Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts in the Archives and Collections of Milan 1385-1618, (London, 1912)

CVP: Rawdon Brown, ed., Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, vol 4 1527-1533, (London, 1871)

C. S. L. Davies, ‘Bishop John Morton, the Holy See and the Accession of Henry VII’, EHR, CII, No. 402 (1987)

James Gairdner, ed., Memorials of King Henry the Seventh: Historia Regis Henrici Septimi a Bernardo Andrea Tholosate Conscripta, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores X (London, 1858), Appendix A (transcript of Lambeth Palace Library, MS CM XI/3)

Lambeth Palace Library, MS CM XI/31 (image at  https://images.lambethpalacelibrary.org.uk/luna/servlet/detail/LPLIBLPL~31~31~178146~135259)

Philippa Langley, The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case (Cheltenham, 2023)

The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church (www.catholic-hierarchy.org): ‘Diocese of Bertinoro’: ‘Giuliano Maffei (Matteis)’ 

The National Archives (TNA), SC 7/23/5, 6 7, 10

Ann Wroe, Perkin: A Story of Deception (London, 2003)

 

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[1]. For an English translation by Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal, see Langley, The Princes in the Tower, pp. 331-3.

[2] Clarke and Zutshi, Supplications from England and Wales, vol. 1: 1410-1464, p. xiii.

[3] Clarke, ‘New evidence of noble and gentry piety, pp. 27-8, 34.

[4] Clarke and Zutshi, Supplications, vol. 3: 1492-1503, p. 127.

[5] The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church (www.catholic-hierarchy.org): ‘Diocese of Bertinoro’: ‘Giuliano Maffei (Matteis)’.

[6] Clarke, ‘English Royal Marriages and the Papal Penitentiary, EHR, pp. 1024-5; Clarke and Zutshi, Supplications, vol. 2, p. 151.

[7] Chroniques de Jean Molinet, vol. V, p. 15.

[8] TNA, SC 7/23/5-7, 10.

[9] Davies, ‘Bishop John Morton, the Holy See and the Accession of Henry VII’, pp. 21-22.

[10] Lambeth Palace Library, MS CM XI/31.

[11] CMP, p. 328.

[12] CVP, vol 4, ed. Appendix: ‘Miscellaneous 1495’, pp. 482-3; CMP, p. 327.

The Princes in the Tower: A Debatable ‘Discovery’

(Image from Wikimedia Commons)

Richard III, Sir James Tyrell, and the Princes in the Tower are in the headlines once again. This time it’s the result of a Channel 5 Documentary. It’s always gratifying to fifteenth-century historians to be reminded that events of 500 years ago have such a wide popular interest. And TV documentaries are a great way of keeping this interest alive or inspiring new fascination. (The Richard III Society experienced a sudden surge of new memberships and gift orders in the hours after the most recent one). But in order to tell a coherent story - and to be accessible to those who know nothing about the period - there is rarely room in such programmes to provide viewers with the full range of information needed to judge for themselves on the evidence presented. This post aims to fill some of that gap.

 

Sir James Tyrell

The documentary concluded that Sir James Tyrell was a prime suspect for overseeing the murder of the princes in the Tower – so who was he? He was the eldest son of an East Anglian gentleman: Sir William Tyrell. Born in 1455, James was three years younger than Richard III. Sir William was executed in 1462 for his part in a Lancastrian rebellion against Edward IV. Custody of young James and his estates was granted to the king’s mother, Cecily duchess of York. But she immediately sold this back to the boy’s mother. In 1469, fourteen-year-old James married a daughter of the greatest landowner in Cornwall, Sir John Arundel of Lanherne. Unlike his in-laws, Tyrell fought for the house of York at Tewkesbury where he was knighted on the field. Shortly afterwards he entered Richard duke of Gloucester’s service and became one of his councillors, entrusted with sensitive commissions, becoming one of the Chamberlains of the Exchequer in 1479 and serving as one of Gloucester’s bannerets in the Scottish campaign. Meanwhile, his first cousin, Elizabeth Darcy (née Tyrell) had become lady mistress of the royal nursery, caring for Edward IV’s younger children.  

On Richard III’s accession to the throne, Sir James became Master of the Horse and Master of the Henchmen to the king. He played a major role in suppressing Buckingham’s Rebellion and was rewarded with the stewardship of the duchy of Cornwall. He was also one of Richard’s key officials in Wales, until he was sent to Guines early in 1485. After Richard III’s death at Bosworth, Tyrell transferred his services to the new king, Henry VII. He was trusted to carry out sensitive diplomatic negotiations and in 1495 he was appointed one of the feoffees to the use of the king’s will. Four years later Tyrell received a visitor at Guines: Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, younger brother of John earl of Lincoln. Many had considered Lincoln to be Richard III’s heir after Richard’s own son died. Lincoln had been killed at the battle of Stoke in 1487. Although Suffolk briefly returned back to England after his initial visit to Tyrell, he fled again in 1501 and it was soon clear that he planned to challenge Henry VII’s right to the throne. Tyrell was arrested in the spring of 1502 for assisting Edmund, was tried at London Guildhall on 2 May that year, and executed four days later.

 

Thomas More’s Narrative

In Sir Thomas More’s narrative of the death of Edward V and his brother (written some thirty years after the event, during the reign of Henry VIII), Sir James Tyrell is one of the henchmen sleeping on pallets outside Richard III’s chamber at Warwick Castle during the king’s post coronation progress north. [As Master of the Henchmen, the real Tyrell’s accommodation would have been elsewhere]. Richard is talking with a page about the impossibility of finding someone willing to kill the princes. The page suggests that Sir James is ambitious enough to be willing to commit murder. So Richard wakes Tyrell from his bed to sound him out and sends him off the next morning to take possession of the keys of the Tower. Tyrell then enlists one of the four men guarding the princes, Miles Forest, and his own horse-keeper, John Dighton, to do the deed. When Tyrell is later imprisoned in the Tower for treason, both he and Dighton confess to the crime. Yet Dighton, More tells us, is still walking free. Forest, he reports, died in sanctuary at St Martin’s church.  

More’s story is full of vivid circumstantial details and reported speech which must have been imagined. Consequently, most scholars are deeply wary of accepting his account of events. Moreover, there are demonstrable errors such as incorrect names and ages and some sections cannot possibly be true. For instance, he relates that Edward IV’s mother, Cecily duchess of York, opposed the king’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville and so tried to arrange instead for her son to marry one of his mistresses, whom he’d recently got pregnant. Cecily claims that this mistress, Elizabeth Lucy, was already legally Edward’s wife. Elizabeth Lucy seems to be an invention by More, conflating several different women, and the whole confused passage appears designed to mock the claim that Edward IV had been precontracted (married) to Eleanor Talbot. For these reasons, we cannot accept More’s narrative without other corroborating evidence. The Channel 5 documentary sought to present such evidence.

 

The Forest Connection

Sir Thomas More knew the sons of Miles Forest, so it was suggested that one of them could have told More of their father’s crime, providing him with a far more detailed account of the princes’ deaths than any previous writer. This theory was discussed in some detail in this blog in 2021 when Professor Thornton first revealed the connection between Thomas More and Miles Forest’s sons. That post questioned whether Henry VIII’s Groom of the Chamber (Edward Forest) or Cardinal Wolsey’s servant (Miles junior) would have risked their family’s reputation by revealing that their father had murdered Henry VIII’s uncle. They would also have risked being found guilty of misprision for failing to reveal their knowledge of regicide earlier.

More recently The Missing Princes Project has brought to light another document relating to Miles Forest. This was the narrative found in the Gelderland Archive at Arnhem which presents itself as Richard duke of York’s report of his escape from the Tower, and subsequent life on the Continent. This relates that the young duke was ‘entrusted to the keeping of Miles Forrest*, Halneth Maleverer and William Puche’. So we now know that as early as 1493 Miles Forest was believed (at least in some quarters) to be connected with the princes’ stay in the Tower. It could be that Thomas More was aware of this Gelderland Archive account, which also mentions James Tyrell among the boys’ keepers. If so, More may have drawn both names from here for his own imaginative account. It's equally possible that both More and the author of the narrative were drawing on oral reports of the arrangements at the Tower. In either case, it seems that these names were first identified as keepers rather than killers. The presence of Forest’s name in the Gelderland document, composed when Thomas More was only a child, makes it much less likely that More had to rely on revelations from Forest’s sons decades later to learn of Forest’s connection with the princes.

The Itinerary

The second piece of evidence is the itinerary of Henry VII. In a fascinating article examining this, Professor Thornton demonstrated that Henry VII only ever stayed at the Tower when ceremonial required it or at times of national crisis. The crisis in 1502 was the threat to Henry VII’s throne from his queen’s cousin, Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. As mentioned earlier, Edmund's elder brother, John earl of Lincoln had been widely considered Richard III’s heir. He died in 1487 when Edmund was only about 15. On reaching adulthood Edmund initially accepted Henry VII’ s kingship, but in 1501 he sought support from the Emperor Maximilian to challenge the Tudor regime. Tyrell was arrested and tried for supporting Edmund's claim. Thomas More reported that at this time Tyrell also confessed to having killed the princes. The Channel 5 documentary suggested that this story of a confession was supported by the fact that Henry's queen, Elizabeth of York, sister of the missing princes, was also present at the Tower and then journeyed to visit her aunt, Elizabeth de la Pole, duchess of Suffolk. It was argued that the queen was likely reporting to her aunt on what she had just learned about the princes.

However, there is an argument to be made that if Queen Elizabeth had just learned of the fates of her brothers she would have been more likely to want to share this with her sisters who had grown up with the boys, rather than her aunt. Elizabeth duchess of Suffolk would surely have been more concerned to hear what Tyrell could tell of her own son Edmund for whose sake Tyrell was about to lose his life. Indeed, the queen’s decision to visit her aunt at this time strongly suggests that it was only Edmund, and not the princes, that Elizabeth had news of. This would mean that the queen was unaware of any confession by Tyrell.

 

The Capell chain

Finally, we were presented with the ‘smoking gun’, a reference to a chain associated with the young king Edward V in the 1516 will of Lady Margaret Capell, half sister of James Tyrell’s wife:

'Also I bequeth to my sonne sir Giles his faders cheyne which was yonge kyng Edwarde the v^th. To have the forsaid stuffe and cheyne during his lyfe w^t reasonable weryng upon the condition that after his decease I wille that yt remayn and be kept by myn executours to the use of Henry Capell and Edward Capell [Giles’s sons] from one to another And for defaulte of thise two childern I wille that my doughter Elizabeth Paulet shalhave the forsaid goodes.' (TNA PROB 11/19/456)

Much like the ‘new evidence’ for Elizabeth Woodville’s death by plague discussed in this blog a few years ago, this document has actually been known to historians for centuries, but it is the interpretation that is new. The will was published in 1826 by N. Harris Nicolas in a collection of old wills: Testamenta Vetusta. In 1906, William Minet quoted Margaret’s bequest of Edward V’s chain in the introduction to an article on the Capell family. In 1994, Diana Scarisbrick mentioned many of Margaret’s jewellery bequests, including Edward V’s chain, in a survey of fashions in late medieval jewellery. In 2015 Dr Susan James referred to it in the context of women’s voices in Tudor wills. She gave it as an example of women handing on relics with royal associations which ‘burnished the memory of the giver by announcing her associations with monarchy’. Professor Barbara Harris also used the will extensively in 2002 in a discussion of women’s pious bequests. There are probably others, but no previous scholar seems to have suggested that it provided any link with Sir James Tyrell. Hitherto it has been overlooked by political historians.

Margaret Capell described the chain as ‘his [ie her son Giles’s] father’s chain’. Giles’s father was Sir William Capell (born before 1448) who belonged to a Suffolk gentry family and became an exceptionally successful London draper, merchant and money lender. Those he is known to have lent money to include John Lord Howard, future duke of Norfolk, Lady Alice FitzHugh, mother-in-law of Sir Francis Lovell (Richard III’s chamberlain who later rebelled against Henry VII) and Henry VII’s queen, Elizabeth of York (Edward V’s sister). Sir William became an alderman in 1485, an MP in 1491 and served as mayor of London 1503-4 and 1510. The National Archives house numerous records of court cases brought by and against him. He died in 1515.

Margaret’s will gives no physical description of Edward V’s chain. In contrast, Margaret also bequeathed her daughter a gold chain bearing a rose of diamonds and three pearls; she gave her son-in-law a long chain of fine gold with a long cross set with a ruby; to her granddaughters she gave a flat chain of worked gold with a cross set with a ruby and diamonds, and a lesser flat chain hung with an agnus dei (with the Trinity on one side and our Lady’s assumption on the other). To her grandson Edward she bequeathed a gold chain of 27 long links which she had bought from ‘one Rydley my lord of Kents servant’. In most cases she even recorded the weight of these chains.

Noblemen typically owned various chains but the objects we might think of as chains of office were usually called collars. We do not know if Edward V had been king for long enough to acquire a personal chain associated with his status as king and it is unlikely that he would have been wearing one when held securely in the Tower. It also seems unlikely that Richard III would have chosen to reward Tyrell with such a distinctive relic of their shared crime since Tyrell could hardly have displayed his ownership without awkward questions being asked. So how else might we respond to this evidence?

It has to be acknowledged that it is impossible to be certain whether the chain had been Edward V’s personal possession, or an item he had gifted to someone else. In the latter case it may have been a gift to Sir William. This might be implied in the wording of the will which describes it as Sir William’s chain. The circumstances of such a gift are difficult to guess. We don't know if Edward V ever issued any livery collars and it is difficult to see what Sir William might have done to deserve receiving one. Livery collars are usually more clearly described as such when they appear in wills. It is therefore unlikely that this was a livery collar.

However, it may have been a gift from Edward V to someone else who either gave it to Sir William as a gift or as collateral for a loan. In 1483, the king’s treasury was significantly depleted with ready cash in short supply. At this time, Richard, duke of Gloucester financed Edward V’s household with £800 of his own money. It is therefore possible the chain was used as collateral by Edward V for a loan from Sir William at this time.

It is also conceivable that the original owner was Sir Giles Daubeney who was another of Dame Margaret's brothers-in-law. Daubeney had been a member of Edward IV's household and could have received a chain from Edward V while the latter was prince of Wales. Daubeney joined the rebels against Richard III in October 1483 and joined the earl of Richmond in exile shortly after. He fought for Henry VII at Bosworth and was rewarded with the lieutenancy of Calais and was made chamberlain of Henry VII's household. It is possible that Dame Margaret named her eldest son in recognition of Sir Giles Daubeney and so Daubeney could, for instance, have gifted the chain to the Capells on the occasion of the birth of their first son.

If the chain was, as the documentary argued, Edward V’s personal property, acquired by Tyrell as a result of murder, it is difficult to imagine how Tyrell managed to pass it on to his brother-in-law without also acknowledging how he had acquired it. It is scarcely likely that Lady Capell would have been knowingly transferring the relic of a murder to her son and grandsons in such a public document as her will. Indeed, if she had any suspicion that a close kinsman was connected with Edward V’s death the object would surely have become a source of embarrassment and concern, no matter how it had been acquired. Sir Giles himself was a well-respected and close companion of Henry VIII when his mother made her will. He was one of Henry's leading military captains, a jousting companion of the king and a knight of the body. It seems highly unlikely that he would have wanted to be in possession of - let alone wear - a chain so closely associated with the murder of a king. There is an argument to be made that Lady Capell’s will indicates that close relatives of Tyrell did not imagine that he bore any responsibility for the death of the princes in the Tower. The rumours of Tyrell’s supposed role in Edward V’s murder were not published until more than a decade after Lady Capell’s death. There is no mention of the chain in the wills of Sir Giles (d. 1556) or his sons.

Ultimately, as Dr Sean Cunningham of the National Archives tactfully observed in a recent entry on TNA’s blog, ‘Margaret’s reference to a chain once owned by the uncrowned teenage king Edward V is a new piece of evidence that raises more questions than it answers.’

* The document is in Middle Dutch but refers to ‘mylorde  Forrest’. There was no Lord Forrest at this period and it makes no sense to use the phrase ‘my lord’ in this context. Consequently it has been widely accepted that the most likely identification of this man is Miles Forest.

 

Sources and Further Reading

 TNA PROB 11/18/292; PROB 11/19/456; PROB 11/40/136; PROB 11/59/443

 Anne Crawford ed., The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk (Richard III & Yorkist History Trust, 1992)

James Gairdner ed., The Paston Letters, AD 1422-1509 (Chatto & Windus, 1903) vol. 6

Rosemary Horrox ed., ‘Financial Memoranda of the Reign of Edward V. Longleat Miscellaneous Manuscript  Book II,’ Camden Miscellany XXIX, Camden Society 4^th series (1987), 34:198-244

Nicholas Harris Nicolas, ed. Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York (W. Pickering, 1830)

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Baron De Cosson, ‘The Capells of Rayne Hall, Essex: With Some Notes On Helmets Formerly in Rayne Church’, Archaeological Journal, 1883, 40/1: 64-79

Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety (Amsterdam University Press, 2018)

Susan E. James, Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material (Ashgate, 2015)

Philippa Langley, The Princes in the Tower. Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case (The History Press, 2023)

William Minet, ‘The Capels at Rayne, 1486-1522’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 2^nd Series 9 (1906), 243-72 

Diana Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, 1066-1837: A documentary, social, literary and artistic survey (Michael Russell, 1994)

Tim Thornton, ‘More on a Murder: The Deaths of the “Princes in the Tower”, and Historiographical Implications for the Regimes of Henry VII and Henry VIII’, History, 2020, 106:4-25 (https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.13100)

Tim Thornton ‘Henry VII and the Tower of London: the context of the “confession” of Sir James Tyrell in 1502’, Historical Research, 2024, 97:218-225 (https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htad031)

Tim Thornton, ‘Sir William Capell and A Royal Chain: The Afterlives (and Death) of King Edward V’, History, 2024, 109: 445-460  (https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.13430)

 

 

 

 

Sir James Tyrell and Calais: Patronage, Treason and Plot

Image: The Potomack Company

The recent purchase by The Richard III Society of the original letters patent granting Sir James Tyrell the custody of Guînes castle in January 1485 has shed the spotlight on Calais, England’s last remaining possession on the continental mainland, during Richard’s reign. The challenges facing the Ricardian regime – the adequate financing of the garrison, the threat of French attack, and relationship between the constituent parts of the English establishment there – were ostensibly the same as those faced by other fifteenth-century rulers. Yet Richard’s control of Calais was threatened from the beginning by the influence of men close to the previous lieutenant, William, Lord Hastings. Hastings’s brother, Sir Ralph, surrendered his command of Guînes castle to John Blount, Lord Mountjoy, a former retainer of Lord Hastings, and the treasurer of Calais, William Slefeld, was replaced by Thomas Thwaytes. Nevertheless, the remainder of Edward IV’s officers in Calais, including Hastings’s deputy as lieutenant of Calais, John, Lord Dynham, remained in office. Indeed, on 16 July 1483 Richard granted Dynham the office of ‘keeper or general governor’ of Calais. In the signed bill instructing the chancellor to draw up the letters patent, however, the line stating that Dynham was to hold the office ‘in as ample form and manner as other governors, lieutenant or captain’ was struck through in the king’s own hand.

In the final year of the reign, Calais became the centre of open rebellion against Richard III. In August 1484 Lord Mountjoy was forced to surrender his command at Guînes because of infirmity. He delivered the castle to Lord Dynham and Sir Richard Tunstall and Richard’s knight of the body, Sir Thomas Montgomery was installed as keeper with their ‘counsel and assistance.’ Mountjoy’s brother, Sir James Blount, remained as lieutenant of Hammes Castle, where, crucially, he had held the prominent Lancastrian rebel, John de Vere, earl of Oxford, in custody since at least 1477. Richard may have had his doubts about Oxford’s security for at the end of October he commissioned one of the yeomen of the crown, William Bolton, to bring Oxford to England where he would be met at Dover by Sir Robert Brackenbury, constable of the Tower. Blount was ordered to escort the rebel earl to the shoreline and see him board ship. The king’s fears proved well founded. Oxford never made it to England and Richard was forced into negotiation with the would-be rebels. On 16 November Richard offered a general pardon to Blount and, four days later, offered to confirm him in all his lands and offices granted by Edward IV. It was too late. Blount, joined by the master porter of Calais, John Fortescue, absconded with his charge, leaving the garrison and his wife, Elizabeth, in situ. Just before Christmas, Blount and Oxford arrived in Montargis, where Henry of Richmond was a guest of the French king.

This was a major blow for Richard, coming alongside rebellion in East Anglia and  the Home Counties in November 1484. Early in the new year, Oxford, accompanied by the East Anglian rebel, Thomas Brandon, returned to lay siege to Hammes. Lord Dynham led a force of men to raise the siege. According to Vergil, Brandon secretly led 30 men into the castle to strengthen the defences, repelling the attackers from the walls ‘more vigorously than before’, while Oxford attacked Dynham’s men from the rear. Faced with this setback, Dynham was forced to come to terms with the rebels. On 27 January Elizabeth Blount and the rebellious garrison of Hammes castle were offered and accepted a pardon, marching out of the Calais Pale to join Richmond in exile. This was the context for Richard’s decision to appoint Sir James Tyrell to the command of Guînes and send him to the Calais Pale with a force of men. Since March 1484 Tyrell had been paid for 140 men raised from the Welsh lands where he was the king’s steward. In January 1485 he was employed in the Low Countries by the king on ‘diverse matters concernyng gretely our wele’, but on the 13th of that month he was recalled to England, arriving in Dover to learn he was to be sent to Guînes as its ‘custodian, governor and supervisor’ during the infirmity of Lord Mountjoy. On the same day, Richard ordered the inhabitants of Guînes to accept Tyrell’s authority, while the treasurer of Calais was instructed to pay both the soldiers who had recently left the castle, perhaps to join the rebels in France, and the new garrison to be installed with Tyrell. On 22 January Sir James was granted the office by letters patent, the original of which is now in the Society’s possession.

As Matt Lewis has recently observed in the June 2024 edition of The Ricardian Bulletin, ‘Tyrell was clearly considered a man on whom Richard could rely to bring some stability.’ Whatever Richard’s hopes, it seems that Tyrell’s appointment did not end the regime’s fears for the safety of Calais and its marches. Sir James did not take possession of the castle immediately and negotiations with Mountjoy’s men who remained now took place. On 30 January Richard agreed to the appointment of John Bonnington, a Derbyshire gentleman and one of Lord Hastings’s retainers who was presumably already serving at Guînes, as constable of the castle. It was this, as much as Richard’s letters patent, that allowed Tyrell to assume his new position at Guînes on 18 February 1485. Four days later, a royal commission was issued to Thomas Thwaytes, requiring all bailiffs, receivers and other royal officials in Calais to deliver whatever cash remained in their hands to him as treasurer. This was another indication of just how unstable the situation was in Calais and the real fear that the entire town and marches would be delivered to Richmond.

It was against the background of these events that, on 11 March 1485, Richard appointed his illegitimate son, John of Gloucester, as captain of Calais. As captain, John would have authority over all other officers in Calais, including Lord Dynham. Around the same time the new captain made his way to Calais, escorted by Sir Robert Brackenbury, via Canterbury and Dover. It is unclear what reception John of Gloucester received in Calais, but the mood seems to have quietened in the town and marches in spring and summer as the rebels planned their invasion of England. It seemed almost an afterthought when, on 17 July, Richard finally moved to replace the traitorous Sir James Blount at Hammes castle with the Yorkshire knight of the body, Sir Thomas Wortley.

Little more than a month after Wortley’s arrival at Hammes, Richmond had killed and defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. News of the change of regime did not reach Calais until the first week in September. We will never know how much the absence of loyal men of proven military ability, like Dynham, Tyrell and Wortley, cost Richard. What is clear is that these men, like the other officers of the Ricardian establishment at Calais, passed seamlessly into the service of Henry VII. Dynham became the new treasurer of England, while Tyrell and Wortley entered the new king’s household. John of Gloucester returned to England and was even granted an annuity by Henry VII. Henry VII was in no position to seek confrontation across the Channel.  According to the Dunes Chronicler, some 200 to 400 soldiers from the Calais garrison, presumably those who would not serve the new regime, left late in 1485 and offered their services to Maximilian, King of the Romans. It was not until March the following year that a new lieutenant, Sir Giles Daubeney, was named and a wholesale change of personnel was initiated in Calais and its marches. Tyrell was one of only four Ricardian officials who remained in office (the others being Sir Thomas Thwaytes, the long-serving comptroller, Adrian Whetehill and the marshall, Sir Humphrey Talbot). In June 1486 Sir James received a general pardon, and the following month he petitioned Henry VII for a pardon on behalf of himself and his garrison at Guînes. This was duly granted, perhaps its passage eased by the intervention of Tyrell’s brother-in-law, the new lieutenant Lord Daubeney.  The first Tudor king’s policy of reconciliation and replacement of office holders was successful. No part of the Calais establishment, it seems, ever rose in rebellion against the Tudors.

Perhaps, by the summer of 1485, Tyrell and the other Calais officers appointed by Richard shared the sentiments Lord Mountjoy expressed in his will made that October. Addressing his brother, Sir James, he advised not ‘to desire to be grete about princes for it is dangerous’ (TNA, PROB11/7, fo. 212). Tyrell’s appointment did indeed bring stability to Calais, but not in the way in which Richard would have wished.

David Grummitt

Further Reading

Tyrell’s grant is also enrolled at The National Archives, Treaty Roll 2 Ric III, C76/169, m. 25. For his life and career see Matt Lewis, ‘The Mystery of Sir James Tyrell’, The Ricardian Bulletin (June 2024), 38-41 and W. E. Hampton, ‘Sir James Tyrell: With Some Notes on the Austin Friars London and Those Buried There’, The Ricardian 4 (1978), 9-22.

Much information on Calais during Richard’s reign can be found in British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, eds. R. Horrox and P. W. Hammond, 4 vols (Gloucester, 1979-83).

For the Calais garrison in the fifteenth century generally, see David Grummitt, The Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in England, 1436–1558 (Woodbridge, 2008), and for 1485 and the situation under Henry VII, ‘“For the Surety of the Towne and Marches”: Early Tudor Policy towards Calais 1485-1509’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 44 (2000), 184-203.

 

 

 

Richard Duke of York Revealed

Surviving images of Richard duke of York are few in number and generic in their style. So it was with great delight that I recently came across a previously misidentified image of him in a manuscript produced for his family. (The manuscript also includes an image of his wife, Cecily, which had been identified in the 1940s but I had been unaware of it).

University of Chicago Library’s MS 224 probably originated at Wigmore Abbey, a house founded and patronised by generations of the duke of York’s Mortimer ancestors. The manuscript looks to have been put together in the fourteenth century and added to in later generations both as a record of Mortimer family history and as a means of justifying their claims to various estates and even to the throne of England. The manuscript includes a history of Wigmore Abbey, a variation of the Brut chronicle of British/English kings, royal genealogies and an annotated heraldic genealogy of the Mortimer family until the male line died out. Notes have been added to the effect that the heir of the last earl, Edmund Mortimer, was his sister’s son, Richard (duke of York). The entry for this last earl is unfinished and on the pages following (ff. 61v, 62) earlier text has been scraped away to begin an entry for Richard duke of York and his wife Cecily – their arms are sketched in and there is a list of Cecily’s siblings that must have been written before her brother-in-law, Humphrey Stafford, was made duke of Buckingham in 1444. But then, for reasons we can only guess, the project was abandoned.

© Wigmore Abbey chronicle and Brut chronicle. Manuscript, Codex Ms 224, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library ff. 61 v & 62.

Some decades after the list of Cecily’s siblings was written, a new and much more accomplished artist started fresh pages for the house of York, this time with sketches of each family member above their shields (unfortunately the very tops of each head have been worn away). It is among these that the image of Richard duke of York is to be found. 

©Wigmore Abbey chronicle and Brut chronicle. Manuscript, Codex Ms 224, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library f. 62 v.

Mary Giffin, whose articles on the manuscript are essential reading, thought that the first of these images (above) depicted a crowned king, holding a sceptre, and presumed it was Edward IV since he was using supporters occasionally used by King Edward (Richard II’s white hart and the lion of Mortimer). On the page opposite, Giffin convincingly identified Edward IV’s mother Cecily duchess of York. Yet Giffin also identified Edward IV in a second - much less complete - image, depicted on the page after Cecily (this shield supported by a lion guardant and the bull of Clarence). It is highly unlikely that Edward IV would have been depicted on that first page, facing his mother, because throughout the book husbands and wives appear on facing pages. 

                                                                           Detail of above: Richard duke of York

I would suggest that Giffin had mistaken a staff of office in York’s hand for a sceptre and a coronet for a crown (see above). The figure opposite Cecily looks exceptionally like the sketch of Henry duke of Warwick in the genealogy of the Beauchamp Pageant (BL MS Cotton Julius E IV/3 see f. 27v), who carries a similar staff and wears a coronet. Indeed the similarities between the images in the Beauchamp Pageant and this Mortimer book are so close that it is tempting to speculate a connection between the artists.

© Wigmore Abbey chronicle and Brut chronicle. Manuscript, Codex Ms 224, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library f. 63 v.

The images in this manuscript of Edward IV (above and below) and Richard duke of York are very different from one another – Edward’s face and shoulders are youthfully slim and his hair is at shoulder length. By contrast, York is square-jawed, almost jowly, clearly a man who has reached middle age. It would be reckless to imagine that this was any closer to a portrait than other surviving images of the duke of York, and the images could have been drawn well over a decade after his death. Yet the care taken to present an obviously older man and the more realistically detailed features make it a compelling representation.

                                                                            Detail of above: Edward IV

The facing page image of the duke's wife, Cecily (below), is also an attractive addition to the more familiar images of Cecily that are usually circulated (from her mother’s book of hours and the Luton guild book). In both of those she is surrounded by women with almost identical faces and it is unlikely that this is anything like a portrait either. In the present manuscript there are no other women to enable us to judge whether any distinctiveness was intended. The faces in the Beauchamp Pageant are all slightly different from one another and in comparison with these we could note the more pointed chin, straighter nose, and perhaps a more determined or down-turned mouth, but the differences are slight and probably meaningless since she is almost identical to the Beauchamp Pageant illustration of her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Lady Latimer on f. 27 v. Nonetheless it is always nice to have an extra resource to draw on in illustrating Cecily’s life and in this one, unlike the others, she is the central focus of the artist’s attention, not kneeling behind her mother or daughter-in-law.

© Wigmore Abbey chronicle and Brut chronicle. Manuscript, Codex Ms 224, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library f. 63: Cecily Neville, duchess of York.

The choice of heraldic supporters is also of interest since neither the duke nor the duchess used these particular combinations in other surviving images of their arms. It may be that once York started using the royal arms of England, just months before his death, he decided to adopt Richard II’s white hart alongside his Mortimer lion and this is our only evidence of that. This combination was used by both his eldest son and his wife in later years. Mary Giffin identified Cecily’s supporters here (below) as eagles but they lack the head tuft that usually distinguishes eagles from falcons in heraldry. Falcons were of course a favourite badge of Richard duke of York and his father’s family. We cannot know who decided that here Cecily should use only a repeated badge of her husband’s family without any nod to her own lineage, but this fits with the impression I’ve gained elsewhere that Cecily had scant interest in promoting her own natal connections, immersing herself completely in her husband’s dynasty.

© Wigmore Abbey chronicle and Brut chronicle. Manuscript, Codex Ms 224, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library f. 63.

The page facing Edward IV looks to have been scraped clean(ish) but there is no hint of a roundel for his wife. This would suggest that these images were most likely inserted before the autumn of 1464. This could be consistent with production by the Beauchamp Master since Alexandra Sinclair suggests he was nearing the end of his career by the time he produced that work in the 1480s. Such a date also accords with Edward IV’s seemingly youthful appearance. That said, we might note a scattering of circles sketched beneath Edward, as if judging where to enter later generations, which could imply a different dating – a project begun just as Edward IV's son, Edward V, left Ludlow to ascend the throne, only for the manuscript to be abandoned at news of his deposition. If the artist was the same as the creator of the Beauchamp Pageant, it suggests a particularly sad scenario since the Pageant was probably left unfinished when its most likely dedicatee, Edward of Middleham, died suddenly in 1484.

 

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I encountered these images while working on an article about Anne Mortimer’s legacy to the house of York which was recently published in a collection edited by Paul Dryburgh and Philip Hume: The Mortimers of Wigmore 1066-1485 Dynasty of Destiny (Logaston Press, 2023).

J.L. Laynesmith

Bibliography

Giffin, M.E. ‘Cadwalader, Arthur, and Brutus in the Wigmore Manuscript,’ Speculum 16 (1941), 109-20

Giffin, M.E. ‘A Wigmore Manuscript at the University of Chicago,’ National Library of Wales Journal 7 (1952), 316-25

Given-Wilson, C., ‘Chronicles of the Mortimer Family c. 1250-1450’, in Richard Eales and Shaun Tyas eds., Family and Dynasty in Later Medieval England (Shaun Tyas, 2003), 67-86

Laynesmith, J.L., Cecily Duchess of York (Bloomsbury, 2017)

Sinclair, A. ed., The Beauchamp Pageant (Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 2

www.lib.uchicago.edu/ead/rlg/ICU.SPCL.MS224.pdf

www.lib.uchicago.edu/ead/pdf/ewm-0224-03.pdf

A Coronation Quiche for Richard III and his Queen Consort Anne?

King Charles and Queen Camilla’s Coronation Quiche has been making headlines – as it happens, one of the dishes at Richard III and Anne’s coronation was probably somewhat similar, beneath its elaborate decoration.

BL MS Royal 20 D IV pt 2 f. 1 (early 14th century)

The list of dishes assembled for Richard and Anne's coronation feast survives in a manuscript that was created for Henry VIII’s household. It can now be found in the British Library (Additional Manuscript 45,716A ff. 71-8). When Anne Sutton and Peter Hammond published the extensive surviving records for this coronation in 1983 they included the details of this feast.[1]

The coronation banquet, at 4pm on Sunday 6^th July 1483, was the culmination of three days of ritual. On the previous two days the food had been dominated by fish dishes  - the first because it was a Friday, and the second because it was the vigil of the Coronation. So, on arriving at the Tower on the Friday, Richard and Anne’s two course meal had included pike soup, tench cooked in broth, plaice, crab, conger, salmon, sole, perch, bass, roach, trout, crayfish and even roast porpoise, as well as a pottage of soft rice and prunes in orange. Dinner the next day included many of the same fish as well as fried marlin, whelks, gudgeon in parsley, and baked quinces. Saturday’s supper at Westminster Palace may have been more sumptuous. It began with ‘Mamorry riall’. Mamorry (or malmeny) was usually made of chicken, but presumably on this occasion it was fish, in spiced wine. What made it ‘riall’ (royal) is unclear, but it was perhaps the expense of the spices. The second course for this meal included more sweet dishes such as date compote and sweet custard tarts called doucettes.

On the Coronation Day the king and queen were expected to fast until after the rituals of the Coronation were complete. The banquet was then held in Westminster Hall and there were probably some 3,000 guests expected. After a herald had ‘proclaimed the feast’ the first course began with a couple of pottage-type dishes (venison frumenty and Tuscany broth), followed by‘Mamory riall’ (chicken in spiced wine) and ‘Viand comford riall’ which was minced meat, spiced, pressed, boiled and served in slices. After these smaller dishes, the more substantial meats arrived – beef, mutton, pheasant served with its tail feathers attached, roast crane, roast cygnet, fattened capons with lemons, and so on, and on.

The final dish of this course, as with every course of the Coronation banquet, was a subtlety, an elaborate confection that was probably made of sugar paste or marzipan, gilded and painted. These were always fashioned with political or religious messages. Unfortunately no description of the subtleties at Richard and Anne’s coronation survives. Henry V’s depicted his emblems of swans, an antelope and an eagle, each with chivalrous mottoes beneath them. His queen’s all related to her name saint, Katherine, and wove together the saint’s story with Katherine of Valois’s own. Henry VI’s celebrated his dual English and French descent.

The second course at Richard and Anne’s feast opened with a multi-coloured jelly that was also decorated ‘with a devise’ and this course included peacock cooked and replaced in its feathers, roe deer turned inside out and a range of roast fowl, as well as fritters flavoured with rose and jasmine. Despite the four o’ clock start, darkness had fallen before the final course could be served. In an age when the leftovers of noblemen and women’s tables were routinely passed immediately to the poor and needy, this was probably no bad thing. That course was to have included roast quails and egrets, baked oranges and ‘Rosettes florished’ which were perhaps sugar roses, painted or garnished with gold leaf. 

The ‘coronation quiche’ at Richard III and Anne’s banquet was the penultimate dish of the first course. Immediately before the subtlety, the king was presented with a ‘Custard Edward planted’. Custards, or croustardes, seem to have originated as any open topped tart in a pastry crust, but by the fifteenth-century they pretty much always included eggs in a custard-like form similar to that in quiches. One mid-fifteenth-century recipe for a custard that has been digitised by the British library provides instructions for straining together cream, eggs and parsley and pouring into a pastry case containing marrow, dates and prunes. Just like the coronation quiche, a dairy-free alternative is offered in the recipe book – ‘if it is in Lent, take cream of almonds and leave out the egg and the marrow’. This custard would have been quite sweet, arguably more like a modern custard tart, but most recipes were more savoury. Another British Library manuscript has a recipe in which milk was used instead of cream, this time with chicken and spices including saffron. Custards didn’t always include milk or cream - the eggs could be mixed with meat broth instead. One version of that included hyssop and summer savory with veal.[2] On occasion almond milk was used for custards even when eggs and meat were still included.

So what was a ‘Custard Edward planted’? ‘Planted’ simply meant decorated. Henry VI’s coronation feast had included a ‘Custade Rooial with a leparde of golde sittyng theryn’. 300 leaves of pure gold had been purchased for decorating the food at Richard III and Anne’s feast, as well as leaves of ‘partie gold’ (ie mixed with a cheaper ingredient), so some may have been used on this ‘Custard Edward’. It is likely that the Edward in question was Edward the Confessor, a popular figure in late medieval royal pageants who also featured on the first subtlety for Henry VI’s coronation banquet. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there was a 3D figure of the sainted king on this custard. Perhaps the dish had simply been given his name as an appropriate coronation dish since so much of the coronation regalia was also associated with him, or it may have been decorated with the coat of arms that more recent heralds had invented for him. We can’t be certain that it was a savoury dish, but most custards were, and the penultimate dish of the next course certainly was - it was a venison bake.

While everyone got to admire the ‘Custard Edward planted’ as it was brought through the hall, it was only those sat at the king’s table who got to eat it. A second menu ‘For the lords and the ladies in the hall the same day at dinner’ listed just two courses. Again each ended with a subtlety and the penultimate dish of the first course was a ‘Custard riall’. Meanwhile, all the rest of the guests had only one course. Like the king’s it began with venison frumenty (but not the other small dishes), this was followed by beef, mutton, roast capon, a jelly and, finally, yet again, ‘custard’.

There can be little doubt that the ‘Custard Edward planted’ at Richard III and Anne’s coronation banquet would have looked rather more splendid than most of the quiches at next weekend’s coronation Big Lunch will do. But the dish that the ordinary guests finished with was likely very similar and all were probably a savoury, egg-based dish in a pastry case. Many of the recent reports about the Coronation Quiche have described it as a dish with German origins, yet the original quiche Lorraine was cooked in bread dough, not pastry. The name may indeed be German, but the dish itself would look pretty familiar to the guests at an English medieval Coronation ‘Big Lunch’ too.

J.L. Laynesmith

 

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[1] Anne F. Sutton and P.W. Hammond eds., The Coronation of Richard III. The Extant Documents, (Alan Sutton, 1983)

[2] Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, EETS os 91 (1888), 74.