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.
