Identifying the Yorkist messengers sent to return Henry Tudor from Brittany: Part 2: 1484

William Catesby, from his memorial brass at Ashby St Ledgers, Northants

Introduction

Henry Tudor’s fateful flight from Vannes in Brittany into France in the autumn of 1484 is claimed by the Tudor histories to have been precipitated by the finalisation of negotiations between Richard III and Francis Duke of Brittany’s treasurer, Pierre Landais, for his repatriation to England. Neither of the earliest narrative accounts of these events, those of Bernard André (1500-1502) and Polydore Vergil (c. 1512), refers to the presence in Brittany of any envoy from King Richard at the time of Henry’s flight.[1] Modern historians in search of the exact trigger for his departure have, however, noted that an offering was made on 12 September 1484 at St. Vincent Ferrer’s tomb in Vannes cathedral by ‘le Grant Escuier d’Engleterre’ (in modern French le Grand Écuyer d’Angleterre): literally ‘the great esquire from England’.[2] Not unnaturally, this man has commonly been assumed to have been the individual whom King Richard had sent to conclude the negotiations for Tudor’s repatriation; he has been identified by some authors as William Catesby, esquire, and by others as Sir James Tyrell.

 

William Catesby as Envoy

Probably on the basis that William Catesby was far and away the most powerful esquire in King Richard’s service, in their discussion of this second failed attempt to capture Tudor, in 1985 Ralph Griffiths and Roger Thomas asserted that Catesby ‘was in Brittany by September 1484 (when he made an offering in Vannes cathedral . . .)’.[3] This identification has since been followed by Rosemary Horrox and Henry VII’s most recent biographer Nathen Amin.[4] It does, however, contain two major flaws.

The first of these flaws is that William Catesby cannot have been in Vannes, in southern Brittany, on 12 September 1484. On 11 September Scottish ambassadors had reached King Richard at Nottingham, 160 miles from the south coast; on the following day – the day on which the Grant Escuier made his offering in Vannes cathedral – William Catesby was with the King to hear the address given by the Scottish ambassador’s spokesman, Archibald Whitelaw; two days later Catesby was formally appointed as one of the commissioners to treat with the Scots for a truce and marriage treaty, and on 20 September was named in Richard’s ratification of the resulting truce as one of those who had negotiated it on his behalf over the period of the previous several days (per nonullos dies mensis Septembris).[5] The second issue is that the translation of le Grant Escuier as ‘the Great Esquire’, upon which this individual’s identification as Catesby is based, is almost certainly misleading. The word escuier/ écuyer has two meanings: in most contexts it is the equivalent of the English ‘esquire’, with which, indeed, it shares a common root. But it was also used to refer to the man in charge of the stable (écurie) of a lord or prince and in France le Grand Écuyer was the official title of the man in charge of the king’s stable, the officer known in England as the Master of the Horse.[6] William Catesby was not Richard III’s Master of the Horse.

 

Sir James Tyrell as Envoy

The true significance of the term ‘le Grant Escuier d’Engleterre’ had evidently been noticed by Clifford Davies when, in 1993, he suggested that the individual in question was ‘probably Sir James Tyrell’, Richard’s ‘master of the horse, and known to be employed on delicate foreign missions. . .’.[7] Davies did not, however, offer any further explanation of the point for readers unfamiliar with the term grand écuyer and so the man’s identification as Richard’s ‘great esquire’, William Catesby, did not fall out of favour.

On the basis that Tudor was fleeing Brittany to avoid being sent back to England, and that Sir James Tyrell was Richard’s Master of the Horse, Davies’ identification of Tyrell as the le Grant Escuier d’Engleterre who made offering in Vannes cathedral on 12 September 1484 is utterly reasonable. Yet, unfortunately, Tyrell was no more available to perform this task than Catesby since he too is recorded as a witness to Archibald Whitelaw’s address at Nottingham Castle on the critical day.[8] But if this English Master of the Horse was not Tyrell, then who was he? The puzzle is perhaps not insoluble, but we may have been looking in the wrong direction for its solution. 

 

An Alternative Grand Écuyer

Whilst it is true that Henry Tudor made his own last recorded offering at Vannes cathedral on 8 September 1484, just four days before the offering made by the Grand Écuyer, he may not have left Vannes for a further three weeks as it was not until 11 October that the French court at Montargis received word that he had left the Duke of Brittany’s domains and was on his way.[9] The mysterious Grand Écuyer would therefore seem to have been someone from whom Henry did not consider himself to be in danger.  

Sir James Tyrell’s immediate predecessor as Master of the Horse was John Cheyne, esquire, and Cheyne had been well known in the French-speaking world since the late summer of 1475 when he and Lord Howard had been left in France as hostages to ensure the return to England of King Edward’s forces and had been nobly entertained in Paris by Louis XI. Both Commines and the Paris notary Jean de Roye, author of the ‘Chronique Scandaleuse’, refer to Cheyne as le Grand Écuyer d’Angleterre, de Roye seemingly having known him only by this title.[10] After losing his post to Tyrell in 1483, Cheyne had thrown in his lot with Buckingham’s Rebellion, and following the collapse of the rising had had the good fortune to find passage from Devon across to Brittany, where he had joined Tudor’s growing band of exiles.[11] When Henry fled from Vannes he took with him less than half a dozen on his most trusted followers; Cheyne was not amongst them as is demonstrated by the Breton financial records, which show that payments of 100 livres each were made to Lord Scales, John Cheyne and Edward Poynings, ‘Englishmen who were left behind at Vannes after Richmond went to France’, to help them to leave Brittany.[12] Therefore, regardless of whether Tudor had left Vannes between 8^th and 11^th September, Cheyne would still have been there on  the 12^th and available to make the Grant Escuyer’s offering at the tomb of St. Vincent.

 

In Search of an Alternative Envoy

This solution does, however, leave us without an identity for the English envoy from whose approach Tudor is often assumed to have fled; it is therefore time to examine Richard’s diplomatic links with Brittany during 1484. Although there is evidence of written communications passing between the English and Breton governments that summer, the statement given by the Breton treasurer Pierre Landais after his arrest in June 1485 indicates that much of the diplomacy had taken place in the context of tripartite negotiations between King Richard, the Breton government and the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, who was concentrating all his efforts on securing the rule of the Low Countries for his infant son Philip.[13] This ties in with Polydore Vergil’s claim that Henry’s flight was caused by the arrival not of an English agent but of a messenger from John Morton, Bishop of Ely, who was then living in exile in Flanders, with a warning about ‘this treacherous agreement’.[14] Bishop Morton would have had a very personal motive for sending such a message since his nephew and protégé Robert Morton (later Bishop of Worcester) was with Henry in Brittany and so also at risk.[15]

 Marie Barnfield

 

Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading

Nathen Amin, Son of Prophecy: The Rise of Henry Tudor (Stroud, 2024)

I. Arthurson and N. Kingwell, ‘The Proclamation of Henry Tudor as King of England, 3 November 1483’, Historical Research, LXIII, Issue 150 (February 1990)

A. Bernier (ed.), Procès-verbaux des séances du Conseil de régence du roi Charles VIII pendant les mois d’août 1484 à janvier 1485 (Paris, 1836)

Bernard André:

James Gairdner (ed.), Memorials of King Henry the Seventh: Historia Regis Henrici Septimi, a Bernardo Andrea Tholosate Conscripta (London, 1858) (Latin text)

Daniel Hobbins (trans.), Bernard André: The Life of Henry VII (New York, 2011) (English translation)

M. Condon, ‘The Kaleidoscope of Treason: Fragments from the Bosworth Story’, The Ricardian, VII, no. 92 (March 1986) ( https://richardiii.net/research/the-ricardian-journal/ )

C. S. L. Davies, ‘Richard III, Brittany and Henry Tudor’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, XXXVII, 1993

James Gairdner, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, 2 vols, I (London, 1861) 

Chris Given-Wilson et al., The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England (PROME) (Woodbridge, 2005)

Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Gloucester, 1985)

Rosemary Horrox, Richard III, A Study in Service (Cambridge, 1989)

Rosemary Horrox, ‘Catesby, William’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) (https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4884)

Rosemary Horrox and P. W. Hammond (eds.), British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, 4 vols, III (Gloucester, 1982)

Michael Jones, ‘“For My Lord of Richmond, a pourpoint . . . and a palfrey”: Brief Remarks on the Financial Evidence for Henry Tudor’s Exile in Brittany 1471–1484’, The Ricardian, XIII (2003), pp. 283-293 (https://richardiii.net/research/the-ricardian-journal/)

Michael Jones, ‘La Bretagne et le Pays de Galles à la fin du Moyen Âge: contacts et échanges’, Mémoires de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Bretagne, XCI (2013)

B. de Mandrot (ed.), Journal de Jean de Roye, connu sous le nom de Chronique Scandaleuse, 1460-1483, 2 vols, I (Paris, 1894 

B. de Mandrot (ed.), Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes, 2 vols, I: 1464-1477 (Paris, 1901)

Stephen O’Connor (ed. and trans.), Polydore Vergil’s Life of Richard III: An Edition of the Original Manuscript, Richard III Society (Westoning, 2023) (Latin text on odd-numbered pages, English translation on evens)

Thomas Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Literae et Cujuscunque Generis Act Publica, 12 vols, XII (London, 1727)

Chris Skidmore, Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (London, 2013)

 

 

 

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[1] Gairdner, Memorials (André), p. 24; Hobbins, André, Life of Henry VII, p. 20-21; Vergil’s Life of Richard III, pp. 33/34, 35/36.

[2] ‘. . . l’offerte que fait le Grant Escuier d’Engleterre sur la tombe de Saint Vincent’ (Jones, ‘La Bretagne et le Pays de Galles’, p. 241, n. 85).

[3] Griffiths and Thomas, Making of the Tudor Dynasty, p. 111.

[4] Horrox, A Study in Service, p. 278, and ‘Catesby, William’, ODNB; Amin, Son of Prophecy, p. 387.

[5] Gairdner, Letters and Papers, I, pp. 63-67; Rymer, Foedera, XII, pp. 236, 242-3.

[6] ‘Écuyer’, Dictionnaire de l’Academie Française (https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr); ‘La Maison du Roi: écurie: le grand écuyer’ (https://www.heraldica.org).

[7] Davies, ‘Richard III, Brittany and Henry Tudor’, p. 117 & n. 38.

[8] Gairdner, Letters and Papers, I, p. 65.

[9] Skidmore, Bosworth, p. 181; Bernier, Procès-verbaux, p.128.

[10] Mandrot (ed.), Chronique Scandaleuse, 1460-1483, I, p. 345; Mandrot (ed.), Philippe de Commynes, I, pp. 306, 325.

[11] PROME, Parliament of January 1484, item 3 [7]; Arthurson and Kingwell, ‘Proclamation’, p. 102.

[12] Jones, ‘Pourpoint’, p. 293.

[13] Davies, ‘Richard III, Brittany and Henry Tudor’, pp. 111-2, 117, 125.

[14] Vergil’s Life of Richard III, p. 33/34.

[15] Condon, ‘The Kaleidoscope of Treason’, p. 210.

Identifying the Yorkist Messengers Sent to Return Henry Tudor from Brittany: Part 1: 1476

17th-century image of Francis Duke of Brittany based on 

stained-glass at the convent of the Cordeliers, Nantes

Introduction

Rather than highlighting recently discovered material, this post and its companion revisit existing evidence on the basis of which claims have been made with regard to the identities of the men sent into Brittany by Edward IV and Richard III to take custody of Henry Tudor.  Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, used often to be named King Edward IV’s chief agent in his attempt to secure Henry Tudor’s repatriation in 1475-6 whilst William Catesby and Sir James Tyrell have both been identified as the envoy entrusted by Richard III with the same task in 1484. The grounds for these identifications is of some importance because of Henry Tudor’s treatment of these men after he became king, two of his first acts having been to order Catesby’s execution and Bishop Stillington’s arrest, whilst Sir James Tyrell, having worked successfully under Henry VII for over sixteen years, was also eventually arrested and executed for treason.[1]

Although most recent texts claim no role for Stillington in King’s Edward failed attempt to secure Tudor’s person, some of the secondary sources that do so are still widely consulted so its rejection by more recent scholars – and indeed by Edward IV’s early-twentieth-century biographer Cora Scofield – is deserving of an explanation.

The Chronicle Sources

The traditional account of Henry Tudor’s escape from King Edward’s envoys in the spring of 1476 is drawn from the Tudor histories. Polydore Vergil, writing early in the reign of Henry VIII, recounted that King Edward sent ambassadors to Francis Duke of Brittany ‘laden down with a great weight of gold’ who pretended that Edward wished Tudor to marry his eldest daughter Elizabeth. At length, so the tale continues, Duke Francis gave in and sent Henry off with the unnamed English ambassadors, who conveyed him to the port of Saint-Malo in the north-east of Brittany where their ship was waiting. Meanwhile the Duke’s favourite Jean Chenlet came to hear of this and persuaded Duke Francis to try to rescue Tudor, who would otherwise be killed. The Duke therefore sent his treasurer, Pierre Landois, to Saint-Malo, where he engaged the ambassadors in conversation ‘while his agents brought Henry, half-dead, to the inviolable asylum in that city’ (i.e. Saint-Malo cathedral). In the 1540s Edward Hall offered details of this English embassy, claiming that it consisted of ‘Doctor Stillyngton and twoo other’. Like Vergil, Hall made it clear that the men who escorted Henry to Saint-Malo were the ambassadors who had negotiated the extradition agreement with Duke Francis.[2]

 

Contemporary Evidence 

Fragmentary survivals of Breton financial records confirm Vergil’s and Hall’s central claim that Henry Tudor was taken to Saint-Malo, but the wider contemporary record calls into question many of the details in the Tudor accounts. To begin with, King Edward seems unlikely to have told Duke Francis in late 1475 or early 1476 that he intended Tudor to marry his daughter Elizabeth since at the end of August 1475 he had publicly sealed a treaty with the King of France for Elizabeth’s marriage to the Dauphin.[3] Vergil has also mangled the name of the Breton lord who, as he claims, persuaded Duke Francis to intervene to prevent Tudor’s repatriation to England: Jean Chenlet’s correct name was Jean du Quélennec, Vicomte du Faou, and he was the Admiral of Brittany.[4] He had been Henry Tudor’s keeper at an early stage in his exile and the same Breton financial accounts that confirm Tudor’s journey to Saint-Malo record that it was Quelennec who brought him there, from the port of Brest on Brittany’s west coast and probably by sea. A quite separate entry records the cost of escorting the English ambassadors, led by Chester Herald, overland to Saint-Malo from the court at Nantes.[5] This strongly indicates that – rather in the manner of extraditions, prisoners exchanges and the like today – the handover was to be made at the frontier, the English ambassadors being permitted to take charge of him only at the port of embarkation and probably only as he boarded ship. Indeed, had Tudor been in English custody during his sojourn in Saint-Malo it is unlikely that, in his ‘half-dead’ state, he could have succeeded in escaping to sanctuary.

The English Ambassadors and their Roles

A detail of Hall’s account that is wholly at odds with the contemporary record is his identification of ‘Doctor Stillyngton’ as the head of the English embassy that both negotiated Tudor’s handover and attempted to remove him to England. That he is here given no greater title than Doctor may itself be a warning sign since Robert Stillington had had been Bishop of Bath and Wells since 1465 so that if Hall had seen any document relating to his appointment in the mid-1470s that is how it would have described him.[6] Stillington is also unlikely to have been given an overseas commission, particularly one involving the forced removal of a fit young prisoner, because, although he had in the past negotiated on Edward’s behalf with foreign ambassadors visiting the English court, the bishop’s chronic ill health had prevented him from following the king on journeys even within England and he had twice before been forced to entrust the Great Seal to a temporary keeper when Edward was away from the capital and in urgent need of it.[7] The third puzzling feature of Hall’s claim is that no extant documents contain any reference to Stillington’s involvement in King Edward’s negotiations with Brittany; what they do record (as recent historians have noted) is the presence in Brittany during the summer of 1475 of an embassy empowered to negotiate a perpetual peace with England consisting of lords Audley and Duras and Master Oliver King, a royal clerk who was fluent in French, having studied at the university of Orléans. This was followed by the ratification of earlier treaties with England (by Duke Francis on 22 January 1476 and King Edward on the following 6 March) and by Oliver King’s promotion on 18 March 1476 to the post of the King’s secretary in the French tongue.[8] By the end of the decade Oliver King had gained a doctorate and it is a remarkable coincidence that, like Stillington, he was to end his days as Bishop of Bath and Wells. It would seem, therefore, that Hall had simply confused two doctors who had become bishops of Bath. Although Dr. King probably discussed with Duke Francis’ representative King Edward’s desire for Henry Tudor to return to England, he had left Brittany well before the attempted handover, and the Breton financial memoranda record Chester Herald (Thomas Whiting) as the head of the embassy that had been sent to escort Tudor into England. Henry Tudor held no grudge against Oliver King for any part he may have played in the affair; on the contrary, from the outset of his reign he entrusted Dr. King with important commissions and generously rewarded his efforts. Thomas Whiting also retained his post as Chester Herald under Henry VII.  

Marie Barnfield

 

Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading

 

Lorraine Attreed (ed.), The York House Books 1461-1490, 2 vols., II (Stroud, 1991) 

Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Stroud, 1993)

Edward Hall, ‘The prosperous reigne of Kyng Edward the fourth’ in The Union of the Two Noble and Ilustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (London, 1547)

Michael Jones, ‘“For My Lord of Richmond, a pourpoint . . . and a palfrey”: Brief Remarks on the Financial Evidence for Henry Tudor’s Exile in Brittany 1471–1484’, The Ricardian, XIII (2003), pp. 283-293 ( https://richardiii.net/research/the-ricardian-journal/ )

Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, Chronicles of London (Oxford, 1905)

H. C. Maxwell-Lyte (ed.), The Registers of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells 1465-1491, and Richard Fox, Bishop of Bath and Wells 1491-1494, Somerset Record Society LII (London, 1937)

Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (ed.), The Crowland Chronicle Continuations 1459-1486 (London, 1986)

Thomas Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Literae et Cujuscunque Generis Act Publica, 12 vols., XI, XII (London, 1727)

Cora L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, 2 vols., II (London, 1923) 

Dana Sutton (ed.), Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia ( https://philological.cal.bham.ac.uk/polverg/ )

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[1] Crowland, p. 183; York House Books, II, p. 737; Kingsford, Chronicles of London, pp. 255-6.

[2] Vergil, Anglica Historia, XXIV; Hall, Lancastre & Yorke, ’Edward the fourth’, ff. 48r-50r.

[3] Rymer, Foedera, XII, p. 20.

[4] Jones, ‘Pourpoint’, pp. 287-8;

[5] Jones, ‘Pourpoint’, p. 289.

[6] Register, p. viii.

[7] Foedera, XI, pp.574, 764, 782.

[8] Scofield, vol 2, p. 166; Foedera, XII, pp. 12, 22, 24, 26.