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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/ )
[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.
