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)

**************************** 

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

Tim Thornton ‘Henry VII and the Tower of London: the context of the “confession” of Sir James Tyrell in 1502’, Historical Research, 2023, 20:1–8

Tim Thornton, ‘Sir William Capell and A Royal Chain: The Afterlives (and Death) of King Edward V’, History, 2024, 109: 445-460

 

 

 

 

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.

"Lockdown" Sale of Titles from the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust

 

Miles Forest and the Fate of the Missing Princes

Five hundred years after Edward V and his brother, Richard duke of York, disappeared, their fate is once again headline news. What do the latest revelations really add to what we already know?

Professor Tim Thornton of the University of Huddersfield has been examining the connections of Sir Thomas More, creator of the most famous account of the deaths of the princes in the Tower. He has uncovered hitherto unrecognised links between More and the sons of one of the men accused of the murder: Miles Forest. According to Thomas More’s story, Forest was one of those charged by Richard III to look after the princes. When Richard decided he needed the boys dead, his servant, Sir James Tyrell, recruited Forest and his own horse-keeper, John Dighton, to assist him in smothering the boys in their beds.

Thornton’s new evidence indicates that Thomas More encountered Forest’s sons, Edward and Miles, in the course of conducting royal business. Consequently, Thornton speculates that it was these two men who had told More the truth about the princes’ fate. More himself described his source only as ‘them that much knew and litle cause had to lye’. The sons of a murderer might perhaps fit that description, he suggests.

But does this evidence justify the conclusion that Richard had ordered the murder of the princes? A deeper look at the evidence would seem to suggest otherwise. Back in 1879 James Gairdner identified Miles Forest as the keeper of the wardrobe at Richard's home of Barnard Castle. According to More, after committing the murder, Forest had ‘at sainct Marten pecemele rotted away’. He gives no date for this, but we know that his widow, Joan, was granted an annuity on 9 September 1484, so Forest clearly died sometime before Richard. Why would a man who had conducted such an important task for the king find himself resourceless in the sanctuary at St Martin’s just months later? It is hard to fathom. No sanctuary register survives so we only have More's word that Forest died in these circumstances. Because More is vague about the date most readers would assume that it was under a Tudor king that Forest died: the idea of Forest 'rotting' in sanctuary during Henry VII's reign because he was a murderer makes some sense. Knowing as we do that Forest really died in Richard's reign, the story is less credible.

If Forest really did die in sanctuary, it might be reasonable to ask why the king felt obliged to give his widow an annuity. It was actually a commonplace of good kingship that if a woman was unfortunate enough to find herself the widow of a felon then she was deserving of charity and should not be made to suffer for her husband’s sins. But we must remember, there is no evidence outside More's story that Forest died in disgrace. The annuity is more likely simply a recognition of Forest's good service at Barnard Castle and indeed Joan's in supporting him.

Forest’s death in 1484 must also have meant that his own boys were far too young for him to have told them of his crime himself. Would their mother have told them? I am well aware of the strong bonds and influence to be found between widowed mothers and their sons, and of mothers' important role in passing on family history, having written so much on Richard III's own mother. But I am not convinced any mother would choose to burden her children with the knowledge that their father had committed the crime of the century. 

Another credibility issue with Thornton's thesis lies in the idea that the Forest brothers would have chosen to reveal this terrible family secret to a man they occasionally met through their work. Henry VIII was reputedly devoted to his mother - what might befall the family of a man known to have murdered her brother? Given that Edward Forest was one of Henry VIII's Grooms of the Chamber and the younger Miles was in Cardinal Wolsey's employ, it would have been a wildly risky step to make.

And what of the other alleged murderers? More claimed that Tyrell and Dighton were both examined and confessed to the murder during Henry VII’s reign. Tyrell was executed but Dighton ‘yet walketh on a live’. Again More’s story is hard to credit here. Dighton confessed to such a murder but was simply allowed to walk free? Unfortunately it is impossible to trace Dighton for certain in other records, but clearly at the time More first drafted his work he had in mind someone he knew was still alive and at liberty.

Tyrell was indeed executed in Henry VII’s reign and, as Thornton notes, More was not the first to accuse him of killing the princes. Yet we have no record that any public statement was made of his guilt at the time of his execution which was for an unrelated charge of treason. His alleged confession does not itself survive.

Time and again in More’s work, we find scraps of truth woven together with plausible names, details no one could have recalled and entertaining direct speech. This makes for a vivid picture but frequently contradicts contemporary evidence (for instance in the controversy around Edward IV's wedding). What we know of More’s work must prompt the question: Was More really reporting what the Forest boys had told him, or was it just that his acquaintance with them had caused him to learn that their father had been a servant of Richard’s which made Miles Forest a convenient name in More's story. 

The fate of the princes is one of the most tantalising gaps in our knowledge of the past. At first sight, More’s novel-like explanation offers an attractively detailed picture to plug that gap. Little wonder so many are eager to believe it. Unfortunately, there are just too many elements that strain credulity or do not fit with what else is known. More's saintly reputation (hair shirt and all) has inevitably made generations of historians unwilling to imagine he was deliberately peddling falsehoods - but that is to assume More expected his readers to receive his work as soberly factual history. Since he never finished the work we cannot be sure what his intentions were, but anyone who has read his famous Utopia will be aware that More enjoyed using fiction under a veneer of plausible facts to explore political ideas.

Thomas More’s connections with the Forest boys are certainly worth adding to our investigation of all available evidence, but as yet they provide no new lead on the fate of the missing princes.

Image: 

British Library Royal 16 II f. 73 The Tower of London

Sources:

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.

The Complete Works of St Thomas More, ed. Richard S. Sylvester (Yale University Press, 1963) vol. 2.

http://ricardianresources.online/downloads/Vol_2_pp1-230.pdf p. 160

Richard III’s Lavish Christmas?

Shortly before Christmas, The Telegraph published an article on Richard III’s Christmas gifts. It mentioned that Richard ordered his Exchequer to pay £100 in ready money to the grooms and pages of his chamber at Christmas 1483. This is almost £70,000 in today’s money. Moreover, in the new year Richard settled a bill with a London goldsmith for Christmas gifts and other jewels worth the equivalent of £500,000 today. The article speculated that Richard’s lavish generosity was an attempt to secure the loyalty of the court after the recent rebellion against his rule. Nonetheless, the headline was an unusually positive one for Richard: “Not so much winter discontent in court of generous Richard III”.

Research currently being undertaken for the Society, thanks to a bequest from Pauline Stevenson, sheds significantly more light on this. The source for this expenditure is a collection of documents at The National Archives. Indeed, the Telegraph’s article was prompted by a Tweet about them from TNA. The documents in question are known as Warrants for Issues. Scholars have been using them for decades but hitherto they have not been published, other than a few details in the List and Index of Warrants for Issues. The Society has begun creating detailed calendars of these documents, starting with the period 1480-85. The plan is eventually to include all of Edward IV’s reign as well. From the work done so far, it is clear that there was nothing exceptional in Richard’s payment to his grooms and pages. His goldsmith’s bill, however, may have been unusually high.

On 10 December 1481, a warrant for Edward IV’s exchequer noted “it has been accustomed that the king’s servants, the grooms and pages of the king’s chamber, should have yearly of the king’s gift and reward against the feast of Christmas the sum of £100 in money” (E 404/77/2/39). On 13 November 1482 the same wording was used in another payment to the grooms and pages (E 404/77/2/54). So Richard III was merely following accepted practice when he paid his grooms and pages £100.

According to the Black Book of Edward IV’s Household, there should be ten grooms and four pages of the king’s chamber. Like other grooms and pages of the household, they were provided with lodging, food and clothing as part of their job. They were also given a quarterly allowance. Pages received 20d and grooms either 40d or 6s 8d, depending on how much clothing they received. The Black Book notes that, besides this quarterly income that was provided by the counting house, they should also receive “the great reward given yearly from the King’s privy coffers to the grooms and pages of his chamber”.[1] This Christmas bonus, it seems, was essentially part of their regular income but it clearly made the grooms and pages of the king’s chamber far better paid than those elsewhere in the household. It is likely that the grooms’ individual share of the £100 was greater than the pages’, probably £8 6s 8d for the grooms and half that for the pages.  According to the National Archives’ Currency Converter, the modern equivalent of the grooms’ bonus would be £5,760. It was twelve times as much as they received from the counting house in the course of the rest of the year. It was certainly a generous gift but its only political significance in 1483 is that it demonstrates Richard III following his brother’s policies.

The payment to a London goldsmith might be more interesting. On 22 January 1484 instructions were sent to pay Edmund Shawe, goldsmith, “the sum of £764 17s 6d as well for certain plate by him ordained for the king’s year’s gifts against Christmas last past, and for other jewels by him ordained and delivered to the king’s own hands” (E 404/78/2/28). Edmund Shawe was of course mayor of London the previous summer, during Richard’s accesson, and it was his brother, Ralph, who had preached the famous sermon declaring that Edward IV’s sons were bastards.

Edmund Shawe had been engraver of the royal mint from 1462-82 and loaned Edward IV money on occasion. According to BL MS Harley 433 (digitised by the Society here), Shawe also lent Richard III 400 marks early in his reign, and Richard had spent £134 on New Year gifts purchased from Shawe in December 1482. John Stow recorded that in December 1483 Richard sold some of his own silver and gilt plate to Shawe for just over £550. This was perhaps to acquire some of the funds necessary for a lavish Christmas.

Unfortunately it is impossible to know how much of the £764 spent by Richard in 1483/4 was for Christmas gifts and what was for jewels for the king himself (and perhaps his queen). This makes it difficult to judge how unusual it was. It may just possibly be significant that Richard arranged for the Receiver of Fee Farms to pay £431 10s 10d out of the total owed to Shawe (according to BL Harley 433). It could be that this was the amount actually spent on Christmas gifts, in which case it would again appear to reflect standard practice. Two years previously, in February 1482, Edward IV had paid £464 17s 3d to John Shawe (nephew to Edmund and Ralph) for ‘year’s gifts’ that included a gold cup costing more than £45, a gold cross set with diamonds, and four diamond rings (E 404/77/2/54).

In conclusion, it could be that Richard III’s gift giving at Christmas 1483 was more generous than his brother’s had been, but at present we simply cannot say. Both kings were lavish in their gift giving as befitted the medieval concept of a good prince.

J. L. Laynesmith

Image: Hastings Hours BL Add MS 54782 f. 42v

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[1] The Black Book was probably in part an ideal rather than a wholly accurate reflection of practice, so it is impossible at present to be sure whether the £100 was originally a gift that came from the privy purse which Edward IV later started taking directly from the Exchequer. It may be that the compiler of the Black Book simply thought it ought to come from the privy purse.