The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA
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2. E. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris (Le Ménagier de Paris) a Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen of Paris c. 1393, London, 1928 (1992), pp. 35–37.
3. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Queen Elizabeth Woodville and the Angelus’, Ric. 10 (1994–96), pp. 326–27.
4. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris, pp. 39–41. The Gloria is not said or sung at ordinary weekday masses. Its inclusion in the list indicates that a Sunday or feast day mass is being described. However, at this period, more feast days would have been celebrated than is the norm in the modern ecclesiastical calendar. In the modern mass rite only very major feasts still have a ‘sequence’ said or sung before the Alleluia.
5. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris, p. 41, present writer’s emphasis.
6. See Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Hours of Richard III’.
7. Beloved Cousyn, chapter 7.
8. http://www.godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm (consulted December 2008).
9. http://www.godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm (consulted December 2008).
10. P. W. Hammond, Food & Feast in Medieval England, Stroud, 1993, p. 105.
11. A reduced pre-Communion fast of one hour is stipulated for Catholics, even today.
12. www.probertencyclopaedia.com/cgi-bin/res.pl?keyword=Fifteenth&offset=0 (consulted December 2008).
13. http://www.godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm (consulted December 2008).
14. T. Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge, 1995, pp. 119–120.
15. Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 26r; HHB, part 2, p. 327.
16. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris, pp. 148–55.
17. The final course of the ‘Goodman’s’ dinner menu 1 comprises pears, comfits, medlars, nuts, hippocras and wafers, and his second dinner menu also ends with a sweet course. However, menu 23 (a fish dinner) begins with fruit (cooked apples and ripe figs) and ends with porpoise, mackerel, oysters and cuttle fish. His twenty-two other sample menus have courses which, to modern eyes, do not noticeably differ from one another. In general terms there was no medieval concept of a fish course, a meat course or a sweet course.
18. Quoted in D. Hartley and M.M. Elliot, Life and Work of the People of England – the Fifteenth Century, London, 1925, p. 17.
19. L. and J. Laing, Medieval Britain, the Age of Chivalry, London, 1996, p. 180.
20. See, for example, M. Black, The Medieval Cookbook, London, 1992.
21. Eleanor, p. 15.
22. Laing, Medieval Britain, p. 181.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., pp. 182–83.
25. The eldest, Anne, Duchess of Exeter, had died in 1476.
26. Certainly during Richard’s reign, envoys to the Habsburg court regularly passed through England (see below).
27. Richard III had been eight years old when his father was killed.
28. Beloved Cousyn, pp. 25–26 and figure 11.
29. Itinerary.
30. Nicolas, p. 123: ‘Reparacion off the Kinges Carre’.
31. For example, one possibility might be that the king used a carriage in order to attend funerals at which he was not officially present.
32. A.F. Sutton & P.W. Hammond, eds, The Coronation of Richard III, the extant documents, Gloucester, 1983, p. 47.
33. Sutton & Hammond, Coronation, p. 68.
34. A. Prockter and R. Taylor, The A to Z of Elizabethan London, London, 1979, p. 21 (map reference K5).
35. www.maney.co.uk/files/misc/HenryChapter3.pdf (consulted January 2009). In September 1485 Curteys was reappointed by Henry VII.
36. Nicolas, p. 132. For evidence of the use of tapestry by John Howard (Duke of Norfolk), see Θ.
37. Nicolas, p. 140. ‘Paled’ means arranged ‘per pale’ (see below note 38).
38. This is a heraldic term, meaning in two broad stripes, set side by side.
39. Nicolas, pp. 132–33, repeated pp. 143–44.
40. The former London home of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and subsequently of his son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, on the site of the present Canon Street Station.
41. Nicolas, pp. 140–42.
42. Ibid., p. 144.
43. Bishop Thomas Langton, an admirer and supporter of Richard III, is said to have remarked that ‘sensual pleasure’ held sway at Richard’s court, and Ross has therefore argued that ‘Richard’s court was perhaps as gay and hedonistic as Edward’s had been’: Ross, Richard III, p. 142, and citing Alison Hanham’s reconstruction of Langton’s Latin sentence.
44. At this period shirts were underclothes.
45. Originally, at least, ‘cordwain’ described sheep or goat leather imported from Córdoba in Spain.
46. Nicolas, pp. 146–52.
47. A.F. Sutton & L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books’, Ric. 7–10 (1985–96).
48. Θ.
49. See also chapter 7 below.
50. A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs with R.A. Griffiths, The Royal Funerals of the House of York at Windsor, London, 2005, p. 116.
51. In 2008 a small copy in oils of this portrait of Richard III was produced in less than a week. In the fifteenth century, the small panel portrait by Petrus Christus of one of the nieces of the Duchess of Norfolk seems to have been easily completed during the weeks when the Duchess and her family were in Flanders for Margaret of York’s wedding in 1468: Eleanor, p. 68.
52. For the history of wedding rings, see Ashdown-Hill, Royal Marriage Secrets.
53. This portrait of Richard III – together with a matching panel portrait of Edward IV – was later owned by members of the Paston family. However, its original owner is unknown.
54. Harl. 433, f. 211v: vol. 2, p. 211. There has been much debate as to the identity of ‘the lord Bastard’. Does this refer to one of the sons of Edward IV? (Richard’s own son, John of Gloucester, is not referred to elsewhere as a ‘lord’.)
55. Ibid.
56. Harl. 433, f. 217r: vol. 2, p. 223.
57. Harl. 433, f. 212v: vol. 2, pp. 213–14. From 1 June 1485 the King of Hungary claimed the title ‘Duke of Austria’, but in April 1485 the reference is almost certainly to a member of the Habsburg family, probably Sigismund, Archduke of Upper Austria (since his cousin, Frederick, Archduke of Inner Austria, was also Holy Roman Emperor, and would more probably have been referred to by that title). There were similar authorisations on other dates to other named servants of Salasar, to a servant of the Duke of Burgundy, and to the Pope’s sergeant-at-arms.
58. Harl. 433, f. 213r: vol. 2, p. 214.
59. Harl. 433, f. 213v: vol. 2, p. 216.
60. Ibid., p. 215.
61. Harl. 433, f. 217v: vol. 2, p. 223.
62. Harl. 433, f. 214v: vol. 2, p. 219.
63. Harl. 433, f. 218v: vol. 2, p. 227.
64. Ibid.
65. www.1911encyclopedia.org/Pheasant (consulted January 2009).
4. Tombs of Saints and Queens
1. Crowland, p. 177, dates these rumours after Holy Week and prior to Whitsun (April–May 1485). The octave of a major religious feast comprises the feast day itself and the seven days following.
2. This comparatively close blood relationship between Richard III and Henry ‘Tudor’ (Henry VII) stemmed from their common Beaufort descent, by virtue of which Richard III was the second cousin of Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond.
3. The fact that Henry’s father, Edmund ‘Tudor’ and his uncle, Jasper ‘Tudor’, used versions of the royal arms based apparently upon those of Edmund Beaufort indicates that their patrilineal ancestry was, in reality, not Tudor but royal, probably via the Beaufort line. See Ashdown-Hill Royal Marriage Secrets.
4. fils du feu roy Henry d’Angleterre: M. Jones, Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle, Stroud, 2002, pp. 124–25.
5. Crowland, p. 173.
6. Kendall R3, p. 300, citing CPR 1476–1485, pp. 544–45. The fleet remained on guard in the Channel until at least the end of May.
7. C. Ross, Richard III, London, 1981, pp. 204–5.
8. Beloved Cousyn, chapter 6.
9. G.F. Beltz, Memorials of the most Noble Order of the Garter from its foundation to the present time, London, 1841, p. 75, citing BL, Harl. MS 36B.18, p. 213; also Harl. 433, vol. 2, pp. 215–16.
10. R.A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI’, ODNB.
11. Cited in W.J. White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 1, Ric. 6 (1982–84), pp. 70–80 (p. 70). Warkworth’s account was penned after July 1482. The 21 May 1471 was indeed a Tuesday.
12. B. Wolffe, Henry VI, London, 1981, p. 347.
13. Ellis/Vergil, pp. 155–56.
14. White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 1, pp. 70–71.
15. Cited in White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 1, p. 71. White argues that this is the most nearly contemporaneous account.
16. A. Breeze, ‘A Welsh Poem of 1485 on Richard III’, Ric. 18 (2008), pp. 46–53 (p. 47). If Henry VI’s death was not natural, Edward would probably have preferred to distance himself physically from this event, and may, therefore, have arranged for the dispatch to take place after he himself had left the capital. On this basis Henry seems unlikely to have been killed on 21 or 22 May. Subsequent belief in the culpability of Edward’s administration perhaps caused later Lancastrian accounts to deliberately adjust the date of his death to one of the two days when Edward and Gloucester were known to have been in London.
17. A. Hanham, ‘Henry VI and his Miracles’, Ric. 12 (2000–02), pp. 2–16 [erroneously numbered pp. 638–52 in the publication] (p. 2).
18. Chenopodium bonus-henricus is an easily cultivated and edible hardy perennial plant native to the Mediterranean, but introduced to England many centuries ago. It is widely known in Europe by variants of the name ‘Good Henry’, but the addition of the title of ‘King’ seems unique to England (where it had certainly been added by the beginning of the sixteenth century). Some writers have assumed that this addition was to honour Henry VIII, but Henry VI seems a more likely contender.
19. Given that the date of Henry’s death can be debated, the supposed presence of Richard, as Duke of Gloucester, in the Tower of London during the night of 21–22 May is not necessarily significant, particularly since ‘many other’ people are also reported to have been there.
20. R.A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI’, ODNB.
21. White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 2, Ric. 6, pp. 106–17 (p. 112); Wolffe, Henry VI, p. 352. This first bay has subsequently become the site of the tomb of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. An alternative possibility is that Richard III intended to be buried at York Minster, where he proposed – and actually began constructing – a very splendid chantry chapel.
22. W.H. St John Hope, ‘The Discovery of the Remains of King Henry VI in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle’, Archaeologia, vol. 62, part 2, pp. 533–42 (p. 533).
23. St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, p. 534.
24. A. Coldwells, St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle guidebook, 1993. Tresilian also made the iron work for the fine gate enclosing the tomb of Edward IV.
25. The accounts for the funeral expenses in 1471 mention spices and cere cloth, but there is no hint of a lead coffin. Warkworth’s Chronicle suggests that a wooden coffin was used at the original interment: St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, p. 538.
26. St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, pp. 534–36.
27. It clearly achieved its objective, since John Rous wrote as though he had seen Henry VI’s intact body in 1484 – though the archaeological evidence uncovered in the last century clearly shows this claim to be impossible.
28. St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, pp. 539, 541.
29. Itinerary.
30. Kendall R3, p. 332 (but Kendall gives no source for this information).
31. ‘shortly before Whitsun’ – Crowland, p. 177. Whit Sunday in 1485 fell on 22 May.
32. The Calendar of State Papers – Venetian attributes this letter to Agostino Barbarigo, but he was only elected Doge in 1486. The sender must rather have been Marco Barbarigo.
33. Calendar of State Papers – Venetian, vol 1, 1202–1509, p. 154.
34. A.G. Twining, Our Kings and Westminster Abbey, London, 1911, p. 139.
5. ‘Þe Castel of Care’
1. ‘Þat is Þe castel of care who so cometh Þerinne / May banne Þat he borne was to body or to soule’: W.W. Skeat, ed., W. Langland, The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, Oxford, 1869, p. 10, lines 61–62. Richard III is supposed to have called Nottingham his ‘Castle of Care’, but actually there is no contemporary evidence that he did so, and the story seems to be a later invention. See A.F. Sutton, ‘Richard III’s “Castle of Care”’, Ric. 3 (no. 49, June 1975), pp. 10–12.
2. ‘The Body of Christ’.
3. A monstrance is a large vessel of precious metal, often bejewelled, with a glass or crystal compartment in which the Host is placed and through which it can be seen. Typically, medieval monstrances closely resembled contemporary reliquaries.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Mystery_Plays (consulted January 2009).
5. E. Poston, ed., The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols, Harmondsworth, 1965, p. 64, dates the carol to the fifteenth century.
6. Itinerary, p. 20.
7. It is clear, at all events, that the king was not suffering from any kind of ‘siege mentality’, since he did not seek to defend himself behind the castle walls, but marched out of Nottingham to meet Henry ‘Tudor’ when he thought the time was ripe.
8. H. Gill, A Short History of Nottingham Castle, Nottingham, 1904, www.nottshistory.org.uk/gill1904/charlesi.htm (consulted January 2009).
9. Gill, Nottingham Castle, www.nottshistory.org.uk/gill1904/charlesi.htm.
10. P.W. Hammond and A.F. Sutton, Richard III: the Road to Bosworth Field, London, 1985, p. 209.
11. Henry ‘Tudor’ also knew this, as he clearly demonstrated after his accession to the throne, when he imprisoned the marquess.
12. Harl. 433, f. 220r: vol. 2, p. 228.
13. See Introduction.
14. Kendall R3, p. 334.
15. Ibid., p. 337.
16. Ross, Richard III, p. 141.
17. Ibid.
18. Soc. Ant., MS 76, ff. 60r, 91v, 144v; HHB, part 2, pp. 70, 116, 207.
19. Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 31v; HHB, part 2, p. 336.
20. The Romans had used the word lusores (‘players’) to refer to both singers and actors. This broad Latin term continued in use into the Middle Ages, and the usage passed into the various vernaculars.
21. C. Ricks, ed., The Penguin History of Literature vol. 3: English Drama to 1710, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, pp. 3–4.
22. There is secondary evidence throughout the Middle Ages for the development of dramatic ‘interludes’ as aristocratic entertainment. Mummers from London entertained Richard II and his court in 1377. Early fifteenth-century texts survive of ‘Prefaces’ written by John Lydgate, a Dominican friar, which ‘call not only for disguise of the persons involved, but for the use of substantial scenic properties’ (Ricks, English Drama, p. 26). It is possible that Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale contains a reference to similar entertainments: L.D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, Oxford, 1987, p. 183, lines 1142–49.
23. Ross, Richard III, p. 135. All the benefactions to Queens’ College of Richard III and his consort were later annulled by Henry VII.
24. Crowland, pp. 176–77; Ellis/Vergil, pp. 218–19; M.K. Jones, Bosworth 1485, Psychology of a Battle, Stroud, 2002, p. 157.
25. Itinerary.
26. Bestwood is the modern name; the medieval form was Beskwood.
6. Bucks at Bestwood
1. Kendall R3, p. 327, suggests that previously Richard took ‘no marked interest’ in hunting but this seems inaccurate. There is implicit evidence that Richard had hunted in his youth.
2. Harl. 433, vol. 2 (Upminster, 1990), p. 216 (f. 214), punctuation modernised.
3. Ibid.
/> 4. Ibid. See also Kendall R3, p. 327, though Kendall misquotes the date of the third commission.
5. In December 1467, while staying in London (or more probably, at his house in Stepney), Sir John Howard purchased various paraphernalia for hawking, comprising a hawk’s bag, two hawk’s bells, and ‘a tabere [sic, tabard? = hood?] for the hawk’. On 19 December 1482, 20d. was paid ‘to Tymperleys man for brynging of a hawke’. On 16 February 1483 there was a payment of 12d. ‘to Seyncleres man for hawkynge’: BL, Add. MS 46349, f. 153r; HHB, part 1, p. 431; Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 26v; HHB, part 2, p. 328; Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 43r; HHB, part 2, p. 360.
6. According to the Boke of St Albans the choice of falcon was entirely hierarchical. Only the emperor should use an eagle. Kings employed gyrfalcons, princes and dukes had peregrines, and so on: Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes, pp. 113–14.
7. In 1368 Nicholas de Litlington, Abbot of Westminster, offered up prayers for the recovery of his sick hawk, accompanied by the presentation of a wax falcon as a votive offering: Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes, p. 112.
8. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Yesterday my Lord of Gloucester came to Colchester’, Essex Archaeology and History, vol. 36 (2005), pp. 212–17.
9. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War and Politics 1450–1500, p. 198; L. Woolley, Medieval Life and Leisure in the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, London: V&A, 2002, p. 25.
10. www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2008/09/18/robin_hood_and_bestwood_feature.shtml (consulted December 2008).
11. www.bw-bestwoodlodge.co.uk/HistoryoftheLodge.asp (consulted December 2008).
12. In England, these comprised the native red deer, the smaller fallow deer (introduced by the Normans), and the roe deer – which had the advantage that roebuck could be hunted all year round.
13. Edward, Duke of York, considered hare the finest game: a swift and clever quarry which could be hunted all year round: C. Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England, Stroud, 1995, p. 106.
14. They were not eaten, though their fur was used to adorn clothing.
15. Edward, Duke of York (d. 1415) translated into English, with additions of his own, the Livre de Chasse of Gaston III, Comte de Foix.
16. The Duke of York had, however, commented on the fact that foxes could provide cunning quarry for hounds, and produced an attractive pelt.