Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  66 CC, p. 165; BL, Har 433 II, pp. 58–9.

  67 CC, p. 165.

  13. ‘TRUE AND FAITHFUL LIEGEMEN’

  1 The same day as the duke’s execution, on 2 November, Thomas Fowler, a gentleman usher of the chamber, was ordered to seize all the property within Buckingham and Bedford that had belonged to the duke of Buckingham, the marquess of Dorset, Sir William Norreys, Sir William Stonor, Sir Thomas Saintleger, Sir Richard Enderby, Sir John Done, Sir Thomas Delamare, Sir Roger Tocotes, Sir Richard Beauchamp, Walter Hungerford and John Cheyney. BL, Har 433 II, pp. 32–3.

  2 Ibid., p. 30.

  3 Lancshire Record Office DD K 1/20.

  4 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 58–9.

  5 CPR, 1476–85, pp. 368, 367.

  6 Leland, The Itinerary of John Leland, ed. Toulmin-Smith, p. 255.

  7 Exeter City Archives Book 51, fo. 321v.

  8 According to an account of the king’s visit, Richard ‘took the view of the whole city’, which he ‘did very well like and commend’, paying a visit to the castle, which ‘he was in a marvellous great liking thereof both for the strength of the place’ and ‘the godly and pleasant aspects’ of its surroundings. When Richard was told that it was called Richmond, according to the account ‘he was suddenly fallen into a great displeasure … at length he said “I see my days be not long.”‘ Ibid., fo. 322r.

  9 TNA, C82/55/6.

  10 CC, p. 165.

  11 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 45–6.

  12 Ibid., p. 47.

  13 Ibid., pp. 48–9.

  14 Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, p. 192.

  15 CCR, no. 1171.

  16 Letters were sent to the Abbot of Beaulieu, ordering ‘in our straightest wise’ to deliver to the council within six days all ‘muniments and writings by the which ye claim to have a sanctuary’, 15 December 1483: BL, Har 433 II, p. 59. Master John Chester, the prior of Beaulieu, was accused of having ‘harboured and succoured certain our rebels and traitors’; his brother was bound by recognisance for the prior to answer the charges in person; however, Chester was ‘so greviously vexed with bodily infirmity’ that he was unable to make the journey. The king granted the prior ‘respite’ until the following autumn, where in front of the council he was able to prove his innocence ‘in such effectual ways’. TNA, C81/1392/18.

  17 Horrox, Richard III, pp. 160–61.

  18 BL, Har 433 II, p. 36.

  19 Green, ‘Historical Notes of a London Citizen’, p. 588.

  20 BL, Har 433 I, pp. 87, 88.

  21 Ibid., pp. xxiii–xxiv.

  22 The eleven rebels were Thomas Arundel, William Berkeley, William Uvedale, John Cheyne, Thomas Fiennes, Nicholas Gaynesford, Walter Hungerford, Thomas Audley, John Norreys, Robert Poyntz and John Wingfield.

  23 Thomas St Leger, William Stonor, William Norreys, George Brown, Giles Daubeney, Thomas Bourchier.

  24 CC, p. 169.

  25 Campbell (ed.), Materials for a History, vol. I, p. 214.

  26 GC, pp. 235–6.

  27 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 66–7.

  28 TNA, E404/78/2/28, 22 January 1484.

  29 TNA, E404/78/2/18.

  30 CPR 1476–85, p. 374.

  31 BL, Har 433 II, p. 43.

  32 CLRO, Journal of Common Council, 9 fo. 43.

  33 The city’s gates were repaired with flint and stone from Maidstone that year, suggesting damage: HMC, 9th Report, vol. I, p. 145.

  34 BL, Har 433 I, p. 3.

  35 In spite of being a knight of the body in Richard’s household, and in receipt of an annuity of £40, local man Philip Courtenay had to stand by as a fellow knight of the body, the Yorkshireman Thomas Everingham, was given lands worth £200, centred on Barnstaple, just sixteen miles from Courtenay’s home at Molland. Philip’s brother John was an esquire of the body, yet received nothing, while his fellow esquire, Halneth Malyverer, another northerner, received lands in his home county worth £66 as well as being granted the office of constable of Launceston. Horrox, ‘Financial Memoranda’, pp. 288–9.

  36 See William Hampton’s review of Ross, Richard III, in The Ricardian, vol. 6, no. 77 (June 1982), pp. 46–7.

  37 BL, Har 433 II, p. 37.

  38 CC, p. 171.

  39 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 226v.

  40 Vergil, p. 203.

  14. TITULUS REGIUS

  1 Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, p. 53.

  2 PROME vol. XV, p. 8.

  3 RP, VI, p. 241.

  4 PROME vol. XV, p. 58.

  5 Ibid., pp. 60–61.

  6 Pewterers’ Wardens’ Accounts 1451–1530, GL MS 7086.1, I, p. 57.

  7 CPR, 1476–85, p. 494.

  8 CC, p. 171.

  9 RP, VI, p. 240.

  10 Ibid.

  11 CC, p. 169.

  12 RP, VI, pp. 244–51.

  13 CC, p. 171.

  14 On 12 January, Richard Fogge had been granted permission ‘to go at his liberty in all places … at our pleasure’. On 10 February, John Norreys, the brother of William Norreys, was ordered to appear at the king’s presence ‘in all goodly haste possible’. Three days later, Lionel Woodville was requested to be taken by Richard’s chaplains Edmund Chaterton and John Doket ‘unto our presence in all goodly haste’. BL, Har 433 II, pp. 74, 91, 92.

  15 TNA, C81/1531/48: ‘Please it your noble grace in consideration of the princely pity which ye have showed to your most sorrowful and repentant subjects whose names be marked with your own gracious hand in the book of exception delivered to Master Chaterton to grant to all them whose names ensue your gracious letters of pardon in form following. Forasmuch as the said book can be no sufficient warrant to make out their pardons available for their lives according to your blessed intent. And that this is the same form no more nor less that passed your grace at Nottingham to them that ye gave your pardon to, being then at Beaulieu and that there is none of these names but such as your grace appointed in the said book that should have your pardon’. See also BL, Har 433 I, p. 181 for a draft pardon list.

  16 P. M. Barnes, ‘The Chancery Corpus Cum Causa File 10–11 Edward IV’, in R. F. Hunnisett and J. B. Post (eds.), Medieval Legal Records, London, 1978, p. 440; CCR, pp. 365, 369.

  17 CCR, 1476–85, no. 1242; TNA, C244/134/31.

  18 RP, VI, p. 298.

  19 BL, Har 433 II, p. 207.

  20 BL, Har 433 I, pp. 259–60.

  21 PROME vol. XV, p. 36.

  22 RP, VI, p. 250.

  23 CPR, 1476–85, pp. 389, 423–8, 501; BL, Har 433 I, pp. 173, 186.

  24 Vergil, p. 204.

  25 BL, Additional MS 12060, fo. 22v.

  26 Vergil, p. 204.

  27 PROME vol. XV, p. 79.

  28 BL, Har 433 III, p. 190.

  29 CC, p. 171.

  30 BL, Har 433 I, pp. 81–2.

  15. ‘THEIR SUDDEN GRIEF’

  1 CPR, 1476–85, p. 422.

  2 Ibid., p. 377.

  3 Ibid., p. 385.

  4 BL, Har 433 II, p. 88. Three days later, Richard issued a similar licence to John Legh from Nottingham after it was ‘unto us showed how that two of his barns full of corn and other goods were of late during his being in our service at Dunbar in Scotland by infortune and negligence suddenly burnt to his utter desolation and undoing’, with Richard urging those who read the licence to give alms, ‘wherein ye shall not only as we verily trust do a right meritory deed to go and to us a singular pleasure’. Ibid., p. 92. On 20 February Richard gave £46 13s 4d to the monastery of Creyke, ‘we moved with pity herein’ that a large part of the monastery, having been burnt down, ‘is like to fall to extreme desolation and divine service to be withdrawn and diminished without charitable remedy’. Ibid., p. 96.

  5 CPR, 1476–85, p. 444.

  6 Ibid., p. 450.

  7 Ibid., p. 452.

  8 Christie’s Sale 5334/Lot 23.

  9 BL, Har 433 III, p. 109.

  10 Sir John Fortescue, De natura legis naturae, II, viii, quoted in Chrimes, Henry VII, p. 14.

&
nbsp; 11 BL, Har 433 III, p. 133; BL, Har 433 II, p. 49.

  12 TNA, C1/67/36; BL, Har 433 II, p. 146.

  13 C. Wedgwood, History of Parliament: Biographies of the Members of the Commons House 1439–1509, HMSO 1936, p. 690.

  14 TNA, KB9/953/45–46.

  15 BL, Har 433 I, p. 66; C. H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, Cambridge, 1842, vol. I, p. 230.

  16 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 207, 192.

  17 BL, Har 433 III, p. 139.

  18 Ibid., p. 123.

  19 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 104–5.

  20 Ross, Richard III and His Rivals, pp. 133–4.

  21 A. F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘“As dear to him as the Trojans were to Hector”: Richard III and the University of Cambridge’, in L. Visser-Fuchs (ed.), Richard and East Anglia (2010), pp. 130–34; Ross, Richard III and His Rivals, p. 134.

  22 Ross, Richard III and His Rivals, pp. 134–5; Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘“As dear to him as the Trojans were to Hector”‘, in Visser-Fuchs (ed.), Richard and East Anglia, pp. 122–3.

  23 BL, Har 433 II, p. 63. Two days later, orders were sent to the mayors and bailiffs of every port, instructing them that a fleet had been sent to encounter a Breton fleet lying off Flanders, ‘wherefore we will desire and nonetheless command you to have good watch and espial if be fortune it happen them to meet together and fight upon your coast, that then ye in all the diligence ye can possible, man out your small vessels and boats with such people as ye can make defensibly arrayed’. Ibid., p. 65.

  24 Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, p. 201.

  25 B. A. Pocquet du Haut-Jusse, Francois II, Duc de Bretagne, et l’Angleberre (1458–88), Paris, 1929 pp. 254–5.

  26 On 6 November, James III had proposed a temporary truce to last until 15 March, requesting safe conduct for an embassy to visit the royal court. Responding on 2 December, Richard formally agreed to the safe conduct, issuing letters authorising it under the Great Seal; however, Richard remained cautious about agreeing to any truce, arguing that it would take too long to notify the wardens of the marches and across the entire border on land and at sea, and wished to delay any agreement until the arrival of the Scottish embassy. BL, Har 433 III, pp. 50–51.

  27 Halliwell, Letters of the Kings of England, pp. 156–7.

  28 Norman Macdougall, James III, Edinburgh, 2009, pp. 209–10; BL, Har 433 II, pp. 101–2; A. Grant, ‘Richard III and Scotland’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), The North of England in the Age of Richard III, Sutton, 1996, p. 131.

  29 BL, Har 433 II, p. 123.

  30 In a letter to the Vatican, dated 31 March, he detailed how the bishop of Durham was forced to consume ‘a vast quanity of money’ defending the border, ‘that even at the height of peace he is compelled to keep at his own expense a hundred armed soldiers in a single castle. What then of the multitude of other places of this kind in the whole Durham estates, especially at this time when we are waging a determined war with the very cruel and obstinate Scottish people? … For almost all the towns and castles which we have mentioned above have fallen into decay, partly by the fault and negligence of former times, and partly by being ravaged and shattered by the calamity of wars, so that the income of many years is not sufficient to restore them’. BL, Har 433 III, p. 70.

  31 Ibid., p. 62.

  32 Ibid., p. 65.

  33 On 3 March, William, earl of Huntingdon, was given an annuity of 400 marks. On 8 March, Thomas FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers, was granted an annuity of 300 marks from the customs of the ports in London and Southampton. On 21 March, Lord Dacre was granted an annuity of 100 marks. On 25 March, Lord Neville was given lands worth £200 and an annuity of £80, while, on 30 March, John, Lord Dudley, was given lands worth over £100 a year and an annuity of £100. On 13 April, for his ‘good service against the rebels’, John, earl of Lincoln, was granted lands with a yearly value of over £350. The same day Lincoln was also granted an annuity of £176 13s 4d. On 18 May, Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor, was granted lands worth over £250 a year, on which he only had to pay a rent to the king of £20 for knight-service. On 20 May, Lord Cobham was granted an annuity of £160, while Lord Welles was given an annuity of 100 marks on 22 May. CPR, 1476–85, pp. 431, 388, 423, 428, 452, 388–9, 448, 430, 453.

  34 Pollard, North-Eastern England, p. 354. It was not just Richard’s ducal estates which would be raided to pay for the support Richard was attempting to buy. The four duchy of Lancaster lordships in Yorkshire had thirty-three new grants of annuities charged to them, costing £118 in Knaresborough, £106 in Pickering, £318 in Pontefract and £286 from Tickhill.

  35 Coventry City Archives, BA/H/Q/A79/8. I am grateful to Keith Stenner for the reference. See also the Ricardian Bulletin, Autumn 2005, pp. 25–6.

  36 CC, pp. 171–3.

  37 On 5 March, Richard gave an order for ‘carpenters called “whelers” and “cartwrightes” and other workmen, cannons and necessaries for the king’s ordinance, and bows, arrows, crossbows and winches for the same for defence against divers revels and enemies of the king who intend to invade the realm’. CPR, 1476–85, p. 385. On 10 March, the gunner William Nele was granted an annuity of 6d a day ‘for his good service in making cannons within the Tower of London and elsewhere’ since 7 July, ‘from which day he has attended to the making of the cannons’. Ibid., p. 448. The following day, Patrick de la Mote was appointed to the ‘office of chief cannoner or master founder and surveyor and maker of all the king’s cannon in the Tower of London and elsewhere’, with a salary of 18d a day with wages for two men, Theobald Ferrount, ‘gunner’, and Gland Pyroo, at 6d a day. Ibid., p. 405. On 23 March, having reached Nottingham, Ralph Bigod, a knight of the king’s body and master of the ordinance, was appointed ‘to take carpenters and all other workmen and cannons and other necessaries for the ordnance and carriage’ while Thomas Beere, the yeoman purveyor of the carriage of the ordnance, was ‘to take cars and waggons and horses called “hakeneys”‘. Ibid., p. 387. 2,228 lb of saltpetre was also purchased from London, for £64 19s 1d. TNA, E404/78/3/9.

  38 Richard explained how ‘we have committed to him certain matters to be explained to your holiness and we humbly ask and beg that with your customary goodwill to us and our kingdom you will listen with ready and willing ears to all the things that the same venerable father will open to you in this matter and graciously deign to show him favour in the business he is to do there’, adding, ‘this will be more pleasing to us than anything else could be’.

  39 CPR, 1476–85, no. 1152.

  40 BL, Har MS 433 II, pp. 24–5.

  41 CC, pp. 496–7.

  42 TNA, DL42/20, fo. 64r, 14 September 1484.

  43 Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, p. 123.

  44 BL, Har 433 II, p. 126.

  45 Ibid.; BL, Har III, p. 71; Foedera, ed. Rymer, vol. XII, pp. 226–7.

  46 J. T. Fowler (ed.), Rites of Durham, Durham, 1903, p. 106; M. O’Regan, ‘Richard III and the Monks of Durham’, in Petre (ed.), Richard III: Crown and People, pp. 339–42.

  47 TNA, C81/897/557–9; Edwards, Itinerary of King Richard III, p. 19.

  48 BL, Har 433 II, p. 138.

  49 Edwards, Itinerary of King Richard III, pp. 20–22.

  50 CPR, 1476–85, pp. 415, 455, 484, 509; Sir Robert Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, London, 1953, vol. I, p. 149n; A. Rowntree (ed.), The History of Scarborough, London, 1931, p. 134; Hicks, ‘Dynastic Change’, p. 376.

  51 CPR, 1476–85 p. 455.

  52 TNA, E404/78/3/42: 31 January 1485.

  53 BL, Har 433 III, pp. 107–8.

  54 Ibid., p. 114.

  16. ‘DEFEND ME FROM ALL EVIL’

  1 BL, Har 433 II, p. 122.

  2 Ibid., p. 163.

  3 Vergil, p. 208.

  4 Ibid., p. 142.

  5 CPR, 1476–85, p. 439; BL, Har 433 II, p. 71.

  6 BL, Har 433 II, p. 51.

  7 A. Hanham, The Celys and Their World: An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 311, 413.

  8 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 212�
�13; LMA, Col/cc/01/01/009 fo. 114v. I am grateful to Sam Harper for this reference.

  9 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 115–16.

  10 TNA, E404/78/3/9.

  11 TNA, E404/78/3/33.

  12 BL, Har 433 III, pp. 109–11.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Ibid., p. 259.

  15 BL, Har 433 II, p. 82.

  16 BL, Har 433 III, p. 259.

  17 BL, Har 433 I, p. 3.

  18 CPR, 1476–85, p. 441.

  19 BL, Har 433 I, p. 3.

  20 LPL, MS 474 fos.139v–140v.

  21 LPL, MS 474 fos. 184–184v.

  22 J. Raine, ‘The Statutes Ordained by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, for the College of Middleham, Dated 4 July, 18 Edward IV 1478’, Archaeological Journal, vol. IV (1847), pp. 161–70.

  23 Ibid.

  24 W. G. Searl, The History of the Queen’s College of St Margaret ad St Bernard in the University of Cambridge, vol. I, Cambridge, 1867, pp. 89–92.

  25 Sutton, ‘“A Curious Searcher”‘, p. 65.

  26 P. W. Hammond, ‘Richard III’s Books: III. English New Testament’, The Ricardian, vol. 7, no. 98 (1987), pp. 479–85.

  27 TNA, DL29/648/10485; J. K. Allison, Victoria County History: East Riding, vol. I: Hull, Oxford, 1969, p. 398; Sutton, ‘“A Curious Searcher”‘, p. 67.

  28 LPL, MS 474, fo. 179v.

  29 BL, Additional MS 38,603, fos. 57v–58.

  30 LPL, MS 474, fo. 183v; Raine, Archaeological Journal, vol. IV (1847), pp. 169–70.

  31 J. Hughes, ‘“True Ornamens to Know a Holy Man”: Northern Religious Life and the Piety of Richard III’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), The North of England in the Age of Richard III, Sutton, 1996, pp. 178–9.

  17. ‘COMMOTION AND WAR’

  1 On 16 June, orders were sent to the constable of the Tower of London to deliver two serpentines, two guns, twelve hackbushes, ten steel crossbows, sixty longbows, a hundred sheaves of arrows and two barrels of gunpowder. BL, Har 433 II, p. 142. Two weeks later, a letter was sent to all sheriffs and constables, announcing that the king had appointed his councillor and clerk Alexander Lye ‘to take up in our name all victuals, soldiers, mariners, artificers, labourers, all carts, boats and all other stuff and horses waynes, all timber stones as he shall think necessary requisite to our use’. BL, Har 433 II, p. 145. John Papedy was to raise mariners and soldiers ‘in our name at our price and wages … to do us service in certain our ships’. Ibid.