by Dan Jones
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES
CCR Calendar of Close Rolls
CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls
CSP Milan Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts in the Archives and Collections of Milan 1385–1618
CSP Spain Calendar of State Papers, Spain
CSP Venice Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice
EHD English Historical Documents
EHR English Historical Review
L&P Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII (online edition)
POPC Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council
PROME Parliament Rolls of Medieval England (online edition)
INTRODUCTION
1 The French ambassador to England, Charles de Marillac, thought Margaret ‘above eighty years old’; Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, reckoned her ‘nearly ninety’. L&P XVI 868; CSP Spain, 1538–42, 166
2 For this and below see H. Pierce, The Life, Career and Political Significance of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473–1541 (University of Wales, Bangor, 1996), chapter 8 passim
3 CSP Spain, 1538–42, 166
4 D. Seward, The Last White Rose: Dynasty, Rebellion and Treason – The Secret Wars against the Tudors (London, 2010), 291
5 CSP Venice, V (1534–54) 104–6
6 Ibid., 108
7 M. Callcott, Little Arthur’s History of England (London, 1835), 112. For further historical uses and development of the phrase, see OED ‘Rose’, 6a. Eng. Hist.
8 W. A. Rebhorn (ed. and trans.), The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio ( London/New York, 2013), 351 n. 3
9 See for example BL Arundel 66 f. 1v; BL Egerton 1147 f. 71; BL Royal 16 f. 173v
10 Notably the D’Arcy family. See H. Gough and J. Parker, A Glossary of Terms Used in Heraldry (London, 1894), 500–1
11 Robbins, R. H. (ed.), Historical Poems of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (New York, 1959), 215–18
12 B. Williams, Chronique de la traison et mort de Richart Deux roy Dengleterre (London, 1846), 151; see below, n. 24 to chapter 18
13 H. Riley (ed.), Ingulph’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland with the Continuations of Peter of Blois and Anonymous Writers (London, 1908) (hereafter Croyland Continuations), 506
14 A good example is BL 16 F II, especially f. 137: this book, commissioned under Edward IV, was unfinished on the king’s death and completed under Henry VII, whose artists liberally plastered it with red roses and other Lancastrian-Tudor insignia.
I Beginnings
1 : KING OF ALL THE WORLD
1 T. Johnes (ed.), The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, I 439
2 T. Rymer, Foedera, conventiones, literae, et cujuscunque generis acta publica, inter reges Angliae, et alios quosuis imperatores, reges, … ab anno 1101, ad nostra usque tempora, habita aut tractata; … In lucem missa de mandato Reginae (London, 1735), IX 907
3 Charles’s murdered friend was the constable of France, Olivier de Clisson.
4 For a comprehensive discussion of Charles’s illness, see R. C. Gibbons, The Active Queenship of Isabeau of Bavaria, 1392–1417: Voluptuary, Virago or Villainess (University of Reading, 1997), 27–40
5 Henrici Quinti Angliae Regis Gratia, quoted in EHD IV 211–18
6 Ibid.
7 For a succinct account of Henry’s conquests following Agincourt, see J. Barker, Conquest: The English Kingdom of France 1417–1450 (London, 2009), 1–45
8 In return for this Queen Isabeau in particular has never been popularly rehabilitated in French history. She is regularly slandered as the greatest whore and traitor of her age, whose numerous sexual misdeeds included an affair with Duke Philip and the bastard birth of the dauphin. For a sensitive rehabilitation see T. Adams, The Life and Afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria (Baltimore, 2010) and Gibbons, Active Queenship and ‘Isabeau of Bavaria’ in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6 (1996)
9 Speed quoted in A. Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, from the Norman Conquest: With Anecdotes of their Courts (12 vols, London, 1840–8), III 97
10 Ibid., III 98
11 J. Shirley (trans. and ed.), A Parisian Journal 1405–1449 (Oxford, 1968), 151
12 Rymer, Foedera, IX 920
13 J. Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996), 113
14 Ibid., 439
15 Gower, quoted in G. L. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), 588
16 Ibid., 588–94
17 The ‘Agincourt Carol’ is printed in EHD IV 214–15
18 Quoted in Strickland, Queens of England, III 101
19 D. Preest (trans.), and J. G. Clark (intro.), The Chronica Majora of Thomas Walsingham (1376–1422) (Woodbridge, 2005), 438
20 C. L. Kingsford, Chronicles of London (Oxford, 1905), 162–5
21 Strecche in EHD IV 229
22 Shirley (ed.), Parisian Journal, 356 n. 1
23 B. Wolffe, Henry VI (2nd edn, London, 2001), 28
24 For a discussion of all the royal minorities of medieval England, see C. Beem (ed.), The Royal Minorities of Medieval and Early Modern England (New York, 2008), passim
25 Ecclesiastes 10:16
2 : WE WERE IN PERFECT HEALTH
1 R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (Stroud, 1981), 51–7; Wolffe, Henry VI, 29–38
2 For more on the history of the residence, see R. Brook, The Story of Eltham Palace (London, 1960), passim
3 H. M. Colvin, History of the King’s Works (London, 1963), II 934–5
4 For the best explanation of the conceptual framework and reality of government in the early fifteenth century, see Watts, Henry VI, 13–101
5 The regency of France was in fact first bequeathed by Henry’s will to Philip the Good of Burgundy, with a stipulation that if he declined the task then rule should fall to Bedford; on Charles VI’s death this is precisely what happened.
6 Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 279–80
7 Ibid., 281
8 CCR Henry VI 1422–9, 46
9 CCR Henry VI 1422–9, 54
10 POPC III 233
11 POPC III 86–7
12 PROME 1428
13 J. Gairdner (ed.), The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century (‘Gregory’s Chronicle’) (1876), 159. For a detailed summary of the Gloucester–Beaufort dispute, see Griffiths, Henry VI, 73–81; G. L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline (Oxford, 1988), 134–49; and L. Rhymer, ‘Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and the City of London’ in L. Clark (ed.), The Fifteenth Century 8, 47–58
14 Ibid.
15 Pedro, duke of Coimbra was the second son of Philippa of Lancaster and her husband John I. His maternal grandfather was John of Gaunt and he was, therefore, a first cousin, once removed, of Henry VI. He was famous for his extensive travels about Europe, and would return to England later in the 1420s for Henry VI’s coronation.
16 Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 84
3 : BORN TO BE KING
1 The best analysis of the battle of Verneuil is M. K. Jones, ‘The Battle of Verneuil (17 August 1424): Towards a History of Courage’ in War in History 9 (2002), which this account follows.
2 Shirley (ed.), Parisian Journal, 198; Jones, ‘Battle of Verneuil’, 398
3 ‘Book of Noblesse’, quoted in ibid., 407. ‘Worship’ was a medieval concept perhaps best translated as ‘honourable respect and gentility’.
4 Shirley (ed.), Parisian Journal, 200
5 BL Add. MS 18850 f. 256v
6 Jean de Wavrin, quoted in J. Stratford, The Bedford Inventories: The Worldly Goods of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France (1389–1435) (London, 1993), 108 n. 15
7 Barker, Conquest, 74. The French text of Bedford’s 1423 ordinances may be found transcribed as an appendix to B. J. H. Rowe, ‘Discipline in the Norman Garrisons under Bedford, 1422–35’ in EHR 46 (1931) 200–6
8 Barker, Conquest, 67–9
9 B. J. H. Rowe, ‘King Henry VI’s Claim to France in Picture and Poem’ in The Library s4, 13 (1932), 82
10 BL MS Royal 15 E VI, reprinted in part in S. McKendrick, J. Lowden and K. Doyle, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London, 2011), 379 and available in full online at bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts
11 Although Bedford did not realise it, this propaganda strategy would be the model – or at least the archetype – for rival kings on both sides of the Channel for the century that followed. See pp. 224–5.
12 Rowe, ‘King Henry VI’s Claim’, 78
13 F. W. D. Brie, The Brut: or, The Chronicles of England (London, 1908), II 454. For the siege of Orléans and the role of Joan of Arc in its relief, see Barker, Conquest, 95–124.
14 For the latest biography of Joan, see Helen Castor’s forthcoming Joan of Arc (London, 2014), which the account here follows in several places.
15 POPC III 340
16 See n. 15 to chapter 2. For details here included of the ceremony see Brut, II 454; Gregory’s Chronicle, 161–77; the traditional order of service for English coronations in the fifteenth century, known as the Forma et Modus, is printed and translated in L. G. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records (London, 1901), 172–90
17 Gregory’s Chronicle
18 Brut, II 460
19 Shirley (ed.), Parisian Journal, 271
20 Ibid., 272. Parisian snobbery about the culinary efforts of other races seems to be a timeless trait.
21 H. N. MacCracken, Minor Poems of John Lydgate (Oxford, 1961–2), II 630–1; J. G. Nichols, Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London (Camden Society, v53, 1852), 16
4 : OWEYN TIDR
1 F. Palgrave, Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of His Majesty’s Exchequer (London, 1836), II 172–5
2 POPC V 46–7
3 For the lives of Owen Tudor’s ancestors, see R. A. Griffiths and R. S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (Gloucester, 1985), 5–24, and R. L. Thomas, The Political Career, Estates and ‘Connection’ of Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke and Duke of Bedford (d.1495) (PhD thesis, University of Wales, Swansea, 1971), chapter 1, 1–29
4 Letter of Catherine de Valois quoted in DNB, ‘Catherine de Valois’
5 J. A. Giles (ed.), Incerti scriptoris chronicon Angliae de regnis trium regum Lancastriensium Henrici IV, Henrici V et Henrici VI (London 1848), 17
6 Catherine’s own family history told her this: her eldest sister Isabella had been the child bride of another king of England, Richard II, and following Richard’s deposition and death she had returned to France to marry Charles duke of Orléans.
7 PROME February 1426, item 34
8 Sir John Wynn of Gwydir, quoted in Thomas, Jasper Tudor, 13
9 PROME September 1402, items 88–102
10 Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 178–9 n. 34, has speculated that Edmund Tudor may indeed have been the son of Catherine and Edmund Beaufort, in which case the later house of Tudor would have had Beaufort roots on both sides. It seems more probable to me that if Edmund Beaufort had any relationship to Edmund Tudor then it was that of godfather, rather than biological father.
11 See Thomas, Jasper Tudor, 19–20
12 National Archives SC 8/124/6186
13 Excavations in the cemetery on the site at Bermondsey Abbey found a high incidence of bodily trauma, particularly of healed fractures among those buried there. Report by the Centre for Bioarchaeology, museumoflondon.org.
14 Brut, II 470–1
15 The account of Owen Tudor’s arrest as given to the privy council, quoted here, is in POPC V 46–50
16 Ibid., 49–50. The article accompanying the council minute detailing Owen’s arrest appears to be preparatory notes for a speech to the king himself, explaining what Owen had done, and rehearsing all the reasons why Henry ought to be outraged by his stepfather’s ‘malicious purpos and ymaginacion’.
17 See M. Bassett, ‘Newgate Prison in the Middle Ages’ in Speculum 18 (1943), passim
18 Robin Ddu quoted and translated in H. Evans, Wales and the Wars of the Roses (Cambridge, 1915), 70 n. 3
19 Priests were necessary to celebrate mass – then as now a rite which women were forbidden to perform. The most complete guide to medieval life at Barking Abbey can be found in T. Barnes, A Nun’s Life: Barking Abbey in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods (MA thesis, Portland State University, 2004).
20 Rymer, Foedera, X 828
21 Thomas, Jasper Tudor, 26; Rymer, Foedera, X 828
II What is a King?
1 Brut, II 516
5 : MY LORD OF SUFFOLK’S GOOD LORDSHIP
1 For the idea that England’s medieval population had begun to conceive of the historical coherence of the ‘Hundred Years War’ by the early fifteenth century, see W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Domestic Response to the Hundred Years War’ in A. Curry and M. Hughes (eds), Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 1994), 83–5
2 C. D. Taylor, ‘Henry V, Flower of Chivalry’ in G. Dodd (ed.), Henry V: New Interpretations (York, 2013), 218. The Nine Worthies were Hector, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon, hero of the First Crusade.
3 Vita Henrici Quinti, translated in J. Matusiak, Henry V (London, 2013), 3–4
4 For dating and provenance of the famous ‘Windsor’ portrait of Henry VI, see notes at http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitConservation/mw03075/King-Henry-VI
5 See Griffiths, Henry VI, 241
6 POPC IV 134
7 M. James (ed.), Henry VI: A Reprint of John Blacman’s Memoir, with Translation and Notes (Cambridge, 1919) (hereafter ‘Blacman’)
8 Ibid., 36–8
9 Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 251
10 Now catalogued in Stratford, The Bedford Inventories
11 Brut, II 573
12 Wolffe, Henry VI, 87–92; Watts, Henry VI, 128–34
13 POPC V 88–9
14 John de Wavrin (ed.), and W. Hardy (trans.), A Collection of the Chronicles and Ancient Histories of Great Britain, Now Called England (London, 1864–87), III 178
15 Ibid.; Barker, Conquest, 121–2
16 H. Castor, The King, the Crown and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power 1399–1461 (Oxford, 2000), 82–93
17 J. Gairdner (ed.), The Paston Letters (new edn, 6 vols, London, 1904), IV 75
6 : A DEAR MARRIAGE
1 The fullest modern account of Margaret’s coronation procession is in G. Kipling, ‘The London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou’ in Medieval English Theatre 4 (1982); a more widely available summary is in H. Maurer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2003), 17–22
2 Gregory’s Chronicle, 154
3 Brut, II 486
4 See above, p. 39
5 Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 41
6 Ibid., 21
7 MacCracken, Minor Poems of John Lydgate, II 844–7
8 J. Rosenthal, ‘The Estates and Finances of Richard Duke of York (1411–1460)’ in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 2 (1965), 118
9 For a full list of York’s manors, see ibid., appendix I 194–6
10 Commission transcribed from the original document in Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, in P. Johnson, Duke Richard of York 1411–1460 (Oxford, 1988), 226
11 T. Pugh, ‘Richard Plantagenet (1411–60), Duke of York, as the King’s Lieutenant in France and Ireland’ in J. G. Rowe (ed.), Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Society: Essays Presented to J. R. Lander (Toronto, 1986), 122
12 C. Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge, 1997), 98–103, offers a succinct articulation of arguments against York as an isolated and ambitious rival for the crown during the 1440s. See also Watts, Henry VI, 237– 8, especially nn. 137–40. A more ‘dynastic’ reading of the decade can be found in R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Sense of Dynasty in the Re
ign of Henry VI’ in C. Ross (ed.), Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1979), passim but especially 23–5.
13 All this closely follows Griffiths, ibid., 20–1
14 Blacman, 29–30. Obviously, Blacman had an interest in talking up the king’s piety and chastity; nevertheless, his portrayal of a squeamish king who would swoon at the sight of naked flesh is both internally consistent and at one with our broader understanding of Henry VI’s character.
15 Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 41
16 The jewel was a gift when Margaret was finally pregnant in 1453. J. Stevenson (ed.), Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry the Sixth (1861–4), II ii 208
17 Margaret’s role in the cession of Maine is discussed in Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 25–38; also see B. M. Cron, ‘The Duke of Suffolk, the Angevin Marriage, and the Ceding of Maine, 1445’ in Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994), 77–99
18 Brut, II 511
19 J. David (ed.), An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI (Camden Society v44, 1838), 116
20 Ibid., 62
21 Ibid.
22 Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 157
7 : AWAY, TRAITORS, AWAY!
1 C. A. F. Meekings, ‘Thomas Kerver’s Case, 1444’, in EHR 90 (1975), 330–46, from which the following narrative is taken.
2 Brut, II 485
3 Quoted in Griffiths, Henry VI, 256
4 Indictment from King’s Bench, reprinted in EHD IV 264
5 PROME February 1449, item 22
6 ‘Between 1437 and 1450 throughout the shires of England the personal influence of the king in the field of justice, law and order was at best a negative one.’ Wolffe, Henry VI, 116–17
7 See M. H. Keen and M. J. Daniel, ‘English Diplomacy and the Sack of Fougères in 1449’ in History 59, 375–91
8 Griffiths, Henry VI, 521; Harriss, Shaping the Nation, 584; Barker, Conquest, 404
9 A simple cash conversion of £372,000 at 1450 prices would give us a rough figure of £202,000,000 in 2005 prices. But this does not quite do justice to the monstrous scale of Henry VI’s indebtedness, which according to the parliamentary figures was nearly 3,400% of his annual income and spiralling every year, regardless of the costs of war with France.