The Third Plantagenet: George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III's Brother

by John Ashdown-Hill

  3. John Rous, using the calendar then in use – according to which 1478 did not begin until 25 March – ascribed Clarence’s death and burial to February 1477 (see below: chapter 15 and Appendix 2).

  4. H. Ellis, ed., The New Chronicles of England and France by Robert Fabyan (London, 1811), p.666.

  5. Ellis, Polydore Vergil’s English History, p.167.

  6. Harl. 433, 3, 108; J. Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII vol. 1 (London, 1861), p.68, my emphasis.

  7. See Ashdown-Hill and Carson, ‘The Execution of the Earl of Desmond’.

  8. ‘Regina … estimavit nunquam prolem suam ex rege iam susceptam regnaturam, nisi dux Clarentie aufferretur: quod et ipsi regi facile persuasit … Condemnatus fuit: et ultimo supplicio affectus. Supplicii autem genus illud placuit, ut in dolium mollissimi falerni mersus vitam cum morte commutaret’ (Mancini, pp.62–3). Mancini states at the end of his text that he finished writing it on 1 December 1483.

  9. The surviving MS dates from between 1498 and 1503, and contains some interpolations, but the original text may have been completed in about 1489.

  10. Rather similarly, Anne Boleyn, having been accused of witchcraft among other things in the following century, was sentenced to be burned to death – but with the proviso that the king could commute her sentence to beheading.

  11. Oudit an LXXVII, advint ou royaume d’Angleterre que pour ce que le roy Edouard dudit royaume fut acertené que ung sien frère, qui estoit duc de Clairence, avoit intencion de passer la mer et aler descendre en Flandres pour donner aide et secours à sa seur duchesse en Bourgongne, vesve dudit defunct le derrenier duc, fist icellui roy Edouard prendre et constituer prisonnier sondit frère et mettre prisonnier en la tour de Londres, où il fut depuis détenu prisonnier par certaine longue espace de temps pendant lequel ledit roy Edouart assembla son conseil, et par la deliberacion d’icellui fut condempné à estre mené depuis ladicte tour de Londres traynant sur ses fesses jusques au gibet de ladicte ville de Londres, et ilec estre ouvert et ses entrailles gecter dedens ung feu, et puis lui copper le col et mettre le corps en quatre quartiers. Mais depuis, par la grant prière et requeste de la mere desdiz Edouard et de Clairence fut sa condampnacion changée et muée, tellement que, ou moys de Février oudit an, icellui de Clairance estant prisonnier en ladicte tour, fut prins et tiré de sadicte prison, et après qu’il ot esté confessé, fut mis et bouté tout vif dedens une queue de Malevoisye defonsée par l’un des boutz, la teste en bas, et y demoura jusques à ce qu’il eust rendu l’esperit, et puis fut tire dehors et lui fut le col coppé, et après ensevely et porté enterrer à … avecques sa femme, jadis fille du conte de Waruik, qui mourut à la journée de Coventry avecques le prince de Galles, filz du saint roy Henry d’Angleterre, de Lancastre (de Roye, vol. 2, pp.63–4).

  12. ‘A cask of wine, or sometimes a measure of capacity, usually equal to half a tun or two hogsheads or four barrels’ (from Commynes, p.89).

  13. Commynes, p.89.

  14. Holinshed, whose account was published in 1577, also reports that Clarence had been ‘privily drowned in a butt of malmsie’, though he erroneously gives the date as 11 March (HCSP, p.139).

  15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drowning_victims (consulted January 2013).

  16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_the_plank (consulted January 2013).

  17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning-pit (consulted January 2013). My emphasis

  18. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drowning (consulted January 2013).

  19. He was descended from John of Gaunt, and married to Edward IV’s eldest sister, Anne.

  20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Holland,_3rd_Duke_of_Exeter (consulted February 2013).

  21. Gairdner, History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third (Cambridge, 1898), pp.32–3, n.2.

  22. A.H. Thomas & I.D. Thomley, eds, The Great Chronicle of London (London, 1938), pp.236–7.

  BURIAL AT TEWKESBURY

  The Clarence vault at Tewkesbury Abbey was probably constructed in 1476/7. Precise dates are not recorded, but since the body of the Duchess of Clarence lay unburied on a hearse in the abbey church for thirty-five days, the work probably took place during this five-week period. The vault must have been completed by Saturday 8 February 1476/7, since on that date it received Isabel’s body.

  The Clarence vault, Tewkesbury Abbey. Copyright Neil H. Birdsall, Architect.

  Although it is usually known as ‘the Clarence vault’, Julian Litten has suggested that it might more accurately be described as a stone-lined grave with access steps.1 It was constructed by being dug out, given a stone roof, and lined with stone walling and floor tiles. The location is behind – i.e. to the east of – the reredos of the high altar of Tewkesbury Abbey church. At the time of its construction, the vault lay ‘in front of the door of the chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the opening of the tomb was made opposite the entrance of the chapel of Saint Edmund the Martyr’.2 As the original Latin words of the Abbey chronicle state, the vault was:

  artificialiter facto retro altaro majus, ante capellam Beatae Mariae ecclesiae conventualis, et ostium sepulturae positum est ex opposite ostii capellae Sancti Edmundi martyris.3

  The eastern Lady Chapel no longer exists. It was destroyed just over sixty years after the burial of the Duke of Clarence, following the dissolution of Tewkesbury Abbey. One writer has noted that:

  the fourteenth century stone screen-work round the choir side of the ambulatory, particularly at the back of the reredos and the north-east portion adjacent to it, is very interesting work. The lower part is panelled with tracery in low relief, with the arches springing from diminutive heads. All the shafting is ornamented with a small ball-like enrichment. Above the panelling is some open tracery of beautiful design. By reference to the plan it will be seen that much of this original screen-work has been set back several feet, possibly to make room for the Clarence vault.4

  This setting back of the stonework was probably the initial preparation for a projected Clarence chantry chapel above the vault. However, it appears that the plan was never completed.5

  The vault had been dug out of the ground in the centre of the eastern end of the ambulatory, directly behind the high altar and its reredos. In fact, measurements indicate that the western wall of the vault is located approximately ten inches west of the screen work at the back of the reredos. The vault is rectangular: approximately 9ft from north to south and 8ft from east to west. The ceiling is covered by a flattened arched vault, 6ft 6in high at the centre.6 Just as the western wall of the vault extends behind the eastern wall of the reredos screen, so also ‘the crown of its arch rises a few inches above the [modern] pavement level’. This is currently concealed by a stone platform constructed in 1878 by Sir George Gilbert Scott.7

  The vault is entered by means of six and a half steps of slightly variable size leading down from a large rectangular opening on its northern side. The present opening is 5ft by 3ft, and although the surrounding stonework was modified in the nineteenth century, it is probable that the original opening was of similar dimensions.

  The floor of the vault is covered by tiles of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century date, probably brought from the reserve stock either of the abbey itself, or of the local tilers. There is every reason to suppose that this tiled floor formed part of the original construction of the vault. The tiles were certainly in place prior to 1709 (see below). Originally, the tiles were glazed, though many of them have now lost their glaze. In the centre of the floor there is a cross, formed originally of thirty-seven encaustic tiles, each approximately 5.5in square.8 This cross was surrounded by plain glazed tiles, most of which are approximately 6in square, though down the southern side of the cross 7in square tiles have been employed, some of which were cut or broken to fit the space. Amongst the 6in tiles, thirteen encaustic patterned tiles pepper the floor in what appears to be a random manner. Some of the 6in and 5.5in patterned tiles bear designs f
ound also in other parts of the Tewkesbury Abbey flooring. Others appear to be unique to the Clarence vault. In the north-eastern corner a roughly rectangular area just at the foot of the stairs was covered in larger tiles, each approximately 7in square, most of these seem to have been plain, with an olive-green glaze. However, one of the broken half-tiles in this section, at the very foot of the stairs, is patterned with a yellow and green glaze. Apart from the central cross, which divided the vault into two sections, north and south – presumably to delineate the spaces for the two coffins of the Clarence couple – there appears to have been no special plan to the pattern of the flooring. Normally, of course, it would not have been visible after the burials.

  Just over a year after the interment of the duchess, on Wednesday 25 February 1477/8, the Duke of Clarence was also buried at Tewkesbury Abbey. Several records survive of this. One of our most important witnesses for George’s burial at Tewkesbury – and also against the burial there of his baby son, Richard – is the fifteenth-century Warwickshire priest and chronicler, John Rous. Further evidence for the duke’s burial at Tewkesbury Abbey will be presented shortly. It is true that none of the surviving documentary evidence states precisely where in the abbey George was buried. However, since the Clarence vault certainly existed at the time of his interment, and since it was large enough to contain two burials, and had apparently been planned to do so, it is virtually certain that he was buried there.

  As we have seen, Clarence was put to death on Wednesday 18 February. The duke’s body must have been prepared for burial almost immediately after he was killed. This was the normal practice in the case of a royal death. Embalming usually took about a day, after which royal bodies normally lay in state for about a week.9 In Clarence’s case, however, there can have been no lying in state. By the evening of Thursday 19 February the duke’s body, embalmed and wrapped in cere cloth,10 probably lay in its coffin ready for his last journey. Instead of a royal lying-in-state in the capital, Clarence’s body was destined to make the 125-mile (200km) journey to Tewkesbury, a journey which must have taken about three days.11

  The Office of the Dead in the fifteenth century.

  The usual pattern for royal burials in the late fifteenth century was that the embalmed corpse was first wrapped in cere cloth and then sealed in lead sheeting, which formed an inner coffin or ‘anthropomorphic shell’. This was then placed in a thin outer wooden coffin. This seems to have been done in 1481 for Edward IV’s daughter-in-law, Anne Mowbray, Duchess of York and Norfolk, and it was done in 1483 for Edward IV himself. A similar pattern was employed by Richard III for the reburial of the remains of Henry VI at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 1484.12 On that occasion a full-sized outer wooden coffin was used for cosmetic purposes, while the small inner coffin that contained Henry’s disarticulated bones was made of lead. Elizabeth Woodville was given no lead inner coffin. She had only a coffin made of wood. It is known from other sources that Henry VII was giving his mother-in-law a deliberately cheap funeral.13 Subsequently, Henry VII himself, Edward VI and James I were all buried in cere cloth, lead and wood according to the standard pattern. It is probable, therefore, that this pattern was also followed in the case of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence.14 Today, however, no trace of cere cloth, of lead coffins, or of wood, survives in the Clarence vault. Cere cloth and wood would have perished in the water that regularly invades the vault. As for lead, it was a valuable substance, inviting the attention of plunderers when the Clarence vault was later opened and workmen were employed within it.15

  The only possible trace of any Clarence coffins that survives today comprises six iron coffin handles, a piece of thin iron plate, and an iron nail about 2.5in in length. When the surviving bones from the vault were examined in 1982, this metalwork was found with them, and it is now preserved in the Parvis chamber at Tewkesbury Abbey. Julian Litten, who examined the best-preserved handle, together with the nail and the iron plate, in 1986, considered that this metalwork could be fifteenth-century in date, and that it certainly pre-dated the eighteenth century (when the only other known burials in the Clarence vault took place). It is possible, therefore, that these six coffin handles were originally attached to one of the wooden Clarence outer coffins. Medieval wooden coffins did not always have handles, but since the body of the Duke of Clarence had to be transported to Tewkesbury from London, handles may have been attached to his outer wooden coffin in order to make it easier to move. However, they could have come from a pre-eighteenth-century coffin which belonged to someone other than the Duke or Duchess of Clarence (see below).

  On Friday 20 February, in a letter written by the royal councillor, Dr Thomas Langton, we hear that the king had ‘assignyd certen Lords to go with the body of the Dukys of Clarence to Teuxbury, where he shall be beryid; the Kyng intendis to do right worshipfully for his sowle’.16 The lords in question are not named by Dr Langton. Nevertheless, it appears that Clarence was being given a respectable funeral. It is conceivable that one of the lords escorting the body was Clarence’s younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Gloucester had certainly been in London and Westminster since soon after Clarence’s arrest the previous summer. He had reportedly been striving to persuade Edward IV to show clemency. Gloucester is then said to have left Westminster soon after Clarence’s execution. Subsequently, he slowly made his way back north to Middleham Castle, where he arrived before the end of March.17 He could have travelled via Tewkesbury.

  Clarence’s coffin and its escort probably left the capital on 20 February, and the funeral party may perhaps have paused that night at the Cluniac abbey of Reading, where Clarence’s distant ancestor King Henry I lay buried. After a second night’s repose at some other religious house – possibly the Augustinian abbey at Cirencester – the little cortege will finally have arrived at Tewkesbury Abbey some time on the evening of Monday 23 February. In the course of Tuesday 24 February – just one week after Clarence’s death – the offices of vespers and matins for the dead were probably celebrated for the abbey’s deceased patron in its choir. Then on the morning of Wednesday 25 February, requiem masses would have been sung for him, at the end of which Clarence’s body will almost certainly have been carried down the steps to join the remains of his late wife in the vault behind the high altar.18

  Edward IV may also have made arrangements to commemorate Clarence’s burial in some way, but if so, no documentation survives. Evidence does exist to suggest that further work on Clarence’s tomb may have been carried out several years later. On 4 August 1483 Clarence’s younger brother, the former Duke of Gloucester – then King Richard III – visited Tewkesbury. While he was there, Richard made arrangements to discharge a debt which Clarence had left owing to the abbot and monastery of Tewkesbury.19 Perhaps this comprised payments due for the construction of the Clarence vault and chantry.20

  Although no medieval funerary brasses now cover the Clarence vault, a brass memorial did once exist. In 1826 The Gentleman’s Magazine published the following:

  At the back of the high altar, beneath a large flat blue stone, bearing evident marks of once having been inlaid with brass or other similar metal, is a flight of eight stone steps,21 which leads to a fine arched vault, wherein the remains of Isabel Duchess of Clarence, eldest daughter of Richard Neville Earl of Warwick, were deposited in 1477; and where, also, her illustrious husband, George Duke of Clarence, brother to King Edward the Fourth, most probably, after his mysterious death in the Tower, found that repose which was denied to him in his lifetime.22

  Thus, despite the fact that the vault had been opened in the eighteenth century, the original brass matrix was still in place in 1826. It must once have borne brass figures representing George and Isabel, together with representations of their arms and suitable inscriptions. For a tentative reconstruction of the possible appearance of such a monument, see plate 23.

  George himself would have had little time or opportunity to arrange for Isabel’s commemoration in this way – and even had he done s
o, someone else would later have needed to add his own figure and inscription to the stone. The most probable explanation therefore appears to be that the matrix was made and installed in 1483, at the behest of Richard III, following the latter’s visit to Tewkesbury, and his financial outlay on behalf of his dead brother, Clarence. The surviving description of the Tewkesbury Clarence vault matrix sounds very similar to the slab which was installed – presumably also by Richard III – over the Westminster Abbey tomb of Richard’s queen, Anne Neville (younger sister of Isabel, Duchess of Clarence). Queen Anne Neville’s Westminster matrix must have been ordered, made and installed in 1485, but ‘To-day all that remains of her tomb is a bluish-grey marble slab in the pavement … Brass nails can still be found, showing that once a “brass” marked [her] last resting place.’23 Since both matrices were of blue stone and both held brasses, it is not unreasonable to suggest that both were commissioned at about the same time (1483/85), and by the same person – Richard III.

  Richard may also have planned to complete the Clarence chantry, but his unexpected death in 1485 prevented it. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, the Clarence tomb was marked by a blue stone matrix, originally containing brasses. Despite the fact that the vault was subsequently opened on a number of occasions, it appears that this blue stone matrix was consistently replaced over the vault entrance up until April 1876. However, it probably lost its brass insets in the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

  NOTES

  1. Former Research Assistant Administrator, Department of Design, Prints and Drawings, V&A; report of a meeting with Dr Richard Morris, then Hon. Archaeologist at Tewkesbury Abbey, in 1986. I am grateful to Dr Morris for a copy of the report of this discussion.