Based on her later assessment of the date of writing, however, Hanham concludes that the ‘prince’ of the note must be Richard of Shrewsbury, the younger son of Edward IV. This seems a highly unlikely interpretation. As we have seen, Richard of Shrewsbury possessed his own proper titles, including Duke of York and Duke of Norfolk. One would expect reference to him to be by one of these – as it seems to be in Lord Howard’s household accounts for 30 January 1482/83, when Lord Howard gave 2s 6d ‘to Poynes that dwellyd with my Lord of York, for to bye with a bowe’.18 Other references to Richard of Shrewsbury during his father’s lifetime, and after his creation as Duke of York, are generally to ‘the right high and mighty prince, the duke of York’.19 There seems to be no surviving example of a document which omits his ducal title and calls him ‘prince’ only.
On the other hand, during his father’s lifetime the future Edward V was Prince of Wales. ‘My Lorde Prynsse’ is therefore far more likely to refer to him than to his younger brother. If the ‘king’ of the note is indeed Edward IV and the ‘prince’, the future Edward V, the only thing that George Cely has to say about Edward V (then still Prince of Wales) is to speculate whether he ‘were troubled’. This certainly does not establish that he was dead at the time – or even rumoured to be so.
Armstrong goes on to associate the questionable evidence of the Cely note with the inference that Edward V’s younger brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, may have been dead by 28 June 1483. Armstrong’s inference has been drawn from the elevation of John, Lord Howard, to the dukedom of Norfolk (previously held by Richard of Shrewsbury) on that date.20 In this connection Armstrong raises the very interesting concept of the distinction between legal and physical death. He argues that in acknowledging Edward IV’s prior marriage to Eleanor Talbot, and the consequent illegitimacy of his children by Elizabeth Woodville, the Three Estates of the Realm created a situation in which Edward V and Richard of Shrewsbury were legally dead. As princes of the realm they did not exist and all their titles were extinct. This is an important concept to bear in mind. It is also a proposition which appears to receive some support from the petition of Elizabeth Talbot, dowager Duchess of Norfolk, to Henry VII, dated 27 November 1489.21
The dowager Duchess of Norfolk was Richard of Shrewsbury’s mother-in-law, and Eleanor Talbot’s younger sister. Her petition relates to the confiscated manor of Weston, Baldock, Herts. Elizabeth Talbot sets out in detail the transmission of this manor as part of the Mowbray inheritance, including Edward IV’s provision for its reversion (in the event of her own death, and that of her daughter, Anne) to Richard of Shrewsbury. However, she then makes no reference whatsoever to the latter’s death, merely stating: ‘afterwards, the said Anne dying, the reversion of the manor descended to John Howard, last duke of Norfolk … and to William, then viscount, now marquis of Berkeley.’22 The omission is interesting, because if Richard of Shrewsbury was known to have died in June 1483, and John Howard had acquired the manor in consequence of the boy’s death, there was no possible reason, in 1489, why Elizabeth Talbot should not have said so. On the other hand, if the reversion of the manor had been held to descend to John Howard because of the illegitimacy of Richard of Shrewsbury, that was a matter to which it would certainly have been extremely unwise for the duchess to make reference in 1489, during the reign of Henry VII – the husband of Richard of Shrewsbury’s sister. This may very well explain why the dowager duchess chose to gloss over the point.
It is certainly possible that Edward V died in the summer or autumn of 1483, under circumstances which will be explored in the next chapter. But if we reject the interpretations of the Cely note arrived at by Armstrong and Hanham, there is absolutely no reason to assume that Edward V’s younger brother, Richard of Shrewsbury, shared the same fate, or died at that time. Indeed, there is no proof that Richard of Shrewsbury died at any time between 1483 and 1485, or that he died in the Tower of London. As we have seen, the so-called ‘Princes in the Tower’ were not a single item.
Moreover, late fifteenth-century Yorkists showed very clearly by their conduct that at least some of them believed the young Richard to be still alive after 1485. It was for this reason that they supported the second Yorkist pretender. He is usually referred to by later writers as Perkin Warbeck, but he himself used the royal styles of ‘Richard of England’ or ‘King Richard’, and he undoubtedly claimed to be the younger son of Edward IV.23 This is the context within which we need to consider Bernard André’s suggestion that the Dublin King also claimed to be Richard.
So was Bernard André’s account of the Dublin King correct? Could the boy crowned in Dublin’s cathedral have been the real Richard of Shrewsbury – or an impostor pretending to be Richard of Shrewsbury? In point of fact, both of these suggestions appear improbable. According to those who saw him, the Dublin King was reported in the most official surviving sources to be a boy of about 10 years of age.24 Since no one can possibly have seen any record of the boy’s birth this estimate of the child-king’s age was presumably based upon his height and appearance. More will be said about this in Chapter 4, while contradictory (but less contemporary and official) evidence which assigns to the Dublin King a different age will be examined in Chapter 15.
For the moment, however, it is worth noting that the average height for a boy of 10 today is said to be 137cm (55in).25 In 1487 Richard of Shrewsbury would have been 14, not 10, years old. The average modern height for a 14-year-old boy is 163cm (65in). Moreover, since Edward IV was unusually tall, it seems unlikely that he would have fathered a short son.26 If anything, given the identity and physical appearance of his father, one would probably expect Richard of Shrewsbury to have been of above-average height. Yet the Dublin King was apparently at least 26cms (10in) shorter in 1487 than Richard of Shrewsbury should have been, were he merely of the average height for his age. This seems to suggest it is unlikely the boy was Richard, Duke of York – or even that he claimed to be.
As a result of André’s text, some historians, led by Polydore Vergil, have contended that the Dublin King underwent a change of identity during his career. It is proposed that at first he (or his supporters) said that he was Richard of Shrewsbury, but that later he changed his identity and claimed instead to be Edward of Clarence, Earl of Warwick. This has sometimes been used to suggest that silver ‘three crowns’ coins from Ireland which bear the name Richard might perhaps refer to ‘Lambert Simnel’. However, this argument is very weak. The issue of the Irish coinage of this period and what it shows will be explored in greater detail later. For the moment, though, it will suffice to point out that we have no way of knowing whether these coins refer to King Richard III, or to Perkin Warbeck, who styled himself as Richard of England.
As for the story of a change of identity, of course that was a useful weapon for official government spokesmen, whose principal objective was to undermine the credibility of the Dublin King. Thus, as we shall see, Polydore Vergil – who basically had an entirely different account of the pretender’s assumed identity than that of his colleague, Bernard André – nevertheless mentioned the same notion as André, namely that the Dublin King claimed to be Richard of Shrewsbury. In Vergil’s version of events the identity of Richard of Shrewsbury was assumed at first, but later changed.
All the evidence relating to the reign of the Dublin King, both from Ireland and from England, will be examined in detail in Part 3. As we shall then see very clearly, this evidence shows that, despite Polydore Vergil’s suggestion that he underwent a change in his royal identity during the course of his ‘reign’, in fact all the surviving contemporary evidence appears to show that the Dublin King consistently used the royal name of Edward. There is absolutely no evidence that he ever used the royal name of Richard.
The more or less inevitable conclusion is that, in his account, Bernard André simply made a mistake regarding the pretender’s royal identity. All the surviving evidence indicates that the name of Richard of Shrewsbury was never claimed by, or for, the Dublin King, either before or d
uring his ‘reign’. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that André’s account is unique among the early sources referring to the Dublin King. No other contemporary writer – whatever his political background – suggests that the boy’s long-term royal identity was based upon the claim that he was Richard of Shrewsbury. Perhaps André was confused by the later events involving Perkin Warbeck.
At present we possess no certain knowledge of the fate of Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York. One possible way to improve our understanding would be to re-examine the remains of children found at the Tower of London in 1674, and later reburied by Charles II in Westminster Abbey as Richard, Duke of York and his elder brother, Edward V. At present there is no certainty whether these remains really are those of the ‘princes’. It is not known whether they are the remains of males or females; nor is it known from what historical period they date.
Indeed, it is not even known for certain whether the bones in the urn at Westminster Abbey comprise the remains of only two individuals. In 2013, together with bone expert Dr Joyce Filer, I took part in a re-examination of the Clarence vault at Tewkesbury Abbey, where Richard III’s brother George, Duke of Clarence and his wife, Isabel, had been buried. This re-examination revealed that the remains preserved in the vault, which had previously been thought to represent two individuals, actually comprise parts of at least three, and possibly four people.27
DNA testing and carbon dating could potentially clarify such issues in respect of the alleged bones of the ‘princes’ at Westminster. In the meanwhile, all we can say, based upon the evidence currently available, is that Richard of Shrewsbury may have survived both the Tower of London and the reign of his uncle King Richard III. However, the important point in our current context is that it seems that there was never any connection between Richard of Shrewsbury and the persona of the Dublin King.
Notes
Abbreviations
CPR
Calendar of Patent Rolls
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
PROME
Parliament Rolls of Medieval England
1. Blank – but for the probable identity of the individual in question, see below.
2. D.F. Sutton, ed., Bernard André, De Vita atque Gestis Henrici Septimi Historia, on-line 2010, section 54.
3. E. Cavell, ed., The Heralds’ Memoir 1486–1490, Donington 2009, p. 59. Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Writhe, accessed September 2013.
4. For extensive consideration of this question see Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, and Ashdown-Hill, Royal Marriage Secrets.
5. For year dates of this kind, see the author’s note in the Introduction.
6. F. Sandford, Genealogical History of England, London 1707, p. 146.
7. For details of the Mowbray marriage and its context see J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Norfolk Requiem: The passing of the House of Mowbray’, Ricardian 12 March 2001, pp. 198–217.
8. In fact, the Crowland Chronicle gives two different versions of the time of Buckingham’s arrival. See J. Ashdown-Hill, Richard III’s ‘Beloved Cousyn’: John Howard and the House of York, Stroud 2009, pp. 86–7.
9. N. Pronay & J. Cox, eds, The Crowland Chronicle Continuations 1459–1486, London 1986, pp. 156–7.
10. For details of the council meeting, see Ashdown-Hill, ‘Beloved Cousyn’, p. 93.
11. Reportedly, Elizabeth Woodville herself had been anxious about the validity of her marriage in 1477. C.A.J. Armstrong, ed., D. Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard III, Gloucester 1989, pp. 62–3. See also J. Ashdown-Hill, The Third Plantagenet, George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III’s Brother, Stroud 2014.
12. See Ashdown-Hill, ‘Beloved Cousyn’, p. 98 et seq.
13. Based upon the handwriting.
14. Armstrong, Usurpation of Richard III, p. 128, n. 91.
15. A. Hanham, ed.,The Cely Letters 1472–1488, London 1975, pp.184–5, 285–6. Also A. Hanham, The Celys and their World, Cambridge 1985, p. 287.
16. Bishop William Grey of Ely died on 4 August 1478.
17. Hanham, Celys and their World, p. 287, recognises that ‘most of these flying rumours were untrue’.
18. A. Crawford, ed., The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–71, 1481–83, Stroud 1992, Part 2, p. 348.
19. N.H. Nicolas, ed., Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe accounts of Edward the Fourth, London 1830, pp. 155–6, 160–1.
20. In C.F. Richmond, ‘The Death of Edward V’, Northern History, 25 (1989), pp. 278–80, Richmond argued from the date of 22 June 1483, given for Edward V’s death in the Anlaby cartulary, in an entry written after 1509 (see below). In fact the significance of the grant of the title ‘Duke of Norfolk’ to John Howard remains debatable. Richard of Shrewsbury was given the dukedom of Norfolk in 1477 in preparation for his marriage to the Mowbray heiress, Anne. The marriage followed in 1478. Anne Mowbray’s subsequent death, together with the fact that Lord Howard was the senior Mowbray coheir, are factors which may have influenced Richard III.
21. CPR, 1485–1494, pp. 307–8.
22 Petition of Elizabeth Talbot, dowager Duchess of Norfolk, to Henry VII, dated 27 November 1489, CPR 1485–1494, pp. 307–8.
23. He is often referred to as Richard IV but there is no contemporary evidence for this, or indeed for any royal numeral.
24. PROME, 1487 Parliament, Lincoln attainder [November 1487].
25. http://www.fpnotebook.com/endo/exam/hghtmsrmntinchldrn.htm, accessed August 2013. There appears to be little difference between medieval and modern heights – see Ashdown-Hill, Third Plantagenet, p. 61, n. 28.
26. The heights of Edward IV and his brothers, George and Richard, varied, probably because their father was tall but their mother was short (Ashdown-Hill, Third Plantagenet, p. 62). In the case of Richard of Shrewsbury we have no information regarding the height of his mother, but his father was certainly of above-average height.
27. Ashdown-Hill, Third Plantagenet.
2
Edward V – and the Wider Problems of the Fate of the ‘Princes’
Even if we have now dismissed the notion that the Dublin King either was, or claimed to be, Richard of Shrewsbury, it remains the case that the fate of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ is of enormous and very widespread interest. What is more, although no fifteenth-century sources advanced the claim that the Dublin King was the elder son of Edward IV, some modern writers have nevertheless put forward that suggestion. For this and other reasons, more will be said in this chapter about the probable fates of Edward IV’s two sons, bearing in mind that the issue of the alleged survival of at least one of these boys subsequently impinged adversely upon the fate of the official ‘Earl of Warwick’, imprisoned by Henry VII in the Tower of London.
Let us not waste time repeating the well-known stories of Thomas More and other Tudor writers, since these are not contemporary and have no basis in fact. Instead, we should concentrate on the surviving real evidence. In particular one important fifteenth-century documentary source will be cited here, which has hitherto been more or less ignored by historians. Let us begin, however, by briefly considering the suggestion of some modern authors that the Dublin King may either have been – or have claimed to be – Edward V. One obvious point in favour of this suggestion is the evidence considered briefly in the previous chapter, namely the fact that the Dublin King apparently consistently used Edward as his royal name.
In all but one of the surviving fifteenth-century sources, this royal name of the Dublin King is unaccompanied by any numeral. This was by no means unusual at that period. Medieval English coins of Edward III, Edward IV and Edward V, for example, all typically employ Latin inscriptions such as: Edwardus Dei gratia Rex Anglie et Francie et Dominus Hibernie (‘Edward, by the grace of God King of England and France and Lord of Ireland’), or abbreviations thereof. And while official documents sometimes add a royal numeral for these Edwards – accompanied by the necessary Latin clarification post conquestum (because the numbering o
f England’s medieval Kings called ‘Edward’ took no account of the existence of such pre-Conquest monarchs as Edward the Confessor) – even written documents do not always include royal numbering.
Generally, historians who are aware of extant references to the Dublin King as King Edward have taken the initiative of adding the royal numeral ‘VI’ after his name. Michael Bennett, in particular, did this consistently. But of course, unless specific evidence can be presented to show that the Dublin King really did call himself ‘Edward VI’, it would be unscientific to refer to him in that way.
Presumably most writers who have assigned to the Dublin King the royal numeral ‘VI’ have done so chiefly because it appears logical. One potential problem, however, is that, as we have seen, the accession of Richard III in 1483 was based upon the parliamentary decision that Edward V was illegitimate, and therefore not a valid king. There is also clear evidence of various kinds that during the reign of Richard III, the brief reign of Edward V was not treated as valid. For example, documents issued in the name of Edward V had to be re-issued. In addition, one specific piece of surviving evidence from the reign of Richard III, showing the unique way in which the son of Edward IV was cited at that time, will be presented shortly.
One possible consequence of all this which needs to be considered is the question of whether, if the Yorkist supporters of the Dublin King believed that Richard III had been the rightful King of England, they might have decided to discount the brief reign of Edward IV’s elder son. Had they followed that course, they would presumably have ignored the royal title and numeral of the 1483 ‘Edward V’ as invalid. In that case they might possibly have counted their new, 1487, Dublin King Edward as the true King Edward V. The only possible way to check whether or not this was done is to find some contemporary fifteenth-century evidence of the royal numeral employed by and on behalf of the Dublin King.
The Dublin King: The True Story of Lambert Simnel and the Princes in the Tower Page 5