The Dublin King: The True Story of Lambert Simnel and the Princes in the Tower
Page 6
The only specific piece of evidence in respect of the Dublin King’s title and royal numeral which survives from the period of his reign consists of a reference in the York city archives, relating to a letter received by the City Council of York from the Dublin King in 1487. Unfortunately the way in which this has been handled in previous publications has merely served to perpetuate the confusion. However, the issue will now finally be resolved.
As published by Angelo Raine in 1941, this York city archives entry was transcribed as follows:
Copie of a letter direct to the Maire, etc. from the lords of Lincoln, Lovell and othre, late landed in Fourneys in the name of ther King calling hymself King Edward the V.1
But while Raine’s official publication states that the letter was from the ‘King calling himself King Edward the V’ (employing the Roman numeral ‘V’), Michael Bennett’s published text of the same letter states that it is a ‘letter of “King Edward the Sixth”’ (with ‘Sixth’ in word form).2 Which (if either) of these two opposing statements is correct? Obviously this point is of the utmost significance, and the conflict between the two modern published versions of the manuscript can only be resolved by referring back to the original.
Fortunately, the fifteenth-century annotation above the manuscript copy of the letter as preserved in York House Book 6, f. 97r, is absolutely clear and unequivocal, and an image of the original manuscript is reproduced below, so that readers can check it for themselves. It reads:
Copie of a lettə [letter] direct to the Maire, &c.
from the Lords of Lincoln + Lovell &
othre Late Landed in fforneys in
the name of þə [ther] King calling
hymself King Edward the vjt.
From this unique York manuscript reference – the only fifteenth-century record now surviving of the Dublin King’s full royal name and number – it therefore seems certain that the boy was referred to by his supporters as King Edward VI. In which case, whoever he was, he was not the elder of the two sons of Edward IV.
In its surviving form, the transcript of the letter itself (as opposed to its heading, written presumably by a York city clerk) contains no reference to the boy-king’s royal name or number. Possibly the actual letter sent from the Dublin King’s camp to the mayor of York (as opposed to the surviving copy of it inscribed in the York archives) was headed simply by the Dublin King’s name (with no number) and titles, as outlined earlier. The original heading may thus have read:
The contemporary heading above the copy of a letter from ‘King Edward VI’, York city archives, 1487 (York House Book 6, f. 97r). Reproduced courtesy of York city archives.
Edward, by the grace of God, king of England and France and lord of Ireland, to the mayor and council of the city of York, greetings
or something similar.3 In other words, even if the manuscript copy of the original letter sent by the Dublin King had been preserved, it might not have provided any further information in respect of the boy-king’s royal numeral.
Presumably those modern writers who had thought that the Dublin King might have been – or have claimed to be – the elder son of Edward IV were either unaware of the evidence from York in favour of the royal style of ‘Edward VI’, or had only seen the erroneous transcript of that document, published in 1941 by Angelo Raine. In favour of their contention, however, they also cited:
a) ‘The consistency in the behaviour of Elizabeth Woodville and Dorset, mother and stepbrother [sic for half-brother] to the little princes, seems to suggest that they believed in the survival of at least one of Edward IV’s sons … it seems possible, then, that the Dublin pretender was claiming to be Edward V.’4
b) Claims that the Dublin king was aged 15 in 1485 (see below) – and was therefore of exactly the right chronological age to be Edward V.5
Smith, for example, asserts that ‘the conclusion that the king from Dublin was Edward V not only fits the events of the so-called Simnel rebellion of 1487, but also explains the differences in the narratives of Molinet, André and Vergil, and in their candidates for the Irish pretender’.6
However, this rather dubious contention needs to be set against the basic fact outlined above, namely that if surviving Yorkists in 1486 and 1487 still considered that Richard III had been the true and rightful King of England, they were possibly unlikely to have counted the elder of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ as his rightful successor. The key difficulty here is that the claims to the throne of Richard III and of Edward IV’s children by Elizabeth Woodville were, and forever are, mutually incompatible. If Edward V was a valid sovereign, then Richard III must logically have been a usurper. On the other hand, if Richard III was a valid sovereign, then Edward V was a bastard with no valid claim to the throne.
Of course, another significant point, which would completely undermine any possibility that the Dublin King could have been the elder son of Edward IV, would be any evidence suggesting that by 1486 Edward V was dead. We have already seen how surviving contemporary evidence appears to imply that Edward may generally have been considered to have died in about 1483. Since at least three other children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville are known to have died young and of natural causes (see the table below), the idea that Edward V may have suffered a similar fate is by no means improbable. However, specific evidence exists which suggests that this may well have been what occurred.
The Children of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville
Age at death
Key events
Elizabeth
37
b. 11 February 1465/66
d. 11 February 1502/03
Married Henry VII
Mary
14
b. 11 August 1467
d. 23 May 1482
Cecily
38
b. 20 March 1468/69
d. 24 August 1507
Married 1. Ralph Scrope; 2. John Welles, 1st Viscount Welles; 3. Thomas Kyme or Keme
Edward
12?
b. 4 November, 1470
d. August 1483
Betrothed 1480 to Anne of Brittany
Margaret
8 months
b. 10 April 1472
d. 11 December 1472
Richard
?
b. 17 August 1473
d. ?
Married Anne Mowbray
Anne
36
b. 2 November 1475
d. 23 November 1511
Married Thomas Howard (later 3rd Duke of Norfolk)
George
2
b. March 1476/77
d. March 1478/79
Catherine
48
b. 14 August 1479
d. 15 November 1527
Married William Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon
Bridget
37
b. 10 November 1480
d. 1517 Probably four of Edward IV’s ten children
died naturally before the age of 15.
The average life of Edward IV’s eight children by Elizabeth Woodville whose age at death is on record was 26.6 years.
• To maintain this average, if Edward V died naturally aged 12, then the natural lifespan of Richard, Duke of York should have been about 41 years.
• Edward IV’s age at death was 41 years.
One of the earliest references to the death of Edward V appears in Domenico Mancini’s account ‘concluded at Beaugency in the County of Orleans, 1 December 1483’.7 A member of a religious order, possibly the Augustinian (Austin) friars, Mancini was in the service of Angelo Cato, Archbishop of Vienne, on whose behalf he visited England for some months in 1483. Indeed, some historians believe that he may have arrived in England in the second half of 1482. It was for Cato that he wrote his subsequent account of the state of affairs he had found in England, under the Latin title De occupatione regni Anglie per Ricardum tercium [Richard III’s take-over of the Kingdom of England]. This report was submitted in December 148
3. Mancini, who had departed from England in July 1483, reported:
I have seen many men burst forth into tears and lamentations when mention was made of him [Edward V] after his removal from men’s sight; and already there was a suspicion that he had been done away with [sublatum]. Whether, however, he has been done away with, and by what manner of death [mortis], so far I have not at all discovered.8
My highlighting of part of Armstrong’s published English translation of Mancini’s text is because it is misleading. The literal meaning of the Latin word sublatum is not ‘done away with’, but rather ‘removed’ or ‘taken away’. Mancini’s subsequent use of the word mortis in the following sentence shows clearly that he is talking about death, therefore his text really means:
there was a suspicion that death had carried him off.
In other words, the original Latin text does not imply that Edward had been murdered.9 Mancini merely reports that Edward V’s death was the subject of rumour and gossip during the summer of 1483 – the period when he himself was still in England. This does not establish Edward’s death as a concrete fact. It certainly does not establish the cause of his death (if indeed he had died). In other words, Mancini’s account merely offers contemporary evidence of public speculation on the subject.
However, he names one specific source for his information on Edward. That source is extremely interesting because it was Dr John Argentine, who was young Edward’s physician (medicus), and who clearly visited Edward on a regular basis while he was in the Tower. Indeed, Mancini tells us that Argentine was ‘the last of his attendants whose services the king enjoyed’.10 Apparently Dr Argentine reported to his friend Mancini that Edward made daily confession because he considered ‘that death was pressing upon him’.11 This phrase is usually interpreted as a sign that Edward expected every day to be murdered. Obviously this is a rather slanted view. After all, the source for the information has already been specified as Edward’s doctor, who was visiting him regularly. Surely a more logical interpretation would therefore be that the young boy was seriously ill, and believed that he was dying – rather like his elder sister, Mary of York, who had died at about the same age just over a year earlier.
Funeral brass of Dr John Argentine.
It is also interesting that Dr Argentine apparently had not a word to say about the health – or the death – of Edward’s younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. A later account by Jean de Molinet suggests that Richard was in good health at the time of Edward’s putative illness, and tried to encourage his melancholy and depressed elder brother to be cheerful and even to dance. Of course, Molinet’s text dates from about twenty years after 1483. Indeed the author even made mistakes concerning the names of the two sons of Edward IV, so they do not appear to have been of any great importance to him, and Molinet is no more to be regarded as the horse’s mouth on the subject of what happened to the boys than Sir Thomas More.12 Nevertheless, a contemporary letter, written by Simon Stallworth to Sir William Stonor on the 21 June 1483 also reports that Richard, Duke of York was in a cheerful mood at the Tower of London in the summer of 1483:
On Monday last was at Westm. gret plenty of harnest men : ther was the dylyveraunce of the Dewke of Yorke to my lord Cardenale, my lord Chaunceler, and other many lordes Temporale : and with hym mette my lord of Bukyngham in the myddes of the hall of Westm. : my lord protectour recevynge hyme at the Starre Chamber Dore with many lovynge wordys : and so departed with my lord Cardenale to the toure, wher he is, blessid be Jhesus, mery.13
An entry in the Anlaby cartulary (written, however, after 1509) assigns the date of 22 June 1483 for the death of Edward V.14 Unlike Mancini’s, this is a far from contemporary account, and the precise date which it gives may not be correct. It would have been much more intriguing if it had suggested that Edward had died just one month later – on 22 July 1483 – the day following Richard III’s departure from London. Nevertheless, further contemporary evidence that Edward V was thought to have died before the end of September 1483 does exist – though it had been largely overlooked until recent years. It is in the borough records of Colchester, in the collection now generally known as the Oath Book.15 This volume comprises various records, including indexes containing listings of burgesses, wills proved in the borough courts, and enrolments of property grants covering the period 1327–1564. The folios relating to the fifteenth century are in the form of a year-by-year listing of the bailiffs and burgesses, together with a summary of documents registered by the borough during the year in question.
Typical entries in the Oath Book to mark the start of a new civic year simply give the names of the two bailiffs for that year. However, 1483 was the highly unusual year of three kings. The Colchester town clerk at that time – the local lawyer, John Hervy, who had served both John Howard (Duke of Norfolk), and the family of Howard’s cousin by marriage, John de Vere, twelfth Earl of Oxford16 – clearly thought it desirable to add some note of explanation. Thus he supplies specific (if slightly inaccurate) accession dates for both Edward V and Richard III.17 From this one can deduce that in broad terms Hervy knew what he was talking about.
The form of the annual Colchester borough records at this period shows that these were written up retrospectively, at the end of the civic year, which ran from Michaelmas Day (29 September).18 This is clear from the fact that the listing of deeds and wills is normally continuous and in the same hand.19 If a bailiff or a king died in the course of a year, that fact is recorded under the bailiffs’ heading for the year, and before the list of deeds for the year commences. In the present instance, this implies that John Hervy’s ‘three kings’ note for 1482–83 was written on or shortly after 29 September 1483.
The Oath Book was published in the form of a calendar, in English, in 1907.20 This calendar version is the one now most often cited, since it is more generally accessible than the original text. Even the calendar version clearly implies that Edward V died in 1483, since it refers to him quite specifically as the ‘late son of Edward IV’.21
The full original Latin entry in the Oath Book itself runs as follows:
Tempore Iohannis Bisshop & Thome Cristemesse, Ballinorum ville Colcestrie a festo Sancti Michelis Archangeli Anno domini Edwardi quarti nuper Regis anglie, iam defuncti, vicesimo secundo, usque octavum diem Aprilis tunc primo sequentem, Anno regni Regis Edwardi --- ------ [Regis spurii?]22 quinti nuper filii domini Edwardi quarti post conquestum primo, usque vicesimum diem Iunij tunc primo sequentem, Anno Regni Regis Ricardi tercij post conquestum primo incipiente, et abinde usque ad festum Sancti Micheli Archangeli extunc primo futuro quasi per unum Annum integrum.23
[In the time of John Bisshop and Thomas Cristemesse, Bailiffs of the town of Colchester from the feast of St Michael the Archangel in the 22nd year of the reign of the Lord Edward IV, late king of England, now deceased, up until the 8th day of April first following; [and] in the first year of the reign of King Edward [erasure; see note 21] V, late24 son of the lord Edward IV after the Conquest, up to the 20th day of June then first following; [and] in the first year of the reign of Richard III after the Conquest, from the beginning, and thence until the first feast of St Michael the Archangel thereafter as for one complete year.]25
Like all the year headings naming the bailiffs, this record is inscribed in red ink, while the yearly record of burgesses, deeds and wills which follows is in black ink. There is no doubt, therefore, that this note was entered in the record as an entirety, and that the entry was made on or about 29 September 1483.
The Colchester record of the ‘year of the three kings’, written in September 1483. The star marks the point at which words were later erased. (Colchester Oath Book, D/B 5 R1, f.107r, modern foliation – old page no. 156). Reproduced courtesy of Essex Record Office.
The same document, with the probable missing words Regis spurii (‘illegitimate king’) conjecturally reinserted, to show how they would fit in the gap.
The proposed format of the erased phrase, ‘Regis spurii’, is high
ly unusual, and is not elsewhere attested with reference to any other supplanted monarch. For example, the terminology employed by the functionaries of Edward IV to describe Henry VI was quite different. He was characterised as rex de facto, non de iure (‘king in fact, but not in law’). However, as we have seen, the situation of Edward V was fundamentally different from that of Henry VI. The personal legitimacy of the latter was never in question. Only his right to be king was at issue. Edward V, on the other hand, was adjudged illegitimate by birth. His exclusion from the throne – for he was excluded, and not deposed26 – depended upon that judgement. It would not be surprising, therefore, to find him referred to in a different and unique manner. In Edward’s case the phrase rex de facto, non de iure would have been utterly inappropriate.
The erasure of the words which seem likely to have characterised Edward V as an illegitimate (i.e. illegal) king, would presumably have been carried out in the autumn of 1485, following the repeal by Henry VII’s first Parliament of the Titulus Regius of 1484. The repeal and destruction of this Act automatically re-established the legitimacy of Edward IV’s children by Elizabeth Woodville.27 In this connection, it is noteworthy that Thomas Cristemesse, one of the two bailiffs for 1482–83, served as a member of Henry VII’s first Parliament. The enactments of this Parliament in respect of the title to the throne were clearly well known in Colchester at the time, and are recorded in precise and accurate detail in the borough records.28 Thus the erasure of offending words implying the bastardy of Edward IV’s children might well have been ordered by the Colchester bailiffs in September 1485, as a politically correct move.29 Even more interesting is the fact that in September 1485, in addition to his role as Member of Parliament, Thomas Cristemesse was approaching the end of yet another term of office as one of the two town bailiffs.30