Richard III

by Chris Skidmore

  25 CC, p. 137.

  26 CSP, Milan, I, no.313.

  27 CC, pp. 143–5.

  28 TNA, C81/1512/51–2.

  29 CC, p. 145.

  30 Third Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, 214.

  31 CC, p. 145.

  32 CC, p. 147.

  33 Jean de Roye, Journal de Jean de Roye connu sous le nom de Chronique Scandaleuse, vol. II, Paris, 1896, p. 64.

  34 Christ Church Letters, ed. J. B. Sheppard, pp. 36–7.

  35 More, p. 6.

  36 Vergil, p. 168.

  37 Ibid.

  38 Hicks, ‘Changing Role of the Wydevilles in Yorkist Politics’, in Ross, Richard III and His Rivals, p. 226.

  39 More, p. 6.

  40 Mancini, pp. 62–3.

  41 CC, p. 133.

  42 CC, p. 147.

  43 Mancini, pp. 63–5.

  44 TNA, DL37/46/15.

  45 TNA, C81/863/4658, 4665, 4669–71.

  4. A NORTHERN AFFINITY

  1 YCA, Book I, fo. 42v; YHB, I, p. 78.

  2 YHB, I, pp. 128–9.

  3 YCA, Book I, fo. 76r; YHB, I, p. 130.

  4 R. H. Skaife (ed.), The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York, Durham, 1872, p. 101.

  5 York City Chamberlains’ Account Rolls 1396–1500, ed. Dobson, p. 152; Historia Dunelmensis, pp. ccclvii–viii.

  6 W. G. Searl, The History of the Queen’s College of St Margaret and St Bernard in the University of Cambridge, vol. I, Cambridge, 1867, p. 87.

  7 W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. J. Caley, 6 vols., London, 1846, vol. II, p. 65; Ms. Bodl. Top. Glouc. D. 2, fo. 40. Hicks, ‘One Prince or Two?’, pp. 467–8.

  8 TNA, DL29/637/10360A.

  9 TNA, C263/2/1/6 no.2; Hicks, ‘Last Days of Elizabeth’, pp. 308–16.

  10 D. Dunlop, ‘The “Redresses and Reparacons of Attemptates”: Alexander Legh’s Instructions from Edward IV, March–April 1475’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 63, 1990, pp. 340-53.

  11 Alnwick Castle, MS Y II 28; Camden Miscellany, vol. XXXII, pp. 177–8.

  12 Ross, Edward IV, p. 202.

  13 R. Surtees, The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, London, 1840, vol. IV, pp. 114–15.

  14 BL, Additional Ch.67545.

  15 A. Raine, Testamenta Eboracensia, Durham, vol. III, pp. 238–41.

  16 PL, vol. III, p. 306.

  17 TNA, Durh 3/168/14; Pollard, ‘St Cuthbert and the Hog’, p. 119.

  18 Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, The Reburial of Richard Duke of York 21–30 July 1476; M. K. Jones, Bosworth 1485, p. 51; M. K. Jones, ‘1477 – The Expedition that Never Was’, The Ricardian, vol. 12, no. 153 (June 2001), pp. 275–92. TNA, C81/880/5513; CPR, 1476–85, p. 254.

  19 TNA, E404/77/1/28; CPR, p. 205.

  20 TNA, E404/77/2/67; E404/77/3/87.

  21 TNA, E404/77/3/90.

  22 One medical recipe in a surviving manuscript gives the ingredients for a remedy specially prepared for the duke himself: ‘For the Lord Gloucester. Take betony, bugle, sanicle, plaintain, stitchwort, pimpernel, of each 2 pounds, of wax 4 pounds, resin, perosin, of each 2 pounds, turpentine, 1 pound.’ The amount of wax suggests that the medicine was some form of ointment; the herbs used were traditionally employed as treatments for wounds, and the recipe is similar to another dating from the fifteenth century in which stitchwort, sanicle, pimpernel and betony were mixed with fats, resins, wine and wax to produce an ‘ointment for consowndynge and gendrynge of fleshce’. T. Lang, ‘Medical Recipes from the Yorkist Court’, The Ricardian, vol. 20 (2010), pp. 97–8.

  23 TNA, E39/92/38; Foedera, ed. Rymer, vol. XII, pp. 156–7.

  24 TNA, E405/70.

  25 TNA, C81/1520/5268.

  26 Metcalfe, Book of Knights, pp. 5–7.

  27 Vergil, p. 170.

  28 Edward Halle, Chronicle, Containing the History of England …, ed. H. Ellis, London, 1809, p. 334.

  29 CC, p. 149.

  30 M. K. Jones, ‘Richard III and the Stanleys’, p. 33.

  31 CC, p. 149.

  32 CSP, Venice 1202–1509, no. 483.

  33 CC, p. 149.

  34 YHB I, p. 273.

  35 CC, p. 149.

  36 CSP, Venice 1202–1509, pp. 87–8.

  37 RP, VI, pp. 204–6.

  38 T. B. Pugh, Glamorgan County History, vol. 3: The Marcher Lordships of Glamorgan and Morgannwg and Gower and Kilvey, Cardiff, 1971, p. 202.

  39 TNA, E403/848, m. 2.

  40 TNA, CP25/1/281/164.

  41 M. A. Hicks, ‘Richard III and Romsey’, in Ross, Richard III and His Rivals, pp. 317–21.

  42 TNA, DL42/19, fo. 105v.

  43 TNA, CP25(1)/281/164/32; Pollard, North-Eastern England, p. 340.

  44 TNA, CP25(1)/281/165/23; BL, Cotton MS Julius B XII fos 241v–243v; CCR, 1476–85, p. 189.

  45 Pollard, North-Eastern England, p. 340.

  46 Mancini, p. 93.

  47 Rous, p. 118.

  48 Orme, ‘Education of Edward V’, p. 127.

  49 Ibid., pp. 129–30.

  50 Ibid., p. 124.

  51 BL, Sloane MS 3479, fos. 54v–55; Orme, ‘Education of Edward V’, p. 130.

  52 Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock’, pp. 226–7.

  53 CCR, 1478–85, no. 612.

  54 Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock’, p. 229.

  55 RP, VI, pp. 215–16.

  56 CC, p. 139.

  57 The Travels of Leo of Rozmital through Germany, Flanders, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, 1465–1467, ed. M. Letts, Cambridge, 1957, p. 47.

  58 CC, p. 149.

  59 Mancini, pp. 3–4.

  60 Ibid., p. 103.

  61 CC, p. 149.

  5. ‘THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING’

  1 Mancini, pp. 73, 81–3.

  2 CC, pp. 150–52.

  3 More, p. 5.

  4 CC, p. 483.

  5 Mancini, p. 73.

  6 YHB I, p. 282.

  7 Mancini, p. 69; More, p. 11.

  8 More, p. 85.

  9 Ibid., CC, p. 155.

  10 TNA 315/486/6,12,13,14; E. W. Ives, ‘Andrew Dymock and the papers of Antony, Earl Rivers, 1482-3’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 41 (1968), pp. 221–4.

  11 More also reported that there had been allegations that Hastings had been preparing to betray Calais to the French, ‘although this accusation was the merest slander’. More, pp. 10–11.

  12 Mancini, p. 85.

  13 CC, p. 153.

  14 St George’s Chapel, Dean and Canons of Windsor mss, XI.B.6, endorsement, rot. 2.

  15 CC, p. 153.

  16 Bentley, Excerpta Historica, pp. 366–79.

  17 Ross, Edward IV, p. 418.

  18 Lyell and Watney (eds.), Acts of Court, pp. 146–7.

  19 Ibid.

  20 C. Richmond, ‘A letter of 19 April 1483 from John Gigur to William Wainfleet’, Historical Research, vol. 65 (1992), pp. 112–16.

  21 CC, p. 155.

  22 Ibid., p. 153.

  23 Ibid., p. 155.

  24 Ibid.

  25 Mancini, p. 87.

  26 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, pp. 121–2.

  27 Mancini, p. 71.

  28 Ibid., p. 73.

  29 CC, p. 155.

  30 Ibid.

  31 Mancini, p. 73.

  32 Ibid., p. 83; C. E. Moreton, ‘A Local Dispute and the Politics of 1483: Roger Townsend, Earl Rivers and the Duke of Gloucester’, The Ricardian, vol. 8, no. 107 (1989), pp 305–7.

  33 Mancini, p. 73.

  34 Ibid., pp. 73–5.

  35 CLRO Journal IX fo. 18r–v.

  36 Lyell and Watney (eds.), Acts of Court, p. 147.

  37 A. Carson, ‘Convocations’, The Ricardian, vol. XXII (2012), p. 40.

  38 CC, p. 155.

  39 More, p. 90.

  40 Mancini, p. 91.

  41 C. Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and the Dukes of Buckingham, 1394–1521, Cambridge, 1978, pp. 28–31.


  42 More, p. 15.

  43 Mancini, pp. 91–3.

  44 The following day, 24 April, the city agreed that John Brackenbury should ride to London to ‘attend upon my lord of Gloucester’s good grace to labour to have pardon of the king’s good grace’ regarding the toll of £50 for the fee farm. YHB I, p. 282.

  45 Rous, p. 118.

  46 CC, p. 155.

  47 Ibid.

  48 Ibid., p. 157

  49 Ibid.

  50 Mancini, pp. 93–5.

  51 Ibid., p. 95.

  52 Rous, p. 118.

  53 CC, p. 157.

  54 Mancini, p. 97.

  55 Ibid., pp. 81–3.

  56 Ibid., p. 83.

  57 BL Cotton MS Vespasian F XIII fo. 123.

  58 BL, Har 433 I, p. 3.

  59 Ibid., III, p. 10.

  60 TNA, E159/261 Dorse 490 (Anglo-American Legal Tradition).

  61 Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, p. 190.

  62 Drapers’ Company: Wardens’ Accounts 1475–1509, fo. 26; Pewterers’ Wardens’ Accounts 1451–1530, GL MS 7086.1, fo. 80b; Goldsmiths’ Company: Minute Book A, 229–32.

  63 Mancini, pp. 101–3.

  64 Ibid., p. 83.

  65 More, pp. 24–5.

  66 Rous, p. 119.

  67 Mancini, p. 83.

  6. ‘PROTECTOR AND DEFENDER OF THIS OUR REALM’

  1 Household Accounts II, pp. 390–91.

  2 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, p. 118.

  3 CC, p. 159.

  4 Ibid., p. 157.

  5 Ibid., pp. 157–9.

  6 BL, Har 433 III, p. 16.

  7 Mancini, p. 85.

  8 TNA, E404/78/1/1.

  9 BL, Additional Charter 5987. On 20 May, a letter was to be sent to the Abbot of St Mary’s, York, requesting that he attend personally the forthcoming Parliament, yet the king had been ‘informed by my lord protector of the impotency and age’ of the abbot. Sir John Neville was appointed constable of Pontefract Castle on 21 May, together with an appropriate reward, ‘by the advice of our dearest uncle the duke of Gloucester’. On 27 May, Walter Felde was appointed the king’s almoner, ‘by the advice of the king’s uncle Richard, duke of Gloucester, protector and defender of the realm during the king’s minority’. BL, Har 433 III, pp. 4, 5; CPR, 1476–85, p. 349.

  10 TNA, E404/78/2/3.

  11 CC, p. 157.

  12 Horrox, ‘Financial Memoranda’, p. 220.

  13 Ibid., p. 216.

  14 Mancini, p. 83.

  15 Ibid., p. 85.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Horrox, Richard III, p. 102.

  18 Nichols, Grants etc from the Crown, pp. 2–3.

  19 HMC, 9th Report (1883), pt 1, Appendix, p. 145. Richard understandably suspected the loyalty of the local sheriff, Robert Poyntz, who had married Rivers’ illegitimate daughter, so replaced him with William Berkeley on 13 May. Richard’s choice of replacement seems to have been carefully made so as not to upset local sensibilities and, as far as possible, Poyntz’s pride: Berkeley himself was the nephew of Poyntz’s stepfather, Sir Edward Berkeley. Horrox, Richard III, p. 101.

  20 Mancini, p. 87.

  21 Nichols, Grants etc from the Crown, p. 54.

  22 BL, Har 433 III, p. 216.

  23 Ibid., pp. 2, 216.

  24 TNA, E101/949; Horrox, Richard III, p. 99.

  25 BL, Har 433 I, p. 36; Horrox, Richard III, p. 101.

  26 Nichols, Grants etc from the Crown, p. 50.

  27 Ibid., p. 51.

  28 Horrox, Richard III, pp. 104–5.

  29 TNA, PSO1/56/2840.

  30 TNA, PSO1/56/2844.

  31 CPR, 1476–85, p. 350.

  32 Ibid., p. 356.

  33 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, p. 122.

  34 The grant of Monmouth to Buckingham had directly dispossessed its holder, John Mortimer, which was hardly likely to ease men’s fears. Horrox, Richard III, p. 108.

  35 Horrox, ‘Financial Memoranda’, p. 230.

  36 Ibid., pp. 230–31.

  37 Registrum Thome Bourgchier, pp. 52–3.

  38 Ibid., pp. 54–5.

  39 Horrox, ‘Financial Memoranda’, pp. 220–21.

  40 Ibid., p. 218.

  41 PL, vol. II, p. 440.

  42 TNA, E404/78/2/37.

  43 BL, Har 433 III, pp. 12–13.

  44 Horrox, ‘Financial Memoranda’, pp. 214–15, 225.

  45 Ibid., pp. 230–31.

  46 Registrum Thome Bourgchier, p. 53.

  47 BL, Har 433 I, p. 16; A. Carson, ‘Convocations’, The Ricardian, vol. XXII (2012), p. 42.

  48 Foedera, ed. Rymer, vol. XII, p. 181.

  49 BL, Cotton MS Vitellus Ex fos.170–76; printed in Nichols, Grants etc. from the Crown, pp. xxxviv–xlix.

  50 Nichols, Grants etc. from the Crown, pp. xlviii–xlix.

  51 Ibid., p. xl.

  52 Ibid., p. xli.

  7. ‘THEIR SUBTLE AND DAMNABLE WAYS’

  1 Registrum Thome Bourgchier, pp. 52–3.

  2 Mancini, pp. 124–5 n. 74.

  3 Ibid., p. 89; CC, p. 157.

  4 BL, Har 433 III, p. 11.

  5 YHB I, p. 283.

  6 Collier, Household Books II, p. 399.

  7 Ibid., p. 391.

  8 TNA, SC1/46/206. The letter continues: ‘Also my lord [Richard] commends himself to you and gave me in commandment to write to you and prays you be a good master to Edward Johnson of Thame he was with my lord and sued to be made a denizen for fear of the payment of his subsidy, and my lord sent to Jeves the clerk of the crown and saw the commission and showed to him that he should pay but 6s 8d for himself, and so were he better to do than to be made denizen, which would cost him the third part of his goods. And as for such as have troubled within the lordship of Thame, my lord will be advertised by you at your coming for the reformation, if you take note or you come, for he thinks that they shall be punished in example of others.’

  9 Horrox, ‘Financial Memoranda’, p. 217.

  10 Ibid., pp. 216–18.

  11 Ibid., p. 224.

  12 Ibid., p. 218.

  13 TNA, SC1/46/206.

  14 YCR, vol. I, pp. 73–4.

  15 PL, vol. III, p. 306.

  16 YHB I, p. 284.

  17 On 13 June, Northumberland had been presented by the council at York with ‘2 shillings of mayn bread, six gallons of Gascon wine and two pikes’, indicating that the earl was in the city by that date at the latest. YHB I, pp. 283–4.

  18 Hull City Archives, BRG 1/1, fo. 133v.

  19 YCA, E 32, fo. 27v; YHB II, Appendix III, p. 714.

  20 YHB I, pp. 284–5.

  21 YHB I, p. 285.

  8. ‘GREAT CONFUSION AND GREAT FEAR’

  1 CC, p. 159.

  2 More, p. 46.

  3 CPR, 1477–85, p. 257; ibid., 1485–94, pp. 232–3.

  4 The English Works of Sir Thomas More, ed. W. E. Campbell, 1931, p. 53.

  5 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, p. 122.

  6 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fos. 216v–217r; Mancini, p. 111.

  7 Dunham, ‘Indentured Retainers’, p. 131.

  8 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 217r.

  9 Mancini, p. 91.

  10 CC, p. 159.

  11 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 217r.

  12 Mancini, p. 91.

  13 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fos. 217v–218r.

  14 GC, p. 231.

  15 Ibid.

  16 More, p. 54; Mancini, p. 111.

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

  18 TNA, C1/144/42.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge’, pp. 308–9.

  21 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, p. 26.

  22 PROME, vol. XV, p. 219.

  23 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, p. 27.

  24 PROME, vol. XV, p. 219.

  25 BL, Har Ch. 58 F 49.

  26 According to
More, who apparently had seen Elizabeth Shore as an old woman, she ‘delighted not men so much in her beauty as in her pleasant behaviour’. She had a ‘proper wit’, and being able to both read and write was ‘merry in company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometime taunting without displeasure and not without disport’. More, Richard III, pp. 56–7.

  27 Ibid., pp. 55–6.

  28 Mancini, p. 113.

  29 TNA, SC1/46/207.

  30 Ibid.

  31 CC, p. 159.

  32 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 218r.

  33 TNA, SC1/53/19A.

  34 Mancini, p. 92.

  35 Ibid., p. 113.

  36 Collier, Household Books, p. 402.

  37 Mancini, p. 109.

  38 Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford, Oxford, 1905, p. 190.

  39 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 216v.

  40 GC, p. 231.

  41 Mancini, p. 89.

  42 CC, p. 159.

  43 Mancini, p. 115.

  44 More, p. 45.

  45 Mancini, p. 95.

  46 CLRO Journal 9, fo. 25b; also Green, ‘Historical Notes of a London Citizen’, 1981, p. 588.

  47 HMC, V, 547a.

  48 Mancini, p. 117.

  49 Stonor Letters, vol. II p. 161.

  50 Edward Hicks, Edward IV, London, 2004, p. 151 n.20; CPR, 1476–85, p. 352.

  51 PRO E 401/949; C244/133/15.

  9. ‘UNDOUBTED SON AND HEIR’

  1 Mancini, p. 95.

  2 GC, pp. 232–3.

  3 More, p. 68.

  4 Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, p. 190.

  5 Vergil, 156 LHS.

  6 Excerpta Historica, ed. Bentley, pp. 246–8.

  7 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, pp. 119–20.

  8 Ibid.

  9 TNA, PSO1/57/2904.

  10 Mancini, p. 83.

  11 Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1448, fo. 287.

  12 Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, pp. 190–91.

  13 GC, p. 232.

  14 See Armstrong, ‘Inauguration Ceremonies’, p. 130 n. 97.

  15 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 219v.

  16 Mancini, p. 97.

  17 Rous, p. 120; CC, p. 161.

  18 RP VI, pp. 240–2.

  19 RP VI, p. 240.

  20 Commynes, Memoirs, pp. 353–4.

  21 C. N. L. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1989), p. 169; Helmholz, ‘Sons of Edward IV’, pp. 95–6.

  22 John Ashdown-Hill, ‘Edward IV’s Uncrowned Queen: The Lady Eleanor Talbot, Lady Butler’, The Ricardian, vol. 11, no. 139 (December 1997), p. 177.

  23 Commynes, Memoirs, p. 354.

  24 Helmholz, ‘Sons of Edward IV’, p. 94.

  25 Mancini, p. 97.

  26 TNA, E159/260, Recorda Easter Term, rot. 4