27 BL, Har 433 III, p. 29.
28 Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, pp. 25, 154.
29 BL, Har 433 III, p. 29.
30 Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, p. 191.
31 Richard Grafton, History of the Reigns of Edward IV, etc. (ed. H. Ellis), London, 1812, p. 133.
32 GC, p. 232.
33 CCR, 1476–85, p. 346.
34 Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, p. 53.
10. ‘GOING IN GREAT TRIUMPH’
1 BL, Har 433 III, pp. 31–2.
2 PL, vol. I, no. 114; CSP, Milan I, p. 39; Frederic W. Madden, Political Poems Written in the Reigns of Henry VI and Edward IV, London, 1842, p. 345; CC, p. 159.
3 Lyell and Watney (eds.), Acts of Court, pp. 155–6.
4 Stowe, Annales of England, pp. 766–7.
5 Mancini, p. 99.
6 Lyell and Watney (eds.), Acts of Court, pp. 155–6.
7 Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, p. 159.
8 Ibid., p. 164.
9 Ibid., p. 28.
10 Ibid., p. 291.
11 Ibid, pp. 292–3.
12 Mancini, p. 101.
13 GC, p. 234.
14 Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, pp. 34–5.
15 The text survives in the archbishop’s register:
Will ye grant and keep to the people of England the laws and customs to them of old rightful and devout kings granted and the same ratify and confirm by your oath, and specially the laws, customs and liberties granted to the clergy and people by your noble predecessor and glorious king saint Edward?
I grant and promise.
Ye shall keep after your strength and power to the Church of God to the clergy and the people whole peace and godly concord.
I shall keep.
Ye shall make to be done after your strength and power equal and rightful justice in all your domes and judgements and discretion with mercy and thought.
I shall do.
Do ye grant the rightful laws and customs to be holden and promise ye after your strength and power such laws as to the worship of God shall be chosen by your people by you to be strengthened and defended?
I grant and promise.
After the archbishop had requested that Richard be ‘perfectly given and granted unto us that ye shall keep to us and to all the churches’ the privileges of canon law, ‘and them defend as a devout Christian king ought to do’, Richard replied:
With glad will and devout soul I promise and perfectly grant that to you and to every of you and to all the churches to you committed I shall keep the privileges of canon law and of holy church and due law and rightfulness, and I shall in as much as I may be reason and right with God’s grace defend you and every of you, every bishop and abbot through my realm and all churched to you and them committed. All these things and every of them I Richard king of England promise and conform to keep and observe, so help me God and by these Holy Evangelists by me bodily touched upon this holy altar.
Registrum Thome Bourgchier, pp. 60–61.
16 The anointing took place concealed from the congregation by a canopy carried by four knights, specially chosen by Richard, including Sir William Parr, Sir Richard Ratcliffe and Sir Edmund Hastings. Oil was placed on Richard’s hands, giving them symbolic healing power, his breast, the middle of his back, his shoulders, to symbolise strength, the crook of his elbows, representing wisdom, and finally on the crown of his head in the shape of a cross, symbolising glory. As the choir sang first the anthem Zadoc the Priest, then a psalm and a prayer, a coif was brought forward by Buckingham and placed on Richard’s head, which would remain fastened for the next eight days, until 13 July.
17 Sutton and Hammond, Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field, pp. 121–2; Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, pp. 275–82.
18 Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, pp. 285–309.
19 Sutton and Hammond, Richard III: The Road to Bosworth Field, p. 123.
20 Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, pp. 275–82.
21 Ibid., p. 83.
22 Ibid., p. 124.
23 BL, Har 433, fo. 22.
24 TNA, C53/198 mm.1.
25 Collier, Household Books, p. 399.
26 TNA, C81/1529/5.
27 TNA, C81/1529/8.
28 Horrox, Richard III, p. 129.
29 YHB, I, p. 290; TNA, C66/544 m.20; CPR, 1476–85, p. 409.
30 PL, vol. III, p. 306.
31 TNA, E404/78/2/3.
32 Horrox, Richard III, pp. 198–9.
33 Ibid., pp. 142–3.
34 Ibid., p. 142.
35 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 2–4.
36 BL, Har 433 I, pp. 65, 69, 72; BL, Har 433 II, pp. 2–4.
37 CPR, 1476–85, pp. 362–3, 16 July and 25 July.
38 TNA, C81/1529/15.
39 Collier, Household Books, vol. II, pp. 411–13. A surviving letter of Buckingham’s in the Staffordshire Record Office is dated 20 July from London, responding to someone claiming ownership of his manor of Penshurst. The duke wrote: ‘we are not advised to make you any further answer until the king and his council be made privy to the title’.
40 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 4–5.
41 TNA, C81/1392/2.
42 CPR, 1476–85, p. 559.
43 Ibid., pp. 559, 577.
44 Magdalen College Register A, fo. 27b; Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge’, pp. 308–9.
45 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, p. 122.
46 The Ricardian, vol. 19 (2009), pp. 108–9.
47 CC, p. 161.
48 N. M. Herbert, Charter of Richard III to Gloucester, in The 1483 Gloucester Charter in History (1983), pp. 9–15.
49 BL, Har 433 II, p. 7.
50 Rous Roll, no. 63.
51 Ibid., no. 62.
52 Rous noted how ‘there were then with the king at Warwick the bishops of Worcester, Coventry, Lichfield, Durham and St Asaph’s; the Duke of Albany, brother of the King of Scotland; Edward, earl of Warwick; Thomas, earl of Surrey, the steward of the king’s household; the earl of Huntingdon; John, earl of Lincoln; and the Lords Stanley, Dudley, Morley, and Scrope; Francis, Lord Lovell, the king’s chamberlain, and William Hussy, chief justice of England, and many other lords. And ladies of similar rank with the queen.’
53 On land she pledged the use of knights, cavalrymen and infantry, ‘strong and armed’, at fair wages. The ambassador’s oration in Richard’s presence was in reality less than diplomatic, for in a remarkable speech he told the king that Isabelle had been ‘turned in her heart from England in times past, for the unkindness the which she took against the king last deceased, whom God pardon, for his refusing of her, and taking to his wife a widow of England’. Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, de Saisola recalled, had caused ‘mortal war’ between Edward and the earl of Warwick, whose side Isabelle had taken ‘to the time of his death’; afterwards, ‘she took the French king’s part and made leagues and considerations with him’. Now that Edward, ‘that showed her this unkindness’, was dead, and Louis XI had recently, she considered, broken his treaty with her, she was willing to make a new alliance with England; ‘the number of spears and horsemen the which the king shall have of Spain shall be at his pleasure 10,000 spears if he will or more and 30,000 footmen’. BL, Har 433 III, pp. 24–5.
54 De la Forssa was not only to present his letters to the king and queen of Castile, but also to show the ‘tender love, trust and affection that the king our brother now deceased’ had borne them, ‘letting them wit that his highness is and ever intendeth to be of like disposition towards them in all things that he may conveniently do’. Richard hoped that a peace treaty that had been previously signed between Edward and the late king of Castile, Henry, and which Edward himself had looked to renew in the last year of his life, might now be concluded. Ibid., p. 35.
55 Ibid., p. 44.
56 James Gairdner (ed.), Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, vol. I, London, 1861, pp. 35–6.
57 BL, Har 433 III, pp. 47–8.
58 Ibid., p. 48.
59 Ibid., pp. 34–5.
60 Gairdner (ed.), Letters and Papers … Richard III and Henry VII, vol. I, pp. 37–43.
61 Vergil, p. 155.
62 Ibid., p. 158.
63 Ibid. p. 159.
64 WAM 123,20; Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, pp. 167, 169, 278–81; M. K. Jones and M. G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, Cambridge, 1992 p. 62.
65 Edward Halle Chronicle, Containing the History of England …, ed. H. Ellis, London, 1809, pp. 388–9.
66 On 2 February 1483, Henry made an offering of £6 7s 1d at the cathedral, on the holy day of the Purification of Our Lady.
67 BL, Har 433 III, pp. 22–3.
11. ‘THE FACT OF AN ENTERPRISE’
1 BL, Har 433, II, pp. 82–3.
2 YCR, vol., I, pp. 78–9.
3 Religious imagery of St John the Baptist, in particular the head of the Baptist, was closely associated with representations of the body of Christ, the Corpus Christi, the springtime feast of which was a significant event in the city, and the responsibility of York’s renowned Corpus Christi Guild, of which both Richard and Anne had been members since 1477. As Richard’s procession took the same route as the Corpus Christi mystery plays, the symbolism of the procession would have been noted by onlookers.
4 YCR, vol. I, p. 79.
5 CC, p. 161.
6 BL, Har 433 II, p. 42. Curtys was ordered to deliver not only doublets of purple satin, tawny satin, two short gowns of crimson cloth of gold and other cloths of velvet and silk, and yards of black velvet, silk and buckram, but also a ‘banner of sarcenet of our lady, one banner of the Trinity, one banner of Saint George, one banner of Saint Edward, one of Saint Cuthbert, one of our own arms all sarcenet, iii coats of arms beaten with fine gold for our own person’.
7 CC, p. 161.
8 York Minster Library, Bedern College Statute Book, p. 48; Sutton and Hammond (eds.), Coronation of Richard III, pp. 140–41.
9 BL, Har 433 I, p. 2.
10 19 August 1483: BL, Har 433 II, pp. 9, 27.
11 Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, p. 50.
12 Ibid., p. 121.
13 BL, Har 433 II, p. 8.
14 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 221v.
15 GC, p. 234.
16 Mancini, p. 93.
17 Ibid., p. 105.
18 Those reimbursed included Edward John, John Melyonek, Sir Oliver Underwood, Master Robert Cam, one ‘Master Smythe’, Sir William Sulby, Sir William Preston, Sir William Lucy, Richard Holme, John Martyn, Edward Wakefield, Henry Muschamp, John London, John Bunting, Thomas Bladesmith, Robert Ham and Thomas Coke. BL, Har 433 II, p. 2.
19 Nestfield did a thorough job of apprehending anyone who seemed suspicious. Several entries in the legal records of King’s Bench include the arrest of the yeoman John Proctor, ‘by John Nestfield’, and the apprehension of Simon Wagstar, a labourer from Westminster by Nestfield’s servants. TNA, KB9/366/16; TNA, KB9/950/24.
20 TNA, C81/1392/1.
21 TNA, C81/1529/20; CPR, 1476–85, p. 362.
22 CC, p. 163.
23 Stowe, Annales of England, p. 767.
24 TNA, E101/107/15, fo. 18; TNA, E404/77/3/49; CPR, 1476–85, p. 272; E 404/78/1/3.
25 BL, Har 433 II, pp. 8–9.
26 Ibid., p. 7.
27 Ibid., pp. 8–9.
28 TNA, C66/556 m.7 dorse; CPR, 1476–85, pp. 465–6.
12. ‘CONFUSION AND MOURNING’
1 BL, Har 433 II, p. 28.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 29.
4 Ibid., p. 28; TNA, SC1/46/102.
5 PL VI, p. 73.
6 Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, pp. 287–8.
7 BL, Har 433 II, p. 19; for further information of Southampton’s involvement in unrest see Horrox, Richard III, pp. 187–8.
8 Ibid.
9 J. A. F. Thompson, ‘Bishop Lionel Woodville and Richard III’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 39 (1986), pp. 130–5, pp. 132–3.
10 Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, p. 122.
11 R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Crown and the Royal Family in Later Medieval England’, in Griffiths and Sherborne, Kings and Nobles, pp. 19–20.
12 More, p. 92.
13 TNA, SC1/44/75.
14 CPR, 1476–85, p. 465.
15 TNA, E159/260; Anglo-American Legal Tradition website: Fronts IMG 130.
16 Christopher Collyns hired 200 soldiers and mariners to take to the sea in a ship called the Carrigan and another 100 men in the ship Michael of Queensbrugh for six weeks, between 29 September and 11 November. TNA E404/78/3/49. On 1 October, William Milfield was given control of Portsmouth and Portchester, ‘by our special commandment … continually abiding in the said castle upon the safeguard and defence thereof and of the country thereabouts’ with a porter, groom, artilleryman and watchman, paid 6d and 3d a day respectively. TNA E159/261 Dorse IMG 509–10. Several days later, on 10 October, the same day as his arrival in Lincolnshire, Richard ordered for receivers of ‘the west parts’ of the kingdom to pay Sir Richard Ratcliffe 500 marks, ‘to be employed in such ways as we have commanded him by mouth’. BL, Har 433 II, p. 29.
17 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 224r.
18 TNA C81/1392/6.
19 TNA C81/1531/61.
20 BL, Cotton MS Vitellius A XVI, p. 191.
21 CC, p. 163.
22 Chronicles of London, ed. Kingsford, pp. 191–2.
23 GC, p. 234.
24 R. Ricart, The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar, ed. L. Toulmin-Smith, London, 1872, p. 46.
25 J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Death of Edward V: New Evidence from Colchester’, Essex Archaeology and History, 3rd series, no. 35 (2004), pp. 226–30.
26 C. S. L. Davies, ‘A Requiem for King Edward’, The Ricardian, vol. 9, no. 114 (September 1991), pp. 102–5.
27 Commynes, Memoirs, vol. II, p. 305: ‘mais le roy ne volulut responder a ses lettres ne oyr le messaige et estima tres cruel et mauvais … ledict duc de Clocestre … Et incontinent commis ce cas’.
28 Helmholz, ‘The Sons of Edward IV’, p. 109.
29 Cely Letters, ed. Hanham, p. 108.
30 Green, ‘Historical Notes of a London Citizen’, p. 588.
31 Commynes, Memoirs, p. 397.
32 Maaike Lulofs, ‘King Edward IV in Exile’, The Ricardian, vol. 3, no. 44 (March 1974), p. 13; Pollard, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, p. 123.
33 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 221r.
34 CC, p. 163.
35 Mancini, p. 115.
36 GC, pp. 234, 236–7.
37 CC, p. 163.
38 GC, pp. 236–7.
39 CC, p. 163.
40 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 222v.
41 BL, Royal MS 12 G I, fos. 1–2v: ‘Per exspoliationem regis Ricardi, ego existens incarcerates in turre Londonarum’; P. Kibre, ‘Lewis of Caerleon: Doctor of Medicine, Astronomer and Mathematician’, Isis, vol. 43 (1952), pp. 100–108.
42 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fo. 224r.
43 CC, pp. 163–5.
44 YCR, vol. I, pp. 83–4.
45 HMC, 11th Report, Appendix III, p. 103.
46 Stonor Letters and Papers, ed. Kingsford, vol. II, no. 333.
47 PL, no. 383.
48 See A. Hanham, ‘A Rebel Manifesto of 1483’, The Ricardian, vol. 20 (2010), pp. 66–9.
49 TNA E207/21/16/12.
50 Southampton Record Office SC5/1/19 fos. 28–28v, 31–31v.
51 Stonor Letters and Papers, ed. Kingsford, vol. II, pp. 70, 122–4.
52 CPR, 1476–85, pp. 362, 461.
53 Ibid., p. 375.
54 Ibid., p. 371; Foedera, ed. Rymer, vol. XII, p. 204.
55 Foedera, ed. Ry
mer, vol. XII, p. 204.
56 TNA E404/78/2/20.
57 John Bell, the bailiff of Cambridge, was rewarded ‘forasmuch as he came to our highness with four men defensibly arrayed to Leicester and so continued still in our service awaiting upon us all our journey in repressing our rebels and traitors unto the time we came to our City of London to his great cost and charge without any reward or recompense’. TNA E404/78/2/24. During October, Thomas Grayson, one of the king’s customers in the ports of Exeter and Dartmouth, ‘armed, manned and vitialled a ship’ carrying eighty men, at his own personal cost of 100 marks. The following month, Grayson also spent £40 in rewards to ‘a hundred men of war being upon the sea in divers ships … to take and resist the Earl of Richmond and other our rebels and traitors in his company then being upon the sea’. In total, Grayson spent £156 13s 4d, for which he was repaid the following November. TNA E404/78/3/25. William Gaske of Saltash would later be repaid £85 19s 8d ‘which he hath at divers times employed of his own money in sundry wise to our full good pleasure and to the resistance of our rebels and traitors’. TNA PSO1/57/2903.
58 Plumpton Correspondence, ed. Stapleton, pp. 60–61.
59 Thomas Nandyke survived the rebellion: he died in 1491, leaving a will that included an inventory of his possessions. Among his goods were two astrolabes, equipment for conducting alchemy, ‘books of physic’ and thirty-seven pounds of lead. TNA, PROB 2/48.
60 BL, Additional MS 19398, no. 16.
61 Vatican, MS Urbs Lat 498, fos. 226r–226v.
62 Robert Picart, The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar, ed. L. Toumin Smith, Camden Society, new series, vol. 5 (1872), p. 46.
63 TNA, PSO1/59/3013.
64 Adam’s Chronicle of Bristol, Bristol, 1910, p. 74.
65 According to Dr Steve Bell of the HM Nautical Almanac Office: ‘There was a total eclipse of the moon on 15th/16th October 1483 (Julian calendar) when the moon was full. The penumbral eclipse starts at 21:43 UT and becomes partial at 22:45 UT. The total phase is at 23:47 UT and mid-eclipse is at 00:32 UT on the 16th. The total phase ends at 1:17 UT and the partial phase ends at 2:19 UT on the 16th. The penumbral phase ends at 3:20 UT on the 16th. The moon was at a declination of +12.1 degrees at mid-eclipse and a distance of 373,159 km – neither of these would suggest particular high tides in their own right. If the Moon was on the celestial equator (0 degrees) and closer to Earth (around 360,000 km) then it would have had a more significant effect on the tides. The presence of a low pressure system and strong winds from the appropriate direction would have a more significant effect than the moon in this case.’ I would like to thank Dr Evan Jones for his help in providing this reference.
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