Notes

Introduction

  1. For Henry VII’s surname see below, and also J. Ashdown-Hill, Royal Marriage Secrets, Stroud 2013 (forthcoming), chapter 5.

1. ‘Your Beloved Consort’

  1. Letter of condolence to Richard III from the Doge and Senate of Venice: Calendar of State Papers – Venetian, vol 1, 1202–1509, p. 154.

  2. The precise nature of Queen Anne Neville’s fatal illness is nowhere recorded, but it was probably tuberculosis (consumption): Road, p. 196. Myers/Buck, p. 44, describes her as ‘languishing in weaknesse and extremity of sorrow’ following the death of her son. My description of her likely symptoms is based on the account of tuberculosis in R. Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, London 1997, pp. 309–10.

  3. ‘Suger candy’, ‘wyne’ and ‘water of honysoclys’ were listed together with additional unspecified ‘medesyns’ supplied to the sick Lady Howard in 1465, though details of her symptoms are not recorded: BL, Add. MS 46349, f. 87r; HHB, part 1, p. 304.

  4. vanisque mutatoriis vestium Annae, reginae, atque Dominae Elizabeth, primogentiae defuncti regis eisdem colore et forma distributis: Crowland, p. 174. However, I take issue with the translation of this passage given by Pronay and Cox, and a different translation is offered here. See also L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘A Commentary on the Continuation’, Ric. 7 (1985–87), p. 521, and also www.r3.org/bookcase/croyland/index.html (consulted June 2009).

  5. In terms of the medieval English calendar, Anne Neville and her son died in the same year (1484). This is because in England the medieval calendar year began not on 1 January, but on Lady Day (25 March). Edward of Middleham died in April 1484, and Anne Neville eleven months later, on 16 March, eight days before the end of 1484 according to the medieval reckoning.

  6. Crowland, p. 175 – see R3MK, pp. 250 and 309, n. 2.

  7. For the date, the solar eclipse and anne’s death see Crowland, p. 175.

  8. Collop Monday (which fell on 14 February in 1484/5) was the day for using up the last scraps of meat before Lent. Ash Wednesday (16 February 1484/5) is the first day of Lent and a fast day. It is so called because a cross of ashes is traced on the foreheads of the faithful at mass that day.

  9. See above, note 5.

10. The time was recorded at Augsburg, where the eclipse was total: http://ls.kuleuven.ac.be/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0103&L=vvs&P=1445, citing Achilli Pirmini Gassari: Annales Augustburgenses.

11. The central duration of the eclipse was 4 minutes 53 seconds: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/SEsaros/SEsaros121.html.

12. Crowland, p. 175.

13. C.A. Halsted, Richard III, London, 1844, vol. 2, p. 399, citing BL, Cotton MS Faustina, c. Iii. 405 and Cooper’s Annals of Cambridge, p. 229.

14. There were, of course, fifteenth-century reports suggesting that Cecily Neville was unfaithful to her husband on at least one occasion, leading to the supposed bastardy of Edward IV. However, these rumours were very firmly countered by Cecily herself in her last months of life, as the words of her will clearly demonstrate. In that document she insisted on the fact that Edward IV was the son of her husband: J. Nicholls and J. Bruce, eds, Wills from Doctors’ Commons. A selection of Wills of eminent persons proved in the PCC 1495–1695, Camden old series, vol. 83, London, 1863, p. 1.

15. Based upon no real evidence, two other bastard sons have been imputed to Richard by some writers. However, the dates of birth of these children are also unknown.

16. Both Anne and her sister, Isabel, Duchess of Clarence, died comparatively young, and Isabel was survived by only two children. Moreover, Eleanor and Elizabeth Talbot, who were first cousins of Anne and Isabel Neville, also seem to have had difficulty in producing children. See Ashdown-Hill, ‘Norfolk Requiem’, Ric. 12, pp. 198–217 (pp. 198–203).

17. See, for example, A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, The Hours of Richard III, Stroud, 1990; and J. Hughes, The Religious Life of Richard III, Stroud, 1997.

18. See Introduction.

19. For details of the funeral arrangements for Edward IV, see Beloved Cousyn, pp. 83–84.

20. ‘Quene Anne deseyd thys same yere at Westmynster that Thomas Hylle was mayor the xvj day of Marche and bered the ix day after ate Westmynster. God have merci on her soulle.’ BL, Harl. MS 541, f. 217v, as quoted in J. Gairdner, History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third, Cambridge, 1898, p. 205, n. 1.

21. Sepulta est … non cum minore honore quam sicut reginam decuit sepeliri, Crowland, pp. 174–75. Such a specific statement from a rather variable source, often hostile to Richard III, makes it quite certain that Queen Anne Neville was buried with the full panoply of late medieval royal honours.

22. English kings at this period did not openly attend funerals of members of the royal family, though they were sometimes present semi-secretly, in a screened ‘closet’: A.F. Sutton, and L. Visser-Fuchs with R. A. Griffiths, The Royal Funerals of the House of York at Windsor, London, 2005, p. 50.

23. The Stuart sovereigns seem to have especially favoured Holy Week and Michaelmas for this ceremony (though it could be performed at any time). French sovereigns also regularly favoured Easter for ‘touching’.

24. M. Bloch (trans. J.E. Anderson), The Royal Touch, Sacred Monarch and Scrofula in England and France, London, 1973, p. 224. To take Holy Communion at or around Easter was and is the minimum requirement for a practising Catholic.

25. Bloch, Royal Touch, p. 22.

26. Edward III is reported to have challenged his rival, Philippe VI, to compete with him in a ‘touching’ ceremony to establish which of them was rightful King of France: Bloch, Royal Touch, pp. 1–2. See also ibid., pp. 65, 220. Subsequently, the ritual was particularly promoted by the incoming ‘Tudor’ dynasty – the legitimacy of whose claim was more than a little suspect. Later still, the exiled legitimist Stuart claimants to the throne would continue to ‘touch’ in exile until the death of the dynasty’s last direct descendant in 1807. The Hanoverian kings, however, never attempted to perform this rite, despite receiving requests to do so.

27. Bloch, Royal Touch, p. 54.

28. Ibid., p. 249.

29. Ibid., p. 65. Fortescue was later reconciled to the Yorkist regime, and retracted his comments. See also N. Woolf, The Sovereign Remedy, Touch Pieces and the King’s Evil, British Association of Numismatic Societies, 1990, pp. 6–7.

30. Bloch, Royal Touch, pp. 181–82.

31. By the ‘Tudor’ period, the ‘touch pieces’ presented to the sick who had received the royal touch were undoubtedly gold ‘angels’. Prior to the Yorkist period each person touched by the king had subsequently been given a silver penny by the royal almoner, but the gold angel was introduced by Edward IV, and Bloch has suggested that this may have been with the deliberate intention of encouraging the sick to come to him for healing (thereby gaining 80 pence rather than a single silver penny): Bloch, Royal Touch, pp. 66, 182; Woolf, The Sovereign Remedy, p. 6.

32. The gatehouse, and parts of the church, of the Priory of the Knights Hospitaller at Clerkenwell survive, and are now in the hands of the so-called ‘Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem’, a Victorian Protestant English ‘recreation’ of the Order of Knights Hospitaller. The original Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem still survives as an order of the Catholic Church, based nowadays in Rome.

33. The first antiphon begins: Mandatum novum do vobis (‘a new commandment I give unto you’). The word ‘Maundy’ is a corruption of the Latin mandatum.

34. E.E. Ratcliffe and P.A. Wright, The Royal Maundy, a brief outline of its history and ceremonial (The Royal Almonry, Buckingham Palace, seventh edition, 1960), pp. 6–9, citing a manuscript account in the College of Arms describing the practice in the early ‘Tudor’ period. The sovereign continued to perform the annual foot-washing ceremony in person until the deposition of James II.

35. Bloch, Royal Touch, p. 92.

36. Ibid., p. 93.

37. Ibid., p. 251.

38. Ibid., p. 100. No Good Friday fell within the very short reign of Edward V, who therefore never made this offering as king.

39. Tenebrae [‘Darkness’] was the traditional name given to the office of Matins during Holy Week.

2. ‘It Suits the King of England to Marry Straight Away’

  1. See below, note 15.

  2. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘“Yesterday my Lord of Gloucester came to Colchester …”’, Essex Archaeology & History 36, 2005, pp. 212–17. There is some evidence that Howard condoned the sexual experimentation of young men. He financed a trip by his young cousin John Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk to a brothel, and Howard’s own eldest son seems to have had an illegitimate son. Θ, subsection 5.8.10 and Beloved Cousyn, chapter 4. For the name ‘John de Pountfreit’ (John of Pontefract), see Harl. 433, vol. 1, p. 271.

  3. Beloved Cousyn, chapter 4, n. 19. The surname ‘de Pountfreit’ appears to imply that John may have been either born or brought up at Pontefract.

  4. Road, p. 202.

  5. On the legitimist stance of the Yorkists in general, and Richard III personally, see Eleanor, pp. 10–12.

  6. See below: Elizabeth of York’s letter to the Duke of Norfolk.

  7. From Edward I to Henry VI all the kings of England had married foreign ladies as their queens consort (though Henry IV’s first wife, married before his accession, was from the English aristocracy). Edward IV had broken this traditional marriage pattern, arguably with disastrous results.

  8. Or possibly ‘… greatly serving God and honouring Him …’ The Portuguese possessive adjective sua could refer to either sex. Its intended application in this sentence is therefore ambiguous. It might refer either to the princess or to the Deity. I am grateful to Carolina Barbara for drawing my attention to this point.

  9. pela concordia que no mesmo Reyno de Ingraterra com seu casamento e ajuntamento com a parte del Rey se segue, de tanto seruiço de Deos e honra sua por se unir em hum a parte de Alencastro e Jorca que são as duas partes daquelle Reyno, de que nascem as divisiões e males sobre a socessão: A.J. Salgado, Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, Livro de Apontamentos (1438–1489), Códice 443 da Colecção Pombalina da B.N.L., Lisboa, 1983, p. 256; also quoted in D.M. Gomes dos Santos, O Mosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro, 3 vols, Lisboa, 1963, vol. 1, p. 93. The council meeting was held in Alcobaça in 1485, but the precise date is not recorded; Conselho que se teue em Alcobaça na era de 1485 sobre o casamento da Ifante Dona Joana com el Rej de Ingrayerra Richarte que foj Duque de Gronsetra e jrmão del Rej Duarte do ditto Rejno: Salgado, Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, p. 254.

10. She is frequently referred to in English as Isabella, but there is no good reason for this. Her name in Spanish was Isabel and that form of the name also exists in English.

11.  J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Lancastrian Claim to the Throne’, Ric. 13 (2003), pp. 27–38.

12. TNA, Warrants for Issues E404/78/3/47, 22 March 1485, cited in B. Williams, ‘Rui de Sousa’s embassy and the fate of Richard, Duke of York’, Ric. 5, pp. 341–45, n. 20.

13. My italics. Poderá casar com a Ifante Dona Isabel de Castella e fazer su ligua com os Reys della e ficaros por imigo e contrajro: Salgado, Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, p. 255; also quoted in Gomes dos Santos, O Mosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro, vol. 1, p. 92.

14. poderlheam os Reis de Castella dar soa filha major por molher: Salgado, Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, p. 255; Gomes dos Santos, O Mosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro, vol. 1, p. 92. Although the Portuguese account refers to Isabel as ‘of Castile’ (which she was, on her mother’s side), it would be more usual to refer to her as ‘of Aragon’, acknowledging her father’s title. It is possible that records of Richard’s enquiries regarding a possible marriage with the Infanta Isabel survive in Spanish archives, but if so they have not yet surfaced.

15. a El Rej de Ingraterra convem de casar loguo: Salgado, Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, p. 255; Gomes dos Santos, O Mosteiro de Jesus de Aveiro, vol. 1, p. 92.

16. casamento da filha del Rej Duarte de Inglaterra … com o duque de Beja Dom Manuel … o qual casamento antes fora a el Rej apontado por Duarte Brandão sendo uindo por embaixador del Rej Richarte jrmão do ditto Rej Duarte a jurar as ligas e commeter casamento com a Iffante Dona Joana: A. Mestrinho Salgado and Salgado, Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, as cited in A.S. Marques ‘Álvaro Lopes de Cheves [sic]: A Portuguese Source’, Ricardian Bulletin, Autumn 2008, pp. 25–27. For a discussion of this second aspect of the Portuguese marriage proposal, see below.

17. Lopes de Chaves, cited in Gomes dos Santos, O Mosteiro, p. 95.

18. B. Williams, ‘The Portuguese Connection and the Significance of “the Holy Princess”’, Ric. 6 (1983), pp. 138–45 (pp. 141–42).

19. I am grateful to Lynda Pidgeon for her comments on the inheritance of the Scales title. This ultimately fell into abeyance between the heirs of the two daughters of Robert, 3rd Lord Scales: Complete Peerage, vol. 11, London, 1949, p. 507.

20. King John II of Portugal, ‘in his letter sent from Santarém (transcribed by Lopes) makes it clear that even at the time of Edward Woodville’s first stop in Lisbon, Henry was already married to Elizabeth and reigning over England’: personal communication from Antonio Marques, January 2009.

21. See below: chapter 8.

22. Isabel of Aragón was born on 2 October 1470. She was heiress presumptive to the thrones of Castile and Aragon until the birth of her only brother Juan, in 1478, and again, briefly, from Juan’s death in 1497 until her own demise the following year. She ultimately married first Alfonso of Portugal, son and heir of John II, and later John’s cousin, Manuel I (formerly Duke of Beja).

23. Lopes de Chaves, cited in Gomes dos Santos, O Mosteiro, p. 95. By comparison, Edward IV’s negotiations for his daughters’ marriages with France and Scotland were very specific. Edward named Cecily as the bride for James III’s son and specified arrangements for a replacement should Cecily die. The Treaty of Picquigny stipulated that Elizabeth was to marry the Dauphin, and if she should die Mary was to take her place.

24. In the Iberian peninsular the title ‘the Infanta’ tout court was generally applied to the eldest daughter of a sovereign, and it meant roughly ‘the [royal] daughter’. Younger daughters of a monarch, on the other hand, were designated as ‘the Infanta [+ first name]’.

25. Their second daughter, Mary, had died in 1482, aged fifteen; their third son, George, died in 1479 at the age of two, and it is possible that their eldest son, ‘Edward V’, had by this time also succumbed to death by natural causes.

26. ‘To the archbishop of Canterbury, mandate. The tenor of the petition presented to the pope of Manuel, Duke of Beja and Viseu [Begie et Visen’ Ducis], and Anne Plantagenet, daughter of the late Edward, king of England, was that for certain reasonable causes they desire to be joined together in marriage, but that since they are related in the fourth and fourth degrees of consanguinity, they cannot do so without apostolic dispensation. Manuel is also, as is alleged, administrator, deputed by the apostolic see, of the military order of Jesus Christ. At their supplication, and since, as is also alleged, Anne has no fixed dwelling place but follows the court of Henry, king of England, the pope hereby commissions and orders the above archbishop to dispense them – if the foregoing is true and if Anne shall not have been ravished on this account – freely to contract marriage together and to remain therein after it has been contracted, notwithstanding the said impediments, declaring the offspring of this marriage legitimate’: Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Vol XV 1484–92, no 631, cited by M. Barnfield, ‘Diriment Impediments, Dispensations and Divorce: Richard III and Matrimony’, Ric. 17, pp. 84–98 (p. 98, n. 45).

27. It may even be that, initially, Henry tried to adopt Richard III’s entire marriage package, with himself as Infanta Joana’s substitute bridegroom. On this basis Elizabeth of York would still have married Dom Manuel. It is noteworthy that Henry did not, in fact, immediately contract a marriage with Elizabeth of York. However, Joana’s matrimonial record, together with the story of her prophetic dream (see below, chapter 8) suggest she would have been unlikely to accept Richard’s supplanter as an alternative spouse. Subsequently (perhaps because of Joana’s reluctance), Henry therefore revised his plans, marrying Elizabeth of York himself. Nevertheless, the projected marriage with the Duke of Beja was not abandoned, and ultimately Anne of York took her elder sister’s place as the proposed bride. This revised marriage project was also later abandoned, when Dom Manuel became heir presumptive to the Portuguese throne on the death of his first cousin once removed, the Infante Dom Alfonso. At that point Manuel married Alfonso’s widow, Isabel of Aragón (who, intriguingly, had been the second string to Richard III’s matrimonial bow in the spring of 1485).

28. Harl. 433, f. 308v; vol. 3, p. 190.

29. This marriage was annulled by Henry VII soon after his accession, and although he subsequently married Cecily to Lord Welles, Cecily was actually available in 1486, at the time when her uncle, the self-styled ‘Count Scales’, was talking to the King of Portugal. For references to Cecily’s Scrope marriage, see: Ellis/Vergil, p. 215; P. Sheppard Routh, ‘“Lady Scroop Daughter of K. Edward”: an Enquiry’, Ric. 9 (1991–93), pp. 410–16 (pp. 412, 416, n. 12); and J. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens, Oxford, 2004, p. 199.

30.  R3MK, p. 257, quoting Kincaid’s edition of Buck’s reported text of Elizabeth of York’s letter. Also Myers/Buck, p. 128. This letter apparently remained amongst the Howard family papers until at least the early seventeenth century, but is now lost.

31. Myers/Buck, p. 128.

32. Crowland, pp. 174–75.

33. Ibid., pp. 176–77.

34. R3MK, pp. 262, 264.

35. See, for example, Myers/Buck, p. 44.

36. It is possible that later in the year, and on the eve of battle, Richard may have made some statement about the succession (see below, chapter 7).

37. R. Horrox, ‘John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln’, ODNB.

38. Ibid.

39.  R. Horrox, British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, vol. 4, London, 1983, p. 66.

40. Horrox, ‘John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln’, ODNB.

41. C. Carpenter, ‘Edward, called Earl of Warwick’, ODNB. Carpenter also refers to Warwick as potentially Richard III’s ‘heir apparent’. This is also an error. Warwick could only possibly have been regarded as an heir presumptive.

42. Confirmed by the York city register, 13 May 1485, ‘when it was determyned that a letter should be consaved to be direct to the lordes of Warwik and Lincoln and othre of the counsail at Sheriff Hoton ffrome the maire and his bretherne’: L.C. Attreed, ed., York House Books 1461–1490, vol. 1, Stroud, 1991, p. 361.

3. ‘Tapettes of Verdoures with Crownes and Rooses’

  1. Nicolas, p. 144.

  2. E. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris (Le Ménagier de Paris) a Treatise on Moral and Domestic Economy by a Citizen of Paris c. 1393, London, 1928 (1992), pp. 35–37.

  3. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Queen Elizabeth Woodville and the Angelus’, Ric. 10 (1994–96), pp. 326–27.

  4. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris, pp. 39–41. The Gloria is not said or sung at ordinary weekday masses. Its inclusion in the list indicates that a Sunday or feast day mass is being described. However, at this period, more feast days would have been celebrated than is the norm in the modern ecclesiastical calendar. In the modern mass rite only very major feasts still have a ‘sequence’ said or sung before the Alleluia.

  5. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris, p. 41, present writer’s emphasis.

  6. See Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘The Hours of Richard III’.

  7. Beloved Cousyn, chapter 7.

  8. http://www.godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm (consulted December 2008).

  9. http://www.godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm (consulted December 2008).

10. P. W. Hammond, Food & Feast in Medieval England, Stroud, 1993, p. 105.

11. A reduced pre-Communion fast of one hour is stipulated for Catholics, even today.

12. www.probertencyclopaedia.com/cgi-bin/res.pl?keyword=Fifteenth&offset=0 (consulted December 2008).

13. http://www.godecookery.com/how2cook/howto05.htm (consulted December 2008).

14. T. Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, Woodbridge, 1995, pp. 119–120.

15. Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 26r; HHB, part 2, p. 327.

16. Power, ed., The Goodman of Paris, pp. 148–55.

17. The final course of the ‘Goodman’s’ dinner menu 1 comprises pears, comfits, medlars, nuts, hippocras and wafers, and his second dinner menu also ends with a sweet course. However, menu 23 (a fish dinner) begins with fruit (cooked apples and ripe figs) and ends with porpoise, mackerel, oysters and cuttle fish. His twenty-two other sample menus have courses which, to modern eyes, do not noticeably differ from one another. In general terms there was no medieval concept of a fish course, a meat course or a sweet course.

18. Quoted in D. Hartley and M.M. Elliot, Life and Work of the People of England – the Fifteenth Century, London, 1925, p. 17.

19. L. and J. Laing, Medieval Britain, the Age of Chivalry, London, 1996, p. 180.

20. See, for example, M. Black, The Medieval Cookbook, London, 1992.

21. Eleanor, p. 15.

22. Laing, Medieval Britain, p. 181.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., pp. 182–83.

25. The eldest, Anne, Duchess of Exeter, had died in 1476.

26. Certainly during Richard’s reign, envoys to the Habsburg court regularly passed through England (see below).

27. Richard III had been eight years old when his father was killed.

28. Beloved Cousyn, pp. 25–26 and figure 11.

29. Itinerary.

30. Nicolas, p. 123: ‘Reparacion off the Kinges Carre’.

31. For example, one possibility might be that the king used a carriage in order to attend funerals at which he was not officially present.

32. A.F. Sutton & P.W. Hammond, eds, The Coronation of Richard III, the extant documents, Gloucester, 1983, p. 47.

33. Sutton & Hammond, Coronation, p. 68.

34. A. Prockter and R. Taylor, The A to Z of Elizabethan London, London, 1979, p. 21 (map reference K5).

35. www.maney.co.uk/files/misc/HenryChapter3.pdf (consulted January 2009). In September 1485 Curteys was reappointed by Henry VII.

36. Nicolas, p. 132. For evidence of the use of tapestry by John Howard (Duke of Norfolk), see Θ.

37. Nicolas, p. 140. ‘Paled’ means arranged ‘per pale’ (see below note 38).

38. This is a heraldic term, meaning in two broad stripes, set side by side.

39. Nicolas, pp. 132–33, repeated pp. 143–44.

40. The former London home of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and subsequently of his son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, on the site of the present Canon Street Station.

41. Nicolas, pp. 140–42.

42. Ibid., p. 144.

43. Bishop Thomas Langton, an admirer and supporter of Richard III, is said to have remarked that ‘sensual pleasure’ held sway at Richard’s court, and Ross has therefore argued that ‘Richard’s court was perhaps as gay and hedonistic as Edward’s had been’: Ross, Richard III, p. 142, and citing Alison Hanham’s reconstruction of Langton’s Latin sentence.

44. At this period shirts were underclothes.

45. Originally, at least, ‘cordwain’ described sheep or goat leather imported from Córdoba in Spain.

46. Nicolas, pp. 146–52.

47. A.F. Sutton & L. Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III’s Books’, Ric. 7–10 (1985–96).

48. Θ.

49. See also chapter 7 below.

50. A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs with R.A. Griffiths, The Royal Funerals of the House of York at Windsor, London, 2005, p. 116.

51. In 2008 a small copy in oils of this portrait of Richard III was produced in less than a week. In the fifteenth century, the small panel portrait by Petrus Christus of one of the nieces of the Duchess of Norfolk seems to have been easily completed during the weeks when the Duchess and her family were in Flanders for Margaret of York’s wedding in 1468: Eleanor, p. 68.

52. For the history of wedding rings, see Ashdown-Hill, Royal Marriage Secrets.

53. This portrait of Richard III – together with a matching panel portrait of Edward IV – was later owned by members of the Paston family. However, its original owner is unknown.

54. Harl. 433, f. 211v: vol. 2, p. 211. There has been much debate as to the identity of ‘the lord Bastard’. Does this refer to one of the sons of Edward IV? (Richard’s own son, John of Gloucester, is not referred to elsewhere as a ‘lord’.)

55. Ibid.

56. Harl. 433, f. 217r: vol. 2, p. 223.

57. Harl. 433, f. 212v: vol. 2, pp. 213–14. From 1 June 1485 the King of Hungary claimed the title ‘Duke of Austria’, but in April 1485 the reference is almost certainly to a member of the Habsburg family, probably Sigismund, Archduke of Upper Austria (since his cousin, Frederick, Archduke of Inner Austria, was also Holy Roman Emperor, and would more probably have been referred to by that title). There were similar authorisations on other dates to other named servants of Salasar, to a servant of the Duke of Burgundy, and to the Pope’s sergeant-at-arms.

58. Harl. 433, f. 213r: vol. 2, p. 214.

59. Harl. 433, f. 213v: vol. 2, p. 216.

60. Ibid., p. 215.

61. Harl. 433, f. 217v: vol. 2, p. 223.

62. Harl. 433, f. 214v: vol. 2, p. 219.

63. Harl. 433, f. 218v: vol. 2, p. 227.

64. Ibid.

65. www.1911encyclopedia.org/Pheasant (consulted January 2009).

4. Tombs of Saints and Queens

  1. Crowland, p. 177, dates these rumours after Holy Week and prior to Whitsun (April–May 1485). The octave of a major religious feast comprises the feast day itself and the seven days following.

  2. This comparatively close blood relationship between Richard III and Henry ‘Tudor’ (Henry VII) stemmed from their common Beaufort descent, by virtue of which Richard III was the second cousin of Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond.

  3. The fact that Henry’s father, Edmund ‘Tudor’ and his uncle, Jasper ‘Tudor’, used versions of the royal arms based apparently upon those of Edmund Beaufort indicates that their patrilineal ancestry was, in reality, not Tudor but royal, probably via the Beaufort line. See Ashdown-Hill Royal Marriage Secrets.

  4. fils du feu roy Henry d’Angleterre: M. Jones, Bosworth 1485: Psychology of a Battle, Stroud, 2002, pp. 124–25.

  5. Crowland, p. 173.

  6.  Kendall R3, p. 300, citing CPR 1476–1485, pp. 544–45. The fleet remained on guard in the Channel until at least the end of May.

  7. C. Ross, Richard III, London, 1981, pp. 204–5.

  8. Beloved Cousyn, chapter 6.

  9. G.F. Beltz, Memorials of the most Noble Order of the Garter from its foundation to the present time, London, 1841, p. 75, citing BL, Harl. MS 36B.18, p. 213; also Harl. 433, vol. 2, pp. 215–16.

10. R.A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI’, ODNB.

11. Cited in W.J. White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 1, Ric. 6 (1982–84), pp. 70–80 (p. 70). Warkworth’s account was penned after July 1482. The 21 May 1471 was indeed a Tuesday.

12. B. Wolffe, Henry VI, London, 1981, p. 347.

13. Ellis/Vergil, pp. 155–56.

14. White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 1, pp. 70–71.

15. Cited in White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 1, p. 71. White argues that this is the most nearly contemporaneous account.

16. A. Breeze, ‘A Welsh Poem of 1485 on Richard III’, Ric. 18 (2008), pp. 46–53 (p. 47). If Henry VI’s death was not natural, Edward would probably have preferred to distance himself physically from this event, and may, therefore, have arranged for the dispatch to take place after he himself had left the capital. On this basis Henry seems unlikely to have been killed on 21 or 22 May. Subsequent belief in the culpability of Edward’s administration perhaps caused later Lancastrian accounts to deliberately adjust the date of his death to one of the two days when Edward and Gloucester were known to have been in London.

17. A. Hanham, ‘Henry VI and his Miracles’, Ric. 12 (2000–02), pp. 2–16 [erroneously numbered pp. 638–52 in the publication] (p. 2).

18. Chenopodium bonus-henricus is an easily cultivated and edible hardy perennial plant native to the Mediterranean, but introduced to England many centuries ago. It is widely known in Europe by variants of the name ‘Good Henry’, but the addition of the title of ‘King’ seems unique to England (where it had certainly been added by the beginning of the sixteenth century). Some writers have assumed that this addition was to honour Henry VIII, but Henry VI seems a more likely contender.

19. Given that the date of Henry’s death can be debated, the supposed presence of Richard, as Duke of Gloucester, in the Tower of London during the night of 21–22 May is not necessarily significant, particularly since ‘many other’ people are also reported to have been there.

20. R.A. Griffiths, ‘Henry VI’, ODNB.

21. White, ‘The Death and Burial of Henry VI’, part 2, Ric. 6, pp. 106–17 (p. 112); Wolffe, Henry VI, p. 352. This first bay has subsequently become the site of the tomb of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. An alternative possibility is that Richard III intended to be buried at York Minster, where he proposed – and actually began constructing – a very splendid chantry chapel.

22. W.H. St John Hope, ‘The Discovery of the Remains of King Henry VI in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle’, Archaeologia, vol. 62, part 2, pp. 533–42 (p. 533).

23. St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, p. 534.

24. A. Coldwells, St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle guidebook, 1993. Tresilian also made the iron work for the fine gate enclosing the tomb of Edward IV.

25. The accounts for the funeral expenses in 1471 mention spices and cere cloth, but there is no hint of a lead coffin. Warkworth’s Chronicle suggests that a wooden coffin was used at the original interment: St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, p. 538.

26. St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, pp. 534–36.

27. It clearly achieved its objective, since John Rous wrote as though he had seen Henry VI’s intact body in 1484 – though the archaeological evidence uncovered in the last century clearly shows this claim to be impossible.

28. St John Hope, ‘Remains of King Henry VI’, pp. 539, 541.

29. Itinerary.

30. Kendall R3, p. 332 (but Kendall gives no source for this information).

31. ‘shortly before Whitsun’ – Crowland, p. 177. Whit Sunday in 1485 fell on 22 May.

32. The Calendar of State Papers – Venetian attributes this letter to Agostino Barbarigo, but he was only elected Doge in 1486. The sender must rather have been Marco Barbarigo.

33. Calendar of State Papers – Venetian, vol 1, 1202–1509, p. 154.

34. A.G. Twining, Our Kings and Westminster Abbey, London, 1911, p. 139.

5. ‘Þe Castel of Care’

  1. ‘Þat is Þe castel of care who so cometh Þerinne / May banne Þat he borne was to body or to soule’: W.W. Skeat, ed., W. Langland, The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, Oxford, 1869, p. 10, lines 61–62. Richard III is supposed to have called Nottingham his ‘Castle of Care’, but actually there is no contemporary evidence that he did so, and the story seems to be a later invention. See A.F. Sutton, ‘Richard III’s “Castle of Care”’, Ric. 3 (no. 49, June 1975), pp. 10–12.

  2. ‘The Body of Christ’.

  3. A monstrance is a large vessel of precious metal, often bejewelled, with a glass or crystal compartment in which the Host is placed and through which it can be seen. Typically, medieval monstrances closely resembled contemporary reliquaries.

  4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Mystery_Plays (consulted January 2009).

  5. E. Poston, ed., The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols, Harmondsworth, 1965, p. 64, dates the carol to the fifteenth century.

  6. Itinerary, p. 20.

  7. It is clear, at all events, that the king was not suffering from any kind of ‘siege mentality’, since he did not seek to defend himself behind the castle walls, but marched out of Nottingham to meet Henry ‘Tudor’ when he thought the time was ripe.

  8. H. Gill, A Short History of Nottingham Castle, Nottingham, 1904, www.nottshistory.org.uk/gill1904/charlesi.htm (consulted January 2009).

  9. Gill, Nottingham Castle, www.nottshistory.org.uk/gill1904/charlesi.htm.

10. P.W. Hammond and A.F. Sutton, Richard III: the Road to Bosworth Field, London, 1985, p. 209.

11. Henry ‘Tudor’ also knew this, as he clearly demonstrated after his accession to the throne, when he imprisoned the marquess.

12. Harl. 433, f. 220r: vol. 2, p. 228.

13. See Introduction.

14. Kendall R3, p. 334.

15. Ibid., p. 337.

16. Ross, Richard III, p. 141.

17. Ibid.

18. Soc. Ant., MS 76, ff. 60r, 91v, 144v; HHB, part 2, pp. 70, 116, 207.

19. Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 31v; HHB, part 2, p. 336.

20. The Romans had used the word lusores (‘players’) to refer to both singers and actors. This broad Latin term continued in use into the Middle Ages, and the usage passed into the various vernaculars.

21. C. Ricks, ed., The Penguin History of Literature vol. 3: English Drama to 1710, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971, pp. 3–4.

22. There is secondary evidence throughout the Middle Ages for the development of dramatic ‘interludes’ as aristocratic entertainment. Mummers from London entertained Richard II and his court in 1377. Early fifteenth-century texts survive of ‘Prefaces’ written by John Lydgate, a Dominican friar, which ‘call not only for disguise of the persons involved, but for the use of substantial scenic properties’ (Ricks, English Drama, p. 26). It is possible that Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale contains a reference to similar entertainments: L.D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, Oxford, 1987, p. 183, lines 1142–49.

23. Ross, Richard III, p. 135. All the benefactions to Queens’ College of Richard III and his consort were later annulled by Henry VII.

24. Crowland, pp. 176–77; Ellis/Vergil, pp. 218–19; M.K. Jones, Bosworth 1485, Psychology of a Battle, Stroud, 2002, p. 157.

25. Itinerary.

26. Bestwood is the modern name; the medieval form was Beskwood.

6. Bucks at Bestwood

  1. Kendall R3, p. 327, suggests that previously Richard took ‘no marked interest’ in hunting but this seems inaccurate. There is implicit evidence that Richard had hunted in his youth.

  2.  Harl. 433, vol. 2 (Upminster, 1990), p. 216 (f. 214), punctuation modernised.

  3. Ibid.

  4.  Ibid. See also Kendall R3, p. 327, though Kendall misquotes the date of the third commission.

  5. In December 1467, while staying in London (or more probably, at his house in Stepney), Sir John Howard purchased various paraphernalia for hawking, comprising a hawk’s bag, two hawk’s bells, and ‘a tabere [sic, tabard? = hood?] for the hawk’. On 19 December 1482, 20d. was paid ‘to Tymperleys man for brynging of a hawke’. On 16 February 1483 there was a payment of 12d. ‘to Seyncleres man for hawkynge’: BL, Add. MS 46349, f. 153r; HHB, part 1, p. 431; Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 26v; HHB, part 2, p. 328; Soc. Ant., MS 77, f. 43r; HHB, part 2, p. 360.

  6. According to the Boke of St Albans the choice of falcon was entirely hierarchical. Only the emperor should use an eagle. Kings employed gyrfalcons, princes and dukes had peregrines, and so on: Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes, pp. 113–14.

  7. In 1368 Nicholas de Litlington, Abbot of Westminster, offered up prayers for the recovery of his sick hawk, accompanied by the presentation of a wax falcon as a votive offering: Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes, p. 112.

  8. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Yesterday my Lord of Gloucester came to Colchester’, Essex Archaeology and History, vol. 36 (2005), pp. 212–17.

  9. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War and Politics 1450–1500, p. 198; L. Woolley, Medieval Life and Leisure in the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, London: V&A, 2002, p. 25.

10. www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2008/09/18/robin_hood_and_bestwood_feature.shtml (consulted December 2008).

11. www.bw-bestwoodlodge.co.uk/HistoryoftheLodge.asp (consulted December 2008).

12. In England, these comprised the native red deer, the smaller fallow deer (introduced by the Normans), and the roe deer – which had the advantage that roebuck could be hunted all year round.

13. Edward, Duke of York, considered hare the finest game: a swift and clever quarry which could be hunted all year round: C. Reeves, Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England, Stroud, 1995, p. 106.

14. They were not eaten, though their fur was used to adorn clothing.

15. Edward, Duke of York (d. 1415) translated into English, with additions of his own, the Livre de Chasse of Gaston III, Comte de Foix.

16. The Duke of York had, however, commented on the fact that foxes could provide cunning quarry for hounds, and produced an attractive pelt.

17. http://www.nottshistory.org.uk/Brown1896/arnold.htm (consulted December 2008).

18. The modern deer-stalking dates for Scotland are as follows: Red Deer (Hart): July–Oct; Red Deer (Hind): Oct–Feb; Fallow Deer (Buck): Aug–Apr; Fallow Deer (Doe): Nov–Apr: www.woodmillshootings.com/holiday_packages.htm (consulted November 2008).

19. C.M. Woolgar, D. Sejeantson & T. Waldron, Food in Medieval England – Diet & Nutrition, Oxford, 2006, p. 178.

20. Edward, Duke of York, called scent-hounds ‘harriers’, ‘crachets’ or ‘raches’, and he preferred them to be tan in colour.

21. Even the alaunt tended to be given the protection of leather armour for this task. Alaunts were notoriously uncertain in temperament, and often vicious. They were favoured for bear and bull baiting.

22. So called because they originated in Spain.

23. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Yesterday my Lord of Gloucester came to Colchester’.

24. Harl. 433, 1, 155.

25. Harl. 433, 2, 111.

26. BL, Add. MS 46349, f. 146r; Arundel Castle, MS, f. 96 (actually numbered 92 in MS); Soc. Ant., MS 76, ff. 87r, 91v, 149r; MS 77, f. 4v; HHB, part 1, pp. 419, 558; part 2, pp. 109, 115, 216, 287.

27. There appears to be no written source which recounts the exact details of the medieval Sudbury processions. This account is, therefore, based on local tradition.

28. Beloved Cousyn, pp. 105–6, 123.

29. Nicolas, p. 3.

30.  N. Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon, 1971 and 1976, vol. 2, p. 444.

31. It is true that the ‘sweating sickness’ or ‘English Sweate’ did first appear in England at about this time, and is mentioned in the Crowland Chronicle (pp. 168–69). The first known cases occurred early in August 1485, several weeks before the Battle of Bosworth. ‘The symptoms and signs as described by Caius and others were as follows: The disease began very suddenly with a sense of apprehension, followed by cold shivers (sometimes very violent), giddiness, headache and severe pains in the neck, shoulders and limbs, with great exhaustion. After the cold stage, which might last from half an hour to three hours, the hot and sweating stage followed. The characteristic sweat broke out suddenly without any obvious cause. Accompanying the sweat, or after that was poured out, was a sense of heat, headache, delirium, rapid pulse, and intense thirst. Palpitation and pain in the heart were frequent symptoms. No skin eruptions were noted by observers including Caius. In the final stages, there was either general exhaustion and collapse, or an irresistible urge to sleep, which was thought to be fatal if the patient was permitted to give way to it. One attack did not offer immunity.’ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweating_sickness (consulted March 2009).

32. Crowland, pp. 178–79. This story could be part of the Stanleys’ subsequent rewriting of their role in the events of 1485. The chronicler at Crowland Abbey could well have derived his account from Lord Stanley’s wife (see below: chapter 7, n. 21).

33. See Beloved Cousyn, appendix 4.

34. Crowland, pp. 178–79.

35. Ellis/Vergil, p. 223.

36. Contemporary sources suggest that this was a real crown, made of gold and set with jewels, and not a piece of gilt base-metal ‘costume jewellery’: Jones, Bosworth 1485, p. 187. Jones suggests that it may have been the crown of St Edward (the coronation crown), but this seems inherently improbable. The precious crown of an English sovereign was usually his personal, state crown. Even today the modern ‘Imperial State Crown’ is a far more valuable object than ‘St Edward’s Crown’. Moreover, it is the former, and not the latter, which is worn on state occasions.

7. Crossing the River

  1. Most horses which appear to be white only have a white hair coat. Their underlying skin is dark in colour, as are their eyes. Such horses are, therefore, more accurately described as ‘grey’. Rarely, true white horses do occur, which have pink skin under their coats and usually blue eyes. It is impossible at this late date to establish whether ‘White Surrey’ or ‘White Syrie’ – if indeed he existed – was in reality white or grey.

  2. On ‘White Syrie’, see J. Jowett, ed., The Tragedy of King Richard III, Oxford, 2000, p. 336 and n. 43; also N. de Somogyi, ed., The Shakespeare Folios: Richard III, London, 2002, p. 267, n. 90. For the list of Richard III’s horses, see Harl. 433, vol. 1, pp. 4–5.

  3.  See Θ, on John Howard’s stable, and Harl. 433, vol. 1, pp. 4–5. The list of Richard III’s horses includes twenty named mounts, which were either grey (liard, lyard or gray) or white (whit). Amongst these was ‘the gret gray … being at Harmet at Nottingham’. There is no horse specifically named ‘White Syrie’, but not all the horses are named, nor are all described in terms of their colour.

  4. See Θ.

  5. Speede’s account is cited in J. Throsby, The Memoirs of the Town and County of Leicester, Leicester, 1777, p. 61, n. b.

  6. F. Roe, Old Oak Furniture, London, 1908, p. 286.

  7. S.E. Green, Selected Legends of Leicestershire, Leicester, 1971, 1982, p. 21. Green cites no source for this quotation.

  8. As we have seen (above), there is no actual evidence for any such change of name.

  9. Green, Legends, p. 21. Thomas Clarke was Mayor of Leicester in 1583 and again in 1598: H. Hartopp, The Roll of the Mayors of the Borough and Lord Mayors of the City of Leicester 1209–1935, Leicester, 1935, pp. 75–76, 80. The story of Clark(e)’s treasure was first written down in Sir Roger Twysden’s ‘Commonplace Book’ in about 1650, and published in Nichols’ History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (1815).

10. Throsby, Leicester, pp. 14, 62, n. b. The feet, which were cut off in the mid-eighteenth century, measured 6 inches square and were 2 feet 6 inches in height.

11. There are recent rumours of a ‘Richard III bed’ at a farmhouse in Sheepy Magna (J.D. Austin, Merevale and Atherstone 1485: Recent Bosworth Discoveries, Friends of Atherstone Heritage, 2004, section 21). But an indication of the ease with which ‘Richard III beds’ may be invented, is provided by the fact that the present author was told that a wooden bedstead at the Guildhall in Leicester had belonged to Richard III. Subsequent enquiries revealed that the bed in question is seventeenth century, was purchased for the Guildhall as part of a room display in the 1950s, and has absolutely no historic connection either with Leicester or with King Richard (I am grateful to Philip French, curator of Leicester City Museums, for this information). See also below, note 16.

12. Speede, History, p. 725.

13. See the case of Jeweyn Blakecote, sortilega, in J. Ashdown-Hill, Mediaeval Colchester’s Lost Landmarks, Derby, 2009, p. 161. Regarding the Richard III Bow Bridge prophecy, the location, at a water crossing, may perhaps be significant. With the substitution of begging for washing, ‘there is a hint of the Irish / Scottish “Washer at the Ford” folk motif. The Washer at the Ford is an Otherworld woman whose task it is to wash the clothes of those who are about to die’: personal communication from Marie Barnfield.

14. Crowland, pp. 180–81.

15. Ellis/Vergil, pp. 221–22.

16. The chair at Coughton Court is said to be made from the bed in which Richard III slept the night before the Battle of Bosworth (thus 21/22 August). This must, therefore, have been his camp bed, and not the great royal bed, which had reportedly been left behind in Leicester. The tradition relating to this chair seems to be an old one, but lacks documentary evidence.

17. ‘The malady was remarkably rapid in its course, being sometimes fatal even in two or three hours, and some patients died in less than that time. More commonly it was protracted to a period of twelve to twenty-four hours, beyond which it rarely lasted. Those who survived for twenty-four hours were considered safe.’ It is said to have particularly attacked the rich and the idle: www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/sweatingsickness.htm (consulted March 2009).
    The exact cause of the disease remains unknown, but the symptoms did not include the rash or boils found in cases of typhus or plague. Some authorities consider sudor anglicus an early form of the Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome which struck parts of America during the summer of 1993: R. Putatunda, published 3/27/2008: www.buzzle.com/articles/sweating-sickness.html (consulted March 2009).

18. The sweating sickness was a fever and its most obvious symptom was sweating. There was no visible rash associated with it. If patients were kept quiet, in an equal temperature, they often survived the disease.

19. Ellis/Vergil, pp. 222–23, speaks of the royal army as a ‘multitude’ which struck terror into the hearts of those who saw it, and says that the king’s forces outnumbered those of Henry ‘Tudor’ by two to one.

20. On the other hand, if the king was indeed suffering from an attack of sweating sickness, he is unlikely to have mentioned that, since it would have given grounds for disquiet as to his physical fitness for the coming conflict.

21. There has been much debate as to the identity of the Crowland chronicler, and the latest thinking is that he may not have been one single individual: A. Hanham, ‘The Mysterious Affair at Crowland Abbey’, Ric. 18, pp. 1–20. Some of the information in the chronicle does appear to have come from someone who had attended the Yorkist court – but of course the Abbot of Crowland would himself have sat in Parliament. We may also note that Henry VII’s mother was an oblate of Crowland Abbey, not to mention its direct neighbour (through her tenure of Deeping).

8. ‘He has now Departed from Amongst the Living’

  1. Iam enim è vivis abiit: the words of the beautiful messenger who reported Richard III’s death to the Infanta Joana of Portugal in a vision: P. Antonio Vasconcellio, Anacephalaeoses, id est, summa capita actorum regum Lusitaniae, Antwerp, 1621, p. 252.

  2. Crowland, pp. 176–83; Ellis/Vergil, pp. 216–25. Pronay and Cox oppose the theory that Vergil saw and used the Crowland Chronicle as one of his sources: Crowland, p. 99.

  3. Ellis/Vergil, p. 221; see also Jones, Bosworth 1485, p. 166.

  4.  Circa 1924: P.J. Foss, The Field of Redemore, Newtown Lindford, 1998, pp. 40, 63.

  5. There is certainly no source earlier than the 1920s for this unlikely story, which appears to have been invented by the ‘Fellowship of the White Boar’ (later the Richard III Society) to provide an ecclesiastical focus for modern commemorations. It is regrettable that Sutton Cheney church was chosen, since nearby Dadlington church has an authentic historic connection with the battle. In the words of Henry VIII’s chantry licence of 1511, Dadlington is specified as the church ‘to Þe wheche Þe bodyes or bones of the men sleyne in Þe seyde feelde beth broght and beryed’: TNA, C 82/367, quoted in Foss, The Field of Redemore, p. 40.

  6. Crowland, pp. 180–81.

  7. BL, Add. MS 12060, ff. 19–20, as quoted in Foss, The Field of Redemore, p. 54. See also R.M. Warnicke, ‘Sir Ralph Bigod: a loyal servant to King Richard III’, Ric. 6 (1982–84), pp. 299–303. It should be noted that Morley was an old man in 1554, while Sir Ralph Bigod had died in 1515. It is also worth noting that similar tales exist relating to the losers of other battles, including Agincourt and Coutrai (see, for example, J.W. Verkaik, ‘King Richard’s Last Sacrament’, Ric. 9, [1991–93], pp. 359–60).

  8. Soc. Ant., accession no. 446. The measurements are those given on the Society of Antiquaries object file, and have not been checked.

  9. Sharp’s drawing of the crucifix, made in 1793, shows no damage at these extremities, but Sharp may simply have reinstated the missing sections of foliation in his drawing.

10. Oman describes the decoration on the reverse of the roundels as ‘the Yorkist “sun in splendour”’. C. Oman, ‘English medieval base metal church plate’, Archaeological Journal, vol. 119, 1962, p. 200. However, the Bosworth Crucifix is not unique in having ‘suns’ on the back of its roundels. The very similar Lamport Crucifix (now in the treasury of Peterborough Cathedral) also has them, while other similar crucifixes have single or double roses in these positions.

11. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Bosworth Crucifix’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological & Historical Society, vol. 78 (2004), pp. 83–96.

12. TNA, C 82/367 (Henry VIII’s licence for a chantry for the battlefield dead at Dadlington church, 24 August 1511) refers to ‘Bosworth feld otherwise called Dadlyngton feld’: Foss, The Field of Redemore, p. 39. Only a small number of burials has actually so far been discovered at Dadlington.

13. C. Ross, The Wars of the Roses, a concise history, London, 1976, p. 131.

14. Ross, The Wars of the Roses, p. 131.

15. Crowland, pp. 180–81 implies that he rose at dawn. On 22 August 2009 the sun rose at 5.57 am BST. However, in the fifteenth century the medieval (Julian) calendar then in use was nine days behind the modern (Gregorian) calendar. Thus we actually need to consider the time of sunrise on 31 August, which in 2009 was at 6.12 am BST: www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=136&month=8&year=2009&obj=sun&afl=-11&day=1 (consulted May 2009).

16. Fifteenth-century custom may have been less strict regarding the use of correct liturigal colours than has subsequently been the case: see Θ, subsection 5.9.

17. Of the possible introits for a mass celebrated in honour of martyrs, one included the following words from Psalm 20 (in the enumeration of the Vulgate), which may also have figured in Richard III’s coronation service: Quoniam praevenisti eum in benedictionibus dulcedinis: posuisti in capite eius coronam de lapide pretioso. [For you have gone before him with blessings of sweetness: you have set on his head a crown of precious stones.]

18. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Bosworth Crucifix’, p. 85.

19. Ellis/Vergil, p. 223.

20. Lord Strange undoubtedly survived. However, there is no proof that the execution was ever actually ordered.

21. See Map 1: The Battle of Bosworth.

22. About 9 am.

23. It is doubtful whether Richard could have actually seen Henry’s features, and in any case, he had probably never seen him before. He would have recognised him by the standard he was displaying.

24. Il vint a tout sa bataille, lequelle estoit estimee plus de XVM homes, en criant: ces traictres francois aujour’uy sont cause de la perdition de nostre royaume. Jones, Bosworth 1485, p. 222. This evidence does, however, seem to be at variance with the ‘traditional’ account of Richard’s cavalry charge.

25. Jones, Bosworth 1485, pp. 194–95.

26. Jones, Bosworth 1485, pp. 196–97.

27. Which Stanley was in command depends on whether or not Lord Stanley himself was present (see above). Both Vergil and Crowland claim that he was but, as we have seen, Lord Stanley himself suggested otherwise.

28. Ellis/Vergil, p. 224.

29. See Beloved Cousyn, p. 115.

30. TNA, C 82/367, 24 August 1511.

31. Williams, ‘The Portuguese Connection …’, p. 142; Vasconcellio, Anacephalaeoses, pp. 251–52. Williams refers incorrectly to the page numbers of Vasconcellio’s text.

9. ‘A Sorry Spectacle’

  1. Polydore Vergil, as quoted in C.J. Billson, Mediaeval Leicester, Leicester, 1920, p. 180.

  2. The precise distance would depend, of course, on the point of departure.

  3. Ellis/Vergil, p. 226.

  4.  The sun probably set at about 7.55 pm that evening: see www.canterbury-weather.co.uk/sun/ukmap.php?d=31&m=8&y=2009 (consulted May 2009).

  5. By the late fifteenth century most churches had more than one bell: a small Sanctus bell, which was rung at mass to signal the consecration, and also a ‘great bell’ for Requiems and anniversaries. Some churches may have had a third bell for ringing the Angelus. Those which did not would have used the Sanctus bell for this purpose.

  6.  Kendall R3, p. 369. See also Speede’s account (appendix 4).

  7. Kendall was probably misled by the large nineteenth-century stone plaque erected near the river to commemorate Richard III by Benjamin Broadbent.

  8. Kendall’s account of the exposure of Richard’s body is based on the rather casual wording of Vergil (see below).

  9. In a subsequent footnote he goes on to recount the very dubious tale of the exhumation of Richard III’s remains at the time of the Dissolution as though this were an established fact, which is certainly not the case.

10. This interpretation is based on Crowland, pp. 194–95. However, the relevant passage does not, in fact, say that Henry antedated his accession, and there is no evidence to support such a claim in the surviving acts of attainder against Richard III’s supporters.

11. C.R. Cheney, Handbook of Dates, RHS, 1945, reprinted Cambridge, 1996, p. 23.

12. Ellis/Vergil, pp. 220–26; Crowland, pp. 178–83.

13. Quoted in Billson, Mediaeval Leicester, p. 180. See also Ellis/Vergil, p. 226.

14. Crowland, pp. 182–83. It is possible (but not certain) that there is a gap in the text, as tentatively indicated.

15. D. Baldwin, ‘King Richard’s Grave in Leicester’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, vol. 60 (1986), pp. 21–24 (p. 21).

16. For details of John Howard’s burial, see Beloved Cousyn, pp. 126–30. Also, J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The opening of the tombs of the Dukes of Richmond and Norfolk, Framlingham, April 1841: Darby’s account’, Ric. 18 (2008), pp. 100–07.

17. Eleanor, p. 184.

18. Crowland, pp. 182–83.

19. Examination of Richard III’s skeleton revealed post mortem injuries to the face and to the right side, and evidence of a sword having been thrust up the anus. Obscene treatment of defeated and dead enemies has occured throughout the history of warfare. Modern examples were reported as recently as 2012.

20. If this detail is true, it can hardly have been done other than by Henry ‘Tudor”s express command.

21. Throsby, Leicester, p. 62, contends that the fact that Blanc Sanglier accompanied Richard’s body was at least a concession of some sort on the part of Henry VII.

22. Although Throsby, Leicester, p. 62 (following an earlier writer) suggests that the rope was ‘more to insult the helpless dead than to fasten him to the horse’, it is interesting to note that the second possibility had at least been considered.

23.  C.W.C. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages, ad 378–1515, New York, 1953, pp. 78, 103.

24. C. Weightman, Margaret of York, Gloucester, 1989, p. 102.

25. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. 1(i), no. 2246, p. 1006, citing Lambeth MS 306, f. 204.

26. J. Ridley, Henry VIII, London, 1984, p. 72.

27. ‘The 21st [September], confirmation of the news of the defeat of James IV, by a messenger, who brought the Scotch King’s plaid [paludiamentum seu tunicam] with the royal arms upon it.’ Letters and Papers … Henry VIII, vol. 1(i), no. 2391, pp. 1060–61.

28. Jones, Bosworth 1485, p. 160.

29. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, p. 39 (G. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ‘The Knight’s Tale’, lines 1001–08).

30. As with the case of James IV, it has been debated whether the bodies displayed as those of Edward II and Richard II were the authentic remains of those kings, but this point is not particularly significant in the present context.

31. This part of the plan was by no means always successful, of course, and royal martyr cults did tend to spring up around the royal bodies, in spite of their discreet burials.

10. The Franciscan Priory

  1. VCH, Leicestershire, vol. 2, 1954, pp. 33–35.

  2. TNA, C1/206/69 recto, lines 4 and 5. For the precise words, see chapter 11 below.

  3. Ellis/Vergil, p. 226.

  4. For an explanation of the differences, see J. Ashdown-Hill, Mediaeval Colchester’s Lost Landmarks, Derby, 2009, p. 65.

  5. See above: Kendall.

  6. As we shall see shortly, Richard was buried in the choir of the priory church: a part of the building normally accessible only to the friars themselves.

  7. Ashdown-Hill, Mediaeval Colchester, p. 74.

  8.  My italics. R. Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England, London, 1684, p. 235. For Speede’s text see below, appendix 4.

  9. Green, Legends, p. 22, asserts that the friars ‘begged for the body’, but as usual, she cites no source. The guardian (religious superior) of the Leicester Greyfriars in 1485 may have shared the dead king’s name. The guardian in office in 1479 had certainly been called Richard: VCH, Leicestershire, vol. 2, pp. 32–35 and n. 19.

10. Richard III’s parents had employed a Franciscan chaplain, and later his sister, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, chose to be buried in the Franciscan conventual church in Mechelen.

11.  Stow, Annals (ed. 1615), p. 327, cited in W. Page (ed.), VCH, London, vol. 1, Section 12, London 1909.

12. Accounts suggesting that Richard III was buried in a stone coffin date only from the seventeenth century and are anachronistic (see below). When his body was excavated in 2012, it was clear that he had been buried only in a shroud.

13. See above: description of Queen Anne Neville’s funeral rites.

14. Calendar of State Papers – Venetian, vol 1, 1202–1509, p. 156.

11. ‘King Richard’s Tombe’

  1. BL, Add. MS 7099, f. 129.

  2. By comparison, Henry VI, for example, had had to wait thirteen years for his new tomb.

  3. Will of Cecily Neville, dowager Duchess of York: Nicholls and Bruce, eds, Wills from Doctors’ Commons, p. 8.

  4. TNA, C1/206/69 recto, lines 4 and 5.

  5. He witnessed a deed on 10 August 1490: Nottinghamshire Archives, DD/P/CD/13. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Mayor_of_Nottingham (consulted June 2009).

  6. R. Edwards, ‘King Richard’s Tomb at Leicester’, Ric. 3 (no. 50, Sept. 1975), pp. 8–9, citing PRO [TNA], C1/206/69. This is a record of a chancery case brought by Rauf Hill of Nottingham against Walter Hylton, alleging the fraudulent insertion of Rauf’s name in indentures between Hylton and Sir Reynold Bray and Sir Thomas Lovell, concerning the making of a tomb for Richard III. About one-third of this manuscript is now virtually unreadable. The supposed figure of £50 for the cost of the tomb is an interpretation advanced by a previous researcher – who may indeed have been able to decipher more of the text than is now legible. However, my examination of the manuscript did not succeed in substantiating this figure, though two separate references to ‘xv li’ and ‘xx li’ respectively were found.

  7. See Edwards, ‘King Richard’s Tomb at Leicester’.

  8. J. Blair and N. Ramsey, eds, English Medieval Industries, London, 1991, p. 37.

  9. Blair and Ramsey, English Medieval Industries, p. 35;J.C. Cox, Memorials of Old Derbyshire, London, 1907, p. 108.

10. M. Hicks, Richard III and his Rivals, London, 1991, p. 342; NA, PROB 11/11, will of Richard Lessy, 1498. I am grateful to Marie Barnfield for these references. The hard stone tomb with brass memorials for Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife cost 400 marks (or about £267) in 1524.

11. The tomb of William Shore, erstwhile husband of Edward IV’s last mistress, is marked by an incised alabaster effigy, similar in appearance to a ‘brass’. See Beloved Cousyn, figure 19.

12. The Latin texts of these two royal epitaphs are given in appendix 6, for comparison with the Latin text of the Richard III epitaph.

13. The manuscript texts give vano rather than vario (i.e. ‘vain’ or ‘ostentatious’ marble).

14. Sandford and BL, Add. MS 45131, f. 10v: ‘Was by many called Richard the Third’.

15. ‘Exactly’ or ‘merely’. The word means ‘just’ in both senses.

16. The extant manuscripts give a variant version of this line: ‘… and caused a non-king to be revered with the honour of a king’.

17. 2 x 5 = 10, -4 = 6. An alternative possible (but less likely) reading of this line would be: ‘When [in] twice four years less five’ (i.e. 2 x 4 = 8, -5 = 3).

18. 300 x 5 = 1500, minus the figure given in the previous line (either 6 or 3) would give 1494 (or – less probably – 1497). This dating technique is a complex numbers game. The punctuation given here assumes that the writer’s intention was to convey the date of the inauguration of the tomb and epitaph. With different punctuation, however, one could argue that the intention was to give the date of Richard’s death – in which case the writer evidently became so tied up in his own cleverness that he got it wrong!

19. On 22 August.

20. Sandford and BL, Add. MS 45131, f. 10v: ‘… the right it claimed’.

21. Henry VII himself referred to this first Yorkist pretender simply as spurium quemdam puerum (‘some illegitimate boy’): J. Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers illustrative of the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, London, 1857, p. 95, citing BL, Add. MS 15385, f. 315.

22. The real identity of this person is not known for certain, but Henry VII later sought to establish that he was one Pierre Werbecque of Tournai, and he is therefore usually referred to as ‘Perkin Warbeck’.

23. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Coins attributed to the Yorkist Pretenders, 1487–1498’, Ric. 19 (2009), pp. 69–89 (pp. 81–86).

12. ‘Here Lies the Body’

  1. Seventeenth-century inscription from Alderman Herrick’s pillar marking the gravesite of Richard III: C. Wren, Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, London, 1750, p. 144.

  2. A tomb effigy which fits the description of Richard’s, and which shows signs of weathering, is now preserved in Tamworth church. P. Tudor-Craig, ed., Richard III Exhibition Catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1972, no. 172.

  3. Wren, Parentalia, p. 144; D. Baldwin, ‘King Richard’s Grave in Leicester’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, vol. 60 (1986), p. 22.

  4. Richard III Society, Barton Library, personal communication from S.H. Skillington, Hon. Secretary, Leicester Archaeological Society, to Saxon Barton, 29 October 1935.

  5. In the present Social Services Department car park on the former Greyfriars site.

  6.  See Richard Corbet’s Iter Boreale (c. 1620–25), cited in J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘the Location of the 1485 Battle and the Fate of Richard III’s Body’, Ricardian Bulletin, Autumn 2004, pp. 34–35.

  7. Such violent exhumations did sometimes occur in the seventeenth century, during the Civil War. It is perhaps significant, therefore, that the story of the digging up of Richard’s body was disseminated at about that period.

  8. The Commons were protesting against Cardinal Wolsey’s attempt to enforce a ‘benevolence’, thus contravening a statute against these forced taxes, enacted by Richard III. Wolsey rebuked the MPs, saying: ‘I marvel that you speak of Richard III, which was a usurper and murderer of his own nephews.’ They, however, responded robustly: ‘Although he did evil, yet in his time were many good Acts made’: J. Potter, Good King Richard? London, 1983, p. 23.

  9. It would be interesting to compare the DNA of this skull with that of Richard III (as revealed below), were it not for the fact that carbon-14 dating has already shown the skull to date from before the Norman Conquest (A. Wakelin, ‘Is there a king under this bridge?’, Leicester Mercury, 8 October 2002, p. 10).

10. VCH, Leicestershire, vol. 2, p. 33. The superior of a Franciscan Priory has the title not of ‘prior’ but of ‘guardian’.

11. See, for example, the extensive but roofless remains of the former Greyfriars at Little Walsingham in Norfolk.

12. Speede, History, p. 725 (see appendix 4).

13. Wren, Parentalia, p. 144.

14. Speede, History, p. 725 (see appendix 4).

13. ‘The Honour of a King’

  1. Richard III’s epitaph.

  2. The bishop of St David’s so described him, and in August 1485 the city of York noted in its records its deep regret at his death: Road, pp. 135, 223. We have also seen that the House of Commons recalled him as a good king in the presence of a rather astonished Cardinal Wolsey during the reign of Henry VIII.

  3. Although Richard III had two known illegitimate children, they seem to have been older than his legitimate son. They are thus likely to have been begotten before Richard married.

  4. ‘… our father, King Edward the Fourth, whom God assoile’: letter from Henry VII to Sir Gilbert Talbot, quoted in J. Gairdner, History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third, Cambridge, 1898, p. 276.

  5. ‘Very truth it is and well-known that at such time as Sir James Tyrell was in the Tower for treason committed against the most famous prince, King Henry the Seventh, both Dighton and he were examined and confessed the murder [of Edward V and Richard Duke of York]’: R.S. Sylvester, ed., St Thomas More, The History of King Richard III, New Haven & London, 1976, pp. 88–89. Tyrell was executed in May 1502 for his support of the Yorkist prince Edmund de la Pole (son of Richard III’s sister, Elizabeth of York, Duchess of Suffolk, and younger brother of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln).

  6. See R3MK; Eleanor; Beloved Cousyn.

14. Richard III’s Genes part I – the Fifteenth Century and Before

  1. For Richard’s books, see the series of articles by A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, Ric. 9 and 10 (1991–96). For his handwriting, see B. Hickey, ‘Richard III – a character analysis’, published by P. Stirling-Langley, Ricardian Bulletin, September 2000, pp. 27–34, and March 2001, pp. 16–22. This article also refers to earlier published material on the same subject. For Richard’s horoscope, see J. Elliott, ‘The Birth Chart of Richard III’, Astrological Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 19–37.

  2. Richard III certainly had two illegitimate children. His daughter, Catherine, was married but died childless. His son, John of Gloucester, was put to death by Henry VII. There is also the curious story of Richard Plantagenet of Eastwell, an old man who died in Sussex in the reign of Elizabeth I, and who reportedly claimed to be Richard’s son. See P.W. Hammond, ‘The Illegitimate Children of Richard III’, Ric. 5 (1977–81), pp. 92–96.

  3. As far as is known. John of Gloucester might conceivably have had illegitimate offspring of his own, but if so, no record of them survives.

  4. A letter dated 20 February 1478 mentions plans for Clarence’s burial at Tewkesbury.

  5. Bodl, MS Top. Glouc. D.2, f. 40r-v.

  6. R.K. Morris and R, Shoesmith, eds, Tewkesbury Abbey, History, Art and Architecture, Almeley, 2003, pp. 32–40.

  7. The account which follows is based upon P. De Win, ‘Danse Macabre around the tomb and bones of Margaret of York’, Ric. 15 (2005), pp. 53–69.

  8. Her heart and intestines were buried in the Carthusian monasteries at Herne and Scheut respectively.

  9. Sub limine ostii huius chori. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, fr. 5234, f. 146.

10. P. De Win, ‘Danse Macabre rond graf en gebeente van Margareta van York’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren an Kunst van Mechelen, 2003, pp. 61–86; English version published as ‘Danse Macabre around the tomb and bones of Margaret of York’, Ric. 15 (2005), pp. 53–69.

11. The precise location of the original tomb was somewhat unclear. See De Win, ‘Danse Macabre’, Handelingen, p. 63 (Ric. 15, p. 55) & passim.

12. Three skeletons found, one of them female; the latter aged between 50 and 60, and 1.54 metres in height.

13. Two skeletons found, one of them female.

14. Partial skeleton (secondary burial?), with hair, belonging to a woman of about 50.

15. Dienst Archeologie.

16. Information supplied by Dieter Viaene, Mechelen Town Archives, 29 June 2007.

17. B. Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, New York & London, 2001, p. 27.

18. E. Hagelberg, B. Sykes and R.E.M. Hedges, ‘Ancient bone DNA amplified’, Nature, vol. 342 (1989), p. 485.

19. A.J. Klotzko, A Clone of Your Own? Oxford, 2004, p. 52.

20. J. Marks, What it means to be 98% Chimpanzee, London and Berkeley, 2002, p. 34.

21. The designations, lifetimes and places of origin of the clan mothers as given here are derived from Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, p. 195 and passim. It was Professor Sykes who named the clan mothers.

22. D. Brewer, Chaucer and his World, London, 1978, p. 89.

23. Ibid.

24. These adjectives of nationality are, of course, anachronistic in a fifteenth-century context, but it is convenient to employ them.

25. One recent writer suggests the contrary, stating that ‘it is possible to speculate that, given [Gilles’] time in the court of the English King and Queen, his wife or wives were of English origin’. J. Lucraft, Katherine Swynford, the History of a Medieval Mistress, Stroud, 2006, p. 2. However, there is actually little evidence that Gilles spent a great deal of time at the English court.

26. J. Gardner, The Life and Times of Chaucer, London, 1977, p. 118.

27. J. Perry, ‘Philippa Chaucer’s Tomb’ (2002), http://members.cox.net/judy-perry/Philippa.html (consulted June 2009), p. 2. The tomb, with an effigy of a lady in a wimple, is uninscribed. It is identified as Philippa’s on the basis of the de Roët wheel badge which the lady wears on her breast. Philippa’s son, Thomas Chaucer, held the manor of East Worldham from 1418–1434.

28. ODNB, vol. 30, pp. 888–89.

29. Later Marquess of Somerset and Dorset.

30. G.C. Coulton, Chaucer and his England, London, 1908, p. 31. Chaucer’s sons were apparently proud of their de Roët heritage. It has been claimed that they abandoned their father’s coat of arms, preferring to use the de Roët arms which came to them from their mother. G.K. Chesterton, Chaucer, London, 1932, p. 80.

31. Reported in J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Alive and Well in Canada – the Mitochondrial DNA of Richard III’, Ric. 16 (2006), pp. 1–14.

15. Richard III’s Genes part II – the mtDNA Line

  1. Kendall, Richard the Third, pp. 261, 274.

  2. ODNB, vol. 13, p. 22.

  3. ODNB, vol. 13, p. 22.

  4.  J.D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, 1485-1558, Oxford 1952, p. 387.

  5. ODNB, vol. 13, p. 22.

  6. All of Margaret Babthorpe’s (Cholmley) daughters married, some of them more than once, however, only one bloodline – the one followed here – has successfully been traced to the present day.

  7. One who conformed in public as an Anglican, but who was a Catholic in private.

  8. ODNB, vol. 50, p. 939, quoting Slingsby’s diary.

  9. Joy Ibsen, personal letter, 13 November 2004.

10. TNA, PCC Wills, Prob 11/884, ff. 161r-162v.

11. TNA, PCC Wills, Prob 11/884, f. 161v.

12. Curiously, given Barbara Yelverton’s royalist ancestry, Sir Robert Reynolds was the Solicitor General under the Commonwealth. He purchased Elvetham from William Seymour, Duke of Somerset.

13.  R. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, London 1974, pp. 165; 166.

14. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, p. 162.

15. J. Pollock, Wilberforce, London 1977, p. 159.

16. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, p. 166.

17. Pollock, Wilberforce, p. 305.

18. The only living descendants of Barbara Spooner [Wilberforce] are in through her sons: J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘A Granddaughter of William Wilberforce’, Genealogists’ Magazine, September 2004 (28:3, 2004), pp. 110–11.

19.  E. Adams, ed., Mrs J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, London 1926, p. 16.

20. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

21. Joy Ibsen, 13 December 2005.

22. A. Comyns Carr, J. Comyns Carr – Stray Memories, London 1920, p. 53.

23. Adams, ed., Mrs J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, pp. 13–14.

24. Adams, ed., Mrs J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, pp. 14–15.

25. Joy Ibsen, 13 November 2004.

26. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 21.

27. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 2.

28. Arthur was the eldest of the three Strettell children, born in 1845. Alice was born in 1850 and Alma in 1854.

29. He died, at the young age of 36, on 24 January 1882 at Colorada Springs, though his will was not proved in England until 13 December 1890.

30. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 112. Henry Irving made his debut on the London stage in 1866, where he was reputed the greatest English actor of his time. Born in Somerset in 1838, Irving began his acting career in the provinces. In 1878 he formed a partnership with Ellen Terry at the Lyceum Theatre, where he became actor-manager. The first actor in British history to receive a knighthood, Sir Henry Irving died in 1905.

31. W.C. Homes, ‘An English Lady at Glen Eyrie, the 1902–03 Diary of Dorothy Comyns Carr’, Kiva, the Journal of the Cheyenne Mountain Heritage Center, Vol. 4, no. 2 (Spring 2000), pp 3–11 (p. 4).

32. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 8.

33.  E. Terry, The Story of my Life, London 1908, p. 350.

34. The portrait is now in the Tate Gallery.

35. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 132.

36. Consort of King Carol and, after September 1914, Queen Dowager.

37. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 44.

38. Homes, ‘An English Lady at Glen Eyrie’, pp. 8–11.

39. Homes, ‘An English Lady at Glen Eyrie’, p. 4.

40. Homes, ‘An English Lady at Glen Eyrie’, pp. 3–4.

41. Homes, ‘An English Lady at Glen Eyrie’, p. 11.

42. Dame Ellen Terry’s memorial service was held at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, in July 1928.

43. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

44. Joy Ibsen, 2 July 2004.

45.  His mother’s second cousin; one of the two sons of Alice Strettell (Comyns Carr).

46. Joy Ibsen, 21 May 2004.

47. His will was proved on 5 January 1940.

48. A.F.G. Stokes, A Moorland Princess: A Romance of Lyonesse (1904); From Land’s End to the Lizard (1909); From Devon to St Ives (1910); From St Ives to Land’s End [DATE?]; The Cornish Coast and Moors (1912).

49. Joy Ibsen, 11 August 2004.

50. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

51. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

52. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

53. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

54. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

55. Joy Ibsen, 2 July 2004.

16. The Future of Richard III

  1. W.C. Sellars and R.J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That, London, 1930: ‘a memorable history of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates’.

  2. There is always an element of presumption in tracing patrilineal descent, since the paternity of a child can never be taken for granted. For this reason it would be impossible to absolutely guarantee that the Plantagenet Y-chromosome survives in the Somerset family.

  3. They were not, of course, ‘princes’: either one of them was a king, or both of them were bastards.

Appendix 1: Richard III’s Itinerary for 1485

  1. Taken from R. Edwards, The Itinerary of King Richard III, London, 1983.

Appendix 2: Calendar for 1485 (March to August)

  1. Solar eclipse, death of Queen Anne Neville.

  2. Feast of the Annunciation (Lady Day); the first day of 1485 according to the medieval English calendar. Burial of Queen Anne Neville.

  3. Palm Sunday.

  4. Maundy Thursday.

  5. Good Friday.

  6. Easter Sunday.

  7. Ascension Day.

  8. Anniversary of the death of Henry VI(?).

  9. Feast of Pentecost (Whit Sunday).

10. Trinity Sunday.

11. Feast of Corpus Christi.

12. Anniversary of Richard III’s accession and start of his third regnal year.

13. Battle of Bosworth. Death of Richard III.

14. Feast of St Louis IX of France: burial of Richard III at the Franciscan Priory Church, Leicester.

Appendix 4: John Speede’s Account of the Burial of Richard III

  1. From Speede, History, p. 725.

  2. It is not the case that all coins of the Emperor Caligula were destroyed.

  3. It is noteworthy that Speede does not say (as is usually reported) that Richard III’s body was thrown into the river, but rather that it was reburied under one end of the bridge.

Appendix 5: DNA evidence relating to the putative remains of Margaret of York preserved in Mechelen, Belgium

  1. When the bones were found, the precise location of the original tomb was somewhat unclear. See De Win, ‘Danse Macabre’, Handelingen, p. 63 (Ric. 15, 2003, p. 55) & passim.

  2. Three skeletons found, one of them female; the latter aged between fifty and sixty, and 1.54m in height.

  3. Two skeletons found, one of them female.

  4. Partial skeleton (secondary burial?) with hair, belonging to a woman of about fifty.

  5. Information supplied by Dieter Viaene, Mechelen Town Archives, 29 June 2007.

  6. V812/2 appears to constitute part of the 1955 (Twiesselmann) remains. What appears to be another part of these same remains is stored under the number V812/4. Information supplied by Professor Cassiman and Dieter Viaene.

  7. For V812/1 and V812/2 only a partial DNA sequence was obtained.

  8. Taken from the femur of V812/2.

  9. All the other samples from V812/2 yielded at least one double reading (see below: Table 2).

10. As has been stated, when analysing mtDNA it is standard practice to concentrate on a ‘control region’ of four hundred nucleotide bases. In terms of its control region, Joy Ibsen’s mtDNA is identical to that of the ‘clan mother’ for haplogroup J. It follows that Margaret of York cannot have displayed mutations in the control region of her mtDNA which Joy Ibsen does not possess.

11. Joy Ibsen has ‘C’ at 146, whereas V812/3 is identical to the Cambridge Reference Sequence (CRS) at this point. Also V812/3 differs from the CRS at three other points (16311, 152 and 228) where Joy Ibsen’s sequence does not.

12. It has been estimated than one mutation will arise in the control region of the mitochondrial DNA every 20,000 years (B. Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, London 2001, p. 155). However, I know of no estimated chronology for mutations outside of the control region (which happens to be where the four mutations which distinguish Joy Ibsen’s mtDNA and that of V812/3 are located). Since the ‘clan mother’ of haplogroup J is estimated to have lived approximately 10,000 years ago, it follows that the last common maternal-line ancestress of Joy Ibsen and V812/3 must have lived less than 10,000 years ago.

13. For the female bone samples examined, carbon-14 dating produced death dates of approximately 1245 and 1367 [De Win, ‘Danse Macabre’, Handelingen, pp. 80-1 (Ricardian, pp. 65-6)]. These dates appear to refer to the Steurs and Winders bones, though sadly the confusion over the remains found in the 1930s means that it is unclear which date refers to which bones.

14. Personal communication from Dieter Viaene, 29 June 2007.

Appendix 6: Richard III’s Epitaph

  1. p. 149.

  2. pp. 217–18.

  3. See below, note 31.

  4. There is no reason to assume that Buck’s published punctuation is authentic. As we shall see, the extant manuscript copies of the epitaph contain no punctuation.

  5. Arguably, Sandford’s text may reflect the original tomb inscription more closely than Buck’s, but as we shall see, there is no great difference in the meaning.

  6. Buck 1647: Richardi.

  7. Buck 1647: ad.

  8. Buck 1647: Sti.

  9. These words are not given by Sandford. Presumably they did not form part of the original inscription, but were in the nature of a heading, supplied by Buck’s manuscript source (since it seems unlikely that Buck himself would have chosen to apply to Henry VII the adjective sanctus).

10. Sandford: multa.

11. Buck 1647: Richardus.

12. Sandford: Nam patrie tutor.

13. Buck 1647 and Sandford: patrius.

14. Buck 1647: duntaxat.

15. Buck 1647: Aetatesque; Sandford: Estatesque.

16. Sandford: non.

17. Buck 1647 has a marginal note here: Annos 2 & 51 dies. Buck 1619 has Annos 2 et 52 dies. This misinterprets the text, which gives the length of Richard’s reign as ‘two summers and fifty-eight days’ (it actually lasted two years and fifty-seven days).

18. Sandford: merito.

19. Buck 1647: dicaras.

20. Buck 1647 and Sandford: quatuor.

21. Buck 1647: quinq.; Sandford: quinqζ.

22. Sandford: tricenta.

23. Buck 1647 here inserts a marginal note: Anno Domini 1484. Buck 1619 sets this note next to the preceding line. Both texts seem to take the convoluted date as referring to the Battle of Bosworth.

24. Buck 1647: antique; Sandford: anteqζ.

25. Buck 1647 has a marginal note at this point reading Die 21 Aug. Buck 1619 has Die 22 Augusti. The latter is clearly the correct reading.

26. Buck 1647 and Sandford: Redideram.

27. Sandford: rubre.

28. Sandford: debita iura.

29. Sandford: rose.

30. Buck 1647: precarem.

31. Buck 1619: levat; Sandford: pena fienda.

32. Curiously, Nichols published a composite text containing elements of Buck 1619 (which was not published in his day) and Buck 1647. Nichols also noted the variant readings of Sandford. Despite occasional errors, Nichols notes more of Sandford’s variant readings than does Kincaid in his edition of Buck 1619.

33. W. Hutton (with additions by J. Nichols), The Battle of Bosworth Field, second edition, London, 1813 (reprinted Dursley, 1974), pp. 220–22. The translation may indeed be by Buck, but curiously it does not figure in the published editions of Buck’s History of Richard the Third.

34. This is an error, the Latin text does not say this.

35. The year date is incorrectly given in this translation.

36. J. Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (4 vols, London, 1795–1811), vol. 1, part 2, p. 298.

37. J. Weever, Ancient Funeral Monuments, London, 1631, p. 475; London, 1767, pp. 253–54.

38. Weever, Funeral Monuments, 1631 edition, p. 476; 1767 edition, p. 254. For the positioning of this epitaph around the top of the tomb chest, see R. Marks and P. Williamson, Gothic; Art for England 1400–1547, London, 2003, p. 83.

39. Weever gives benigne; the inscription on the tomb reads benigna.