The Ricardian 2019 West The Journal of the Richard III Society of Western
Australia
CONTENTS
1. President’s report page ii 2. Research papers page 1 a. The Herbert Family b. The Mill of the Black Monks c. Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury d. Modern day gaming and medieval education e. Murder in Medieval Europe. f. Medieval Wall Paintings in East Anglian Churches: Teachings for Parishioners g. Elizabeth Woodville h. ABC of Embroidery 3. Alphabet research page 35 1. C is for Cymru 2. D is for Dynasties 3. E is for Eleanor crosses 4. G is for Geddington and other Eleanor cross places 5. I is for Immigration 6. N is for the Book of Nurture 7. N is for Sir William Norris 8. O is for Outlaw 9. Q is for Quarter days 10. V is for Roger Vaughan 4. Book reviews page 57 5. Events page 67
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PRESIDENT’S REPORT
Research papers We have had a very interesting mix of research papers this year:
1. Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury by Alison Carman 2. The Herbert Family in the Fifteenth Century by Anita Bentley 3. Medieval Wall Paintings in East Anglian Churches – Teaching for Parishioners by Carole Carson 4. Modern Day Gaming and Medieval Education by Jo-Ann Koh 5. European Art and the Renaissance Period by Jo-Ann Koh 6. Murder in Medieval Europe by Karen Wintle 7. Elizabeth Woodville – Mother of the Princes in the Tower by Pat Masters 8. The Mill of the Black Monks by Terry Johnson
And our Alphabet Paper series has also ranged far and wide for topics:
1. C is for Cymru by Jo-Ann Koh 2. D is for Dynasty by Terry Johnson 3. E is for Eleanor Crosses by Louise Carson (me) 4. H is for Hereward the Wake by Karen Wintle 5. G is for Guildford and George Abbot with Lady Frances Howard by Anita Bentley 6. G is for Grantham, Geddington and other Eleanor Cross places by Louise Carson (me) 7. I is for Immigration in Medieval England by Jenny Gee 8. N is for Notable Nurtures in Noble Households in the Fifteenth Century by Anita Bentley 9. N is for Sir William Norris by Anita Bentley 10. Q is for Quarter Days by Jo-Ann Koh 11. V is for Roger Vaughan by Terry Johnson
Workshop – Chainmail, 22 June 2019 Our workshop this year was hosted by friends of mine, Rodney and Anne-Marie Southall. Rodney was previously a member of a re-enactment group and had agreed to take us through the (difficult) process of making chainmail. I know that I, for one, managed to squash my finger in the pliers more than once, and instead of a nice flat strip of mail I produced a coaster-like circle! I believe full honours for the day go to Jo-Ann, who seemed to be the most successful student.
Australasian Convention – Melbourne, 8-10 August 2019 Jenny, Carole and I attended this year’s Convention in Melbourne. We flew out at stupid o’clock on Thursday morning, and hired a car in Melbourne to drive the hour to Doncaster East. While the event itself was great, Melbourne was experiencing an (Ant)Arctic blast weather-wise, and the hotel was very cold. A full review by Jenny can be found in the upcoming Ricardian West Journal for 2019.
The next Convention is to be hosted by the South Australia branch at the Rydges Hotel, Adelaide, the weekend of 21 & 22 August, 2021.
York Medieval Fayre – 29 September 2019 This year we managed to secure a spot at the York Medieval Fayre! Carole and I drove to York on Saturday after our September meeting, and met Terry first thing in the morning on Sunday 28th to set up our new gazebo and display our “wares”. Thank you also to Jenny (and Rob), Pat, Anita and Hugh who travelled to York for the day. A day-long event is made much
ii easier when there is a group of us to share the duties. I had previously printed 33 new reading lists, and a quick count at the end of the day showed we only had 2 left! That is a good bit of advertising for Richard III and the Society!
NSW Mini Conference – Albury, 8-10 November 2018 Carole and I attended the NSW Mini Conference in Albury last November. Starting with afternoon tea on Thursday afternoon, and finishing with a day tour of the surrounding countryside on Saturday, the main event took place on Friday, with a banquet in the evening. A full review of the event can be found in the Ricardian West Journal for 2018.
Facebook Page As of 25th October 2019 our Facebook page has 385 followers. The top country for ‘likes’ is the US (n=117), closely followed by the UK (n=116).
Your Country Your followers Country followers United States of America 117 Paraguay 1 United Kingdom 116 Ukraine 1 Australia 59 Sweden 1 Italy 16 Georgia 1 Canada 15 Ghana 1 Germany 9 Egypt 1 France 5 Switzerland 1 New Zealand 4 South Africa 1 Brazil 4 Mexico 1 Portugal 2 Malaysia 1 Ireland 2 Argentina 1 Greece 2 Austria 1 Poland 2 Philippines 1 Belgium 1 Nigeria 1 Finland 1 Pakistan 1 Japan 1
Website Our website has had a total of 47 posts so far for 2019 and most views of the website have come from Australia (n=307).
Below is an infographic of the reach of our website generated on 25 October 2019:
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Country Views Country Views Australia 1353 Romania 2 Canada 221 Italy 2 United Kingdom 169 Belgium 2 United States 162 Benin 2 India 56 Kuwait 1 China 36 South Korea 1 Kenya 22 Angola 1 Brazil 18 Sweden 1 New Zealand 16 Tanzania 1 Nigeria 16 Hungary 1 Malta 10 Russia 1 Ireland 8 Chile 1 Belarus 7 Mexico 1 France 7 Colombia 1 Netherlands 6 Guatemala 1 Germany 4 Grenada 1 Philippines 4 Ghana 1 Spain 3 Indonesia 1 Finland 3 Thailand 1 South Africa 3 Brunei 1 Argentina 2 Cambodia 1 Portugal 2 Dominican Republic 1 Malaysia 2 Lithuania 1 Ukraine 2
Thank you to my fellow office bearers for 2019– Vice President Terry, Treasurer Jo-Ann, and Secretary, Carole.
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Finally, thank you to those-who-can for attending the monthly meetings and researching on topics of interest for both our research papers, and for the monthly alphabet papers to be published in the upcoming Ricardian West Journal 2019. And once again thank you to our Country Members for your continued support.
Louise Carson October 2019
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RESEARCH PAPERS
THE HERBERT FAMILY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
By Anita Bentley presented to the Richard III Society of WA on 23 February 2019
The origins of the Herbert family name goes back to Norman times with an Anglo Norman nobleman Herbert of Winchester, or as he was sometimes called, Herbert the Chamberlain. He held the office of Chamberlain of the Winchester treasury during the reign of King William II of England, and the office of Chancellor and Treasurer under King Henry 1. Herbert the Chamberlain, in 1198, was accused of attempting to assassinate King Henry I and was punished by being blinded and castrated — which was considered mild instead of “the hanging he deserved” (Abbot Suger of St Denis). Herbert was the father of Herbert, who became chamberlain to King David I of Scotland in 1156, and William, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. The Herbert family that we associate with the fortunes of the York and Lancastrian dynasties didn’t take the name Herbert until the early fifteenth century when William and Richard from the Welsh family of William ap Thomas of Raglan Castle anglicised their name. It is thought they took this measure because their lack of a surname may have caused problems and inconvenience when playing their part in English affairs from the Welsh Marches. Their choice of the surname Herbert appears to have come from the ancestry of Herbert the Chamberlain.
William and Richard Herbert, the sons of William ap Thomas, had as their grandfather Dafydd Gam ap Llyewelyn ap Hywel, (1380-25/10/1415). You will note the day of his death as the day of the Battle of Agincourt. Dafydd was one of Henry V’s bodyguards at Agincourt and reportedly defended and saved the King’s life when he was being attacked in the latter stages of the battle. He was knighted posthumously on the
Figure 0-1 Raglan Castle. battlefield. It is also interesting to note the surname Gam. Apparently Dafydd cadw.gov.wales Gam was lame and from that came the saying ‘a Gammy leg’. Dafydd’s family is described as a striking example of a native Welsh family that flourished under the rule of an aristocratic English family. Dafydd himself was previously in the service of John of Gaunt. Dafydd and his brothers were the king’s esquires and were prominent supporters of Henry Bolingbroke in south-east Wales as he gathered support for his overthrow of Richard II in1399. Daffyd’s son in law was William ap Thomas of Raglan Castle, who had married his daughter Gwladys as his second wife. Gwladys served as maid of honour to both of Henry
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IV’s wives, Mary and Joanna. William’s first wife was Elizabeth Berkeley, and through her, William gained Raglan Castle. When she died in 1420 William continued to live in the castle as a tenant of his stepson, James Berkeley. However in 1432 William purchased the castle outright. William was knighted in 1426 at the same ceremony as the young king, Henry VI. As well as running his own estates, Sir William worked as an administrator of other peoples’ land in his locality, and one of them was Richard, Duke of York. William died in London 1445, but is buried in Abergavenny Priory as is Gwladys who died in 1454. His two advantageous marriages had enabled him to build and expand his wealth and social position. Also a retainer of Richard, Duke of York was William’s son and heir William, who was born in 1423. In 1445 William the son had married Anne Devereux. Anne was from a prominent Hertfordshire family, and her father, Sir Walter Devereux, served as Chancellor of Ireland between 1449 and 1451. He was also closely affiliated with Richard, Duke of York. Together with his father-in-law Walter Devereux, William dominated the Welsh marches for the Duke in the 1450’s. They were known as being very violent and vengeful. William, who had by now taken the surname Herbert, became known as Black William. Occupying Hereford in the summer of 1456, William Herbert and Walter Devereux were sent to regain Carmarthen and Aberystwyth castles from the Earl of Pembroke, Edmund Tudor, who had previously seized them from the Duke of York. They regained the castles and imprisoned Edmund Tudor, the king’s half-brother, in the process. Inside they also discovered four year old Henry, Earl of Richmond, Jasper Tudor’s nephew. William Herbert paid a high price for the wardship of the boy and for control over his marriage. Herbert planned to marry Henry to his daughter Maud. In the autumn Edmund was released but died in November. Information later, reportedly from the Earl of Richmond’s own mouth, was that although he was kept as a prisoner he was honourably brought up by the wife of William Herbert, Anne, at Raglan Castle. Herbert and Anne had a large young family of their own and the Earl of Northumberland’s son, Henry Percy, was also in their care. Henry Richmond was apparently educated in grammar by two Oxford graduates, Edward Haseley and Andrew Scot, who were rewarded years later, when Henry became King Henry VII in 1485. Instruction in the military arts may have been given to him by Sir John Hughs a man of some influence and property in Gower, of which Herbert was the lord in the 1460s. This is presumed because Henry rewarded him in 1485 with a gift of 10 pounds. As a consequence of their actions, Henry VI summoned Herbert and Devereux to a great council meeting, and at the end of March 1457 Herbert and his accomplices stood trial in presence of the King, Queen and Duke of Buckingham. All were found guilty and attainted of treason. Devereux was sent to Windsor Castle, and Herbert to the Tower. Herbert received a royal pardon in June and this pardon was enough for him to turn his coat, and for a while he and his brother supported the King and Queen. Most of his neighbours in southeast Wales were Yorkists. The constableships of Carmarthen and Aberystwyth were transferred from Richard, Duke of York to Jasper Tudor. Then followed the dynastic disputes between Henry VI and Richard of York culminating in the battle that took place near Wakefield where the Duke of York was killed on December 30th 1460. After Wakefield Edward, Earl of March, set off for Wales, which had been a rich reservoir of men and money for his father. His intention was to prevent Jasper Tudor and his forces joining the Lancastrians as they made their way north. At age eighteen Edward was embarking on his first major independent campaign, though he had the support of York’s senior councillors, Sir William Devereux, Sir William Herbert, and Sir John Wenlock. As he prepared to return to London he heard of the approach of Jasper Tudor and there was the resultant battle of Mortimer’s Cross on 2nd February 1461. Jasper Tudor’s father was beheaded by Edward. Writing to some of the North Wales gentry three weeks after the
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battle, Jasper looked upon Mortimer’s Cross as a “great dishonour and rebuke that we and yee now late have by traitors Marche, Herbert and Dwnn with their affinities, as well in letting us of our Journey to the Kinge is putting my father and your kinsman to the death”. Herbert again supported Edward at Towton on 29th March 1461, and after Towton Herbert was rewarded by King Edward with the title Baron Herbert of Raglan and invested as a Knight of the Garter. Sir William Herbert thus became the first Welshman since Edward I had conquered Wales, to achieve a high position in English politics. Soon after the Battle of Towton, Herbert replaced Tudor as Earl of
Figure 0-2 The battle of the three suns Pembroke which gave him control of Pembroke castle. britishheritage.com In the first months of his reign Edward was happy to taste the delights of the crown and leave its burdens to the Earl of Warwick. At Westminster, Edward revelled with Hastings and Herbert and vied with them in pursuing the girls. Much of Wales was still loyal to King Henry, with many castles still being in the grip of Jasper Tudor so Edward sent off the Lords Herbert and Ferrers to raise an army in the Welsh marches. He decided to join them himself but after starting off, decided they were quite capable, and leisurely returned to London, on the way back stopping at Stony Stratford. By 1467 Warwick and Herbert had now developed an open dislike of each other. As the counterpart of Warwick in the north, Herbert was made responsible for ruling Wales and a great rivalry and jealousy developed between them because: 1. Herbert had married his heir William to the Queen’s sister, Mary. 2. Herbert was leading the King astray with his carousing. 3. Herbert had acquired Dunster castle which Warwick apparently coveted, and he had had his son and heir installed as Lord Dunster. 4 Edward had found out that George Neville, Archbishop of Canterbury was intriguing to obtain a dispensation for the marriage of George of Clarence to Isabel, Warwick’s daughter. Edward took Lord Herbert with him to the Archbishop to demand the surrender of the Great Seal of Office; they took it and gave it to Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells. In 1468 Herbert was ordered to raise an army and capture the last Lancastrian stronghold, Harlech Castle. On the 14th August the castle surrendered but Jasper Tudor outwitted Lord Herbert, and made his escape by dressing as a peasant and boarding a ship to Brittany. On the 8th September Lord Herbert was given the earldom of Pembroke as his reward. In the course of besieging the castle Herbert had captured a messenger from Margaret of Anjou who asserted he had heard reports of the Earl of Warwick favouring Queen Margaret. Edward requested Warwick to come in and clear himself of the accusation, but Warwick angrily refused saying he would not enter court until the mortal enemies of him and his policies, Lord Herbert and the Woodvilles, had been dismissed. On the 26th July 1469 Herbert, now Earl of Pembroke, led a large Welsh contingent against Warwick at Edgecote, only to be defeated, captured and he, with his brother Richard, executed. Reportedly William Herbert and his brother Richard fought with magnificent courage. A report by a medieval historian Edward Hall said ‘Herbert was cut shorter by the head’. It is interesting to note Richard Herbert was married to Margaret ap Thomas, who was the sister of Rhys ap Thomas of Bosworth fame, or shame. Herbert’s widow had once promised him that if anything should happen to him she would take a vow of perpetual
3 chastity. Before he was led out to die, he wrote her a last letter, ‘Pray for me, and take the said order that ye promised Me, as ye had in my life my heart and love’. He proved to be irreplaceable. He was buried in the old St Paul’s Cathedral. The loss of his powerful guardian left young Henry, earl of Richmond, without a protector, but the widowed Countess of Pembroke, Anne, took him to live with her at Weobley in Herefordshire. At some point Richard Corbet, who was married to a niece of Herbert’s widow, took him under his protection and handed him over to Jasper Tudor. Anne and William had at least ten children including William (1451-1491); Sir Walter Herbert (1452- 16/9/1507) who married Lady Anne Stafford, sister to the Duke of Buckingham, and Maud Herbert who married Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. Herbert’s eldest son succeeded him in the earldom in 1469, when he was eighteen. Some historians have not been kind to the second Earl of Pembroke, suggesting he was a weak and ineffectual governor and maybe even of delicate health, which could account for his perceived lack of energy and determination. However others have argued that the many enemies his father Black William left him, made his life difficult. Also, now that Edward had a son, the Prince of Wales, and he had established a council to rule Wales, he didn’t need the support of the Herberts. After Tewksbury on the 4th May 1471 it was William and Lord Ferrers who were despatched to deal with Jasper Tudor and the escaping Lancastrians. Jasper escaped. William’s fall from grace began 1473 when there was a general resumption of grants made by the king, and the offices inherited by the young Earl William were not exempted. Though he did not lose all the offices at once, it was a strong signal that the king was not willing to trust him as he had his father. In 1475 there must have been a reconciliation as William went to France with the king, and was restored to his full inheritance. However in 1479 William was forced by Edward to surrender the Earldom of Pembroke and the accompanying lands in Wales to Edward’s son, the future Edward V, but he was created Earl of Huntingdon and given lands of a much lesser value. He and his brother Walter were forbidden to enter Wales for a year. William had married Mary Woodville, sister of the queen Elizabeth Woodville, in January 1467 at St George’s Chapel Windsor, ‘amid profuse magnificence’. The bride was ten and he sixteen. They had one daughter, Elizabeth Herbert, 3rd Baroness Herbert. Mary died in 1481. Herbert’s position was transformed under Richard III. After the fall of the Duke of Buckingham, Richard needed a supporter to keep order in Wales. William received Buckingham’s old post, Chief Justice of South Wales. In 1484 he married for the second time Katherine, Richard’s illegitimate daughter and received an annuity of one thousand pounds, doubling his income. Katherine is to have presumed to have died by 1487 because when William participated in the coronation of his first wife’s niece Elizabeth of York, he was noted to have been a widower. In the 2014 Ricardian there was an article about Katherine’s grave site. It is also online, written by Christian Steer. A sixteenth century herald had noted ‘the countesse of huntingdon ladie Herbert wtout a stone’ in the church of St James Garlickhithe, London. When he died in 1491 William’s only child Elizabeth Herbert, inherited the Herbert lands including Raglan Castle, but not his title. However his earldom did not pass to his younger brother, Walter, as it had been merged into the crown. When Henry Tudor landed in South Wales in 1485 Herbert’s position forced Henry to take a roundabout route into England. It is likely that a Herbert agent first notified Richard III of Henry’s landing. William did not fight at Bosworth. William’s younger brother Walter, a man with no titles or major estates was an able military commander and possibly the most competent of the Herbert brothers. Walter fought on the side of Henry at the Battle of Bosworth and was knighted afterwards, a gesture of
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gratitude that Henry issued to his supporters. Henry VII needed an alliance with the Herberts. When Black William had died had he said in his will that he wished Henry to marry Maud. However by this time Maud was married to Henry Percy, Black William’s other ward. The other sisters Cecile, or Jane or Katherine remained an option and Henry apparently did consider to them if Elizabeth of York was unavailable. In 1502 it is recorded that Queen Elizabeth of York stayed at Raglan Castle as a guest of Walter Herbert. On 19th August 1502 he was married to Anne Stafford, the daughter of the Duke of Buckingham who was killed in 1483 for joining Henry’s rebellion. Anne was also the stepdaughter of Jasper Tudor, who had married her widowed mother, Katherine Woodville. After the death of his brother, Walter oversaw the administration of the Herbert estates which had been inherited by his niece. Sir Walter passed away 16th September 1507. His lasting, if fictional, legacy may be the fact he was mentioned in Shakespeare’s play Richard III when Henry of Richmond commands ‘and you, Sir Walter Herbert, stay with me’. It would appear that Walter did indeed stay with Henry Tudor, remaining loyal to the first Tudor monarch until his death. Following the defeat of the House of York the earldom was restored to the Tudors and in September 1532, a few months prior to her marriage to Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn was granted the title Marquesse of Pembroke. After her death, without a male heir the title was forfeit. The title was next revived in favour of Sir William Herbert, whose father was Richard, an illegitimate son of Black William Herbert. Richard had married Anne Parr, sister of Henry’s sixth wife Catherine Parr. Richard was created earl in 1551. The 7th creation of the Earl of Pembroke, was Edmund Tudor; the 8th creation of the Earldom of Pembroke, was Herbert in 1468; the 9th creation was Edward Prince of Wales, of the House of York, and the 10th creation was Richard Herbert in 1551. The current earl is Sir William Herbert, 18th Earl of Pembroke.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Falkus, Gila, The Life and Times of Edward 1V, London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. Griffiths, R. A., The Making of the Tudor Dynasty, Stroud, Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1985. ———, The Reign of King Henry V1, Stroud, Sutton Publishing Ltd., 2004. Hicks, Michael, Who’s Who in Late Medieval England, London, Shepheard-Walwyn, 1991. Kendall, Paul Murray, Warwick the Kingmaker, London, Phoenix Press Weir, Alison, The Wars of the Roses, London, Random House, 1996. Williams, Neville, The Life and Times of Henry VII, (ed. Antonia Fraser), London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd., 1994. Wikipedia entries for individuals mentioned in the article
THOMAS BOURCHIER, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY
By Alison Carman presented to the Richard III Society of WA on 27 April 2019
Unfortunately Alison has lost this paper. She is going to rewrite it, and it will be in the next Journal.
THE MILL OF THE BLACK MONKS: A PUBLIC HOUSE NEAR BARNSLEY ENGLAND.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CLUNIAC MONKS IN YORKSHIRE.
By Terry Johnson presented to the Richard III Society of WA on 23 March 2019.
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Why does the story of the Cluniac Monks in Yorkshire begin with images of a pub and end in an empty field?
The Cluniacs or ‘Black Monks’ were based at the Pontefract Priory located about twenty kilometres from the Inn. Later a smaller priory was located in Monk Bretton; it was this priory that operated the mill. Pontefract is a historic market town in West Yorkshire, England, near the A1 (or Great North Road). It was the site of Pontefract Priory, a Cluniac priory founded in 1090 by Robert de Lacy dedicated to St John the Evangelist. When the Domesday Book was commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086 Tanshelf (close to the west end of Pontefract) was still a sizeable settlement for the period. The town had a priest, sixty petty burgesses, sixteen cottagers, sixteen villagers and eight smallholders, amounting to a total of one hundred and one people. The actual size of the population might be as much as four or five times larger than this as the people listed are landholders, and therefore the Domesday Book does not take their families into account.1 Tanshelf also had a church, a fishery and three mills. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the church on The Booths in Pontefract, off North Baileygate, below the castle. The oldest chiurch grave dates from around 690 A.D. The church is likely to been at Tanshelf and may have been similar to the church at Ledsham. The area which is now the town market place was the original meeting place of the Osgoldcross wapentake. In the Anglo- Saxon period a part of the modern township of Pontefract was known by the Anglo- Scandinavian name of Kirkby. An historian named Hume, claims that the name Pontefract was connected to the fertility of the soil in the area and that ‘pomum ferre’ was the origin of Pomfrete. The Tudor historian, John Leland, claims that it was the name of a place in Normandy that belonged to the de Lacy family. But the most popular theory is that Pontefract takes its name from the Latin ‘pontus fractus’ meaning broken bridge. and was also known as Pomfret from the Norman French ‘pont freit’. By 1135 the name had passed into general use. In 1135 Richard of Hexham, writing about the murder of William Maltravers, says that Maltravers held the honour of Pontefract – ‘for so that town is called − by grant of Henry the king’. The Latin is written as ‘Fracti Pontis’. By the time of a charter of Roger de Lacy in 1194 the words have been transposed and the name is Ponte Fracto. Over subsequent years it is spelled in a variety of ways including the French version of Pomfret, but gradually Pontefract became the usual spelling and is the name by which the town has been known for generations. In an article by Eric Houlder,
1 https://elizabethashworth.com/2011/09/17/how-pontefract-got-its-name/. Sept 2011
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published in Local History Magazine, March 1990, the author suggests that prior to 1320 there was a medieval road which ran through an area known as The Wash, which was liable to flooding, and that after this date the route was relocated three miles to the east to cross the River Aire at Ferrybridge. It is possible that the old bridge then fell into disrepair. Monk Bretton is located about two miles from the centre of Barnsley.2
The emergence of Monasteries. In the Middle Ages, men thought that storms and lighting, famine and sickness, were signs of the wrath of God, or were the work of evil spirits. The world was a terrible place to them, and the wickedness and misery with which it was filled made them long to escape from it. Also, they felt that God was pleased when they voluntarily led lives of hardship and self- denial for his sake. So great numbers of men went out into the desert places and became hermits or monks, in order that they might better serve God and save their own souls.3 Much of the protocols of the early religion were based on the ‘Augustinian’ values of Love. Interiority, Humility, Devotion to Study and the pursuit of Wisdom, Freedom, Community. Common good, Humble and generous service, Friendship and prayer. Eventually these separate monks drew together and formed monasteries, or groups of monks living in communities, according to certain rules. One famous monk, Benedict of Norcia (480-547 AD), drew up a series of rules for his monastery, and these served the purpose so well that they were adopted by many others. In the course of time the monasteries of all Western Europe were put under “the Benedictine rule” as it was called. During the later Anglo-Saxon period all monasteries were Benedictine. Benedictine monks followed the rules written by St Benedict in the early sixth century (535-540) for his monastic foundation at Monte Cassino. The rule covers what monks are and aren’t allowed to do as well as regulating their days and nights with regard to divine worship, study, manual labour and prayer. However, as the medieval period went on many monks began to move away from Benedict’s ideals, behaving in a decidedly unmonastic manner.4 Over time most ideas are found not to fit the contemporary attitudes, so was it with religion. Faced with the decline in standards that was evolving, a new order was emerging. The Cistercians, were founded in 1098 by the monks of Citeaux who believed in austerity and hard work – again a reinterpretation of the rule of St Benedict – and reforms designed to counter perceived laxity in other monastic houses. Unlike the standard Benedictine monks, they refused gifts and rights of patronage – in short anything that would have made them easily wealthy. Instead they cultivated the wilderness. An emphasis was placed upon labour. By the eleventh century, the monks of Cluny Abbey were following the Benedictine rules. Founded around 910, Cluny Abbey is in Burgundy. Its influence spread to over one thousand monasteries. They undertook reforms which demanded greater devotion to God and a stricter observance of monastic rules focused on prayer, silence and solitude.5 Cluniacs were Benedictine monks from the monastery of Cluny (Burgundy) founded by
2 https://elizabethashworth.com/2011/09/17/how-pontefract-got-its-name/. Sept 2011 3 Harding, B., Story of the Middle Ages available at https://www.heritage- history.com/index.php?c=read&author=harding&book=middle&story=monastery 4 https://thehistoryjar.com/2015/06/14/medieval-monastic-orders-part-i/ (On-line 2015) 5 The Cluniacs ate and drank well. To obtain the quantities of food needed, they would have to have faced and spoken to suppliers almost continuously. So much for their adherence to the reforms. The procurement of food for a large monastic communities like Cluny or Pontefract required detailed conversations among high-ranking officials and multiple transactions with people outside of their walls.
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William, duke of Aquitaine, in 909.6 Cluny was a centre of reformed observance, laying great stress on the rule, the liturgy, and freedom from lay (and, indeed, episcopal) control. Under the leadership of its early abbots, especially Odo (927–42), Odilo (994–1048), and Hugh (1049–1109), Cluny enjoyed considerable prosperity, and exercised a wide influence on monastic reform elsewhere in Europe, while an increasing number of monasteries were taken under Cluniac control, or adopted Cluniac observances. The order was extremely centralized, Cluny's abbot possessed autocratic powers within the order, and other Cluniac foundations or ‘priories’ were subordinate to Cluny, where their monks made profession. The Cluniacs were closely involved with the papal reform movement of the late eleventh century. and Pope Urban II (1088–99) was himself a Cluniac. Under Hugh's abbacy, Cluny reached the height of its prestige as a spiritual and cultural centre, famous for its music and rebuilt abbey church, which, when consecrated in 1131–2, was perhaps the grandest in western Europe. The first English Cluniac priory was founded by William de Warenne in 1077 near his castle at Lewes in Sussex. His, the largest community, was joined by some thirty more, most being founded in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Though initially subject to Cluny's authority and hence regarded as ‘alien priories’ and liable to sequestration during the Anglo-French wars, most purchased national identity as ‘denizens’. The impetus for reform lay in abuses thought to be a result of secular interference in the Church and monasteries. The land needed to build the monasteries had to be sourced from the powerful and wealthy landowners, who no doubt retained some form of proprietary interest, perhaps even a source of income. It was in the late 1070s that efforts to introduce a reform agenda began, leading to the first Cluniac house on English soil at St Pancras, Lewes. With the backing of the king and many wealthy patrons, they soon spread their foundations across England. Spreading their domain, the Cluniacs, often referred to as ‘Reformed Benedictines’, established themselves in Pontefract around 1090 as a dependency of La Charite-sur-Loire. As part of their growth, a subordinate Priory was founded at Monk Bretton. It was these monks who built the water mill, which is now a public house (though not totally original). In 1280, the priory broke from the Pontefract Priory and continued as a Benedictine House until HenryVIII dissolved the monasteries. The Pontefract monks claimed full jurisdiction over the Monk Bretton Priory. This conflict caused relations between the two monasteries to become strained, and regular disagreement over who had ultimate control of the Priory led to armed conflict on occasion. Things came to a head in 1252 when the Prior of Pontefract appointed Adam de Northampton to be the new Prior of Monk Bretton. The monks refused to accept the new man, insisting that they had the right to elect whomsoever they chose to the post.7 Relations between Pontefract and Bretton led to disputes and ill feeling, and Pope Alexander IV in 1255 issued a mandate directing the Dean and Archdeacon of Lincoln to make inquiry and decide between the two houses. The monks of Pontefract had, rightly or wrongly, regarded Monk Bretton as a cell of their house, and the Prior of Pontefract had claimed a right to the appointment of the Prior of Monk Bretton, which Monk Bretton had refused. As a consequence, the sub-prior of Monk Bretton reported in 1267 that this convent had been without a prior for fifteen years, the monks claiming the free election of their prior, and the Prior of Pontefract claiming to present to the post, and actually presenting Adam de Northampton, whom the daughter house refused to accept. An agreement was arrived at in
6 Brian Golding, Encyclopedia.Com; The Oxford Companion to British History © The Oxford Companion British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and- maps/cluniacs 7 https://www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=3570. David Ross: Editor
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1269 as follows: Monk Bretton was to pay twenty shillings a year to Pontefract ‘ad pitantiam’, and the monks of Bretton were to have the free election of their prior and were to be free from all kind of subjection or obedience to Pontefract.8
Mills
The Cluniac mill at Monk Bretton was a water mill, more efficient as it was not subject to the vagaries of the wind. Monastic mills were very important to the medieval rural economy: many mills were self-proficient but the monastic tradition allowed the local community to benefit. Lucas refers to the importance of the Sibton Abbey in the agrarian economy of the Sussex region.9 Mills were not only a tool for ensuring the well being of the monks, but also a means of earning income, sometimes large incomes. This type of behaviour is consistent with the criticism by monastic leaders and the emergence of a new influence; that of the Cistercians. The income from mills was determined in many cases by whether or not the houses managed to acquire/retain/reclaim suit of mill. Unlike the Benedictines, the Augustine canons were a relatively young order, with fewer mills, lower rents and incomes and rare instances of suits of mill. Hence, Augustinian mill enterprise tended to be, overall, much less extractive, compared to the Benedictines. The Cistercians on the other hand, did their best to extract as much revenue from their mills as they could.10 Later they sought to return to the simple and severe form of service set out by Benedict. The operation of mills would have been eschewed by them. The Priory was dissolved and was then purchased by the Blithman family and in 1580 sold to the Earl of Shrewsbury for his son, Henry Talbot. Henry transformed the Prior's Range into a comfortable residence; the fate of the Mill was unknown. Although its foundations are 13th century, the building was heavily rebuilt/remodelled in 1635. It was connected to the priory by a large drain to provide water to the kitchen and reredorter. There is very little physical evidence of its existence left. A major monastic site in the Romanesque period, now not a stone is to be seen. Remains are in the hands of museums and in ‘a garden adjoining the site’ Much stone
8 Victoria County History, A History of the County of York: Volume 3, London. 1974, available at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/vol3/pp91-95 9 Lucas, Adam, Ecclesiastical Lordship, Seigneurial Power and Commercialization of Milling in Medieval England, Farnham, Ashgate, 2014, pp. xxii + 414. {Read on-line] 10 Lucas, Adam, Ecclesiastical Lordship, Seigneurial Power and Commercialization of Milling in Medieval England, pp. xxii + 414. {Read on-line]
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is said to have been taken in the sixteenth century to build the nearby ‘New Hall’, north of the Ferrybridge Road, but this has itself been demolished. Where are the Cluniacs now? World wide there has been a decline in the number of men taking the vows. In the early twentieth century when the Catholic Movement was at its height, the Anglican Communion had hundreds of orders and communities and thousands of religious followers. However, since the 1960s there has been a sharp falling off in the numbers of religious in many parts of the Anglican Communion. Many once large and international communities have been reduced to a single convent or monastery composed of elderly men or women. In the last few decades of the 20th century, novices have for most communities been few and far between. Some orders and communities have already become extinct.11 There are however, still several thousand Anglican monks working today in approximately two hundred communities around the world. The most surprising growth has been in the Melanesian countries of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. The Melanesian Brotherhood, founded at Tabalia, Guadalcanal, in 1925 by Ini Kopuria, is now the largest Anglican community in the world with over four hundred and fifty brothers in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Golding Brian, Encyclopedia.Com; The Oxford Companion to British History © The Oxford Companion to British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002. Harding, B., Story of the Middle Ages, https://www.heritage- history.com/index.php?c=read&author=harding&book=middle&story=monastery Lucas, Adam, Ecclesiastical Lordship, Seigneurial Power and Commercialization of Milling in Medieval England. Farnham, Ashgate, 2014. Pp. xxii + 414 pp {Read on-line] Victoria County History, A History of the County of York: Volume 3, London, 1974. https://thehistoryjar.com/2015/06/14/medieval-monastic-orders-part-i/ (On-line 2015) https://elizabethashworth.com/2011/09/17/how-pontefract-got-its-name/. Sept 2011 https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and- maps/cluniacs https://www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=3570. David Ross: Editor https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/vol3/pp91-95 Wikipedia (on-line) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk
MODERN DAY GAMING AND MEDIEVAL EDUCATION
By Jo-Ann Koh presented to the Richard III Society of WA on 25 May 2019)
Introduction The current school curriculum includes the early introduction of iPads in Year 1 via the use of educational games. By the time students are in Year 4, it is a requirement that they have their own iPads. You could surmise that it is inevitable that digital media will be embedded in our lives – it is more so the timing of when. More and more, children and teenagers encounter new visual media which affects their approach to learning. To take advantage of this change, we must consider adapting this new way of learning. At present, this is a very underutilised area of analysis.
11 Wikipedia (on-line) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk
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As computer graphics and systems have become more powerful, the gaming platform has also become more powerful in both narrative and gameplay user interaction. gaming is bad news, as games of strategy allow us to relive long-ago forgotten medieval battles and culture (if the research is undertaken correctly by the developers).
Origins of the concept. Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) first came up with the expression ‘the medium is the message’ as far back as 1967 in one of his published best sellers. His book Understanding media: The extensions of man examined the effect of each medium on the human senses and looked at the effect of numerous mediums together. The main argument of this book is that ‘we become what we behold... we shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us’. McLuhan also discussed the drawbacks new technologies have caused such as the decreasing interaction between man and his environment. Man, according to McLuhan is being numbed in a ‘hypnotic trance’. Meanwhile, scholars have widely debated on McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message’. For example, a movie is the means to communicate written text, sounds, light. The level of interaction with the user depends on whether or not a user is active (book) or passive (movie) or somewhere in between (computer game). Game studies, or ludology was made popular by Gonzalo Frasca in 1999 from the Latin word for game, being ludus. He defines ludology as the playing aspects of the game such as mechanics and control schemes; and distinguishes this from the narrative aspects which provide context within the game. There has been some debate about ludology versus narratology, and Frasca stressed that while gaming shares many similarities with narrative stories, they should be complemented rather than seen as two separate ideologies. The counter arguments is that games cannot tell stories and therefore both ludology and narratology cannot exist together – where the significant difference is that while a gameplayer can control the narrative, a story has to happen in a certain order. Frasca states that game studies includes the framing of a game within certain narrative frameworks – as determined by literature and art, and that game studies needs to also consider input from other disciplines – encompassing psychology, anthropology, economy, education and sociology.
Origins of video games In 1972, Atari was created to eventually become a pioneer in the home, arcade and video gaming field. In 1977, their console was released for home gaming, which was the inception of what was to redefine the gaming industry. Later in 1979, a maths-themed game called Lemonade Stand was created on the Apple II computers – whereby you had to decide how to control your inventory, set your prices and advertise based on weather conditions. While the earlier gameplays were text- based, it did not end up being any less educational than the games of today.
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Games started becoming interactive, and while it was not dissimilar to a ‘choose- your-own-adventure’ book by way of user interaction, choice and its visual link to reward became a part of the learning process. Consider how the games of The King’s Quest series by Sierra Entertainment took on a more medieval theme – although that was where the similarities ended. King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown (1984)
King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human (1986) King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella (1988)
As you can see from the graphics, it had highly evolved over time. But the theme of unicorns most likely stretched the concept of medieval realism somewhat…. King’s Quest V: Absence makes the heart go yonder! (1990)
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King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (1992) King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride (1994) King’s Quest VIII: The Mask of Eternity (1998)
… and undead zombies.
Medieval games available From the late 1990s and early 2000s onwards, computer graphics became much more sophisticated and the games became more interactive. This meant that gaming developers could no longer hide under the excuse of bad computer pixilation and needed to deliver a more authentic experience for the user. While this was a challenge, it was not an impossible task. The point of difference came when gaming developers could just choose a character in a medieval costume and call it a medieval game.
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From there, you started your civilization from the Bronze Age, where you had to research new technologies, while you build your cities – allocating your resources between scientific research, the maintenance/upkeep of your city and keeping your citizens happy by not overcrowding your population. The narrative controls the order of technologies/research – such as inventions – you must have researched the Alphabet before unlocking Literacy, and then Religion. One does not achieve nuclear fission research without also first having researched chemistry, physics and advanced weaponry. Each turn is a year in the timeline, and whilst the user travels further forward in the game, and therefore through time, the background music changes – previously the medieval trumpets are replaced by the likes of Beethoven and then Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. World wonders change. Ancient inventions will become obsolete and new world wonders are attained. It is also an important distinguishing point that role-play or ‘cos-play’ fantasy games set the scene of a game, but may do very little to aid in the educational arena; careful consideration must be given to disseminate the more historically authentic to the superficial visual aspect of the game setting. Clearly the concept of magic is not realistic in our historical timeline and so this becomes of the distinguishing points from an educational standpoint. Total War: Medieval I (1087 – 1321AD) Medieval II (1080AD – 1530AD)
Viking invasion (793AD – 1066AD) Shogun & Shogun II Rome Empire Napoleon Attila (Dark Ages) Warhammer I and Warhammer II Thrones of Britannia (c.878AD after the death of Ragnar Lothbrok)
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Three Kingdoms (190AD) Less warmongering – Settlers
Assassin’s Creed Kingdom Come: Origins Civilization
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Crusader Kings
The cost vs benefits of learning outcomes Consider the fact that alternative histories would need to be programmed into the game. Whilst the starting points are historically accurate, it allows the user to choose alternative scenarios to what has happened in history – for example, if Dong Zhuo in the Three Kingdoms (of China) is going to be offering peace to everyone instead of being evil, as history suggests, the history is programmed to react in an authentic way. The military units, the cultural and social network system may be historically accurate, but it still allows the player to drive the narrative – similar to the Bosworth historical days at schools in the United Kingdom.
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In order to understand history, it must be understood from many different angles, not just the straight memorisation the schools have us do for exams. The Abdullah Gul University in Turkey developed an undergraduate history course incorporating computer games to better understand their subjects, and for the period of the Middle Ages – attention to the Great Schism in the Christian world, the Sunni-Shia split in the eastern world. The games these courses experimented with were: Civilization, Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV and Hearts of Iron IV. Each course began with a learning and discussion session, followed by an introduction to a particular game. Students were given goals to achieve within the game and asked to write about their experiences by comparing it to sources of historical information. After a two-year period, it was found that Crusader Kings II was thought to provide the best material for learning purposes during the Medieval period. It had the most comprehensive level of detail, high historical accuracy and showed versatility in the modelling of different cultures and nations. The game play in these courses provided the students with: - Better understanding of the geography and naming of principalities at the time; - The political and economic implications of trade routes and supply chains; - The complexities of economic and political interactions. While it can be argued that computer games do not assist in factual education, the same can be said for motion picture storylines – remakes and adaptations do not make accurate book reviews either. It is difficult for any medium to stay true to the original narrative, but it does come close. Consider the next slide about the Battle of Bosworth remake under the Medieval Total War set up. A player has to study the battle as it was played out and simulate his interpretation of the battle outcome. While no one would have 100% accuracy on what happened that fateful day in 1485, one cannot argue that it cannot be used as a useful tool to assist with learning.
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The key aim to these games was to shift the student mindset to viewing these events from a historical point of view and not the modern point of view that they are used to doing. It can take you back, with the aid of the cinematic and more immersive interactive experience, to allow history to be taught in ways never done before – it provides students with a unique way of learning history by placing them within history itself. Now that is what I would consider a game changer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abdullah Gul Universitesi, “World History taught through computer games” http://www.agu.edu.tr/news/3748/World%20History%20Taught%20Through%20Computer%20 Games%20at%20AGU (18 May 2019) Atari, https://www.atari.com/ (21 May 2019). Gros, B., “The impact of digital games on education” https://www.mackenty.org/images/uploads/impact_of_games_in_education.pdf (13 May 2019). McLuhan, M., 1964, ‘Understanding media: The extensions of man’, McGraw Hill, USA. (13 May 2019) History of War, “The Making of Total War: Three Kingdoms” https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/history-of-war/making-a-game-from-history-total-war- three-kingdoms/ (14 May 2019) The Gamespot, “How Critical is Historical Accuracy in a Historical Video Game?” https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-critical-is-historical-accuracy-in-a-historica/1100- 6457812/ (14 May 2019) The Courier UK, “Historical Accuracy and Video Games” http://www.thecourieronline.co.uk/historical-accuracy-and-video-games/ (15 May 2019) PC World, ‘The Best 17 Educational Games of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s’, https://www.pcworld.com/article/2972721/the-17-best-educational-games-of-the-70s-80s- and-90s.html (23 May 2019) MIT Technology Review, Video Games could be serious tools for historical research, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611099/video-games-could-be-serious-tools-for- historical-research/ (23 May 2019) Youtube, “Christopher Tin – Baba Yetu (Official Music video) Civilization IV” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiHDmyhE1A (24 May 2019) Youtube, “Medieval II Total War; Tribute to the Battle of Bosworth Field”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYb6bAVQ6BY (23 May 2019) Wikipedia, Gonzalo Frasca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Frasca (23 May 2019)
MURDER IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
By Karen Wintle presented to the Richard III Society of WA on 27 July 2019
Medieval society, not unlike today, was plagued with a series of crimes both petty and capital. In the middle ages, according to John Bellamy, an ‘overabundance of violent deeds, perhaps also the very harshness of life, seems to have bred a certain callousness which regarded blood-letting as commonplace and even as a form of grim jest.’12 Late
12 Bellamy, John. Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
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medieval England, for example, was known throughout Europe for its high rate of crime.13 Until the reign of Edward I a person suspected of committing a felony could be arrested only if he was a notorious criminal and was ‘caught in the act’ or if he had been indicted or appealed, or charged by a coroner’s jury. By the end of his reign it had been decided that the arrest of felony suspects not yet formally accused was permitted, although a perfunctory yet pre- arraigned inquest was often employed as a form of justification. The first open admission by a king that public order was poor was when Edward I, in the preamble to the Statute of Winchester (1285), complained about the wretched observance of the peace. Murders, robberies, and arsons so it was said, were more common than ever before and jurors were refusing to indict or convict the offenders or those who received the proceeds from their misdeeds. Eight years later, in his instructions to the sheriffs, the king admitted to learning from the great number of complaints since the promulgation of the statute that more homicides, robberies, arsons, and other trespasses that ever before had been committed. By the later fourteenth century, arrests of suspected but unindicted felons, of which there were quite a few, were justified in the records by reference to the Statute of Winchester and similar acts from the reign of Edward III, stating clearly that no person should be arrested or imprisoned without presentment or indictment. In the late fifteenth century a professional judge gave it as his opinion that a person of bad fame could be arrested without cause but not someone of good fame. We may assume that a person of bad fame included a person who had been observed committing a felony. The question remains – how might a person of good fame who had not flown the coop, not indicted or appealed, yet nevertheless suspected of committing a murder be arrested? It was in the sixteenth century, on instruction by a magistrate or on a constable’s, or similar law officer’s own judgement. In order to arrest a suspected murderer, or any other type of felon, law officers sometimes took it upon themselves to enter private premises. There was no statute or ordinance that authorised them to do so. They conducted searches doubtless because of the absence of any official prohibition.14 In this paper I want to concentrate on murder through looking at case-studies. Murder meant not so much premeditated killing as homicide by stealth. The earliest surviving prohibition of murder can be found in the Sumerian law codes of Ur-Nammu (c1900 BCE), the first complete law code in the world which demanded the ultimate penalty of death. Murder has always been a feature of human society, recorded not only in the earliest law codes like those of Ur-Nammu but also present in the archaeological record – 430,000 years ago, an early Neanderthal was beaten around the face with a blunt object and thrown down a cave system in Atupuerca, Spain. The poor unfortunate remained there until 2014 when his remains were discovered among those of twenty-eight other individuals. Biblical tradition claims that the ‘first’ murder was that of Cain and Abel – killing one brother by another using the jawbone of an ass.
Figure 0-1The murder of Abel One of the few cases known to us which contained isstockphoto.com elements of a modern murder mystery occurred in Lincolnshire in 1375. Sir William Cantilupe, a Lincolnshire knight was apparently murdered in his own home in Scotton. The perpetrators were said to be twelve members of Sir William’s own household, including his esquire, his steward, Maud
13 Bellamy 3. 14 Bellamy, John. Strange, Inhuman Deaths. Murder in Tudor England. Glos: Sutton Publishing, 2005, p. 25.
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his wife and Agatha her maid. The indictments, of which there were several, said that Sir William had been murdered while lying in his bed at night. His murderers had then bathed the mortal wounds in water, presumably to staunch the flow of blood, put the body in a sack, carried it for four miles and then, having first reclothed it in fine garments, including belt and spurs, thrown it into a field. The intention was to give the impression that he had been killed by robbers while travelling on the highway. A date for committing the crime couldn’t be fixed by the juries trying the case, varying between 13 February to 11th April. Eventually at the Lincolnshire quarter sessions in June 1375, sixteen men and women, including a landowning neighbour, Sir Ralph Paynel, were indicted of the murder. Both Maud, the wife, and Sir William’s steward were acquitted while the other suspects, except Sir Ralph Paynel, were outlawed. In 1377 he was later acquitted and it seems that all the outlawed members of Sir William’s household were able to secure pardons. What was the motive and who did it? Sir Thomas Kydale, to whom Maud was married not long after, has come under suspicion, as perhaps prompting the murder. He had on occasion associated with Sir Ralph Paynel, who is known to have been an enemy of Sir William’s brother, Nicholas Cantilupe. However, quarrels were commonplace among the late medieval gentry, and widows with property were soon persuaded to marry again. Nothing was proved and unfortunately the identity of the killer remains unknown – an early ‘cold case.’ The interesting feature of the murder was trying to shift the blame from the real culprits to highwaymen or footpads. Moving the corpse any distance and changing the victim’s attire are rarely documented in medieval records. The killing of a master by his servants or a husband by his wife was statutorily classified as petty treason in 1352 though it had long been acknowledged as such, and was an uncommon offence. For such a heinous offence juries more often than not were likely to find the accused guilty. This might be the reason for the flight of nearly all members of the Cantilupe household. Another notable aspect of the case was the inability to place the date of the murder with any degree of consensus. It is likely the corpse was not found for some time after being dumped in the field or it is also possible the first finders failed to report their discovery to the proper authority. In all, ten juries framed indictments which gives the impression that a great deal of effort was made to gather information.15 Another juicy murder mystery was the killing in Devon in October 1455 of Nicholas Radford. This has been called ‘the most notorious private crime of the century.’ 16 Radford was an eminent apprentice at law, a barrister, who had served his time as a Devon Justice of the Peace. He woke up at his home in Upcott on the night of Thursday 23rd October to discover his outhouses on fire and a hundred armed men in his yard. When he found they were led by Sir Thomas Courtenay, he opened the door to allow the marauders entry, having been promised that no harm would befall him or his property. However, while Radford was distracted by Courtenay, offering him food and drink, his men consequently stripped the house of all its valuables. Courtenay told Radford he must go with him to speak to his father, the earl of Devon. While Radford pointed out that all his horses had been taken, Courtenay told him he would soon ride well enough and with that parting note he rode off. Thereupon six of his men set upon Radford with drawn swords and daggers and killed him in rather a brutal way (I won’t go into details). Courtenay and his father showed no remorse for the killing. The following Monday on the earl’s instructions a number of his men went to Upcott to hold a mock Coroner’s inquest. They indicted Radford of his own death and brought in a verdict of suicide. The motive? It was not a desire to rob, despite the burglary, but a deadly feud. Radford was a friend and probably the legal counsellor of Lord Bonville, the sworn enemy of
15 Bellamy 54-55. 16 Bellamy 56.
20 the Devons. Much of the information about the crime can be found in a parliamentary petition of January 1456. The King agreed that the crime should not go unpunished but nothing was done until the Duke of York, a friend of Bonville, became Protector later that year. An Exeter jury indicted Courtenay but to little purpose, for he demonstrated that he could assume at will the functions of the king’s legal officers and pervert the law as he wished. Sir Thomas Courtenay did not make an effort to conceal the killing of Radford because he was confident he could never be made accountable. Malicious magnates who sought to settle scores before, usually acted more covertly. Sometimes they even used the existing machinery of justice and the king’s law officers to revenge themselves on their foes. As a class, late medieval landholders had a passion for disputing the ownership of property, and often resorted to force in their search for a settlement, which could be mediated through the arbitration of third parties. In investigating aristocratic offences the Crown may have depended on corruptible local agencies, usually the Justices of the Peace. For the Crown, success in containing disorder was to be measured, not by the punishment of landed felons, but by the fostering of conditions more favourable to the reconciliation of disputants and unfavourable to the escalation of private feuds. 17 Still, it could be argued that the Crown’s failure to punish crime amongst the aristocracy had serious adverse consequences. Of course not all indictments taken before the Justices of the Peace were malicious or beyond positive proof, and not all violence among the landed classes socially acceptable. To give a case-study there is the breaking into a house of John Chaworth at Kirtlington in Nottinghamshire soon after 11pm on Sunday 28 October 1464. Entering into his chamber and finding him lying in bed asleep with his wife, the intruders pulled him to the floor and ran him through with their swords. This murder was apparently the culmination of a conspiracy between his wife Margaret and her lover, Robert Marshall who was a gentleman from nearby Normanton. The conspiracy represented a double betrayal of the murdered man, for not only was Margaret his wife but Marshall was retained to do him service at the annual fee of ten marks. For the sum of 20 marks the two lovers commissioned assassins to commit the murder but failed to cover their tracks adequately. One of the indictments concerning the murder report that the victim on the point of death had cried out: ‘a good wife helpe they slee me. A gode lorde of late archebisshop of York I fynde the now a true lorde that bad me beware for Robert Marshall had hyred men to slee me.’18 Since the Archbishop had died more than six weeks before the murder, rumours of the plot must have been current by early September and Chaworth, perhaps unwilling to credit his wife’s complicity, had unwisely chosen to disregard them. It was also unfortunate that Marshall’s sister Joan was one of his wife’s servants and it was Joan who, on the night of his murder, allegedly left unsecured doors into the house’s gardens and into the victim’s chamber. There are many holes in this story because how did the jury gain their information about the victim’s dying words? It is possible they either had access to a witness or that the words ascribed to John were a fiction that was designed to demonstrate that the murder was the product of an ill-concealed conspiracy. The murder of a member of the wealthiest gentry family in the country excited a stern response from Nottinghamshire’s political community. Just over a fortnight later, on 15 November, five of the leading men of the county gathered at Nottingham as Justices of the Peace to hear an indictment of the murderers. Marshall was arrested and put into the custody of the sheriff, who was enjoined to keep him on pain of forfeiting the sum of £1,000. Two days later the Justices of the Peace took another indictment concerning the murder, in
17 Payling, S. J. ‘Murder, Motive and Punishment in Fifteenth-Century England: Two Gentry Case-Studies.’ English Historical Review February 1998. 1. 18 Payling 11.
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which the only mention of the conspiracy was that Joan Marshall had left the doors open on the order of her brother and Margaret. Noticeably, the conspirators were not named among the indicted who comprised the four murderers as principals and Joan as abettor. These omissions lead one to suspect that Margaret and her lover had friends who were prepared to exert influence in their favour. This suspicion is heightened by the fact that the first indictment was quickly delivered into the court of King’s Bench where pardons could be pleaded. Only the second indictment was left to be determined by the justices of the peace. Marshall, like so many others who had been held in the custody of the sheriffs, escaped from gaol. Attempts to bring the murderers to justice was difficult and lax. The four men who had struck the fatal blows were outlawed at the Nottinghamshire county court on 30 September 1465, and thereafter they disappear from the records. Although Marshall’s sister Joan was waived on 17 March 1466, she secured a pardon in the following November. Another woman indicted as an accessory found the process against her so unthreatening that she waited until 1476 before successfully pleading an insufficiency in the indictment, namely its failure to mention her place of residence. As for Margaret, the wife, despite her failure to answer the indictment and the outlawry of the principals, no waiver was issued against her and she was left to sue her pardon at leisure. For her lover meanwhile although the controlment roll names him as an outlaw, the plea rolls continue to note the failure of successive sheriffs to return writs of outlawry issued against him as late as 1478. Now for a gruesome tale to finish off with. There is the case in France of what could be called the first known medieval serial killer: it is the case of Gilles de Rais, a man of means and a friend of Joan of Arc. Baron de Rais was a model of piety, constructing a magnificent place of worship and filling its choir stalls with boys whom he auditioned and selected personally. Being a bit of a profligate he squandered his money and took to employing alchemists and sorcerers in the hope they could conjure up some more. Rumours spread of Devil worship and unholy rites and then an adolescent boy disappeared. He was the first of several boys to go missing, but nothing much was done. Then Rais took a priest hostage in order to get a ransom, because he was the brother of the treasurer of Brittany. An investigation took place into Rais’
Figure 0-2 wikipedia.com outrageous behaviour. The baron and his servants were arrested and charged with the kidnap of the priest but the charge was then extended to include murder, heresy and sodomy. At first De Rais refused to enter a plea; then he changed his mind after being threatened with torture and excommunication. The men confessed to sexually assaulting then killing the missing boys. The highest estimate of the boys missing rose to 600 but there is little to support this figure. The baron was sentenced to death. Despite his crimes, Gilles de Rais was not vilified. Instead his noble birth plus the fact he faced his executioner with bravery and remorse, elevated him to a model of Christian penitence. A three day fast was held in honour of his piety. Through the centuries that followed his case has been studied and doubt cast on his crimes because it was extracted under threat of torture. Was he innocent? He had a lot of enemies in very high places and as he was associated with Joan of Arc and kidnapped a priest, it has been suggested he was the victim of a Church plot. When de Rais was found guilty his lands were awarded to the Duke of Brittany whose cousin, Jean de Malestroit, also happened to be one of the trial judges. No human remains have been found in archaeological digs that have been carried out. The case remains open.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bellamy, John, Strange, Inhuman Deaths. Murder in Tudor England. Glos: Sutton Publishing, 2005. Bellamy, John. Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. Payling, S. J. ‘Murder, Motive and Punishment in Fifteenth-Century England: Two Gentry Case- Studies.’ English Historical Review February 1998. 1.
MEDIEVAL WALL PAINTINGS IN EAST ANGLIAN CHURCHES; TEACHINGS FOR PARISHIONERS.
By Carole Carson on presented to the Richard III Society of WA 22 August 2019.
This paper was first presented to the ANZAMEMS Conference in Brisbane, Queensland, in 2015.
This paper is looking at wall paintings in parish churches in the East Anglian counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. These counties have, possibly, the highest survival rate of wall paintings in England. Comparatively few throughout England have survived the depredations of changing fashions, the iconoclasm of the Reformation and the Protectorate, and the vandalism of the Victorians, but enough remain to give a glimpse of how the interiors of medieval churches may have looked. Because most churches in Norfolk and Suffolk are built of flint, the Victorian passion for stripping all the plaster from the walls and revealing the smooth stone beneath – and so destroying the paintings – was thwarted. Flint buildings do not have a smooth interior surface, so the plaster covering has to be retained, therefore aiding the survival of wall paintings.
Figure 0-1 St. Margaret, Hales, Norfolk
The interiors of medieval parish churches in England were highly decorated, with both walls and ceilings painted. Indeed, William of Malmesbury in his English Chronicles commented ‘We think it not enough unless the walls glisten with various coloured paintings,
23 and throw the reflection of the sun’s ray upon the ceiling’19. Roger Martin, a gentleman from Long Melford, Suffolk, writing in his old age, remembered that the roof of his parish church ‘was beautiful with fair gilt stars.’ 20 For many years scholars have thought these paintings merely random, painted perhaps, at the whim of the parish council. However, my recent research has shown that the paintings were not random choices, but their subjects and placement around the walls of the church was deliberate. Churches were built on an east- west axis, with the chancel at the eastern end. The main entrance to the church in England was usually the south porch, perhaps because it provided some shelter from the inclement English weather.
I am examining the paintings displayed only in the nave. Churches were divided in two: the public space of the nave and the sacramental space of the chancel. The chancel was the ‘Church Triumphant’, where parishioners could glimpse a promise of life after death, but where only the clergy, who had been educated in the fight against sin - but probably still struggled with it - were allowed to enter. The nave, the ‘Church Militant’ was the responsibility of the parish and the parishioners, the souls who needed to work to achieve a heavenly afterlife. The chancel arch was the dividing point There was then, symbolism in the division of the church: the public nave was where Christians St. Thomas, Salisbury, Wiltshire struggled to overcome sin as described in Ephesians: 6, 12 Figure 0-2 St Thomas, Salisbury, Wiltshire ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wicked ness in high places.’ Next came passing through the chancel arch – death – and into the sanctuary, representing the heavenly afterlife. The paintings in the nave, then, can be presumed to be for the laity rather than the clergy. Churches have long been decorated. For example the Saxon church of Saint Martin- on-the-walls, Wareham, Dorset (dating from 1030) has a twelfth century painting of Saint Martin as well as fictive brickwork and chevrons which may be even older. Saint Martin can be seen on the donkey. He shares his cloak with the naked beggar sitting on the ground. Saint Mary, Houghton-on-the-Hill, Norfolk, has paintings which have been dated to the eleventh century – the Creation of Eve being one. Nothing is known about the artists. Joan Evans classified some as ‘rustic daubers’!21
19 J. A. Giles, (ed.), William of Malmesbury’s Chronicle of the Kings of England: From the earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1847, p. 351. 20 D. Dymond & C. Paine, C., The Spoil of Melford Church, Ipswich, Salient Press, 1989, p. 3. 21 J. Evans, English Art 1307-1461, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1949, p. 212.
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Figure 0-3 St. Andrew, Wickhampton, Norfolk
Entering the church through the south porch, the first wall to be seen was the north, and the first painting to be seen would be that of Saint Christopher. Invariably opposite the main entrance, he was painted larger than life size, (in Saint George, Stowlangtoft, Suffolk, the painting measures about 5m x 4m), usually crossing the river, surrounded by birds and fish, and carrying the Christ child on his shoulder. His legend says that, after a life spent wandering and serving the most powerful lords, including the Devil, he converted to Christianity and was given the job of seeing people safely across the river. One day a child asked to be taken across, and as Christopher did so, he found the child increasingly heavy. The child was the Christ child, bearing the world in his hand. Christopher was thought to protect against, among other things, epilepsy, death by drowning and lightning strike, and sudden death. Sudden death meant that the victim would die unshriven; they would have no time to confess their sins and repent. A prayer to Saint Christopher was considered efficacious for travellers, who may have been more at risk from accidental death, while far from a confessor. Indeed, in John Mirk’s Festial, in the burial sermon he tells a cautionary tale of one of the perils associated with dying unshriven: ‘þan com a fend and toke þis cors þat was not anoylud and ȝode into itte and so forth into þe toun, and makud many cryes be þe which men weron sore agaste, and dured þus a long tyme.’22
Figure 04 St. Mary, Moulton St. Mary, Norfolk
Still looking at the north wall, more paintings could be seen. Some were designed to help the sinning worshippers achieve the goal of everlasting life, and showed the way
22 S. Powell, (ed.), John Mirk’s Festial, p. 258.
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through both pursuance and avoidance. The Seven Works of Mercy – Feeding the Hungry, Giving Drink to the Thirsty, Welcoming the Stranger, Clothing the Naked, Visiting the Sick, Visiting the Prisoner and Burying the Dead – were activities that could be carried out by either sex and indeed, men are sometimes shown in wall paintings, yet it is usually women who are pictured as the protagonists. Many of the acts, Feeding the Hungry, Giving Drink to the Thirsty and Visiting the Sick, could be considered the exclusive province of the housewife.
Figure 0-5 Lust, St. Cador, Llancarfen, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales
The Seven Deadly Sins could be shown in a variety of ways, sometimes as a tree, sometimes as a wheel, or each sin in a circle reminiscent of stained glass. The sins themselves, Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Anger and Sloth, were first categorised by Saint Gregory the Great in the sixth century. All included a demon waiting to thrust the sinner into the jaws of hell.
Figure 0-6 St. Mary & All Saints, Little Melton, Norfolk www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/littlemelton
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The Warning Against Gossip is another painting directed mainly to females, and, again, typically placed in the nave: women, of course would not be able to enter the chancel. The original tale, written by Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) was directed at both men and women. The women are often shown in modish dress, with rosaries, leaning towards each other as they chatter. Tutivillus the devil, is behind them with a scroll. The original story said that Tutivillus wrote so much he ran out of parchment, and so became visible to the congregation. Their repentant tears washed the parchment clean. This painting could also be linked to the norms of social behaviour as presented in other genres: ‘How the Good Wijf tauȝte Hir Douȝtir’ stipulates that ‘Whanne þou sittist in þe chirche, þi beedis þou schalt bidde; Make þou no iangelyuge To freende nor to sibbe; lauȝe þou to scorne nouþer olde bodi ne ȝonge, But be of fair beerynge and of good tunge;’23 Written in 1430, this verse demonstrates that women, especially young women, were supposed to comport themselves with decorum: a ‘still and upright posture, head still, gaze level’ was the desired standard.24 A less than upright posture could be taken to mean not only poor posture, but poor character. The women in the wall painting were then not only contravening the desired norms of behaviour in church, but were displaying themselves as of possibly immoral character. The paintings were therefore policing social behaviour as well as religious behaviour, but were also showing that there was hope of redemption through behaving properly.
St. Andrew, Wickhampton, Norfolk
Figure 0-7 St. Andrew, Wickhampton, Norfolk
The paintings of the Three Living and the Three Dead were also part of the Christian teaching cycle. Recorded in the late thirteenth century in the court of Margaret II of Flanders (1244-1280) as being in the repertoire of the minstrel, three men meet Death in his guises of
23 ‘How the Good Wijf tauȝte Hir Douȝtir’ in The Babees Book, F. J. Furnivall (Ed.),New York, Greenwood Press, 1969, p. 37 24 M. Gill, ‘Female piety and impiety: selected images of women in wall paintings in England after 1300’, p.108, and K. Phillips, ‘Bodily Walls, Windows and doors: The Politics of Gesture in Late Fifteenth-Century English Books for Women’ in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, J. Wogan-Browne, R. Voaden, A. Diamond, A. Hutchinson, C. Meale, L. Johnson, (Eds.), Belgium, Brepols, 2000, p. 189.
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three decaying corpses and skeletons.25 They tell the men that death faces them: the first says that the men will soon be like him; the second that all, regardless of status, face death, and the third that there is no escape. Over the centuries the paintings became individualised and personalised. The men were transformed into kings and nobles; they were hunting in a forest when they met Death, sometimes there were dogs and peasants with them, but the message was always the same ‘Thus will ye be, and as ye are, so once were we’.26 Both scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, which includes the infancy of Christ, and the adult life of Christ can be seen on the north wall, although not as often as messages of Christian teaching. The Virgin is depicted as a child with her mother Saint Anne, then as a married woman at her Annunciation, when she is told of her pregnancy by the Archangel Gabriel. She is shown in labour, with the midwife and Joseph; at the Nativity with the infant Christ, the Magi and the shepherds, at her death, and her Assumption into Heaven and Coronation as Queen of Heaven. The Life of Christ encompasses apocryphal early life miracles such as that of the Clay Birds, followed by the Passion. The Passion itself incorporates the Entry into Jerusalem, Mocking, Scourging, Bearing the Cross, Crucifixion, Deposition, Entombment, and Ascension into Heaven. Turning away from the north wall and towards the east - the chancel, the sacred section of the church - paintings of the Day of Judgement, or Doom paintings, come into view. Often painted on the chancel arch – the physical division of the nave from the chancel - the Doom painting showed the worshippers what lay before them, and what the journey to Heaven involved. The chancel arch symbolised the gateway to heaven, through which all had to pass. At the top of the painting sat Christ in Majesty, with the Virgin Mary at his right hand, and the Archangel Michael, with his scales to weigh the souls of the dead on his left. The Virgin Mary signified love, compassion and Paradise, and Michael justice and damnation. The dead, called by the angels blowing the last trump, can be seen clambering out of their coffins on one side of the arch, and on the other, demons shoving the damned into the jaws of hell. Looking from the chancel arch and towards the south wall, the themes of the paintings changes. Instead of teaching, more saints are seen as well as more scenes from the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ. The selection of saints appears to relate to the devotional choices of the parishioners: local saints may be popular – Saints Edmund and Walstan are both East Anglian saints rarely, if ever, found elsewhere; the saint may have a specific role, such as Saint Christopher, or may commemorate a specific event – the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, for example. Saints can be both patrons and intercessors. Saint Margaret, for instance, was the patron saint of women in labour, and childbirth. Saint James the Great was the patron of labourers and pilgrims, and was a disciple, so he had perhaps more clout when passing on the prayers of the worshippers to God. The lives of saints were sometimes painted as examples of men and women who had endured much suffering, but then achieved a heavenly afterlife. Turning again, the west wall comes into view. There are few paintings surviving on the west wall, only, so far seven throughout the two counties. Three of those are a Doom, a Warning against Gossip, and the Three Living and Three Dead. One is of an unidentifiable saint, another of Saint George, and the remaining two scenes are from the Life of Christ, Noli me Tangere and Christ in Exaltation
25 M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1963, p. 74 26 M. D. Anderson, Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches, p. 74
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To sum up: the north wall held Saint Christopher in a prominent place. The passing traveller would be able to look through the door, pray, and continue travelling without even entering the church. The wall also showed Christian teaching and scenes from the lives of the Virgin Mary and Christ. The east wall held the promise of Doom, the Day of Judgement and a glimpse of the heavenly afterlife. The south showed exemplars of devout and saintly lives, encouragement towards saintliness and exhortations against sinfulness, and saints who were the intercessors between humanity and Christ. The depictions of the Virgin Mary – as a child, a bride, a new mother and a grieving mother – reflected the lives of the parishioners, as did the infancy, followed by the suffering, of Christ. Those affective depictions reinforced the themes of the other paintings: to learn, to strive, to hope, that the result would be a heavenly afterlife as it was for the Virgin Mary and Christ. All the paintings in the nave then, created a learning and teaching experience for the parishioner. Those people not there to worship could see, as their attention was drawn from the north towards the east, and lastly to the south, exemplars of devout and saintly lives, encouragement towards saintliness and exhortations against sinfulness, and saints who were the intercessors between humanity and Christ. And, on at least one wall in every church, the viewer would encounter at least one part of the lives of the Virgin Mary and her Son.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, M. D., Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1963, p. 74. Anderson, M. D., Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches, p. 74. Gill, M., ‘Female piety and impiety: selected images of women in wall paintings in England after 1300’, p.108, and Phillips, K., ‘Bodily Walls, Windows and doors: The Politics of Gesture in Late Fifteenth-Century English Books for Women’ in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, J. Wogan-Browne, R. Voaden, A. Diamond, A. Hutchinson, C. Meale, L. Johnson, (Eds.), Belgium, Brepols, 2000, p. 189. ‘How the Good Wijf tauȝte Hir Douȝtir’ in The Babees Book, F. J. Furnivall (Ed.), New York, Greenwood Press, 1969, p. 37. Dymond, D., & Paine, C., The Spoil of Melford Church, Ipswich, Salient Press, 1989, p. 3. Giles, J. A., (ed.), William of Malmesbury’s Chronicle of the Kings of England: From the earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen, London, Henry G. Bohn, 1847, p. 351.
AN EXCERPT FROM:
Elizabeth Woodville : mother of the Princes in the Tower, by David Baldwin (Stroud : Sutton, 2002, pp xv - xviii).
By Pat Masters presented to the Richard III Society of WA on 28 September 2019.
Elizabeth Woodville spent her earliest years in relative obscurity at Grafton Regis in rural Northamptonshire, but she was destined to become the wife of King Edward IV, mother of Edward V, sister-in-law of Richard III, mother-in-law of Henry VII and grandmother of Henry VIII. The eldest of the twelve children which Jacquetta, dowager Duchess of Bedford bore her second husband, the middling country knight Sir Richard Woodville, she was to experience more vicissitudes of fortune, than the heroine of any novel or television soap opera. Her legendary meeting with Edward IV beneath the oak tree at Grafton and their secret marriage baffled contemporaries and led to allegations of witchcraft; her husband’s
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promotion of her relatives bred resentment among the older noble families and contributed to her spending two fearful phases of the Wars of the Roses in sanctuary; her father, two of her brothers, and a son from her first marriage were executed and the ‘Princes in the Tower’, her sons by King Edward, disappeared mysteriously; and the last five years of her life were spent in religious seclusion after a plot to depose Henry VII misfired. But her reign as queen was not all tribulations. There are royal progresses, great state occasions and tournaments, the satisfaction of interceding with her husband on behalf of plaintiffs, of influencing his policies behind the scenes and fulfilling the role of a ‘great lady’ on her own estates. She has been praised and vilified (more often the latter) by bother contemporaries and later writers, but few have tried to understand her difficulties, to probe her mind (to plumb her unfathomable relationship with Richard III, for example), or answer the questions ‘What was she really like?’ Some prospective biographers may have been dissuaded from studying Elizabeth by a vague, and possibly erroneous, notion that it would be difficult to bring their work to a satisfactory conclusion. It is sometimes said that it is all but impossible to write ‘the life of’ a medieval man or woman because the detailed, personal information needed to understand their motives and actions is not available. Only seldom are there memoirs by contemporaries who knew their subject, and almost never a substantial body of correspondence between friends or family. The dry mass of chronicles and administrative records may tell us what a person did or received or suffered but not what he or she thought or hoped for; and there has been a tendency to produce books which describe themselves as the ‘Life and Times’ of the subject (with much space and emphasis given to the ‘Times’) or alternatively, to resort to an unacceptable amount of speculation in order to create a real, thinking individual. Informed guesswork is probably essential, but when overused can result in caricature bearing only passing resemblance to the person concerned. These difficulties apply to Elizabeth as much as they apply to her contemporaries, but the lack of some evidence and of absolute certainty does not render a conventional biography impossible. Much material has survived, and if it does not always tell us all that we would like to know it still provides the basis for a reasoned assessment. I have tried to tell the story of her life as accurately as possible, resorting to conjecture only when her involvement is distinctly likely: few kings, or chroniclers writing on their behalf, would openly declare they acted upon their wife’s suggestion or recommendation, although there must have been many occasions on which queens obtained favours or directly influenced policy. My intention has been to provide enough background information to make Elizabeth’s career intelligible to readers who have little or no previous knowledge of the late fifteenth century, but not to make her an excuse for another general book on the Wars of the Roses. Accordingly, the events of the reign of Edward IV, her second husband, are discussed only insofar as she influenced or was affected by them. I have tried to let contemporary documents tell their own story, wherever possible, rather than interpret them to confirm to a preconceived view of her character, and have found little to substantiate the conventional portrait of the haughty queen and her grasping family. Certainly her relatives are ambitions, but Warwick, Hastings, Clarence and Gloucester – the men with whom they clashed so bitterly – never themselves refused a grant or declined an opportunity, and the modern view of them is essentially that created by Warwick’s propaganda in 1469 and Gloucester’s of 1483. Elizabeth is a fascinating but neglected character – there have been three biographies of her Lancastrian rival, Margaret of Anjou, in English since the Second World War – and much new material has come to light since the publication of David MacGibbons ‘Life’ in 1938. Historians will continue to argue about some of the episodes of Elizabeth’s
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career – for example, her part in the Simnel conspiracy – but she was, I believe, one of the most politically aware, and, at the same time, judicious, Queen Consorts, who fulfilled her difficult role as competently as anyone before or since. My over-riding concern has been ‘would Elizabeth Woodville recognise herself in these pages’? I hope – and I think – that she would.
On a practical note I have tried to distinguish carefully between the several John Pastons, the various Margarets, and Elizabeth’s two sons named Richard (to give but three examples) and to refer to noblemen principally by their titles rather than by their lesser-known personal names. The footnotes are designed primarily to acknowledge quotations and sources of evidence and to enlarge upon and justify interpretations; I have not, generally speaking, given references for facts which are accepted and uncontroversial and have only provided such information where, as it seemed to me, a question might arise from the main text. I am grateful to those who have given permission for the use of copyright material, to Peter and Carolyn Hammond of the Richard III Society for much advice and the loan of books from the Barton Library, to Susan Blake, John Gallimore, Charles Reece and Joseph and Mary Sargeant at Grafton Regis, and to Geoffrey Wheeler for supplying many of the illustrations and other items from his collections. Special thanks are due to Geoffrey Wheeler and Joanna Laynesmith for reading my typescript and suggesting improvements; and to my wife Joyce for patiently living with Elizabeth Woodville while this book was in preparation and for all her help and encouragement over the years.
David Baldwin
February 2002
ABC OF EMBROIDERY By Jennifer Gee presented to the Richard III Society of WA on 25 January 2020 (instead of 23 November 2019).
Assisi Embroidery As the name suggests, this style of embroidery was first used by the nuns in the convent in Assisi, Italy. Earliest examples dating from the thirteenth century can be found in the town of Assisi and in other Italian cities. The nuns worked on fine linens and table runners using this technique of ‘voiding’. Embroidery techniques used in Italy were quite different to other methods used around the world. Almost all the Italian methods were worked as a negative of the picture. In Assisi this technique was Figure 0-1 Assisi dolphin by Jennifer Gee worked with the background in small delicate cross stitches. Although Italian embroideries are famous for their colours the backgrounds were often left plain. Bright red was popular as was green and blue. The other thread used for the detail was often black or a darker shade of the background colour. These details were worked in a double running stitch know as Holbein stitch. Holbein stitch gives a similar effect to back stitch but is a lot
31 neater in appearance on the reverse side of the fabric. The very old surviving examples are often red, the green and blues shades not being as enduring as the red. Convents all around Italy decided to help the young women from poor families with work by setting up small handicraft workshops. In 1902 St. Anne’s convent in Assisi set up a workshop to teach young girls the Assisi techniques so they could supplement the family income selling their embroidery. To make the embroidery easier for the girls, the technique was adapted. Historically the design was drawn on the cloth: the design was then outlined in Holbein stitch and finally filled in with a delicate long armed cross stitch, one arm of the cross being longer than the other, forming a plaited effect. The nuns in Assisi decided to use cotton rather than expensive silk; the outlines were no longer free drawn, but worked over counted threads. The background was still filled in with one colour in cross stitch but with both arms being the same length. Holbein stitch was still used to outline the work. Traditionally Assisi work was embroidered on altar cloths, habits and table runners for the church. The nuns changed this, as these items were of little use outside the churches or convents. The embroidery was now to be completed on household items such as tablecloths and napkins, which would have a market among the townswomen. Three basic models were introduced: medallion cloths which had border patterns and motifs; cloths with decorated corners, and cloths with scrollwork boarders. The designs were also adapted. Originally birds were the most common motif, often in pairs. The women were thought to have taken their inspiration from St Francis of Assisi, but animals and birds surrounded by scrollwork had always been a part of religious art and embroidery. As the workshop in Assisi became better known the idea of ‘voiding’ began to be used in other European countries. To more readily identify Assisi work carried out in Assisi from 1930, the work carried a cross of St. Francis and the arms of Assisi embroidered in the bottom right hand corner. Although the traditional colours are still used, many different colours are now used and many different motifs. Modern dying techniques have developed many rich and beautiful colours for people to experiment with. Blackwork Although Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry Vlll is credited with having introduced blackwork into England, it was already known as it is mentioned in Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale. He describes a smock as “white and embroidered in front and behind with coal- black silk and embroidered also on the inside and outside of the collar.” It is not known how popular this sort of embroidery was prior to Catherine’s arrival in England. Early blackwork would seem to be the decoration of borders with black thread, rather than the counted-thread blackwork embroidery we know today. The thread was dyed with iron oxide which caused rust stains in damp conditions. This can be seen on a few examples which survive today. Black embroidery silk from countries such as Spain were dyed using less iron so items embroidered using non-English silk have survived better. Many ethnic forms of embroidery have developed using a single coloured thread worked in counted stitch on plain material. It is often debated that
32 Figure 0-2 Blackwork cushion, 16th. Century blackwork has been influenced by the linear embroideries of northern Europe, using Holbein (double running stitch) or of Moorish linear designs from southern Spain. This may give rise to the connection with Catherine of Aragon, a Spanish princess. Although Catherine may not have introduced blackwork to England, as a keen needlewoman she may have increased the popularity of embroidery especially if she had brought articles with Moorish influenced blackwork on them as part of her trousseau. Lady Marion Alford, a Victorian authoress, wrote in 1866 of the connection between Queen Catherine and blackwork as she “introduced the Spanish taste for embroidery which was then white or black silk and ‘gold laced’ stitches on fine linen”. Blackwork was used extensively from Catherine’s arrival in England as can be seen in detailed paintings of Holbein. The popularity of blackwork continued until the end of the reign of Elizabeth I. Europe also adopted blackwork. Louis Xl and Charles Vlll of France invited Spanish and Italian embroiderers to their courts to teach embroidery. Blackwork is also found on four chemises left by Mary Queen of Scots. Blackwork was also popular in the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe. Some blackwork fragments have also been found in Egyptian burial grounds of the late medieval period. Traditionally blackwork has been black stitching on white fabric but this is not really necessary. Any colour can be used as long as it is a contrast of the fabric. It is possible to mix colours but this may detract from the aspects of the design. The patterns are usually made up of three stitches. All or just one may be used. Double running stitch (Holbein stitch) was popular in Tudor times as it can give a double sided effect. Back stitch can also be used as can ordinary running stitch. The patterns chosen for Blackwork can be very dense, depending on the number of stitches used to build up the pattern. The shapes used to make up the pattern give it a sense of texture. These may be vertical or cross stitches, horizontal or diagonal lines, squares or cross stitches or other shapes made up from a combination of these. The threads do not need to be of uniform thickness or type. There is no rule about when a thick or thin thread must be used. Completely different effects can be obtained by using different thickness threads in a pattern. Gold thread is a traditional but optional extra. Blackwork was originally free embroidery in a variety of stitches but it in fairly recent years blackwork patterns, worked on counted fabric have been used to fill in areas of design, producing beautiful effects. Blackwork is an embroidery which gives a similar effect to etching, mono printing or photography, using different tones of one colour to create form and texture. Cross Stitch Although embroidery has been found in a tomb in Egypt dating from around 500 AD, the first cross stitch found is from the Tang dynasty in China (618-906 AD). From here it may have slowly travelled to Europe via the trade routes. The most famous early embroidery is the Bayeux Tapestry which is neither a tapestry nor a cross stitch, but an embroidery using its own Bayeux stitch. Cross stitch became popular in Europe in the middle ages. There are many articles in folk museum throughout Europe. Cross stitch is a form of embroidery where a stitch in the form of a cross (X) is used to form a picture. An uneven weave
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Figure 0-3 Millenium sampler by Jennifer Gee fabric such as linen or aida is used and the embroiderer stitches in one direction and then back again thus forming a cross. This is called counted cross stitch. Stamped cross stitch is where the embroiderer stitches over a pre stamped pattern. Aida fabric comes in different count sizes. The larger the count the larger the finished work and the smaller the count the smaller it will be. Young girls being taught embroidery used to embroider samplers. The pattern usually incorporated the alphabet, flowers and maybe household items. They were not meant to be displayed but rolled up so they could be referred to in later years when other items were being stitched. The oldest surviving sampler in England was stitched by Jane Bostocke in 1598. Items such as doilies, table clothes, linen and other household items were often embroidered using cross stitch. Cross stitch was often used in Europe to embroider blouses shirts and dresses. Traditional costumes often are still embroidered with cross stitch. Today there are many pattern books available and you can cross stitch anything from a traditional sampler to the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel pattern was stitched by Joanna Lopianowski-Roberts after she created the pattern on a computer software program. Modern embroidery thread comes with six strands loosely twisted together and easily separated as usually only two or three threads are used for the cross stitch. Linen and other uneven weave fabrics are still used but aida is still very popular. Wall hangings, cushion covers and greeting cards are very popular items to cross stitch.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Assissi Leszner, Eva Maria, Assisi Embroidery: Old Italian Cross stitch, London, B. T. Basford Ltd., 1988. Wilkinson, Sue, New Stitches, Faversham, Kent, Creative Crafts, 1993. Blackwork. Alford, Marion, Needlework as Art, (1886), Addition published by Sampson & Lowe & Co., 2011? Chaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, (ed.) John Halverson, New York, Bobbs-Meril, 1971. Snook, Barbara, The Creative Art of Embroidery, London, Hamlyn Publishing, 1972. Swain Margaret H, Historical Needlework: A Study of Influences in Scotland and Northern Ireland, New York, Von Nostrand, 1970. Swain Margaret, The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scots, New York, Von Nostrand, 1973. Thurman, Christa C. Maye, Textiles in the Art Institute in Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, 1992. Cross stitch. Caulfield, S.F.A. and B.C. Saward, The Dictionary of Needlework, 1985. Enthoven, Jacqueline, The Creative Stitches of Embroidery, Van Norstrand Rheinhold, 1964. Gillow, John, and Bryan Sentence, World of Textiles, Bulfinch Press/Little Brown, 1999.
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ALPHABET RESEARCH
C is for Cymru
By Jo-Ann Koh 26 January 2019
The word Cymru is descended from old Brythonic27 (an ancient Celt language spoken in Britain before the 6th century AD). There is evidence from the Welsh that show Latin and Common Brittonic spoken during the Roman occupation period, where a lot of the language of the Christian religion was spoken in Latin derivatives. The first evidence of Cymru being used was in a poem singing the praises of Cadwallon ap Cadfan (c.633AD). Wales in the early Middle Ages was ruled by the marcher lords who were loyal to the Normans and other rulers/leaders of their respective territories. Wales was only unified once under Gruffydd a Llywellyn from 1055 to 106328. From then on, Welsh rule was fractured and there was no political unity. Welsh rulers in the Middle Ages were vassals to the English and had to pay public homage. Cymru was used to describe both the country and the people. The final conquest of Wales occurred on 11 December 1282 resulting in the death of Llwellyn ap Gruffydd, slain by the soldiers of Edward I of England (aka Edward Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots). The Welsh went to arms against their attempt to impose English law on Welsh subjects. Upon the death of Llwellyn ap Gruffydd, the Welsh lords rebelled against foreign (English) rule, being unwilling to pay homage to a stranger whose language, customs and laws are unknown to them29. According to legend, Edward I’s problems were solved less than a year later when he presented the Welsh lords with his son, the future Edward II, born in Caernarfon Castle who did not speak one word of English, and was born on Welsh soil. Of course, it is highly improbable this would have occurred in real life, given the English aristocracy would have spoken in Norman French at the time. In any case, Edward I most likely required Welsh buy-in that he was bringing back the age of King Arthur under English rule. As we all know, a little bit of PR never hurt the Crown. For whatever the reason, the future Edward II became Twysog Cymru - the first Prince of Wales. Up until the first Prince of Wales, the title to the heir apparent to the throne was the Earl of Chester – with the earldom being one of the most powerful in medieval England. Once the title had been granted, it was generally the custom for the Prince of Wales to be invested. It was not necessary for an investiture to take place as it was seen as expensive and cumbersome. This practice was abandoned in the mid-1600s but gained popular revival in recent times. The title will be held by the heir apparent until it becomes merged with the Crown. It is interesting to note that Edward II was declared Prince of Wales in 1301, much later than the 1283 that legends spoke of. For someone who wanted Welsh buy-in, a delayed investiture did not give as much weight to the legend. Edward II in turn, did not grant his son30, the future King Edward III the title of Tywysog Cymru as he was the fourth son and was not the heir apparent until the death of his brother
27 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales 28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Wales 29 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/middle_ages/wales_conquest_01.shtml 30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Wales
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Alphonso. He had two other older brothers, John and Henry who died before Edward III was born. Edward, the Black Prince - son of King Edward III was granted the title Tywysog Cymru, Earl of Cornwall and Earl of Chester. A female heir presumptive/apparent cannot be made Princess of Wales, and Queens Mary I, Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II never held this title. The current Prince of Wales is Charles Philip Arthur George, the longest serving Prince of Wales, having held the title since 1958. Only the wife of the Prince of Wales can become the Princess of Wales. Unless she was born of royal blood, her title would be
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Encyclopedia Britannica < https://www.britannica.com/topic/prince-of-Wales> (24 December 2018). Our home online .cymru .wales
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D is for Dynasty By Terry Johnson 23 May 2019
Dynasty: A succession of hereditary rulers, a line or family of monarchs. A succession of leaders in any sphere, a prominent family spanning a number of generations. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Vol A-M, Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1993.
The word is old and, as is well known, exists in all European languages – ( dynas-ty, dynastie, dinastía, dynasti, dinasti, dinasztia, династия…); its origin is in Ancient Greek political vocabulary. However, its association with ‘a succession of rulers of the same family or line’ – is a relatively recent one. From the sixteenth century on the word became a generic word for power. It was only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the word ‘dynasty’ took on its current meaning, which Afanasyev describes as “… an omnipresent and misleadingly banal historiographical term”.31 In history there have been many dynasties over time. Long established dynasties include: the Chinese Xia Dynasty dating back to the 21st century B.C., the Plantagenets, who ruled England for three hundred years, the Romanovs in Russia, and the Japanese REWAI phase of the Chrysanthemum Dynasty which has just begun. So what are the factors that lead to the formation of a dynasty, and what factors lead to their decline and loss of power? What of the almost mythical Xia Dynasty in China? ‘According to folklore, the Xia Dynasty ruled more than 4,000 years ago. Granted the authority to rule by one of the Five Emperors, a group of god-like rulers who embodied the ideals of Chinese culture, the Xia ruled a sizable amount of land around the Huang He River. Speaking from a historical perspective, it is likely that if the Xia Dynasty existed, it evolved out of the earlier, village-based culture that thrived around the Huang He Valley. From their supposed establishment sometime in the 21st century BC, the Xia ruled for more than 400 years. There is much argument as to whether the Xia really existed or not, however irrespective of myth or legend, their rule was said to have applied for longer than any European dynasty’32. Eighteen Romanovs ruled Russia from the early seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. Famous Romanovs include Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I, Nicholas I and Alexander II. But there are others, less well known but equally extraordinary; Ivan V and Peter I, who ruled together, Anna Ivanovna, who built the famous ice palace in St Petersburg and Feodor III, the shy, bookish invalid. Between them, over time, the Romanovs established the modern world's largest and most powerful empire. The reign of the Romanovs began in the so-called ‘troubled time’, after the death of the last tsar of the Rurik dynasty in 1598. It ended in 1917 with the forced abdication of Nicholas II. In July 1918 anti-Royalists put the Tsar’s family to death. in Ekaterinburg. Is it possible to identify the factors that influenced the rise and fall of the dynasties? Bartlett ’ finds it remarkable that the Plantagenets were able to rule England for 331 years…when violence could change things overnight’.33 Yet surprisingly, few monarchs have
31 https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/bomg/Medieval-Dynasties-Workshop- Programme.pdf Extract from 2018 workshop presented by University of Birmingham, Ilya Afanasyev (BRIHC, University of Birmingham) 32 https://study.com/academy/lesson/chinas-xia-dynasty-timeline-culture-achievements.html 33 The Plantagenet royal dynasty: England’s ultimate family drama. Robert Bartlett: History extra, BC History Magazine. 2019. .History Extra, https://www.historyextra.com/period/plantagenet/the-plantagenet-royal- dynasty-englands-ultimate-family-drama/
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died from other than natural causes. [See Appendix A]. If we take Henry II as the start of the Plantagenet reign and Richard III as the end, five monarchs have died as a result of violence (and that includes the alleged death of Edward V). Of those, two were killed as the result of battle (Richard I and Richard III). Richard I died of gangrene from a crossbow wound after besieging a castle, and Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Richard II was allegedly killed in Pontefract Castle though I have no actual evidence. Three were probably murdered after abdicating or being deposed: Edward II supposedly with a red-hot poker, Henry VI who was secretly executed in the Tower of London and Edward V (who may have been murdered by Richard III). The remainder apparently died of natural causes. Violence does not seem to be a significant factor in the continuation of the Plantagenet Dynasty. If anything could be blamed for changes in the monarchy, health was the main factor. Dysentery, stroke, and natural causes are given as the major causes of death. If not death, then what? It would seem family rivalry often is the generator of changes in power within dynasties. The TV drama Game of Thrones has just ended and provided a basis of discussion for many critics. The fictional drama reminds us that families come in all forms. “People are complicated. You see families who stick together and back each other up…and you see families who stab each other in the back.” 34 Winston goes on to state “…of course not all families are bound by blood…some…are based on shared values.” Whilst it is not sensible to compare real life drama to a TV program, nevertheless there are certain parallels that can be seen. In a paper prepared by Hegarty, there are several analyses of the rivalry contained within families.35 She cites Professor Hilary Fox, who, emphasising the complexity of family ties, claims humans are often bound to family, even when they have been treated badly; ultimately they are bound by those family relationships. Certainly, there were examples in the Plantagenet dynasty of internal rivalries and thwarted ambitions, some giving way to violent acts within the family; the death of the two Princes, Bolingbroke ‘s usurpation of Richard II, and Henry VI’s murder in the Tower.36 Other factors imposed on the dynasty and its hegemony over parts of France. The deaths of Richard I and Henry V had a significant influence over eventual expulsion of the Plantagenets from their French possessions.37 Although mainly based on masculine actions, it should also be mentioned in passing, that some women of the period played significant roles in the tensions in the dynasty. Anne Neville’s passage between the two major Houses of York and Lancaster indicated a shift in power between them. Margaret of Anjou, Margaret Beaufort, and Elizabeth Woodville are all cited as major players in the civil war. Apart from having eligible sons, one of the major factors in sustaining a dynasty was marriage. A strategic marriage could help to create or maintain a dynasty. Queens produced many children, [due to the high death rate, many children of the period died before the age of ten), and often became fierce champions of their offspring’s rights to rule. A good example of this was Margaret of Anjou who fought for her son, Edward, Prince of Wales, to become King.
34 https://www.abc.net.au/life/game-of-thrones-teaches-us-about-real-life-family-feuds/10992174. Assoc Prof Diane Winston: USC. 35 https://www.abc.net.au/life/game-of-thrones-teaches-us-about-real-life-family-feuds/10992174. Hilary Fox: Assoc Prof: Wayne State University 36 https://www.abc.net.au/life/game-of-thrones-teaches-us-about-real-life-family-feuds/10992174. 37 https://www.abc.net.au/life/game-of-thrones-teaches-us-about-real-life-family-feuds/10992174.
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She was offered as bride to Henry VI as a means of inducing a truce in the wars with France. Seen as little more than that, nevertheless in time she would prove to be a formidable player in the dynamics of the Plantagenet dynasty. When Henry fell into a stupor, unable to rule, Margaret campaigned to ensure her Lancastrian family retained power. Earlier, I touched on the role of death in the dynastic history. The very vulnerability of life played its part in the Plantagenet story. Natural causes, dysentery, stroke, and a history of illness are all cited as the cause of death in at least seven monarchs of the Plantagenet era. This effect has carried on over the centuries. Since Richard III’s death, (if we discount Lady Jane Grey), only one monarch Charles I, died of unnatural causes. The case of Oliver Cromwell, who was executed posthumously, can be discounted as he was never part of a succession of leaders, ie, a dynasty. Certainly, in my opinion, it was family genes and not swords that determined the longevity of our English dynasty.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 1 https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/bomg/Medieval- Dynasties-Workshop-Programme.pdf Extract from 2018 workshop presented by University of Birmingham, Ilya Afanasyev (BRIHC, University of Birmingham) 2 https://study.com/academy/lesson/chinas-xia-dynasty-timeline-culture- achievements.html 3 The Plantagenet royal dynasty: England’s ultimate family drama. Robert Bartlett: History extra, BC History Magazine. 2019. .History Extra, https://www.historyextra.com/period/plantagenet/the-plantagenet-royal-dynasty- englands-ultimate-family-drama/ 4 https://www.abc.net.au/life/game-of-thrones-teaches-us-about-real-life-family- feuds/10992174. Assoc Prof Diane Winston: USC. 5 https://www.abc.net.au/life/game-of-thrones-teaches-us-about-real-life-family- feuds/10992174. Hilary Fox: Assoc Prof: Wayne State University. 6/7 History extra. Ibid
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Appendix A
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E is for Eleanor Crosses By Louise Carson 23 March 2019
The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve tall and lavishly decorated stone monuments topped with crosses, in a line down part of the east of England. King Edward I (of the nickname “Longshanks”) had the crosses erected between 1291 and 1294 in memory of his dead wife Eleanor of Castile, marking the nightly resting-places along the route taken when her body was transported to London. Married in 1254, when Edward was 15 and Eleanor about 10 (her birth dates range from 1241 to 1246), Eleanor was to survive at least fifteen pregnancies – bearing 4 or 5 sons, and 11 daughters; many of whom did not survive infancy. In 1270 she accompanied Edward on a crusade led by King Louis IX of France, and they returned to England to be crowned King and Queen in 1274 (Edward’s father, Henry III having died in 1272). Eleanor is suspected of contracting malaria during a visit to Gascony in 1287 – sources refer to double quartan fever – and Eleanor and Edward were on their way to Lincoln, having toured through her properties in the summer of 1290 when she died. Upon her death at Harby, near the city of Lincoln, the body of Queen Eleanor was carried to Lincoln where she was embalmed, probably either at the Gilbertine priory of St Catherine or at the priory of the Dominicans. Her viscera, less her heart, were sent to the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral for burial, where they still rest. Her body was then sent to London, taking twelve days to reach Westminster Abbey. The crosses were erected at the places where her funeral procession stopped overnight. Her heart travelled with the body and was buried in the abbey church at the London Dominicans' priory at Blackfriars – which was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries of Henry VIII’s reign. Several artists worked on the crosses, as the "Expense Rolls" of the Crown show, with some of the work being divided between the main figures, sent from London, and the framework, made locally. "Alexander of Abingdon" and "William of Ireland", both of whom had worked at Westminster Abbey, were apparently the leading sculptors of figures. At Westminster she was buried at the feet of her father-in-law King Henry III. Reasons for construction A similar situation had taken place in France for the body of Edward’s uncle, King Louis IX in 1271, although his memorial crosses were erected as part of a bid for canonisation; Edward had probably seen similar memorial crosses in France and elsewhere in Europe during his travels. They were at least in part intended as cenotaphs to encourage prayers for Eleanor’s soul from passers-by and pilgrims.
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The twelve places The only three crosses still standing are those at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham Cross, although remnants of the lost ones can also be seen at other sites. Lincoln The only remaining piece of the Lincoln Eleanor cross is in the grounds of Lincoln Castle. The cross originally stood at St Catherine's, an area at the end of Lincoln's High Street. Grantham No part survives of the Grantham Cross in Lincolnshire, though the records of the eighteenth- century antiquary, William Stukeley, suggest that it featured Eleanor's coats of arms. Stamford Only a small marble fragment survives of the Stamford Cross in Lincolnshire, a carved rose excavated by William Stukeley. Following the closure of Stamford Museum, the carved fragment is displayed in the ‘Discover Stamford’ area at the town's library. Stukeley's sketch of the top portion of the Stamford Cross, which suggests that it stylistically resembled the Geddington Cross, is preserved in his diaries in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Geddington Still standing, the Geddington Cross in Northamptonshire is the best-preserved of the three survivors. It is unique among the surviving crosses in having a triangular plan, and a taller and more slender profile with a lower tier entirely covered with rosette diapering, instead of the arch-and-gable motif with tracery which appears on both the others; and canopied statues surmounted by a slender hexagonal pinnacle. Hardingstone, Northampton The Northampton cross in Hardingstone in Northamptonshire is still standing at the edge of Delapré Abbey, on the side of the A508 leading out of Northampton, just north of the junction with the A45; the King stayed nearby at Northampton Castle. This cross was begun in 1291 by John of Battle. He worked with William of Ireland to carve the statues: William was paid £3 6s. 8d. per figure. The cross is octagonal in shape and set on steps: the present steps are replacements. It is built in three tiers and originally had a crowning terminal, possibly a cross. It is not known when this became lost although a local anecdote says that it was knocked off by a low- flying aircraft from a nearby airfield in the Second World War. However, the cross appears to have been lost by 1460: there is mention of a "headless cross" at the site from which Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, watched Margaret of Anjou's flight following the Battle of Northampton. A replacement cross was installed in the first restoration of 1713, but was replaced by the picturesque broken shaft which is seen today by a further restoration in 1840. Its bottom tier features open books. These probably included painted inscriptions of Eleanor's biography and of prayers for her soul to be said by viewers, now lost. This Eleanor Cross has fallen into a poor state, and campaigners have argued for urgent work to be carried out. Historic England and Northampton Borough Council have squabbled over responsibility but apparently now have an action plan for repairs. Stony Stratford The Stony Stratford Cross in Buckinghamshire stood at the lower end of the town, towards the River Ouse, on Watling Street (now the High Street), although it’s exact location is hotly debated. It is said to have been of a tall elegant design (perhaps similar to that at Geddington); it was destroyed during the Civil War by the Parliamentarians. The base survived for some time, but any trace has vanished.
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Woburn Work on the Woburn Cross in Bedfordshire started in 1292, later than most of the others. A great part of the work was done by one Ralph de Chichester. No part survives and the precise location is unknown. Dunstable Eleanor's coffin was guarded by Canons in Dunstable Priory whilst local people mourned at the crossroads in Dunstable in Bedfordshire, the location where the original cross was then constructed. A shopping precinct in High Street North now contains a modern cross statue in her honour. St Albans The St Albans Cross in Hertfordshire was erected in the Market Place at a cost of £100. It stood for many years in front of the fifteenth-century Clock Tower in the High Street and was demolished in the early eighteenth century due to neglect, and replaced by the town pump. A fountain was erected in its stead in 1874, which was subsequently relocated to Victoria Place. The first Battle of St Albans in 1455 was fought in the vicinity of the Cross, however the 2nd Battle, fought in 1461, was centred at Bernards Heath, almost one mile away. Waltham (now Waltham Cross) The Waltham Cross monument in Hertfordshire was constructed in co-operation between an architect and a sculptor: Roger of Crundale, who was the senior royal mason, and Master Alexander of Abingdon, respectively. It is still standing, although it has been restored on several occasions, and the original statues of Eleanor were replaced by replicas during the last major restoration in the 1950s. The original statues were kept for some years at Cheshunt Public Library; but they were removed, possibly in the 1980s, to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Westcheap (now Cheapside) Fragments of the Cheapside Cross in the City of London are held by the Museum of London, but although a number of drawings of the cross – and of its destruction – survive, they post- date an extensive restoration, or even rebuilding, under Henry VI, and thus provide no safe indication of how the original looked. It is likely, however, that it was similar to the Waltham and Hardingstone Crosses, but even more ornate and boasting some marble facings. The Cheapside Cross was demolished in May 1643 under an ordinance from the Parliamentary Committee for the Demolition of Monuments of Superstition and Idolatry, led by Sir Robert Harley. The cross was the third incarnation of the monument, which had been reconstructed and refurbished several times in the preceding three centuries, in which time it had enjoyed the protection of various monarchs and the Mayor and Corporation of London. Matters came to a head during the years running up to the English Civil War, when the cross was seen to encompass the doctrinal debates of the period. To puritanical reformers, it was identified with Dagon, the ancient god of the Philistines, and was seen as the embodiment of royal and Catholic tradition. At least one riot was fought in its shadow, as opponents of the cross descended upon it to pull it down, and supporters rallied to stop them. After Charles I had fled London to raise an army at the start of the Civil War, the destruction of the cross was almost the first order of business for Harley's commission. Two fragments of the cross, displaying shields bearing the royal arms of England and of Castile and León, were recovered in 1838 during reconstruction of the sewer in Cheapside. These are now held by the Museum of London.
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Charing (now Charing Cross) The cross at Charing Cross in Westminster, in what was then the Royal Mews, was the most expensive, built of marble in co-operation between an architect, Richard of Crundale, who was the senior royal mason, and a sculptor, Master Alexander of Abingdon. The original cross stood at the top of Whitehall on the south side of Trafalgar Square, but was destroyed on the orders of Parliament in 1647 during the Civil War, and was replaced by an equestrian statue of Charles I in 1675 following the Restoration. Since the early nineteenth century, the site of the cross in Trafalgar Square has been regarded as the official centre of London in legislation and when measuring distances from London. A 100-metre- long mural by David Gentleman on the platform walls of Charing Cross underground station, commissioned by London Transport in 1978, depicts, in the form of wood engravings, the story of the building of the cross by medieval stonemasons and sculptors.
BIBLIOGRAPHY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_cross https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/royals/edward-i-and-eleanor- of-castile https://www.historyofroyalwomen.com/eleanor-of-castile/eleanor-of-castile-the-distant- mother/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Castile https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-45916248
Gi s for Geddington, Grantham and other Eleanor Cross Locations By Louise Carson 22 June 2019
My last alphabet research was “E is for Eleanor Crosses” which generated some discussion around why the funeral cortege stopped in these particular places – was it because of a royal residence nearby? So I endeavoured to find out ….
Harby to Lincoln (≈55 kms) Eleanor of Castile, Queen Consort of King Edward I of England, died at the house of Richard de Weston in Harby, Lincolnshire on 28 November 1290. Her body was carried to Lincoln, a few miles away, where she was embalmed – probably either at the Gilbertine priory of St Catherine in the south of the city, or at the priory of the Dominicans. The viscera was buried in a tomb at Lincoln Cathedral and her heart was buried at Blackfriars Church in London.
Grantham (≈40 kms) Grantham is best known as the birthplace of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and the place where Isaac Newton went to school. The Grey Friars had a house in Grantham Grange in 1290, and this is the most likely place for Eleanor to rest. The order was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540 and no trace remains.
Stamford (≈40 kms) A Norman castle was built about 1075 almost certainly erected by the Crown, but by the late 12th century it was in the hands of the lord of the manor of Stamford, and apparently demolished in 1484.
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In 1189 the castle served as a refuge for the Jews of Stamford when a group of crusaders converged on the town's fair. The crusaders, fired by religious zeal, killed a large number of the town's Jewish population and rest fled behind the castle walls for safety. Much of the castle appears to have been pulled down in the reign of Richard III and the stone used to rebuild Whitefriars.
Geddington (≈30 kms) The building of the Royal Hunting Lodge situated on the rise to the north of the church in 1129 put Geddington on the map, and was used as a base for hunting within the Royal Forest of Rockingham for the next 160 years. The first Plantagenet King, Henry ll (1154-89) used the Lodge frequently and presumably organised improvements for in 1177, and again in 1188. In 1194 Richard l entertained King William of Scotland in the village and there are several records of the visits by King John. It was during Henry III’s reign (1216-72) that most improvement was made to the Lodge, many with the Queen in mind and leading to the building becoming known as a “Palace” or “Castle”. While the building has been lost, the "King's Door" within the church of St Mary Magdalene, Geddington in the village remains – it was the entrance through which the King could enter the building while staying at the lodge.
Hardingstone (≈35 kms) Delapré Abbey was one of two Cluniac nunneries in England (the other being Arthington Priory in Yorkshire). The Cluniac congregation was initially a reform movement of Benedictine life. King Edward I stayed at nearby Northampton Castle. Under the dissolution of the English Reformation in 1538, King Henry VIII forced the Abbey to surrender to the Crown.
Stony Stratford (≈20 kms) The original Wolverton was a medieval settlement just north and west of today's town. This site is now known as Old Wolverton, although the medieval village is all but gone. The manor of Wolverton was held by the de Wolverton family until the mid-fourteenth century
Woburn (≈20 kms) Woburn was first recorded as a hamlet in 969 and is found in the Domesday Book of 1086. It is best known as the location of Woburn Abbey (a stately home), founded by Cistercian monks in 1145 and granted to the first Earl of Bedford in 1538 after the dissolution of the monasteries. Despite some financial difficulties in the 1240’s, fifty years later it was one of the wealthiest houses in the county.
Dunstable (≈15 kms) The Priory Church of St Peter with its monastery (Dunstable Priory) was founded in 1132 by Henry I for Augustinian Canons in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. On 23 May 1533, in the Lady Chapel of the conventual church at Dunstable, Archbishop Cranmer together with and the bishops of Winchester, London, Bath and Lincoln pronounced the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to be null and void.
St Albans (≈20 kms) The medieval town grew on the hill to the east the Benedictine Abbey of St Albans which was founded by Ulsinus in 793. There is some evidence that the original site was higher up the hill than the present building, which was begun in 1077. St Albans Abbey was the principal
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abbey medieval in England. The scribe Matthew Paris lived there and the first draft of Magna Carta was drawn up there. It became a parish church after the dissolution of the Benedictine abbey in 1539 and was made a cathedral in 1877. An earthquake shook the abbey in 1250 and damaged the eastern end of the church. In 1257 the dangerously cracked sections were knocked down — three apses and two bays. The thick Presbytery wall supporting the tower was left. The rebuilding and updating was completed during the rule of Abbot Roger de Norton (1263–90). Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I, when previously visiting the monastery, was surrounded by the women of the town, who implored her to influence the abbot to let them use their own hand-mills. When the body of Eleanor was being taken to Westminster for burial, the whole convent came out in their copes to meet the procession at St. Michael's and escorted it to the abbey.
Waltham (≈25 kms) Records, some patched together and non-contemporary, state her body rested at St Albans on the night of 12 December and was carried to "Waltham" on the following day, where it rested for the night at Waltham Abbey and arrived in London on 14 December. In 1268 nearby Cheshunt was in the hands of the Crown, Peter of Savoy having left the honour of Richmond to his niece Queen Eleanor, who sold it to her husband. The latter granted it to the descendants of Peter de Braine.
Westcheap (≈23 kms) In the Middle Ages Cheapside formed part of the processional concourse through the city towards Westminster, and regularly witnessed all the pageantry of Coronation processions, royal and diplomatic entries and, from the time of Edward I until the 16th century, of the tourneys and civic spectacles including the annual "Midsummer Watch". In late medieval times this locality was particularly famous for its community of wealthy gold- and silversmiths. There are two candidates for Queen Eleanor’s resting place:
St Mary-le-Bow Founded in or around 1080 as the London headquarters of the archbishops of Canterbury, the medieval church of St Mary-le-Bow survived three devastating collapses before being completely destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.
St Peter Westcheap The church and parish of St Peter Westcheap were in existence in the 12th century. The patronage of the church belonged to the Abbots of St Albans until the Dissolution of the monasteries.
Charing (≈3 kms) The name of the area, Charing, is derived from the Old English word "cierring", referring to a bend in the River Thames. It is placed between the former hamlet of Charing and the entrance to the Royal Mews of the Palace of Whitehall (today the top of Whitehall on the south side of Trafalgar Square). Folk etymology suggests the name derives from chère reine – "dear queen" in French – but the original name pre-dates Eleanor's death by at least a hundred years. At some time between 1232 and 1236, the Chapel and Hospital of St Mary Rounceval was founded at Charing. It occupied land at the corner of the modern Whitehall and into the centre of Northumberland Avenue, running down to a wharf by the river. It was an Augustinian house, tied to a mother house at Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees.
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Westminster Abbey (≈ 1.5 kms) Eleanor's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey on 17 December 1290. Her body was placed in a grave near the high altar that had originally contained the coffin of Edward the Confessor and, more recently, that of King Henry III until his remains were removed to his new tomb in 1290. Eleanor's body remained in this grave until the completion of her own tomb which consists of a marble chest with carved mouldings and shields (originally painted) of the arms of England, Castile, and Ponthieu. The chest is surmounted by William Torel's gilt-bronze effigy, showing Eleanor in the same pose as the image on her great seal. When Edward remarried a decade after her death, he and his second wife Margaret of France, named their only daughter Eleanor in honour of her.
Calendar of the patent rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward II, A.D. 1307-1327, Volume 2. (p.409/424) This volume of Patent Rolls has the Great Seal – usually in the possession of the Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper – at these locations on these dates, which coincide with Eleanor’s journey.
Nov 22-27 – Harby
Dec 2-3 – Lincoln
Dec 5 – Casterton (somewhere between Grantham and Stamford judging by the dates)
Dec 14-15 – London
Dec 18 – Westminster
Dec 27 – Ashridge (Berkhamstead, Herts?)
Calendar of the Charter Rolls for the same period has no entries between November 23 at Harby and January 8 1291 in Ashridge.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harby,_Nottinghamshire 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_cross#Procession_and_burials 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Catherine%27s,_Lincoln#St_Catherine's 1 https://kids.kiddle.co/Grantham 1 https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/LIN/Grantham 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford,_Lincolnshire 1 https://www.britainexpress.com/counties/lincs/castles/stamford-castle.htm 1 http://www.geddington.net/history/royal-hunting-lodge/ 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geddington 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardingstone 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delapr%C3%A9_Abbey 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolverton 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woburn,_Bedfordshire 1 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/beds/vol1/pp366-370 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstable_Priory 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstable_Priory#14th_to_16th_century 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Albans 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Albans_Cathedral#13th_to_15th_centuries 1 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol2/pp469-477 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltham_Cross
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1 https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/herts/vol3/pp441-458 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter,_Westcheap 1 https://www.stmarylebow.org.uk/ 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Peter,_Westcheap#The_medieval_church 1 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015031081162&view=1up&seq=424
I is for Immigration in Medieval England By Jennifer Gee. 24 August 2019.
Immigration has been common throughout history. This could be caused by such things as famine, war and population growth. Movement by individuals was also common. Craftsmen often moved to where there was work. Academics and scholars also moved to centres of learning. Other people moved to cities which were centres of commerce and trade. Land would be given to soldiers after a region was conquered as reward for their services, which happened after the Norman Conquest of England. Immigrants tended to live within their own communities. They would be mixing geographically but not culturally. During the middle ages the arrival of immigrants had the same implications it has today. English born people saw them as a threat to their livelihood. A petition presented to Edward lV complained that aliens who are craftsmen give work to people from their own countries enriching other aliens while impoverishing local Englishmen. This was just one of many such petitions, a lot from London, complaining of foreigners taking their jobs. One suggestion put forward was for the English Guilds to have control over the immigrants work by putting limitations on their output. These proposals were usually ignored by the English kings as they saw skilled workers from overseas were beneficial to the country’s economy. A lot of these new arrivals were highly skilled craftsmen from the Low Countries or German regions. They had moved to England to cater for the increasing demand for consumer goods in the aftermath of the Black Death. In the summer of 1381 the English craftsmens’ opposition took a violent turn. The Peasants Revolt saw about forty Flemings dragged out of churches and into London’s Vintry ward and beheaded. Members of the London Weavers Guild were thought to be behind the carnage but they were never formally charged. Members of the guild had been complaining for nearly twenty five years that the Flemish cloth weavers’ success harmed their industry. Their requests to control the output of the Flemings had been continually rejected by the king. Violence against immigrant craftsmen continued. In 1468 a planned attack by skinners, cordwainers, goldsmiths and tailors in London was foiled. The local craftsmen stated that the Flemings were taking their jobs, and they wanted to cut off the Flemings’ thumbs or hands so they could no longer work at their craft. To protect local workers, in 1484 a statute was passed that only immigrants with letters of denization, a document giving some rights to aliens usually reserved for English born people, could exercise a craft or manual occupation, or employ servants other than their own children. The most pressing issue facing local born craftsmen was still ignored. Many of the petitions of London’s craft guilds throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries actually reveal that many English manufacturers had become uncompetitive because the standard of their workmanship had declined. Goods made by the immigrants were more popular and seen as better quality. Even the king bought most of his luxury goods from London’s immigrant population rather than from their English counterparts. The statute had little effect. The same measurers were reintroduced in Tudor times but still to little effect. Immigrants were still held responsible for unemployment among the English craftsmen.
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In the later middle ages applications for royal letters of denization came before the English parliament on a regular basis. Often they were presented by people who had been in the country for many years and represented their communities in Parliament regardless of their alien status. A Gascon-born wine merchant, Edmund Arnold (Arnaud), established himself in Dartmouth. He represented the town in four Parliaments between 1395 and 1416 and rose to become a deputy to the Admiral, Thomas Beaufort Duke of Exeter. Craftsmen bringing their skills included William Veysy, who was probably of German origin. He represented two Dorset boroughs in Parliament in the late 1440’s. A highly skilled brick maker and beer brewer Veysy was appointed Henry Vl’s official brick maker and also surveyor of beer brewers throughout England. He held this title for over twenty years. The Welsh were also classed as aliens. Glamorgan born John Gregory or John Walsh as he was more commonly known, was MP for Dartmouth in 1437. organ Meredith, MP for Dover in 1445, was born in Carmarthen. John Hore was also from Carmarthen. He was MP for Bridport in Dorset when he enlisted the support of fellow Members for his petition for his denization in 1437. Many English born members of parliament had foreign born wives. The husbands often did not see any need to seek naturalization for their wives. After the death of their husbands these women usually petitioned for their letters of denization. As a series of kings married foreign princesses, retainers would accompany the princesses. These men served the king often for many years before they decided to petition for letters of denization. Sir John Dabichecourt’s father, Sir Sanchet Dabrichecourt, had arrived in England in the retinue of Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward lll. Sir John was a Member of Parliament for Derbyshire in the 1390’s. He also distinguished himself fighting for Edward lll in the French wars. It was not until 1407 that Sir John saw a need to secure letters of denization. Serving the king on the battle field can been seen as important for a man not born in one of England’s territories such as Gascony or Wales to qualify for naturalization. Another example was the Danish born Sir Andrew Ogard who was fighting on the Lancastrian kings’ side during the French wars. In 1427 he was knighted on the battle field in the aftermath of the Duke of Bedford’s victory at Verneuil. He went on to become the duke’s chamberlain and was granted letters of denization by Parliament in 1433. Usually a petition for denization had to show the applicant had been resident in England for a long time. John Gregory stated he had been in England for 30 years or more and intended to stay. Edmund Arnold claimed he had been in England 20 years, while Sir John Dabrichecourt said he had lived in England from the time of his youth and served faithfully Edward lll and then various members of the house of Lancaster. The argument about immigrant labour impacting on the labour market has been discussed for hundreds of years. Late medieval governments also struggled with the problem. Laws used during the medieval period were only ever a temporary fix. What qualifies a person for naturalization is also not always clearly defined even today. Both these issues are still debated hotly in the 21st century. References. historyworkshop.org.uk thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com quora.com
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N is for Sir William Norreys or Norris
By Anita Bentley 24 September 2019.
William Norris was born in 1441 at Yattendon Castle, the family home, the son of Sir John Norris and Lady Alice Merbrook. Sir John Norris of Ockwell, in the county of Berkshire, was the eldest son of William Norreys, who came from a prominent aristocratic family of Norman ancestry dating back to the 11th century. Alice was born at Yattendon, in the county of Berkshire, in 1410, the daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Merbrook and Ellen de Montford. From his wife, John became master of Yattendon in 1440. In 1448 King Henry Vl gave him permission to expand and transform it into a defensible castle surrounded by a 600 acre park. Sir John was the Master of the Wardrobe to Henry VI. Lady Alice was made a ‘Most Honourable Lady of the Garter’ by King Henry in 1448. His family being highly ranked Lancastrians led to William becoming a soldier in the Royal Army during the Wars of the Roses and he was knighted by King Henry VI at the Battle of Northampton on the 10th July 1460. He was also present at the Battle of Towton in 1461 when Edward was proclaimed King. However, William and his father John quickly reconciled themselves to the new monarchy, and by August William had been appointed steward of the manors of Cookham and Bray, which adjoined the family estate of Ockwell. Ockwell Manor had originally been given to a Sir Richard Le Norreys in 1283 who was the chief cook to Queen Eleanor. In 1446, after William’s father John had inherited Ockwell, he commenced a rebuilding programme installing stained glass windows in the great hall, depicting among others, Henry Vl, Marguerite of Anjou, the Duke of Somerset and Sir John Wenlock. These windows survive today. Sir William became Justice of the Peace for Berkshire from 1467 until 1483 and was Sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1468, 1482 and 1486. Around the time of his father’s death in 1466 William allied himself with another Lancastrian family by marrying Jane, the sister of John de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. William and Jane lived in the castle at Yattendon with their four sons Edward, Richard, William, George, and two daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth. William’s mother Alice had died in 1450 and his father John had married for a second time Eleanor Clitheroe, and after her death Margaret Chedworth. After John’s death, Margaret married his wife’s cousin, Lord Howard. The two eventually became Duke and Duchess of Norfolk. On the death of his stepmother Margaret in 1494 William took over the family Ockwell estates. William’s father had left it jointly to his second wife and William. Sir William acted as the Duke’s shipping agent in London. In 1469 Sir William was made Esquire of the Kings Body to King Edward, and it may have been this reason he did not join in the Warwick rebellion which briefly reinstated Henry as King. Upon Edward’s final victory William remained in office and a year after the Battle of Barnet in 1472 he was in a strong enough position to marry the widow of John Neville, Lord Montague, Isabelle Ingoldisthorpe. Isabelle was the daughter and heiress of Sir Edward Ingoldisthorpe and his wife Joan, sister and eventual heiress of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. It is speculated that William and Isabelle might have met at John Neville’s funeral at Bisham Abbey. Isabelle and William had a son and two daughters who all died young. Isabelle died in 1476 and Sir William married for a third time to Joan, the daughter of Alderman Robert Horne of London. Sir William enjoyed less favour under King Richard and in 1483 reverted to his former Lancastrian sympathies by joining with his younger brother John, and neighbour Sir Thomas de la Mere, in the Duke of Buckingham’s rebellion. Whilst the Duke assembled forces in
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Brecon, Sir William and Sir Richard Woodville, Edward’s brother in law, gathered further rebels at Newbury and declared for the Earl of Richmond. The rising failed and Sir William fled. A reward was offered for his capture but he escaped to Brittany. He was later joined by his brother in law the Earl of Oxford. When the two returned to England, Sir William commanded a troop of men at the Battle of Bosworth when Richmond took the crown as Henry VII. Sir William was richly rewarded for his loyalty by Henry Vll, and continued his role in the Royal Army, together with his son Edward. On 16th June 1487 he commanded the Royal Forces against Lambert Simnel. Edward died soon afterwards. The following year Sir William was acting as Bailiff for the Queen and was commissioned to ,’summon all Earls, Barons, Knights and other nobles in the county of Oxfordshire, to examine how many archers each is bound to find for the Kings army”. In 1505 he became steward to the Chancellor of Oxford University. He died in 1507 and was succeeded by his grandson John, the son of Edward. About 1480 Edward had married Frideswide Lovell, sister to Francis Lovell. They had two boys and two girls, John, Henry, Anne and Margaret. It is said it was at Yattendon Castle when John was entertaining the Royal Court in 1520, that Anne Boleyn dropped her hanky and it was retrieved by Henry Norris, the son of Edward and Frideswide, who picked it up and gave it to her. This incident would later be used as evidence in Anne Boleyn’s and Henry’s trials to support rumours of their affair. When Henry Norris was beheaded, as his wife had died five years earlier, it was his brother John who took over the care of the orphaned children. John had no children of his own. The Norris family owned Ockwell until in 1517. Sir William’s grandson John had to surrender the estate for having murdered a certain John Enhold of Nettlebed. John had to surrender his lands to his younger brother Henry at “whose suit the pardon had been made”. On Henry’s death the land would revert to John or his heirs. However after John’s death Ockwell was seized by one of the trustees, John’s uncle, Thomas Fettiplace. John was Edward’s son, Sir William’s grandson. Sir William Norris, besides changing his allegiance when it suited him, married the widow of John Neville, was the grandfather of Henry Norris and the father in law to Francis Lovell’s sister. The End.
BIBLIOGRAPHY www.Royal Berkshire History Wikipedia Sir William Norreys Ockwell Berkshire England -Geni.com Wikipedia Sir John Norreys Wikipedia Yattendon
N is for Notable Nurtures in the Noble Household of the 15th Century.
By Anita Bentley 27 April 2019
This excerpt comes from the Book of Nuture describing various duties of members of the Noble household in the 15th Century. The Book of Nurtures served as a basis for contemporary manners and domestic management. It was written by John Marshall in 1450; he was Marshall to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry V.
An usher or a Marshall, without fail, must know all the estates of the church,
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And the excellent estate of a king with his honorable blood. The estate of the pope has no peer. An emperor is next to him everywhere, a king is correspondent. A high cardinal next, then a king’s son, an archbishop his equal. A duke, a bishop, a marquis and an earl are coequal. A viscount, baron and Chief Justice and the Mayor of London May dine together, but an ex- mayor of London ranks with a sergeant at law. Gentlemen well nurtured and of good manners, together with gentlewomen and the lord’s foster mother, all of these may eat with the squires. The duty of the chamberlain is to be diligent in office, neatly clad, his clothes not torn, hands and face well washed and head well kempt. He must be ever careful, not negligent, of fire and candle. And look you give diligent attendance to your master, be courteous, glad of cheer, quick of hearing in every way, and be ever on the lookout for things to do him pleasure. If you will acquire these qualities, it may advance you well. See that your lord has a clean shirt and hose, a short coat, a doublet , and a long coat, if he wear such. His hose well brushed, his socks at hand, his shoes or slippers as brown as a water leech. In the morning, against your lord shall rise, take care that his linen be clean, and warm it at a clear fire, not smokey, if the weather be cold or freezing. When he rises make ready the foot sheet, and forget not to place a chair or some other seat with a cushion on it before the fire, with another cushion for the feet. Over the cushion and the chair spread this sheet so as to cover them, and see that you have a kerchief and a comb to comb your lord’s hair before he is fully dressed. Then pray your lord in humble words to come to a good fire and array him thereby, and there to sit, or stand pleasantly, and wait with due manners to assist him. First hold out to him his tunic, then his doublet while he puts in his arms, and to have his stomacher well aired to keep off harm, as also his vamps and socks, and so shall he go warm through the day. Then draw on his socks and his hose by the fire, and lace or buckle his shoes, draw his hose on well and truss them up to a height that suits him, lace his doublet in every hole, and put around his neck and on his shoulders a kerchief, and then gently comb his head with an ivory comb, and give him water wherewith to wash his hands and face. If your lord wishes to bathe and wash his body clean, hang sheets around the roof, every one full of flowers and sweet green herbs, and have five or six sponges to sit or lean upon, and see that you have one big sponge to sit upon, And a sheet over , so he may bathe there for a while. Have a sponge also for under his feet, if there is any spare. Always be careful that the door is shut. Have a basin full of hot fresh herbs and wash his body with a soft sponge. Rinse him with fair warm rose water, and throw it over him, Then let him go to bed. See that the bed be sweet and nice, and first put on his socks and slippers that he may go near the fire. Stand on his foot sheet , wipe him dry with a clean cloth, And take him to bed to cure his troubles. This is a notable nurture, cunning, curious and commendable.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Portable Medieval Reader, Penguin Books, UK., pages 120,121.
Q is for Quarter days.
By Jo-Ann Koh 24 August 2019
There were two equinoxes, and two solstices which were roughly three months apart and since the Middle Ages, quarter days were based around these events. Many school terms start on quarter days and leasehold/rent payments are now still due on quarter days (though their significance as celebration days are much reduced over the years): • Lady Day (25 March)38 - Lady Day is the Feast of the Annunciation, when Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she was with child. This day is observed universally amongst all of the Christian religions – Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism and Orthodoxy. - This was the first day of the year for all British dominions from 1155 until 1752. From 1752, January 1 became the first day of the year when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. “Old Lady Day” under the Gregorian calendar corresponded with “New Lady Day” 6 April under the Julian calendar, and this became the British tax year as we know it today. - As this quarter day did not fall between ploughing and harvesting seasons, this traditionally became the day when tenancy contracts came to an end. Farmers’ entries to new fields generally fell on this day and families would often travel from old to new farm leases on Lady Day. - As Lady Day roughly coincided with an Equinox where the day and night lengths are equal, then this would signify the start of a new year. This was the original new year under the Iranian and Hebrew calendars. • Midsummer Day (24 June)39 - This day is centred around the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and this celebration predates Christianity and has been celebrated by man since the Stone Age. - This is also known as Feast Day of St John the Baptist and observed amongst all Christian religions and the Freemasonry to celebrate his birth six months before the birth of Christ. • Michaelmas (29 September)40 - This is to celebrate the Feast of the Archangels – Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, though for obvious reasons was a feast originally to honour Michael around the 5th century in Rome. - This day marked the ending of the husbandman’s year when the harvest was over and the bailiff/reeve of the manor would start making out accounts for the year. Hiring fairs (also known as statute or mop fairs41) were held around this time as well – where peasants and labourers were hired on fixed terms. This dates back to Edward III in an attempt to regulate the labour market by the Statute of Labourers in 1351 after a shortage of labour around the time of the Black Death. Pay conditions and rates were stipulated/bargained and new positions could be
38 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Day 39 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midsummer 40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michaelmas 41 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiring_and_mop_fairs
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secured at these fairs and this day was traditionally tied to the harvest, rather than the calendar. • Christmas (25 December)42 - And obviously to celebrate the birth of Christ.
R is for ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX: AN ELIZABETHAN ICARUS By Pat Masters on 26 October 2019
An excerpt from the book by Robert Lacey (2002), Orion Publishing Co., London. (ISBN 9781842122853)
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, has long been a fascination both as a man and as a parable of an eternal dilemma. When Francis Bacon compared him to Icarus, his soaring flight destroyed by the sun, he captured not only the spirit of the man but the essence of the historical tragedy in which he was trapped. His political power was based on the personal attraction he exercised over Queen Elizabeth I, but when he presumed to pursue that attraction he was struck down. The love affair between Elizabeth and Essex was non-existent, if “love” is understood by its conventional meaning. The young earl’s wooing of the Queen was, in the first instance, a calculated exercise in financial survival and later an instrument of political ambition. Elizabeth, old enough to be her suitor’s grandmother, was in love with the idea of an affaire, but experienced towards Essex the man nothing more than a calculated, wilful infatuation whose main constituent was fear of old age. The Queen with whom Essex had to deal was failing – she was not the woman who had flirted in earlier years with Hatton and Leicester. It suited the purposes of both the needy young suitor and the ageing monarch to weave around their relationship a tissue of romance which subsequent generations have embroidered; but the core of it was hollow. The essential reason for this emptiness was the cold, flawed nature of their own personalities. And the explanation of the rich, elaborate hush which they and other pieced together around their deficiencies lies in the nature of society at the end of the sixteenth century – and particularly in life at the royal court, which was in the 1590’s closer to destruction in the Civil War of 1642 than it was to the glorious certainties of the High Tudor Age. And I [Lacey] also examine in some detail the three great military expeditions of the Earl of Essex to Cadiz, the Azores and Ireland. These shed considerable light on the earl’s own personal qualities and, though often neglected in the shadow of the Armada of 1588, they were in fact the most costly and ambitious English military ventures of the century.
V is for Sir Roger Vaughan [1410:1471]
By Terry Johnson 23 February 2019
A veteran of the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, son of Sir Roger Vaughan who died at Agincourt, one of ten siblings, twice married father of six and victim of the executioner’s axe at Chepstow. Roger Vaughan was born into an influential Welsh family. His half-brother, Sir William Herbert, was Earl of Pembroke. Sir William, a zealous Yorkist, was raised to the peerage as Baron Herbert by Edward IV.
42 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas
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Not much is known about the early life of Roger Vaughan; although he was known as a Yorkist, a cause followed by most of his immediate family. He was born in Tretwr (Tretower), Breconshire in 1410; third son of Roger Vaughan of Bredwardine and Gwladys Gam. #1.
Family Roger was married twice; in 1431 and 1466. Once to Denise (her name is sometimes given as Cicely) daughter of Thomas ap Philip Vychan, of Talgarth, She was the mother of his heir Sir Thomas Vaughan, and his son Roger Vaughan of Porthaml and four daughters, all of whom reached adulthood and married into prominent Welsh families. He also married Margaret Tuchet, daughter of Lord Audley, (another of the English heroes of Agincourt), and Eleanor Holland, natural daughter of the Earl of Kent. They had one daughter, the wife of Humphrey Kynaston. He was also alleged to have fathered a number of illegitimate children. It was also reported he previously had married an Eva Coch at a place and time unknown. However, evidence exists to imply it was not a marriage, but that he simply fathered a child with the illegitimate daughter of a prior of Abergavenny Monastery known as Pirio Koch. #2. This child, Thomas, was later knighted and became a favourite of Richard III; but a reversal of fortune had Richard III order his beheading at Pomfret.
The Meaning of Knighthood in the 15th Century. Although bearing the title of ‘Sir’, Roger was not a knight in the traditional and often romantic perception of an armour-wearing soldier. The 15th century was a time of change for knighthood. Knights no longer fought for their lords in return for land, since the feudal summons had long before given way to a system of contracts. Moreover, many knights now preferred the role of landowner, man-about-town or parliamentary representative. Countries started creating their own professional armies that were quicker to train, cheaper and easier to mobilize. As the feudal system came to an end, lords saw no further use of knights. Many landowners found the duties of knighthood too expensive and so contented themselves with the use of squires. Mercenaries also became an economic alternative to knights when conflicts arose. Armies of the time started adopting a more realistic approach to warfare than the honor-bound code of chivalry. Soon, the remaining knights were absorbed into professional armies. Although they had a higher rank than most soldiers because of their valuable lineage, they lost their distinctive identity that previously set them apart from common soldiers. As the age of knights dissolved, some still survived as knightly orders which still existed even by the end of the Medieval Age. They adopted newer technology while still retaining their age-old chivalric traditions. #3
Mortimer's Cross However, Sir Roger did fight for the Yorkist cause and took part in the Battle of Mortimer's Cross which was fought on 2 February 1461 near Wigmore, Herefordshire (between Leominster and Leintwardine, by the River Lugg), not far from the Welsh border. It was a major battle of the Wars of the Roses. The opposing forces were an army led by Jasper Tudor and his father, Owen Tudor, and other nobles loyal to the King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster, his Queen, Margaret of Anjou and their seven-year-old son Edward, Prince of Wales on one side, and the army of Edward, Earl of March on the other. Some sources say it was fought on 3 February, and the exact location has been the subject of some speculation. Upon the death of the Duke of York at Wakefield the previous December, the Yorkists were led by his 18-year-old son Edward, now 4th duke of York. He sought to prevent
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Lancastrian forces from Wales, led by Owen Tudor and his son Jasper, Earl of Pembroke, from joining up with the main body of Lancastrian forces. However, Jasper Tudor's hostile army was approaching and so he changed his plan. So as to block Pembroke's advance and stop him from meeting up with the main Lancastrian force which was approaching London, Edward moved north with an army of approximately five thousand men to Mortimer's Cross. It was a crushing defeat for the Lancastrians. Owen Tudor was captured and taken by Roger Vaughan to Hereford where he was executed. #4 Estimate of the size of the two opposing forces varies widely between 2000 and 3000 per side with as many as 4000 casualties. If that was true, then Roger was lucky to survive such a bloody battle. Following Mortimer’s Cross, he rose in prominence through the grant of several properties in the border country. In 1465 he was prominent in quelling a rising in Carmarthenshire and subsequently received grants of the insurgent’s estates in the Gower. Already a knight, in 1467 he was commissioned as ‘oyer and terminer’ in Wales and the Marches. #5 Appearing at the Earl of Warwick’s charter to Neath Abbey in 1468, he was occupying the position of the Earl’s Chancellor. On 17th August 1469 Richard Neville (1428- 71), 16th Earl of Warwick, was appointed Constable of Cardigan Castle for life as Justiciar of South Wales. He was known as “Warwick the King-maker” and was the wealthiest and most powerful peer of his age, as well as a principle protagonist in the Wars of the Roses. Following his split with Edward over his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, Warwick supported the Lancastrian Henry VI. When Edward landed in Yorkshire on his return from exile, he led his forces south and met Warwick at Barnet. The Lancastrians were beaten and Warwick was killed fleeing the field of battle in 1471, the same year that Sir Roger died. On 16th December 1469 Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was empowered to recover the castle. In February 1470, Roger was appointed constable of Cardigan Castle for life.#6 Roger also took part in the Battle of Tewksbury [1471]. The Lancastrians had joined forces with discontented Welsh and foreign mercenaries under Jasper Tudor (the previous 7th Earl and half-brother of Edward VI). By the use of superior military tactics, King Edward achieved a decisive victory. Many of his opponents were killed in the battle or executed in the field but Jasper Tudor managed to avoid that fate and fled. Sir Roger was ordered by Edward IV to pursue Jasper and to take him into custody. He failed and he himself became the prisoner and was beheaded by Jasper Tudor in Chepstow. Jasper Tudor escaped to France where he remained in exile.
Footnote: Roger enjoys 19 degrees of separation from film star, Eva Gabor.
REFERENCES #1 https://biography.wales/s-VAUG-TRE-1450. Vaughan family of Tretower, parish of Llandfihangel Cwm-du, Brecknock #2 https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Coch-4 #3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight #4 Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mortimer%27s_Cross, and British Battles by Ken and Denise Guest. English Heritage. HarperCollins, London, 2002 #5 OYER AND TERMINER (AF., to hear and to determine). In English law, a commission under the King's great seal appointing certain judges to hear and determine criminal causes in and for designated circuits. This commission was very ancient in its origin, it having first been employed some time after the reign of Edward III., the exact date not being certain. Before the Judicature Act (q.v.), the commissioners, as the judges so appointed were called, constituted the Court of Oyer and Terminer. The above act vested in the High Court of
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Justice all the powers formerly exercised by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, but its jurisdiction of criminal offenses is still dependent upon such a commission. A special commission is sometimes issued, authorizing the judges to try certain designated criminal cases out of the regular term. The highest court of criminal jurisdiction in the State of New York was formerly known as the Court of Oyer and Terminer, but it derived its jurisdiction from the statutes creating it and not from a commission as was the case in England. It has been merged in the Supreme Court by the Constitution. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_International_Encyclop%C3%A6dia/Oyer_and _Terminer #6 http://www.glen-johnson.co.uk/cardigan-castle-a-history/
BOOK REVIEWS
Kathryn Warner, Edward II: An Unconventional King, Stroud, Amberley Publishing, 2017. Back Cover -- “He is one of the most reviled English kings in history. He drove his kingdom to the brink of civil war a dozen times in less than twenty years. He allowed his male lovers to rule the kingdom. He led a great army to the most ignominious military defeat in English history. His wife took a lover and invaded his kingdom, and he ended his reign wandering around Wales with a handful of followers, pursued by an army. He was the first king of England forced to abdicate his throne. Popular legend has it that he died screaming impaled on a red-hot poker, but in fact the time and place of his death are shrouded in mystery. His life reads like an Elizabethan tragedy, full of passionate doomed love, bloody revenge, jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness and obsession. He was Edward II, and this book tells his story. Using almost exclusively fourteenth-century sources and Edward's own letters and speeches wherever possible, Kathryn Warner strips away the myths which have been created about him over the centuries, and provides a far more accurate and vivid picture of him than has previously been seen.” Warner includes an extensive bibliography and uses primary sources such as the chronicles Scalacronica, Polychronicon and the Vita Edwardi Secundi. These were written during Edward’s reign and in the most part are highly critical of Edward. Throughout the narrative she includes such daily items from household accounts as the sum Edward handed over to a local fishmonger, to minstrels and other entertainers, and ‘those who made him laugh’. This is a well-written book that deals with the life and reign of Edward II. Warner’s Edward is not the “lily-livered, namby-pamby, limp-wristed” king of many Edwardian biographies. She does not hide his weakness and foolishness, but balances this with his strong marriage to Isabella of France – strong until it all went south that is. Edward fathered four children with Isabella in their 20 years of marriage, and acknowledged one illegitimate son. Likewise, Piers Gaveston, Edward’s first “favourite”, sired two daughters – one out of wedlock; and Hugh Despenser and his wife had nine children who survived infancy. Warner argues that this would make Edward (and Piers and Hugh) bisexual, rather than the traditional homosexual. Warner does not hold with the idea that the King had a sexual relationship with any of his favourites, but does stress many times the deep love he held for these men. She refutes the idea that Isabella and Roger Mortimer were lovers prior to Isabella leaving for France in 1325 and believes that –after an initial post-marriage hurdle – Isabella was actually quite friendly with Piers, and it was Hugh who broke the royal marriage. The closing chapters of the book deal with the ‘traditional’ story of Edward’s end – as defined by Christopher Marlowe’s play which was first performed around 1592 – that is
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Edward, once deposed, died by murder. (However Marlowe did not start the “red hot poker in the bowels” version that has become the popular method of murder – this rumour started circulating in the 1330s and 1340s.) Warner, however, puts forward evidence that Edward was actually exiled to the Continent in 1327 – either by faking his own death and escaping Berkeley Castle for Corfe Castle and then on to Ireland, or by being escorted from the country in secrecy to live out his life wandering Europe. (Paul Doherty in his book Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II, 2013, also puts forward this explanation of Edward’s end.) This theory is supported by what is known as the Fieschi Letter – written by the priest Manuele Fieschi and sent to Edward III in 1337. This letter recounts a tale told to the priest by Edward II of his escape: that the King, on hearing of his intended murder, changed clothes with a servant, killed the gate-keeper, and escaped to Corfe Castle where he remained for 18 months before heading to Ireland and then on to the Low Countries calling himself ‘William the Welshman’. The Fieschi Letter was discovered by a French archivist in 1878 Montpellier, in an official register dated before 1368, and tests have shown it was not written later than this date. Rather than being tidily buried in Gloucester Cathedral, historians Warner and Doherty (and others) now believe Edward’s remains lie near a hermitage in Cecima, Lombardy. Things I did not like about this book: 1. It was well written, however I had difficulties in staying focussed. On putting the book down, I usually couldn’t remember where I was up to when I next picked it up. 2. There are a few editorial errors that were confusing. Example: When Edward was fighting Robert Bruce in Scotland a few references are made to Edward Bruce. Now, Robert did have a brother Edward (later King of Ireland), however the index lists these particular pages as containing references only to Robert. 3. The inclusion of monetary items from the household accounts seems at some points random and even gratuitous. Example: A paragraph on page 143 begins with Edward debating whether to send the current favourite Hugh Despenser abroad for his own safety and ends with a description of Edward “purchasing six pairs of boots with tassels of silk and drops of silver-gilt, which cost five shillings a pair from Robert le Fermor, bootmaker of Fleet Street”. 4. Warner is steadfast in downplaying the idea of Edward’s sexual relations with his favourites, but has no qualms about emphatically describing Isabella’s feelings for Despenser as “hatred” and “loathing”.
Louise Carson
Chris Skidmore, Richard III: Brother, Protector, King, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, 2017 This book is described as a stripped back look at Richard’s life based on original documentation rather than an account based on the findings of others. It is a large read, some 372 pages with 60 pages of citations and bibliography. Not a book for a lazy afternoon’s relaxation but rather one for a long cold winter night snuggled up next to a log fire. It quotes extensively from such contemporary sources as the Croyland Chronicle and from commentary by Italian traveller Dominic Mancini. Skidmore’s style is easy to read, avoiding excessive use of extravagant language. He tends to have a diarist like approach, almost automatic when writing a biography, but one full of nuance and illustrative asides. Richard is seen as a whole man, not just an able administrator or warrior prince. Skidmore (p206) describes Richard’s stylist dress sense and how he ordered clothes of his own
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choice, favouring gowns made of damask. Seen in this way, Richard becomes a real person not just a man in armour driven by ruthless ambition. We are given insights into Richard’s complex life with explanations of how his contemporaries may have interpreted events. Often referred to as a loyal brother, Richard had often to play second best to the Duke of Clarence, waiting his turn to receive recognition and reward. Loyal as he may have been, Skidmore paints a picture of a crafty man who found a path to financial stability by scheming to marry Anne Neville, heiress to the Warwick inheritance, much to Clarence’s dismay. Thus, thwarted from gaining this estate, Clarence sought both legal and moral pressure to prevent Richard from benefiting from his wife’s wealth. Yet Richard seemed to have put aside any resentment in 1475 when the brothers raised troops to join in an invasion of France. Skidmore relates how the chronicler, Philippe de Commynes, comments on the apparent division that once again became apparent when King Edward made a treaty with the French in which Clarence received the more favourable distribution of Louis XI’s reparations. It seems the tag ‘loyal’ varied in its meaning as circumstances changed. There are many references to, and quotations from, contemporary sources, as well as rumours, to build a picture of Richard’s personality, motivations and allegiances. In his own words#1, Skidmore states “I’ve tried to look afresh at the king’s life and reign, to get away from this traditional paradigm. But Richard himself also leads an action- packed life of drama that makes his story so compelling: a younger brother with few prospects, he is exiled twice, fights his first battles as a general aged only 18, is a loyal brother to King Edward IV and yet deposes his nephew Edward V to take the crown for himself. Why he does so is such an enigma.” Critics seem almost unanimous in their opinion of this book and its author. Words like extensively researched, Scholarly and genuinely objective, fresh, gripping and vivid, meticulous account, abound in their commentary. Who am I to argue against them. Terry Johnson
#1 History: The Official website for BBC History Magazine https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/was-richard-iii-a-loyal-brother-or-murderous- tyrant-60-seconds-with-chris-skidmore/
Polydore Vergil’s English History Comprising Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III Transcribed and modernised by Robert Bender, OAM. (2019) Polydore Vergil was a renaissance scholar, who wrote a history that was once much referred to in studies of Richard III. His text is now very much suspect and most historians agree it has too many inaccuracies and biases to be relied on. Vergil was encouraged to write the Anglia Historia by Henry VII. The first manuscript of was finished in 1513, and first published in 1534. It was extended and went through further editions, published in 1546 and 1555. Vergil espoused and followed a relatively new critical approach, seeking to compare sources and to create his own accurate narrative. Along the way, he would put his own made up speeches in the mouths of historical characters. Richard III is the 25th book in the Anglia Historia. Beginning on the day that Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was informed of Edward IV’s death, Vergil writes that it was as early as this day that Richard began his “quest” for the crown. Robert Bender – at the 2019 Victorian Convention – went into some detail about Vergil’s work, and says
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“There are 19,000 words in Vergil’s story of Richard, but only about half tell what Richard did and the story of the times of his 2-year reign. About a third is about the preparations made by the Earl of Richmond for his attempted invasion and the later successful invasion, and about 3,300 words are editorial comment by Vergil on what an evil man Richard was. So the story of Richard is very thin in Vergil’s history, with very few facts about his reign. Vergil seems to have suffered from a shortage of informants, as most of Richard’s friends and entourage had been killed at Bosworth, 25 years earlier.” Additionally, Vergil has many (all?) of the significant dates for this period wrong – apparently Richard and Anne celebrated their coronation in July of 1484, and Buckingham’s rebellion was carried out in October 1484. Fictionally – this book is verging (pardon the pun) on a bodice-ripper! For example: of Elizabeth Woodville “…as soon as she had intelligence that her sons were bereft this life, at the very first motion thereof, the outrageousness of the thing drove her into such passion as for fear forthwith she fell in a swoon, and lay lifeless a good while; after coming to herself she wept, she cried out loud, and with lamentable shrieks made all the house ring, she struck her breast, tore and cut her hair, and, overcome in fine with dolour, prayed also her own death, calling by name now and then among her most dear children, and condemning herself for a mad woman, for that (being deceived by false promises), she had delivered her younger son out of sanctuary, to be murdered by his enemy, who, next unto god and her sons, thought herself most injured; but after long lamentation, when otherwise she could not be revenged, she besought help of god (the revenger of falsehood and treason) as assured that he would once revenge the same.” And at the fateful council where Hastings makes his exit, Richard announces "My lords, I have procured you all to be called hither this day for that only cause that I might show unto you in what great danger of death I stand; for by the space of a few days by past neither night nor day can I rest, drink, nor eat, wherefore my blood by little and little decreases, my force fails, my breath shortens, and all the parts of my body do above measure, as you see (and with that he showed them his arm) fall away; which mischief verily proceeds in me from that sorceress Elizabeth the queen, who with her witchcraft has so enchanted me that by the annoyance thereof I am dissolved." In his closing remarks, Vergil does finally say something nice about Richard but you have to look for it… “He was little of stature, deformed of body, the one shoulder being higher than the other, a short and sour countenance, which seemed to savour of mischief, and utter evidently craft and deceit. The while he was thinking of any matter, he did continually bite his nether lip, as though that cruel nature of his did so rage against itself in that little carcass. Also, he was wont to be ever with this right hand, pulling out of the sheath to the midst, and putting again, the dagger which he did always wear. Truly he had a sharp wit, provident and subtle, apt both to counterfeit and dissemble; his courage also halt and fierce, which failed him not in the very death, which, when his men forsook him, he rather yielded to take with the sword, than by foul flight to prolong his life, uncertain what death perchance soon after by sickness or other violence to suffer.” “His courage also halt and fierce, which failed him not in the very death”. Verdict: NOT RECOMMENDED as a source for serious research
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Louise Carson
Susan Higginbotham, Margaret Pole, The Countess in the Tower, Stroud, Amberley Publishing, 2016 Margaret Pole was the daughter of George Duke of Clarence. The book starts off with conjecture. Margaret’s husband Richard was in Wales so Margaret may have been with him. She may not have been with him. Richard Pole is always seen as a husband unworthy of her. She was marrying beneath herself although she had no choice of husband. It is explained that Richard Pole was actually a half cousin of Henry VII. Margaret Beauchamp married three times. Her first husband was Sir Oliver St John. Edith St John was one of their children. She married Geoffrey Pole Esq. They were the parents of Richard Pole. Secondly Margaret Beauchamp married John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Their daughter was Margaret Beaufort. This made Edith St John and Margaret half-sisters. Interestingly Margaret Beauchamp’s third marriage to Lionel, Lord Wells produced a son, John Viscount Wells who Henry Vll married to Cecily of York, daughter of Edward lV and sister of Henry’s wife Elizabeth of York. He was keeping the Plantagenet women close to him by marrying them into his loyal extended family. Richard Pole died in 1504. He was about 45 years old. Margaret was only 31 years old with five children. Henry Vlll gave Margaret the title Countess of Salisbury in 1512 and made Margaret governess to his daughter the Princess Mary in 1516. As the book progressed Margaret and her travels and family began to be detailed through court documents and her own letters. She remained a Catholic and supported efforts to restore the religion to England. She and her sons intrigued with the Pope, the French king Francis I whose son was betrothed to Mary, Queen of Scots, and other Catholic dignitaries. Her son Reginald became a Cardinal and eventually an adviser to Princess Mary when she became queen and restored the Catholic Religion. Reginald and another son Geoffrey inadvertently helped incriminate Margaret and her eldest son, Henry Lord Montagu, sealing their fate. Margaret’s death on the block is dealt with. The usual story about her running around the block chased by the executioner is unlikely. It was attributed to Lord Herbert of Cherbury but he wrote it nearly a hundred years after the event. The contemporary account was written by Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador. Margaret did lay her head on the block but the executioner was young, inexperienced and inefficient. The book is good and becomes more factual as it progresses. Some family trees would be helpful. It contains some relevant photos. The book also refers to Richard lll’s body being found in Leicester and comments that Cardinal Wolsey is also buried in Leicester Abbey and that his body has not been found yet. Leicester Abbey is a different place to Greyfriars Friary Church where Richard lll was found. Recommended reading. Jenny Gee
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Title Elizabeth of York
The first Tudor Queen
Author Alison Weir
Publisher Jonathan Cape (1st pub), Vintage
Publication 2013
Edition 1st
Pages 445
ISBN13 978-0-099-54647-7
Daughter, niece, sister, wife and ancestress of Kings of England, it is surprising that very little has been written about Elizabeth of York. Having lived her life through one of the most turbulent times in history, Elizabeth is always overshadowed by the people around her – be it her mother, father, uncle and husband. There is only portrait of Elizabeth or copies of her original portrait is at best unflattering – no doubt taken after the toll of childbirth, giving her a double chin, pasty look compared to her clothing and a blank stare. Born to a position of privilege, there was very little that Elizabeth involved herself in. Despite her position as the eldest child of King Edward IV, male-preference primogeniture (or the right of the first born son legitimate child to inherit as oppose to the first born child) did not afford her much of an identity of her own and she had very little personal freedom. However, at the time of her birth, Weir says that Elizabeth displaced her uncle George, Duke of Clarence from the line of succession which contradicts the very notion that as a first born girl, she could not become queen in her own right. Interestingly enough, Weir seems to think that Elizabeth was an active player in “actively pushing for a marriage” to her uncle Richard III. A seemingly controversial opinion, and Weir acknowledges that historians have long debated where Elizabeth really stood amongst all of this for she had sent John Howard, the Duke of Norfolk a letter in early 1485: a letter which was eventually badly damaged in a fire in 1731 where parts of the text were rendered illegible and missing. This letter was edited by George Buck the younger, very inaccurately, that Elizabeth wrote that “her only joy and maker in [this] world that she was in his heart and thoughts, in [body] and all.” Weir does point out that this rewritten letter bears remarkable similarities to those written by Cecily Bonville, Elizabeth’s cousin. Historians have concluded that although the letter was likely genuine, it only proved Elizabeth wanted to be married – but not necessarily to Richard III, but likely to Manuel of Portugal – which has more of a basis than Weir’s position on this subject. Certainly the wording of “in body” is speculative as it may have meant something different in those times, and it would have been silly to speak so openly to Norfolk about “sleeping with her uncle” without a pre-
62 contract or dispensation from the Church, so putting at risk her reputation and damning her immortal soul – quite a conflict with the pious and religious Elizabeth. Thankfully this particular argument was dismissed. Weir does acknowledge that there was no evidence of her true feelings towards Richard III, except the fact she was in possession of two of his books while she had no royal status. Upon her marriage to Henry Tudor, she was brought to the forefront of history. She became the first Tudor queen, and Weir asserts that Elizabeth left Henry with no doubt where her loyalties lay. Though her claim to the throne far surpassed his, he knew that he had nothing to fear from her as he grew to love, trust and respect her over time. This in itself was a miracle, as we all know how secretive and miserly Henry was. It was likely that she provided a stable domestic life to him after years of exile, and no doubt he was equally grateful that she provided him with heirs. Interestingly enough, Weir points out that Henry and Elizabeth travelled often together and spent as much time as they could in each other’s company. His privy purse expenses revealed numerous kindness such as money given to a man who was wrongfully arrested, a Jewess in her marriage, the liberation of prisoners and a “little fair maiden who danceth”. These observations paint a different side to Henry. Weir also makes mention Henry’s illegitimate son Roland de Velville, later appointed by Henry as the Constable of Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey. Elizabeth had a good collection of books which were a mix of secular and devotional, a love which stayed with her from childhood. The Hours of Elizabeth the Queen was one of the finest manuscripts of the age, dating from 1415-30, once belonging to Cecily Neville, Countess of Warwick, daughter of Ralph Neville Earl of Salisbury. Like her parents, Elizabeth was a patron of William Caxton (thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press to England in 1476). It seems that there was no stone unturned on every detail of her everyday life. There is no doubt that Elizabeth was a popular queen while she was alive. She was a patron of a good number of charities and occasionally interceded in some courtly political matters. She had a strong hand in the education of her children and worked well together with her mother-in-law Margaret Beaufort One of the things Alison Weir does well is to make her narrative interesting, in amongst her research. If there was any doubt, she provides 27 pages of reference sources, not including any footnotes and appendices. The footnotes are a bit hard to follow as they start their numbering back at number one for each chapter, so you need to locate each chapter first before you can find what the footnote reference is. This serves as a bit of a distraction from the actual book itself to have to go rifling through pages to find the one line reference you are looking for and to flip back for continued reading. The sheer volume of the research resulted in a smaller Times New Roman font against an off white or beige page, making this very difficult to read at night. Though quite interesting, it took many starts and stops to complete the book. Jo-Ann Koh
Helen Castor, SHE-WOLVES, The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth, London, Faber and Faber, 2011 (paperback edition) ISBN: 978-0 571-23706-7
Helen Castor is an English historian who specialises in the medieval period; she was a lecturer in history at Cambridge University and she is also the author Blood and Roses (2005) (This was my book review a few years ago), The King, the Crown, and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power, 1399–1461 (2000) and Joan of Arc: A History (2014). In 2012. BBC 4 presented it as She-Wolves: England's Early Queens.
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‘Man was the head of woman, and the king was the head of all. How, then, could royal power lie in female hands?’ This is a sentiment that rings loudly through this book. With a woman’s right and ability to rule being questioned and often denied. Helen Castor examines what it was to be a woman and especially a high born woman in Medieval Europe through the biographies of five queens, Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou, and Mary Tudor, with the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey getting a small mention. All these women were subject to similar pressures and expectations and were essentially the pawns in a real life game, where the prizes were great and the losers were likely to lose everything, including their lives. Married off at very young ages in politically driven unions they were expected to play the part assigned to them. The power these women eventually yielded was due not to their inherited right, even though for the most they certainly had the pedigree that would have handed them their own throne to rule in their own right had they been born male. Their power was by default of the failures of those around them, who had been deemed more fit for the role of ruler. A quote in reference to Lady Jane Grey epitomises Castor’s perception of the female dilemma. ‘she struggled to cope with the shock of a situation in which her father-in-law, her parents and her husband were foisting royal power upon her, and simultaneously seeking to prevent her from exercising it’. Her response was strong and like all the women addressed in the book she pushed back hard against their interference. These women were ‘puppets that defied the puppet masters’ and it is this defiance as much as anything that marks their places in history. The book is an easy read in its conversational prose style. The depth of the research makes it a slow read as every sentence is loaded with historical fact and analytical appraisal. Having said that, the facts are sometimes open to examination and some of the conclusions may not be agreeable to everyone. For our group in particular an example is the galling statement ‘the baby boy born to Edward and Elizabeth in the Westminster sanctuary – was deposed and murdered by Edward’s youngest brother - Richard of Gloucester’. The indexing is quite thorough, listing under each alphabetical entry, events or others also significant and mentioned in the book. The referencing style in particular I found interesting and pleasing with extensive references listed at the back of the book but those within the book knitted in easily without disruption. The author also indicated the heavy use of on line references in this book and some of the references used might be useful to others of us researching this era. Those that looked particularly interesting were The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com and British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk Over all I have enjoyed the read. Although I have not agreed with all the conclusions drawn it was a very interesting ramble through an era for which there is little attention generally paid to the female influences. Alison Carman.
Martial Rose & Julia Hedgecote, Stories in Stone: The Medieval Roof Carvings in Norwich Cathedral, London, Herbert Press, 1997. If you have any interest in roof bosses in medieval churches and cathedrals, this is a book you have to have. Although its focus is on Norwich Cathedral, the authors do mention other great churches which have roof bosses. If you are wondering what a roof boss is, a stone one is the keystone which holds in place the ribs of the vaulting, and a wooden one does the same for the wooden vaulting. Sometimes they are plain, but most often carved, either with religious scenes, or flowers and foliage.
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There are two reasons why the Norwich bosses are unique: there are many of them – more than one thousand throughout the cathedral - and many tell a story from beginning to end. Norwich cathedral was begun in 1096, and the authors give a quite detailed description of its construction, its crises, and the people, mainly bishops, but some tradesmen who were involved in its construction. For instance, there were town riots in Norwich in 1272, and the townspeople set fire to the cathedral – which actually led to the rebuilding of the roof in stone rather than wood. It was struck by lightning in 1463, which again set it alight and resulted in more stone roofs and bosses. The book is divided into sections which correspond with the areas in the cathedral – the cloisters, the nave and the transepts, for example. There is also a plan of the cathedral, from its inception, to the present day to help you identify the areas and their relationships to each other. Each section deals with the themes of the bosses in those areas. The section on the cloisters explains where they were, why they were in that place, and what they were used for. The authors give the dimensions of the cloisters, and point out that they had built-in stone seats and games tables, as well as book cupboards. The cloister led not only to the main body of the cathedral, but to the refectory, and each way has a different story in the bosses. For example, begun in the early fourteenth century, the bosses in the east walk of the cloisters tell the story of Christ’s Passion, the Flagellation, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and the Harrowing of Hell. Other themes throughout the cathedral include Noah and the ark, the Fall of Man, the Nativity, and the Apocalypse. There are Old Testament stories, the parting of the Red Sea, and the Sacrifice of Abraham, and Joseph and his coat of many colours. Each section gives a detailed description of the bosses, any restoration work which may have been done, and sometimes, the names of the workmen, as well as the bishops involved. There are also references to other cathedrals where the same themes may be found. For instance, the Apocalypse used to be painted in the chapter house of Westminster Abbey, but only a few panels have survived: there are depictions in the glass of York Minster, and the remains of a French tapestry in Angers, as well as in the rose window of Sainte- Chapelle in Paris, but these are later than Norwich. Edward IV gets a mention, too, as the Sun in Splendour boss is at the beginning of the nave vaulting! The authors make the point that the bosses in the nave are very hard to see, as the roof is so high that binoculars are needed. They also comment on the fact that so many bosses have survived in spite of disaster and the iconoclasm of the Reformation and the Puritans. Altogether a lavishly illustrated, worthwhile, and interesting book. Carole Carson
Matthew Lewis, The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, Murder, Mystery and Myth
First published in 2017 by The History Press. My edition is the paperback edition published 2018. ISBN: 978 0 7509 8914 5 Matthew Lewis is an author and historian with a deep interest in the Wars of the Roses, the reign of Richard III and the Tudors. He has written several books on Richard III, the Wars of the roses and the Medieval Period. He runs an active blog where he discusses many of his ideas. He has a law degree and currently lives in England. Among his other works are:
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RICHARD III, Loyalty Binds Me RICHARD, DUKE OF YORK King by Right THE WARS OF THE ROSES, the Key Players in the Struggle for Supremacy Lewis presents interesting arguments for his various hypothesise but does not draw any conclusions other than that we don’t and can’t know what happened but we can, with hindsight and some knowledge form legitimate scenarios other that ‘The Princes Were Murdered in the Tower’. Lewis’ approach is one of psychological forensic investigator. Given the lack of written evidence of the era he concerns himself as much with possible motives for certain positions taken by the actors in this historical drama as he does with documentation of the time. The book is most convincing in its arguments for the survival of Richard Duke of York, Edward IV’s youngest son. He sets great store by many members of the European elite (including Richard’s aunt Margaret of York the Duchess of Burgundy) readily accepting Richard as the son of Edward IV. In the chapter the “New Believer”, Lewis discusses both the advantages and other to both James IV of Scotland and Richard Duke of York. Referring to him as prince: “Richard represented the greatest threat to the English king and so the perfect weapon for James. The lure for Richard was easy to see too. He had a ready ally in James at the moment when all others seem to be setting him aside in the face of Henry’s clever charm offensive. As with other rulers, it is important to understand James’ motives but not to assume that they were simple or one-dimensional. He had much to gain from promoting Richard’s cause, but much to lose by championing a commoner to take a king’s throne and by adopting a lost cause. ... James either knew Richard was a fraud or didn’t care whether he was genuine or not, but there are signs that James may well have believed Richard was a genuine duke of York.” A marriage arranged between Richard and Lady Catherine Gordon, the daughter of one of Scotland’s most powerful men, of whom it is said that he was second only to James in his authority, is one indication emphasised by Lewis as marking Richards’s acceptance as the genuine son of Edward IV. It seems unlikely that Richard would be accepted into such a powerful family if his credentials were in question. The preferential treatment of Richard and his wife (she was lady in waiting to Elizabeth) by Henry is touted as further evidence of Richards legitimacy. Whilst Henry VII insists on the appellation of Perking Warbeck, Lewis also points out the reluctance of Henry VII to mete out punishment upon this incarnation of Richard of York and asks if this is also an indication of Henry’s true belief. The indexing is a little light but there are some interesting pointers to further readings in the Bibliography. I enjoyed the mental exercises of this book through its offerings of alternate interpretations, even though its repetition of various events from different angles took some perseverance. Alison Carman
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EVENTS
Workshop 22 June 2019 In previous years our workshops have tried to emulate the skills relevant to the Ricardian era – gentle pastimes such as drop spindle spinning, illuminating bookmarks and book binding. This year we ventured into the (metaphorical) blacksmith’s forge to make mail, enough for perhaps a coaster rather than a full suit. A friend of Louise, Rodney, had made his own mail (not to be called chain mail) while a member of a re- enactment society, and he and his wife Anne-Marie, came to instruct and aid us. Armed with two pairs of pliers each, and a quantity of metal rings – wire earlier cut and shaped by Rodney – we tried hard to follow his instructions. Jo-Ann steamed ahead and completed hers perfectly: Louise managed a circle rather than a square, and the rest of us – well, some finished, and others took the rings home to try again. We were full of admiration for those who make full suits, and those whose living it was in the middle ages. If you look closely, you can see Rodney’s suit of mail in the corner of the room.
Carole Carson
Report on the Richard lll Australasian Convention, Victoria, 9-11 October 2019 On Friday evening the attendees met for the ‘meet and greet’. Canapés and drinks were served and we were given our convention bags. The bags included an R3 mug and coaster, ‘rations’ of teabags and snacks, a note pad and pen and our nametags. The program for the next two days was also included. It was a relaxing time meeting old friends and making new friends. The convention proper commenced on Saturday at 8.45 am. After the welcome message from Ron Pidcock on behalf of the Victorian Branch, Rob Smith read a message from Phil Stone, the chairman of the London Branch. First presentation was from David Bliss from Victoria. His subject was John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk entitled ‘Sola Virtus Invicta’ (‘Only Courage is Invincible’.) This coved the Duke’s family tree and then went into more detail on the first Duke. An interesting and well researched paper. Dorothy Preis from NSW was next. She presented a paper entitled Hertford – a bit of fact and speculation. Hertford is the county town of Hertfordshire. It was named in the Domesday Book although the area has been inhabited since Neolithic times. A stone castle was built in Henry ll’s time to replace a wooden fortification structures. The name Hertford comes from the Heort Ford or deer crossing water.
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Morning tea was next. Scones and strawberry jam with as much tea or coffee as you wished. Julia Redlich presented Shakespeare could do better. He may be England’s greatest playwright but his play Richard lll was likened to a fairy tale by Julia. The first portfolio of Shakespeare’s works was published in 1623. It was also pointed out that William was not a peasant. His father was an alderman and William was educated at a Grammar School — not exactly a poor boy made good. Julia suggests the book William Shakespeare should have written is Dark Sovereign by Robert Fripp. This is a single act play presented in Shakespearian English which challenges Shakespeare’s perception of Richard lll. Dr Jane Evans from the UK was next. Her presentation was via a DVD and was a recording of her video entitled Richard lll – Analysing the skeleton of a King. She started with the myths around Richard’s death, and continued on the discovery of his body and reburial. Isotope information gave evidence of his diet including drinking water. She ascertained that his diet had changed in the last two years of his life. Those were the two years he was king, and he had a much richer diet than before including game and game birds. She finished with a play on words from Frank Sinatra, “Egrets (Herons), I’ve had a few”. (Frank Sinatra, “Regrets I’ve had a Few” from his song My Way. Dr Jenny Spinks from Melbourne University presented a paper entitled Renaissance Men? Books, Metalwork and Art in late 15th century Nuremberg. We always think of the Renaissance and Italy, but Dr Spinks’ talk reminded us that the Renaissance spread all over Europe, including Nuremberg in Germany. Mentioned in the talk was the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, written by Hartman Schedel and printed by Anton Korberger, The Golden Bull of 1356 which fixed aspects of the Holy Roman Empire for the next four hundred years, Albrecht Durer the artist, Adam Kraft, sculptor, and Martin Behaim producer of the world’s oldest surviving globe. All these events ,and more, took place in Nuremberg. Lunch followed. A nice buffet, and a break. First presentation after lunch was Ipomedon – a story read by Richard lll. Anne Maslin from Victoria did the presentation which covered books that were known to have been owned by Richard lll. The main book looked at was History of Ipomedon written in old French in 1180 by Hoe de Rotelande. Originally a long poem in rhyming couplets it was translated into Middle English by Thomas Hunting. The story covers hunting, tournaments, pursuit of courtly love, disguise, and defending a maiden. What did Richard desire? Any of these? Arms and Armour was a practical demonstration and talk about medieval armour. This was presented by four members of JOAS Living History Society of Melbourne. Next was a break for a light afternoon tea. We were later told a light tea was chosen because of the banquet that evening. Louise Carson from WA was the next presentation. Her subject was Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. A very comprehensive paper covering his ancestry, why he was sidelined by Edward IV, his marriage, and why he first encouraged Richard to take the crown and then betrayed him? The final presentation of the day was by Helen Portus from NSW and Denise Rawlings from ACT. Their subject was, A Voice for a King. This dealt with modern technology used for voice reconstruction. As people spelt as they spoke and in their dialects this also shows the evolution of the English language. Unfortunately the recording they were hoping would be sent to them was unavailable at the last minute so we learnt about the technology but did not hear Richard’s ‘voice’. Hopefully Helen and Denise will receive a copy before the next convention. The Banquet. This started with the lighting of the candles followed by the first remove, pea and bacon broth, herb and cheese tartlets, bread and butter, hedgehogs and raisins
68 plus almonds. Next was the entrance if the subtlety, a beautiful white iced cake with a white rose in the centre. Second remove was roast pork, roast chicken, savoury pie, buttered parsnips, carrots and leeks, apple sauce and rice. The Loyal Toasts were then given. The third remove was apple pie with cream, strawberries with cream, dates and figs and finally ice cream crept in which was not on the menu. Wine and ale were freely available. Thank goodness for the light afternoon tea! Sunday commenced with a presentation by Mark Porter, Queensland, via DVD as he could not attend as he had hoped. His subject was John Wycliffe. John Wycliffe was a theologian who translated the bible into English. This was not approved of by the Catholic Church especially as he said there was no scriptural justification for the papacy. He was declared a heretic for his translation. Although he died in 1374 his body was exhumed and burned, the ashes being thrown into the River Swift in 1428. Richard lll owned a copy of Wycliffe’s New Testament Bible. Robert Bender from Victoria, followed with his presentation, Polydore Vergil’s Memoir of Richard lll. As can be imagined it was not very complementary. Vergil suggests Buckingham did not urge Richard to take the throne, Richard was an evil, deformed bully. Everyone was afraid of him. Rob Smith from New Zealand then conducted the business section. Discussed was the changing status of the society. He encouraged individual members to vote in the ballot which would make individual members no longer liable when they book activities on the society’s behalf. It was asked if the mini conference was needed in Albury. Helen and Denise passionately argued it was a NSW concept for country members who could not get to meetings in Sydney, although it is open to interstate members. Adelaide was officially announced as the venue for the 2021 convention. A morning tea consisting of pastries etc. was next. Mercia Chapman from Victoria was next. Her presentation was entitled, Medieval Courts and the Legal Profession. ‘The first thing we do is kill the lawyers’ Henry V Part 2 Act 1V Scene 2. Many people may agree with Shakespeare on this one! Mercia concentrated on the fifteenth century court and legal profession: The Court of Common Pleas, Court of Kings Bench, Court of the Exchequer, Court of Chancery and the Star Chamber. She also mentioned the growth of lawyers, barristers, attorneys and solicitors. Finally members of the Victoria and New Zealand branches did a light hearted sketch entitled, How Richard got his Hump. It was badly fitting armour! It was a good way to end the convention. All that was left was the drawing of the raffle. WA members were out of luck. The answers to the quiz were given. The conference ended with Auld Lang Syne and all members shaking hands and saying farewells to both old and new friends, and then, last of all, lunch. Jennifer Gee
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The York Medieval Fayre, 29 September 2019 Sunday 29th September 2019 on the road to York for the annual York Fayre; sun shining, the road clear and a car packed with essential items to put on a show. Each year, York, about 96 kms from Perth, holds a Festival spread over three weeks. It has swordsmen, knights, weapon displays, snakes, camels, archery, music, stalls and dancing demonstrations including the Mad Tatters Morris dancers. One of the unique events of the Medieval Fayre features live re-enactors, exhibitions of medieval weapons and clothing, and of course information booths. Set in a riverside park, there were many exhibitors and of course the obligatory food and drink stalls. The Richard III Society of WA participated this year and proved a popular area of interest to the many visitors to the event. A later count of pamphlets handed out indicated that there were a lot of people interested in the Ricardian era. Some members had travelled to York the previous evening and were waiting impatiently for my arrival with the marquee, tables and other items. With good humoured cooperation, it didn’t take long to set out our stall. During the day, more members arrived to give support. This proved invaluable enabling everyone to take a break and find cool refreshment on a quite hot day. Camels passing by, even a unicorn, minstrels and many costumed visitors gave it a special feel. This year, the children seemed to be the most prevalent in the arena, with great gusto they put all their energy into trying to defeat their opponents. Let’s hope they tried as hard when they resumed school the next day. Our Ricardians had a satisfying day: lots of contacts, good company and a wine tasting booth next door! What more could we wish for? Terry Johnson
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