The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (38 page)

24. ‘Grants from the Crown during the reign of Edward V’, xv, 3, 15, 17, 51.
‘Whightmede Parc’ is in the Forest of Dean and very much in the Woodville
sphere of influence; the pay was 4 pence daily. William ‘Slatter’ had been granted
it in 1481,
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward IV
, p 234. The new grant of Whitmede
was to John Cotington and is undated but together in a batch with one dated 26
May 1483; the grant is in the
Calendar of Patent Rolls
for 26 January 1484, p 457.

25. Hicks,
Richard III
, p 102.

26. J.A.F. Thomson, ‘Bishop Lionel Woodville and Richard III’,
BIHR
, vol. lxix
(1986).

27. More,
History of King Richard III
, p 52.

28.
Richard III
, Act 3, Scene 5.

29. More,
History of King Richard III
, p 49.

30.
Ibid
., p 42.

31. For instance, the petition laid before the parliament of 1484 to justify Richard’s
title to the throne refers to the Woodvilles as ‘insolent, vicious and of inordinate
avarice’. Michael Hicks in
Richard III
explores Richard’s case against the
Woodvilles and finds it wanting (pp 158–86).

32.
Excerpta Historica
, pp 240–5.

33. Rous quotes the first two verses in his
Historia Regum Angliae
(Oxford, 1745
edition, p 214) and the three others are in Ritson (
Ancient Songs
, II). There seems
to be no doubt about the ascription to Rivers. Caxton also mentions that Anthony
composed ballads.

34. Blomefield,
History of Norfolk
(Middleton), p 25.

35. C. Ross (
Edward IV
) regards Richard as ‘the first English King to use character-
assassination as an instrument of policy’. M. Hicks (
Richard III
, p 99) noted
that King Richard effectively charged the late king, his brother, with the sort
of misgovernment that had led to depositions in the past and he saddles the
Woodvilles with the responsibility. Ross also wrote of a ‘virulent and puritanical
propaganda campaign by which Richard sought to discredit the Woodvilles’.

36. H. Ellis (ed),
Original Letters Illustrative of English History
(London, 1825), letter v,
p 9.

37. Commines,
Memoirs 1461–1483
, p 270. However, there is no other evidence to
confirm this theory.

38. The promise of marriage given in exchange for the promise of the other party
was binding in English law and marriage before witnesses was standard. Church
weddings did not become obligatory until the Council of Trent in 1564.

39. M.A. Hicks deals with the matter in detail in
Anne Neville: Queen to Richard III
(Tempus, 2007), pp 133–4, 145.

40. Vitellis A XVI, quoted in Ross,
Richard III
.

41. The origin of the custom is from the Norman conquests when Marmion, a
powerful baron, challenged anyone to dispute King William I’s right to the
throne. Marmion’s successors held the right for 300 years. It then passed to the
Dymmocks who had married a Marmion daughter and inherited Scrivleby in
Lincolnshire. See William Hutton,
The Battle of Bosworth Field
(Stroud: Sutton,
1999).

42. The officers of
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
would be in the mould of Chaucer’s sea
captain: ‘...But he was a good enough fellow. He had tapped many barrels of fine
Bordeaux wine, when the merchant was not looking, and had no scruples about
it. A ship’s cargo was not sacrosanct. The sea was the element in which he felt at
home. He had acquired all the skills of observation and navigation; he had learnt
how to calculate the tides and currents, and knew from long acquaintance the
hidden perils of the deep. No one from Hull to Carthage knew more about natural
harbours and anchorages; he could fix the position of the moon and stars without
the aid of an astrolabe. He knew all the havens, from Gotland to Cape Finistere,
and every creek in Brittany and Spain. He told me of his voyages as far north as
Iceland’ (
The Canterbury Tales
, trans Peter Ackroyd (London: Penguin 2009)).

Chapter 7. Exile in Brittany

1. One of the best sources for the period is Polydore Vergil who was writing around
30 years later and knew some of the people who had been in Brittany. He was the
King’s official historian but he makes little of Edward Woodville, who was then
long dead; however, other sources rate Edward highly. Additionally
François II,
Duc de Bretagne, et l’Angleterre
by B.A. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé (Rennes, 1928),
The
Making of the Tudor Dynasty
by R.A. Griffiths and R.S. Thomas and
Henry VII
by
S.R. Chrimes have proved invaluable.

2. Her father was Charles VI of France (1368–1422) who was insane for much of his
life, though he did father at least 12 children. France was in chaos for most of his
reign.

3. Her father was John, Duke of Somerset, directly descended from John, Duke of
Lancaster (John of Gaunt), third son of Edward III, but from his mistress Catherine
Swynford. When Margaret’s grandfather was legitimized there was a specific
proviso that he and his heirs were forever barred from the royal succession. She
inherited large estates and married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, by whom
she had Henry. (Illegitimacy and kingship were not necessarily incompatible in
the Middle Ages, e.g. William the Conqueror.)

4.
Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History
, ed H. Ellis, p 158.

5. Henry was given 2,000 livres a year (about £400) plus a further 620 livres
as pocket money; he was awarded a 10 per cent rise in October 1482. Jasper,
Henry’s guardian but not of the blood royal, was allowed 600 livres a year (£120)
plus 40 for personal expenses.

6. Another Beaufort heir was Mary Lewis who had been safely married off to
Anthony Woodville.

7. The deed was drawn up at Westminster on 3 June 1482 in the King’s presence.
In the same deed Lord Stanley promised not to ask for changes to Margaret’s
marriage settlement, i.e. Henry would inherit (see Griffiths and Thomas,
The
Making of the Tudor Dynasty
, p 85). There is also the draft of a royal pardon for
Henry in the
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Register
s, vol. 14, p 18, which shows
there were discussions about him marrying Elizabeth of York.

8. Gardener (ed),
Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII
,
vol. i, pp 22–3.

9. A description of two ‘Tower’ ships in 1501, in Oppenheim,
Administration of the
Royal Navy
, p 41.

10. Neither ship appears again in crown records for the reign of Richard III but
they re-appear in Henry’s reign (C.F. Richmond, ‘English Naval Power in the
Fifteenth Century’,
History
, lii (1967), p 53). C.R. Ross in
Richard III
, p 195,
concurs, as do R.S. Griffiths and R.S. Thomas in
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty
,
p 86.

11.
Grants etc. from the Crown During the Reign of Edward the Fifth
, ed J.G. Nichols
(London: Camden Society, 1854), p 51.

12. It might have been the French pension: £10,000 is roughly 50,000 crowns which
was the annual payment due under the Treaty of Picquigny. If King Louis was
unnerved by Edward’s war preparations he may have decided to make peace
by sending the suspended payment. If he did, then it could be in a ship on
Southampton Water on 14 May 1483.

13. ‘Retinue’, according to the
Dictionary of Middle English
, is a ‘band of retainers,
attendants or followers of a king, lord, goddess etc; a train, suite; also an army’.

14.
Mémoires de la Société d’Historique de Bretagne
, vol. ix, chapter 8 (‘Le Régne de
Richard III’), p 431.

15. ‘The Lord Skales is the scalop Schelles’. The silver scallop was the badge of the
Rivers contingent recorded for the 1475 French expedition and presumably was
used for the 1472 one to Brittany. It was presumably used by Edward in both
Spain and Brittany, as he is regularly called Scales, i.e. the shell. In old French a
shell is ‘escale’ and in old English ‘scealu’.

16. In July Mancini reported a rumour that the princes were dead.

17. The generic term for a group of courtiers is a ‘treachery’.

18. From the fifth son, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester. His mother was
a Beaufort, Margaret’s first cousin.

19.
Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History
, p 196.

20. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé,
François II, Duc de Bretagne, et l’Angleterre
, p 419.

21. King Louis’s reign is in two parts: in the first half he was preoccupied with
survival, problems with Burgundy and aristocratic disaffection which came to a
head in the War of Public Weal (1465) and the Treaty of Perronne (1468). In the
early 1470s he was able to start pursuing an expansionist policy. At the start of
his reign the kingdom was 425,000 km2 and 460,000 km2 at the end.

22.
The Crowland Chronicle
, p 491. Henry’s title was weak but possible; if it was joined
to Elizabeth of York’s then the combination was much stronger.

23.
Calendar of Patent Rolls 1476–1485
, p 371.

24. Earlier dates suggested for Henry’s voyage could have been reconnaissance or
opportunity excursions, perhaps by
The Trinity
and
The Falcon
. Duke Francis
authorized a loan of 10,000 gold crowns (£2,000) on 22 November 1483.

25. Henry’s ship had trouble with the weather and dropped him at La Hogue in
Normandy. He went back by land, across France, and the ship sailed back to
Brittany. Breton records are quite clear. There were five ships and 324 soldiers
provided as an escort by Duke Francis for Henry who was – theoretically –
joining a successful uprising, but the fleet was separated by storms. Pocquet
du Haut-Jussé,
François II, Duc de Bretagne, et l’Angleterre
, vol. ix, p 419. Polydore
Vergil recorded Duke Francis providing 15 vessels and a loan of 10,000 ecus
d’or on 30 October. They sailed in November but were separated by storms
and returned. A few Bretons were left behind in England and had to ransom
themselves out of captivity.

26. Bishop Lionel went into sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey, from where he continued
to administer his diocese until his death the following year.

27.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Richard III
, p 425.

28. The English exile community was 423 men who lived at Vannes in south-west
Brittany. Commines noted they were a financial burden on Duke Francis who
paid them 3,100 livres in June 1484, while the burgers gave them credit of 2,500
livres, which was guaranteed by the Duke. There were allowances to Dorset and
his entourage of 400 per month while four others, one of whom was Edward,
got 100 per month each. All in all the exiles were an expensive community to
maintain.

29. Harleian MS 433, ed R. Horrox and P.W. Hammond, vol. iii, p 190.

30. Fabyan,
New Chronicle of England and France
, vol. viii, p 219.

31. Macdougall,
James III
, pp 208–10.

32. Vergil believes the intelligence came from other sources and Urswick was only
used as the courier.

33. Edward Woodville, John Cheyne and Edward Poynings were each given 100
livres and the others five crowns (one livre) each. The total cost in the Exchequer
accounts was 708 livres, i.e. 411 men. There had been 423 in June, Henry had
taken 12: the figures add up.

34. On King Louis’s death Charles inherited and his elder sister Anne (aged 22)
became Regent. Anne was married to Pierre de Beaujeu, Duke de Bourbon, to
whom King Louis had paid the highest pension in France, 20,000 livres a year.

35. Commines,
Memoirs 1461–1483
, vol. i, p 396.

36. There was no doubt in French minds about Richard’s guilt. At the opening of
the States-General on 15 January 1484 the Chancellor, Guillaume de Rochfort,
delivered the inaugural address. It included special emphasis on French loyalty
and devotion to the Crown which, he said, distinguished them from the English:
‘Consider for instance, what happened in the country after King Edward’s death;
how his children were murdered with impunity and the Crown transferred to
the assassin by the goodwill of the nation.’ Bridges,
History of France
, vol. 1, p 66.