Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (28 page)

The text of the letter reads:

The question of dating has come somewhat to the fore, since the second year of Richard’s reign by the calendar would be 1484, yet in the following text it is noted as 1485. As the monarch’s reign was most probably dated from the coronation, the year 1485 is likely to be correct.

The full text in modern English can be found in Preston, J.F. & Yeandle, L.,
English Handwriting 1400-1650
(pp8–9), Pegasus Press: Ashville, NC, 1999. The original text is held at in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, reference Folger MS. X.d. 92 (
see
Figure 16).

What is much less commonly known is that the following notation is made on the reverse of this letter:

What this examination of William Knight was about in 1640, why the interrogators had this paper and what its significance may have been, I have not yet been able to ascertain. It is the subject of an on-going investigation.

Rather than trying to provide an exhaustive listing of all of the offices that William Catesby held over the course of his life, this appendix is only concerned with how he specifically benefitted from the execution of William, Lord Hastings.
¹
Thus, it is principally confined to the offices and rewards he received following Hastings’ execution on 13 June 1483. Even that restriction provides significant scope since, as we shall see, Catesby reaped numerous rewards, many of which derived directly from Hastings’ demise.

Very shortly after 13 June, Catesby began to see manifest rewards for his service to the Protector, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Among the first of these was a position he clearly coveted, that of Constable of Rockingham Castle and Master Forester of the Forest of Rockingham. As is evident from analysis of his land holdings, Rockingham occupied a prime place in Catesby’s ambitions. Around the same time he was also named both Chamberlain of the Exchequer and Steward of the holdings of the Duchy of Lancaster in Northamptonshire. Each of these offices had previously been held by Hastings, and the latter appointment brought him great influence in the area of his own existing family hegemony. Also, on 30 June, before Richard had even been formally crowned, Catesby was also named Chamberlain of Receipts.

Chamberlain of Receipts was another of those offices which the hapless Hastings had previously occupied. Added to this, Catesby was now the Steward of the Manors of Rockingham, Brigstock and Cliffe (assumedly the modern-day King’s Cliffe). As if these were not rewards enough, Catesby was also appointed to the much more prestigious position of Chancellor of the Exchequer on 30 June 1483. In respect of the latter appointment, Payling has the following to say:

Here then is a wealth of accumulated evidence of Catesby’s direct benefit, not only from Hastings’ vacated offices but also from the highest administrative positions in the land. Payling’s observation bears reiterating, that Catesby also thus became an immediate member of the inner circle, that being the Royal Council. Again, just two days after Richard assumed his leadership, Catesby was also Chancellor of the Earldom of March.
³
It is clear that Catesby had gone from being a legally capable individual, but just one of the followers of Lord Hastings, to the leading professional administrator in the land. Little wonder that Collingbourne, thus impressed by Catesby’s meteoric rise, later placed him first in his insulting couplet.

These various offices and appointments, and the celerity with which they were awarded, very much supports my contention that it was Catesby who revealed the pre-contract and at the same time precipitated the death of Hastings. This contention is supported by the fact that this profusion of honours and appointments came to him right at the very start of Richard’s reign. Other honours also followed for Catesby in the first months of the new reign. On 16 August he was named Deputy Butler to the ports of Bristol, Exeter and Dartmouth and on 25 September of the same year he became Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster’s lordships in High Ferrers, Daventry and Peverell’s fee of the estates in Northamptonshire. Each of these appointments was associated with his relationship with Lovell.

This is by no means an exclusive listing of all of Catesby’s offices and influence, nor of his appointments to legal positions and various commissions. Neither does it emphasise his parliamentary seat nor arguably his most critical role as Speaker of the Parliament scheduled for November 1483 but subsequently convened in January 1484. However, it does give a useful account of not merely the rewards Catesby received, but the critical timing of those rewards immediately following Richard’s assumption of power. They stand in stark contrast to the lack of reward received by Stillington, it being arguable that the unfortunate cleric received absolutely no personal reward from Richard whatsoever. I think, in in answer to the question
cui bono
, Catesby was the one on the receiving end and the unprecedented reward of someone outside Richard’s close circle argues for the rendering of a unique service. There is, of course, another very tangible way in assessing Catesby’s reward and this can be found in the form of the accumulation of lands and influence on lands following the happenings of 13 June. It is to these acquisitions that I now turn.

As with the offices of William Catesby, one of the most interesting comparisons that can be made is between his holdings prior to 13 June 1483 and the lands and influence he accumulated after this pivotal date. It is this division which is presented here. There are, however, important caveats with respect to this present comparison. First, I should be very explicit and note with care that this is not an exhaustive but an illustrative listing. Although a complete evaluation awaits future scholarship, the present comparison relies on a number of present sources and I am happy to acknowledge each of these.
⁴
The principal way in which this comparison can be made plain is to provide a map-based representation of Catesby’s holdings either side of 13 June, and then distill what we may from the pattern that emerges. I have done this in Figures 36, 37, and 38.

Of the general trends which can be distilled from this overall pattern, some are indeed self-evident. These patterns certainly show that Catesby was enlarging his holdings and, if we compare the lands represented on Figure 36 that had taken his family well over a century to accumulate, then his own additions, which accrued in approximately two years, are enormous in comparison, see Figure 37. It is not only the size of his accumulations which are telling but also their spatial distribution. For example, it is clear that Catesby focused considerable effort at ‘in-filling’ around his already-established holdings,
see
Figure 38. We shall return to the specific case of the manor of Welton after we have noted the general pattern. As well as in-filling, Catesby expanded his lands consistent with the valley of the River Nene. He extended the boundary of his holdings both east and west, but his primary acquisitions were to the north in Leicestershire. It will, by now, come as no surprise that Leicestershire was the heartland of Lord Hastings holdings. Thus what we see here is a systematic and coherent plan to generate a cohesive, inter-linked domain of contiguous land holdings. In general, Catesby had done very well in looking to put this strategy into effect.

Perhaps the most evident example, especially of this in-filling policy, comes in respect of his dealings for the manor of Welton. It is also representative of Catesby’s rapaciousness, a characteristic of which he himself was well aware as we shall also see. In respect to his dealings concerning Welton, we can again cite Payling,
⁵
who reports:

Here we can see evidence of a number of facets of Catesby’s behaviour. Even a brief glance at the map will show that Welton lies right in the heart of the Catesby domain and he must have schemed for this transfer fairly extensively. Obviously he took advantage of Hawte’s (Haute) misfortune, but essentially he traded two of his family manors, which arguably would have gone to Peyton anyway, for the coveted manor at Welton. Here Catesby himself risked almost nothing to secure his desired aim. When this arrangement was threatened, Catesby used his legal skills and position to perpetuate the arrangement with the connivance of the law.

This incident does not represent a ‘one-off,’ but rather seems to have been part of a general pattern. In respect of the efforts at in-filling, we can also cite the case of Long Buckby (Bukby). Again, this was a property within only two to three miles of Catesby’s own centre at Ashby St Ledgers and, again Catesby seems to have schemed to get it. It has been noted that somehow, and here we are unsure of the mechanism, Catesby obtained land that was in this location. It has been noted that this land in the time of Henry III was in the possession of one Hugh Revell. Somehow Catesby was successful in obtaining it, but it is clear that this transaction preyed on his conscience. The evidence that we have for this lies in Catesby’s will, in which he himself stated:

The suggestion here is that Catesby, in his ‘hasty’ will, was trying to put right each of the suspect dealings that had helped him accumulate the domain we have seen. In this case we see that he was returning the Long Buckby lands to the Revell family, who had held them for an extensive period of time, notably since the reign of Henry III. The other cases cited in his will attest to a similar attack of conscience; the Welton lands were not mentioned, although they might conceivably come under his command to ‘restore all londs that I have wrongfully purchased.’ In places where Catesby could not force or cajole the private owner to part with their property, as was the case with Church lands, he used his undoubted influence with the king to help secure his design. Thus, in the case of Stanford-on-Avon, we can see this tactic come to fruition. Again, it is important to note the geographic context here. Stanford-on-Avon is not so close to Ashby St Ledgers as either Welton or Long Buckby; however, it does lie a few miles to the north, immediately adjacent to the properties of Catthorpe, Lilibounre and Clay Coton, for which Catesby had already manoeuvered. Critically, it also lay directly on the path of his manifest expansion into Leicestershire. Thus we find Roskell observing that, ‘it was at the King’s instance that on 5 October, 1483, the abbot of the said Yorkshire Benedictine house of Selby gave Lovell and Catesby a grant for their lives (in survivorship) of the office of steward of the manor of Stanford [on-Avon] (Northants.) near where Catesby’s own estates were on the ground.’ Roskell is very helpful here, but Stanford-on-Avon was not near Catesby’s estates; it now lies packed within them, another of the dominoes to fall in Catesby’s progressive march to dominion.