Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (8 page)

We know relatively little about William’s mother, and Sir William’s first wife, Phillippa Bishopston. We do know that she helped her husband by bringing him a considerable income. Further, we know that she fulfilled what would then be seen as her principal duty by providing children to carry on the family line. She had, of course, in her first child, produced a male heir. What is most evident is that she died young, almost certainly less than ten years after her marriage and perhaps as little as five. I have suggested that she may have died as a result of complications in childbirth; however, at the present this is simply a speculation which, although apparently reasonable, awaits further clarification.
¹⁶
What the death of poor Phillippa meant was that Sir William was a widower at a relatively young age and that William had lost his mother at the most impressionable age of between five and eight.

Sir William’s association with the Talbot family seems to have flourished in the years following his first wife’s death. Perhaps the fish worked, because just as John Talbot (
see
Figure 5) was preparing for what would turn out to be his final military campaign in France in autumn of 1452, he named Sir William as one of his executors.
¹⁷
At this juncture then, when Eleanor was presumably just taking her first steps into the full marriage state, Sir William Catesby was one of the main advisors to her father. This Talbot connection, which would also assumedly have included some form of social interaction, was perhaps the basis for Sir William himself finding his second wife. As we have seen previously, this second wife was Joan Barre, widow of Sir Kynard de la Bere of Kinnersley in Herefordshire. More directly, she was the daughter of Alice, the youngest sister of the Earl of Shrewsbury and was thus John Talbot’s niece. The best estimate is that Sir William was about thirty-three while Joan was about thirty-one. Obviously, both had been married before and both had living children. It appears that the brother of Joan, Sir John de la Barre, had suggested some form of legal contract and, although Sir William Catesby was willing to provide this, he sought to emphasise that no such formality was really necessary.
¹⁸
Perhaps it was, in part, a love match second time around? Regardless, it appears that the two were married, most probably on 10 June 1453. It is, of course, pure coincidence that it was almost exactly thirty years to the day before the fateful events which were to take place at the Tower of London.

Like his son who was to follow him, Sir William was an Esquire of the Royal Body and now, in later 1453, he was knighted. Like many in those times, Sir William had to navigate carefully amongst the politics of the respective ascendancy of first, the Lancastrian and then the Yorkist cause. In this, Sir William seems to have been modestly successful, relying largely on his various relations and relationships, and like many others, never investing too deeply or heavily in any one cause such that the other could not see his value when the tide of affairs turned. It must have been a very important phase in the development of his son William who, now in his middle and later teens, must have been a keen observer of such events and strategies. It was perhaps these early experiences that schooled William in the notion of the expediency of switching allegiances as the times and the conditions changed? We have some very tentative evidence that the son, William Catesby, attended the University of Oxford as a student at what would then have been recognised as Gloucester College. This college was founded in 1283 and later in 1560 became Gloucester Hall, which was administered through St John’s College. Eventually, the institution became Worcester College after benefiting from the will of Sir Thomas Cookes.
¹⁹
At exactly what age William would have been a student at Oxford we do not know but perhaps this was part of his preparation as a lawyer in looking to continue the family tradition?

The swaying vicissitudes of the times eventually seem to have caught up with Sir William, especially around the time of Henry VI’s readeption, which should have been of advantage to him as a previous Lancastrian supporter. However, although well treated, Sir William’s mind seems then to have been more on things spiritual than events temporal. In early January 1471 he was involved with the arrangements for a ceremonial at Ashby St Ledgers to take place on 26 July, which may well have been his birthday. The record of the respective arrangements noted his service to the Talbot family in the late 1440s and early 1450s and especially notes his link to the now deceased John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. Significantly, it also notes Sir William’s link to Talbot’s second wife, Countess Margaret, and most intriguingly two of their children, John, Viscount Lisle and, most especially, Eleanor Butler,
²⁰
the so-called ‘uncrowned queen’ of Edward IV.
²¹

It was at about this time, when William
²²
was around twenty-one years of age that, probably with the guidance of Sir William, he made a strong marriage in the sense of its important familial linkages. The young lady was Margaret Zouch and she was the daughter of William, Lord Zouche of Harringworth and his second wife, Elizabeth St John. Elizabeth herself was the maternal half-sister of Margaret Beaufort and this may help account for a later conundrum associated with William and his appeal to Margaret Beaufort’s son, Henry VII, in the city of Leicester in late August 1485. Elizabeth, it seems, went on to marry her second husband, Lord Scrope of Bolton, and it was through this association that William received her life interest in some of the Zouche lands in Leicestershire. At the same time (most probably associated with the marriage also), William was the recipient from his father of the Bishopston lands that had come as part of his own mother’s inheritance. It is very possible that this was the essential beginnings of William’s search to build up a territorial hegemony of his own. It might also have been this acquisitiveness that was one of his fundamental motivations for his later recorded actions.

Despite the continuing disputation between the Houses of York and Lancaster, this seems to have been a good time for the Catesbys,
pere et fils
. Sir William, it seems, had a connection with George, Duke of Clarence, and it was also around this time that the Catesby connection to William, Lord Hastings grew in magnitude and importance. It was perhaps this latter association that saw Sir William again avoid the fall-out from Clarence’s demise and he returned for a final time as the Sheriff of the County of Northamptonshire. Indeed, Sir William died in office in the autumn of 1479 and despite his adaptation to the Yorkist administration, his memorial brass reads, ‘
quondam unus trencheatorum Regis Henrici sexti
.’ Apparently, his persuasion was Lancastrian to the end.
²³
(
See
Figure 15)
²⁴

To understand the events of the summer of 1483, we need to delve further into the career and aspirations of young William Catesby. While we are still uncertain about his attendance at Oxford, we do know with a degree of certainty that William followed in his father’s footsteps and pursued the family vocation of law at the Inner Temple. We first hear of him as ‘W. Catysby, lectorem,’ discoursing on the nature of the Magna Carta
²⁵
and there are some formal records that show his progress in the profession.
²⁶
Payling noted that Catesby was most probably unlike the general run of students of the Inner Temple at the time. He had already made a very advantageous marriage and had a considerable income from this source, as well as from the lands his father had given him. Indeed, it is in regard to his wife’s family, the Zouches of Harringworth, and their extended relations, now including Lord Scope of Bolton, that we see William’s penetration into the world of influence.
²⁷
It appears as though he could have settled into a life of quiet, country gentility, and yet the impression we get from the legal records of the time is one of his evident ambition.

In the present thesis, it is very important to note that the first ever royal appointment of which we have a record for William Catesby was to a commission of inquiry on 18 May 1473.
²⁸
It is not the date
per se
, but rather the subject of this commission which is particularly important. With others, he was commissioned to make inquiries as to the Warwickshire lands and estates of the late Ralph, Lord Sudeley.
²⁹
As we know from the previous chapter, Ralph, Lord Sudeley was Ralph Butler, the father-inlaw to Eleanor Butler (née Talbot). We should also recall that his son and Eleanor’s husband Thomas had died earlier, perhaps from wounds received at the Battle of Blore Heath, fought on 23 September 1459. His daughterin-law, Eleanor, had herself died on 30 June 1468, so Ralph Butler was in the sad situation of seeing at least one branch of his direct family die out completely.
³⁰
It was perhaps this lack of a direct heir that indeed led to the commission to which William Catesby was appointed. Given the death of his son and daughter-in-law, it is more than likely that some of the lands around Great Dorsett and Fenny Compton reverted to his control. From investigation of the pattern of land acquisition of William Catesby, we can see that these particular properties lay squarely in the path of the quickly expanding Catesby holdings (
see
Appendix VI, The Offices and Lands of William Catesby). Thus, the commission represented a pivotal opportunity for William to influence the destiny of some properties that he and his family may well have coveted, perhaps even for decades. For, as we know, the original Catesby family holdings were in Ladbroke, less than five miles from Great Dorsett, and it is likely that their original lands bordered on these manors. The implication is that William must have worked hard to get himself appointed to this commission, potentially with the help of some of his influential relatives.
³¹
Of course, as a local landowner, it may be that this was seen as ‘natural’ appointment. The property eventually found its way by means of the marriage of Lord Sudeley’s sister into the eventual possession of Sir Edward Belknap, whose draconian action, added to the decimation wreaked by an earlier bout of the Black Death, eventually dispelled the glory of Great Dorsett, which continues only as shadow of its past self today.

After the death of his father in 1479, William would have been a very rich man indeed, and had more than enough wealth for the rest of his life. Yet there appears to have been continual and unstinted effort. This acquisitiveness and ambition are reflected in his purchases in the later 1470s and early 1480s of various properties. We have information as to his acquisition of the manors of Oxhill, just a short distance from Ashby St Ledgers, and Tilbrook, just across the county border in Bedfordshire. Indeed, the pattern and development of the acquisition of Catesby’s lands may well give us direct insight into his political motivations.
³²

Like everyone else’s, Catesby’s world was changed with the death of Edward IV. In his early forties, Catesby saw the main chance for advancement and took it. He was well acquainted with many of the individuals whose influence now came to the fore. Not only was he a trusted advisor to Lord Hastings, he had dealings with Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, who was taking the emerging opportunity to flex his political muscle. It is most probable that Catesby also knew and interacted with Francis, Lord Lovell, who was arguably the closest friend and advisor of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, having known the duke since childhood.

It was such connections that now brought Catesby to the fore in the tumultuous times of that summer. Ten days after Richard had accompanied his nephew Edward V into London, Catesby was appointed Chancellor of the Earldom of March on 14 May 1483 with an annual fee of forty pounds. This may have been the result of his association with Buckingham, since the earldom was put under the latter’s control the next day, although Roskell attributes this appointment as Richard continuing to curry favour with Hastings by appointing one of his affinity to this advanced office.
³³
The next day Catesby was made a Justice of the Peace for the first time in his home county of Northamptonshire. One gets the sense of the Protector dispensing offices and asking individuals who they would like their administrators to be. Clearly, an able individual and lawyer such as Catesby rose to the forefront here. In respect of the specific events of Friday 13 June 1483, again our most detailed account comes from More, and it is worth examining his observations on Catesby’s actions around that time. They form the basis for what I shall refer to as the ‘traditional’ account of motivations and events and Catesby’s role in them.

Sir Thomas More, from whom we derive our most detailed account of the critical meeting of the Council on Friday 13 June 1483, is rather complimentary in his initial observations on William Catesby. Whether this is in the nature of a professional courtesy of one lawyer to another or whether More’s opinion is framed rather by the impressions of Morton we shall have to leave largely in abeyance at this point. What we can evaluate are More’s specific words and phrases. With respect to Catesby he notes that: