The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA (12 page)

Hawking was only one form of hunting, an activity which Richard III (in common with others of his period and social background) had enjoyed in all its forms from the days of his youth. On his first independent excursion as a teenaged royal duke to the eastern counties, as the guest of Sir John Howard (as he then was), Richard had almost certainly been taken hunting at the Earl of Oxford's park at Lavenham.
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Hunting was the universal pastime of the aristocracy, and since ancient times the hunt had been regarded as reflecting the prowess required in military service. Although the fifteenth century had seen a reduction in the proportion of English land reserved for deer, both in open forest and in enclosed parks, large tracts of forest were still set aside as hunting parks for the enjoyment of this elite activity, and they were vigorously protected. Fifteenth-century commentators continued to see hunting both as an important training for war and as a genteel activity.
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The royal hunting park to which, in the second week of August 1485, Richard now made his way, accompanied by a few friends, was that of Bestwood, a little to the north of Nottingham, in Sherwood Forest. This park comprised some 3,000 acres, centred around a royal hunting lodge. It had been a royal hunting preserve since at least the twelfth century, ‘where King John and his brother Richard stayed to get away from Nottingham … Bestwood Country Park was [then] a royal deer park – one of the best parks in Sherwood Forest. It was very strongly guarded and kept very well stocked.'
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The building in which Richard III stayed, however, did not date back to the days of the earliest Plantagenet kings of England. It was of rather more recent construction, having been built by his ancestor, Edward III. ‘Prior to his visit to Nottingham in 1363 King Edward III sent instruction to Robert Maule of Linby, the custodian of Bestwood to fell sufficient timber to enclose the park in order to build a suitable lodge on the most attractive part of the enclosure, somewhere for the King to stay whenever he wished.'
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Subsequent English monarchs, including Richard's brother, the late King Edward IV, had likewise stayed at Bestwood Lodge and hunted the deer in the park. When Bestwood Lodge was repaired, just over a hundred years after Richard's visit, in 1593, it was described as a timber-framed building of lath and plaster construction, with a tiled roof. At that time it seems to have contained thirty-eight rooms, and it had outbuildings comprising cottages and barns.

One of the closest approximations to such a medieval royal hunting lodge to survive today is perhaps ‘Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge' in Epping Forest, near London. Despite its popular name, this structure was actually built in 1543 for King Henry VIII, and was originally known as ‘The Great Standing'. In fact, it was built in part to function as a grandstand from which guests could both view the royal hunt, and also participate by shooting at the game with bows and arrows as beaters drove the animals past the lodge. However, this building, like the royal hunting lodge at Bestwood, also contained extensive kitchens, together with facilities for entertaining visitors. Like the hunting lodge at Bestwood park, ‘Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge' is a timber-framed building with laths and plaster and a tiled roof. But the lodge at Bestwood was probably a somewhat more extensive building, albeit one which probably lacked the ‘grandstand facility' of the lodge in Epping Forest, being designed rather for the overnight accommodation of royal hunting parties than as an actual venue for the hunt itself.

Beneath its ceremonial trappings, hunting served two practical functions: the provision of meat, and the control of animals regarded as vermin. In fifteenth-century England possible quarry included deer,
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boar, hare and game birds (as sources of meat).
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Otter were hunted as vermin.
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Heron were both a kind of vermin (as a threat to the fish ponds) and also a source of meat. Bear were still hunted on the European mainland, but wild bear – once a native species – had finally become extinct in England during the fourteenth century. Richard III's great uncle, Edward, Duke of York, who wrote an English hunting text based upon a French treatise, also refers to wolf-hunting, but wolves were certainly very rare in England by the fifteenth century, if not already extinct. In fact, wolves may have figured in the Duke of York's text merely because he was working from a French original.
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York had also referred to hunting foxes. Foxes and wolves were classified as vermin, hence they were certainly destroyed as and when occasion arose. They could be killed with traps, snares and poison. The supposedly ‘traditional' English ‘sport' of foxhunting with horses and hounds is a much more recent invention which in Richard III's day had yet to be thought of. In the fifteenth century the fox was considered an unsuitable quarry for a gentleman, and far beneath the notice of aristocratic huntsmen.
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The Duke of York also utterly despised the hunting of rabbits, an unspeakably plebeian activity, which was carried out with nets and ferrets.

Richard III's quarry at Bestwood was that favourite quarry of aristocratic fifteenth-century English huntsmen: the deer. Both red deer and fallow deer lived in the park at Bestwood. The former were a native species, whereas the latter had been introduced to England by the Norman kings. However, by the fifteenth century fallow deer were naturalised in England and had become quite numerous. Later, in 1607, a survey was undertaken, and at that time the deer stock at Bestwood was reported to consist mainly of fallow deer: ‘We find that there are in the park at least three hundred fallow-deer, and four-and-twenty red deer.'
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The respective numbers in the fifteenth century are not on record.

Whether he was hunting red deer, fallow deer, or both, during the month of August, Richard III's quarry can only have been the male animals of these species.
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Deer were best hunted on a seasonal basis. Males were at their best in summer when they were ‘in grease', that is, had built up fat in preparation for the rut. The fattest harts and bucks were to be caught in the relatively brief period between mid-June and early September, though they were often hunted earlier. By Michaelmas, the season was over. Hinds and does, conversely, were best hunted in autumn and winter, their season lasting until February or Lent. Fresh venison could be obtained for much of the year.
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Both horses and dogs were employed in hunting. During the fifteenth century the main role of horses was as transport. In pursuing animals such as boar, otter and the slower-moving game birds, once the huntsmen had reached the hunting site they dismounted and proceeded on foot. However, the hunting of swift-moving prey, such as deer and some birds, was pursued on horseback. ‘Scent-hounds', such as the famous (and now extinct) white Talbot breed, were used to track prey by smell,
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while swift ‘sight-hounds', such as greyhounds, were for the pursuit of deer. The large and powerful alaunt was a hunting dog which resembled the greyhound, but was both bigger and endowed with a broader head and wider jaws. It was employed for tackling the dangerous wild boar.
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Smaller dogs, such as terriers and spaniels,
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were for flushing out prey for the hawks, while retrievers and other spaniels were of assistance in collecting the birds once the hawks had brought them down.

Not only deer hunting, but all medieval hunting was strictly seasonal, taking due account of the breeding cycle of the prey animal in order to preserve the game for the future. The prime season for deer hunting was summer and early autumn. As previously mentioned, when Richard had been a mere teen-aged royal duke, Sir John Howard had apparently taken him deer hunting at Lavenham in Suffolk.
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Many years later, as Duke of Norfolk, Howard was created master forester of Desenyng and Hemgrave [Hengrave] by Richard III, following the execution of the Duke of Buckingham, who had previously held these posts.
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He also received similar appointments in the county of Norfolk.
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Information survives relating to some of John Howard's dogs, but the names of the king's own hounds are not on record.
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While Richard and his friends were hunting the deer in Sherwood Forest, Henry ‘Tudor' and his small invasion force made their way through Wales, and on Friday 12 August they entered the town of Shrewsbury unopposed. It was about two days later, probably on the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption, that John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, received his summons to the king's array. Howard's precise whereabouts at this time are unknown. He was not with the royal hunting party at Bestwood, but somewhere in the East Anglian region, which comprised the heartland of his territory. Quite possibly he was at Sudbury, not far from his ancestral manor house of Tendring Hall at Stoke-by-Nayland. During the fifteenth century the Feast of the Assumption was kept with special solemnity in Sudbury, where the celebrations are believed to have included a procession, bearing from its shrine in St Gregory's church the miraculous image of Our Lady of Sudbury. Reportedly, the statue was first carried through the streets and then out into the countryside to bless the fields around the town. It then seems to have spent the night at the town's Dominican Friary, the gatehouse of which still survives, before being returned to its shrine chapel the following day in an even grander procession known as ‘Our Lady's Homecoming'.
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John Howard was a patron of the Sudbury shrine,
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which also enjoyed the patronage of members of the royal house of York.
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Moreover, Sudbury was not far from Bury St Edmunds, and we know that it was at Bury that the Duke of Norfolk commanded his own men to assemble when he received the royal summons.
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It was certainly on the Feast of the Assumption itself (Monday 15 August) that the royal summons reached the city of York. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, this city of supposedly loyal and devoted supporters of Richard III did nothing whatever on the actual feast day. On the following day, when they did get around to discussing the most appropriate response to the king's message, they finally decided not to send the men they had been asked for, but instead to ask the king for further information!

It was also on the feast day that Richard III, still at the Bestwood Park hunting lodge, received a messenger from Lord Stanley, who regretted that he would be unable to attend the royal array in accordance with the royal summons, which he also had received, since unfortunately he was suffering from the sweating sickness.
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Lord Stanley seems to have been running true to form, and the king probably concluded that his polite excuses were merely a pretext. However, it is conceivable that Stanley really was ill, and it is even possible that his messenger carried the contagion to Bestwood (see below). In either case, Richard probably took comfort from the fact that the doubtful lord had sent his excuses – thus indicating that he was unwilling (for the time being, at least) to disobey the king openly.

The king requested that Lord Stanley send in his place his son George, Lord Strange, and Stanley complied. Lord Strange seems to have been regarded as a hostage for his father's good behaviour. The Crowland chronicler goes on to tell us that Lord Strange subsequently tried to escape to rejoin his father, but was captured, whereupon he revealed a plot involving his uncle, Sir William Stanley, and Sir John Savage. According to the chronicler, Richard III then had both men publicly denounced as traitors at Coventry and elsewhere.
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On the afternoon of Wednesday 17 August, the messengers dispatched in quest of further information by the city fathers of York reached the royal hunting lodge at Bestwood Park. There they were received in audience by the king. Subsequently, Richard brought his hunting holiday to an end, and returned to Nottingham Castle. One of the messengers from York rode home with the king's answer, in response to which, on Friday 19 August, the city of York finally committed itself to sending eighty men to the royal array. It was probably also on 19 August that Richard III rode out of the gates of Nottingham Castle for the last time, making for Leicester.

On Saturday 20 August the Earl of Northumberland and his men arrived to swell the royal host, the muster of which was being supervised by the Duke of Norfolk who, in the meanwhile, had reached Leicester with his own East Anglian forces. These latter probably included his trumpeter from Harwich, Richard Lullay, together with men from John Howard's home village of Stoke-by-Nayland, and men from Colchester, Ipswich and the surrounding villages, at least some of whose names can be tentatively listed.
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By Sunday 21 August the assembled royal army had reached its full strength (allowing for the known absence of the Stanley contingent), and both the Crowland Chronicle and Vergil's
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agree that it comprised a very large force.
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Indeed, Vergil states that it was twice as big as Henry ‘Tudor''s army.
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The royal force was assembled outside Leicester, and on Sunday 21 August, with great pomp, wearing a crown,
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and accompanied by the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Northumberland and the whole of his great army, Richard III marched westwards out of the city, preparing to meet Henry ‘Tudor' and his rebel forces. He and his men camped for the night near Market Bosworth.