The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (37 page)

38. J.F. Kirk,
History of Charles the Bold
, vol. iii, pp 361, 423.

39. Loose translation of what the Milanese ambassador reported: ‘Si ne he riso
dicendo, per paura si ne ha andato.’ Anthony left on 9 July and Charles’s defeat at
Morat took place on 22 July 1476. Both armies were about 35,000 strong.

40. Vaughan,
Charles the Bold
, pp 204–17.

41. W.H. Black,
Illustrations of Ancient State and Chivalry
(London, 1840), vol. iii, pp
25–40.

42. Anthony had married Elizabeth Scales in 1460; six years later she made a will
giving Anthony outright possession of the bulk on the Scales estates with the
remainder going to feofees (trustees); nothing was left to any of her remote blood
cousins. There were 15 manors in Norfolk, one in Cambridge and the advowsons
of two priories and several parish churches. Anthony inherited when she died
on 2 September 1473. Writs to the escheators of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and
Hertfordshire were issued on 12 October 1473.

43. Francis Blomfield,
History of Norfolk
(Linn, 1796), vol. i, p 26.

44. Maximilian (1459–1519) was then 17 years old. There is a fine woodcut by
Albrecht Dürer of him as Emperor, drawn in 1518. His contemporaries did not
rate him highly. Machiavelli later wrote, ‘He is very fickle, he takes council from
nobody and yet believes everybody. He desires what he cannot have and leaves
what he can readily obtain.’

45. Painter,
William Caxton
, pp 86–9.

46. The manuscript of the works of Christine de Pisan (1363–1431), which he
probably used, is now in the Harleian collection (BM no. 4431). The one in the
collection was Anthony’s and he evidently received it from his mother. He later
gave it to a Burgundian friend, the Seigneur de la Gruthuyse. Christine de Pisan
was the daughter of an Italian astronomer who married a Frenchman and ‘took
to letters’ after his death; she later removed to a convent.

47. Rivers delivered the manuscript to Caxton on 2 February 1479, printing started
the next day and the 78 leaves were finished on 24 March.

48. Written from Middleton, probably on 28 May 1482. PRO no. 38 in augmentation
486, reproduced by Gardener in
Richard III
(London: Longman, 1878), annex B,
p 340.

49.
Weever’s Funeral Monuments
(London, 1767), p 269. It also notes that the chapel
was close to St Stephen’s but somewhat smaller.

50. A particularly close relationship is apparent from Anthony’s will. We know
Edward was with Anthony in Brittany and the fact that Edward knew the King of
Portugal also points to him having been there with Anthony in 1471, so it seems
reasonable to conclude that he was squire and companion to his brother.

Chapter 5. The Graduate

1. E.W. Brayley,
The Graphic and Historical Illustrator
(London: Chidley, 1834), p 27.

2.
Tirant Lo Blanc
, p 115 (with some minor changes to the translation).

3. Wardrobe accounts of Edward IV.

4. Scofield,
The Life and Reign of Edward IV
, vol. ii, p 284.

5. Painter,
William Caxton
, p 113.

6. Lotte Hellinga,
Caxton in Focus
(London: British Library, 1982), p 89.

7. Lowe, ‘Patronage and Politics’. John Giles was looked after. On 30 July 1484 he
was awarded £20 a year from the customs of Exeter and Dartmouth.

8.
Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History
, ed H. Ellis (London: Camden
Society, 1884), p 227.

9. ‘Grant for life to Edward Wydevill, knight, of the custody of the king’s castle
and town of Porchester and forest and warren there and the supervision and
governance of the king’s town of Portsmouth and his place there, with power
to appoint under him a porter, an artiller and a watchman within the castle,
receiving 12d. daily of his own fee, 3d. daily for the wages of the porter and
1d. daily for the wages of the groom under him to keep the warren, 6d. daily
for the wages of the artiller and 3d. daily for the wages of the watchman and
the accustomed fees for the supervision and governance, from the issues of the
castle, forest and warren and the fee-farm of the town, so far as their extent
suffices, and the residue from the issues of the county of Southampton with all
other accustomed profits, in the same manner as John, late earl of Shrewsbury,
or any one else had the same; in lieu of a like grant to the king’s kinsman Anthony
Wydevill, earl Ryvers, lord of Scales and Nucelles, by letters patented dated 9
November, 17 (rectius 19 November, 7) Edward IV, Surrendered.’

10. Grafton’s chronicle records Edward as one of only four (named) officers in the
‘Middleward’ of 5,800 men, under the command of Duke Richard himself.

11. Coventry Leet Book, p 505.

12. N. Macdougall,
James III: A Political Study
(Edinburgh, 1982), p 188.

13. The arrangement operated from 4 July until 12 October and consisted of riders
stationed at 20-mile intervals; a letter could cover 200 miles in two days. This
is the first recorded example of the courier system being used in England. See

Scofield,
The Life and Reign of Edward IV
, vol. ii, p 344.

14. The conspirators had met to grumble about their king. One of them told the
fable about the parliament of mice who met to decide what to do about the cat.
They decided to ‘bell the cat’. Lord Angus volunteered to ‘bell the cat’ and so
acquired his nickname. The fable is told in
Piers Plowman
but appeared before that
in the early thirteenth century.

15. Metcalf,
A Book of Knights
. A Knight Banneret is a field commander, a military
rank which carried the right to a square banner with arms. It was awarded for
distinguished battlefield service. The King or most senior nobleman in the field
cut off the two points of the knight’s pennon, thus creating a banner (the 1475
expedition had just 12 knight bannerets). The active-service day rate of pay for a
banneret was 4 shillings which was the same as a baron; a knight was 2 shillings;
men at arms and scurriers were 1 shilling and archers were 6 pence. At the other
end of the scale a duke was 13/4 and an earl 6/8. (One pound had 20 shillings
(20s) and 1s had 12 pence (12d). One mark was 13s-4d.)

16. C.D. Ross,
Edward IV
(Yale, 1974), pp 289–90.

17. Pope Sixtus IV,
Calendar of State Papers at Venice
, p 145.

18. E.W. Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock and the Papers of Anthony, Earl Rivers 1482–
83’,
BIHR
, 41 (1968), pp 216–29.

19. Commines,
Memoirs 1461–1483
, p 240.

20.
Ibid
., p 242.

21. Thomas Rotherham, John Morton, William Hastings, Thomas Montgomery,
John Howard, John Cheyeny, Thomas St Leger, Thomas Grey (Dorset).
Commines knew about the payments, as he was involved in the offers of pensions
and had paid Hastings when he had worked for the Duke of Burgundy. See
Commines,
Memoirs 1461–1483
, p 167.

22. More,
History of King Richard III
, p 11. Precise records of sexual activity are rare
but, as an indication, the Duke of Clarence’s household passed through Lichfield
in 1466 and a single lady of the town, Cecelia, enjoyed 14 men in 24 hours
and earned herself £3. A. Goodman,
The Wars of the Roses: The Soldiers’ Experience
(Tempus, 2005).

23. ‘The Nut-Brown Maid’, a long fifteenth-century poem in praise of woman’s
fidelity.

24. Nicolas von Poppelau, a visitor to England in 1484.

25. Tradition has Elizabeth of York as the model for the Queen in the classic pack
of English playing cards. This seems perfectly possible, as playing cards were
imported until the late fifteenth century when production started in England.
Elizabeth was then queen. By all accounts she was tall, beautiful and had her
mother’s long golden hair.

26. Fifteenth-century prayer published in B. Green and V. Gollancz (eds),
God of a
Hundred Names
(London: Gollancz, 1962), p 24.

27.
Richard III
, Act 1, Scene 1.

Chapter 6. The Great Coup

1. The main sources for this chapter are
The Usurption of Richard III
by Dominic
Mancini,
The Crowland Chronicle
and
The History of Richard III
by Thomas More.
Mancini was in the service of the Archbishop of Vienne and visited England
between late 1482 and July 1483 when he wrote an objective report for his
patron, who seems to have had a particular thirst for intelligence. The details
in More’s account are believed to originate from someone who was directly
involved in the events, perhaps Bishop Morton. Both of these works have been
widely used and quoted.

2. The hall still exists and measures 101ft by 36ft (30.8 metres by 10.9 metres)
and 55ft (16.8 metres) high to the apex of the roof. It is a magnificent ‘false’
hammerbeam construction decorated with fine tracery and there is evidence that
it was once partly gilded. It was built by Thomas Jordan, the King’s chief mason,
and his chief carpenter Edmund Gravely.

3. King Edward blamed Hastings, partially, for allowing the treaty to happen.
As Captain of Calais, Hastings was close to Burgundy and had intelligence
responsibilities for the area.

4. R. Horrox,
Financial Memoranda of the Reign of Edward V
(London: Camden
Society, 1987). It covers some folios of Exchequer notes in the Longleat Library
and amongst them are the financial records of the defence measures taken
immediately after King Edward’s death. They show there was real anticipation
of war with France and preparations had (probably) started before Edward died.
See Appendix A.

5.
Richard III
, Act 2, Scene 1.

6. Henry Tudor is rated as shrewd but he inherited the Yorkist system of sound
finance and, even at the end of his reign, he had only managed to increase his
annual revenues to £105,000. However, English royal revenues were dwarfed
by those of France at 5.4 million livres in 1482, i.e. around £600,000; in 1484
French military expenditure was about £100,000. See D. Potter,
A History of
France, 1460–1560
(London: Macmillan, 1995), p 144.

7. Commines,
Memoirs 1461–1483
, iii, vii. Seven of the battles are identifiable but
two are unknown.

8. A king’s title had three parts: hereditary, acclamation or election, and coronation.
Edward V was king from 10 April and was recognized as such everywhere.

9. Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock and the Papers of Anthony, Earl Rivers 1482–83’.

10. Full details are in
Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry
VII
, ed Gardener, p 6.

11.
The Mariners Mirror
, vol. x, p 216.

12. M. Oppenheim,
A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy and of Merchant
Shipping in Relation to the Navy
(London: Bodley, 1896), vol. 1, pp 49, 56. (The
armaments and companies for ships of those sizes are in a 1513 state paper.)

13. Scofield,
The Life and Reign of Edward IV
, vol. ii, p 414.

14. The restitution programme agreed later between Duke Richard and Lord
Cordes refers to French ships held at Sandwich and Plymouth, also to ‘damages’
and ‘as for other prizes and takings’. It would be surprising if Edward was not
responsible for some or all of this.

15. Horrox,
Richard III
, pp 108–9.

16. M.A. Hicks,
Richard III: The Man Behind the Myth
(Collins and Brown, 1991), p
103.

17. Mancini,
The Usurption of Richard III
, pp 90–1.

18. Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock and the Papers of Anthony, Earl Rivers 1482–83’.

19. A troop of 2,000 would cost around £1,500 for 30 days plus rations, a large and
seemingly needless expense. Another example is Duke Charles of Burgundy’s
bodyguard which was 309 strong when he was campaigning in 1474. See E.A.
Tabri,
Political Culture in the Early Northern Renaissance
(Edwin Mellen, 2004), p
41.

20. ‘uch ein grosses hertz’; Nicolas von Poppelau in the journal of his visit to King
Richard in May 1484.

21. The dinner was recorded in detail by Mancini, More and in
The Crowland Chronicle
;
the quotations are from More, pp 18–21, and Mancini, pp 91, 93.

22. British Library, Harleian Manuscript, vol. iii. Richard was obviously ignorant of
Dorset’s whereabouts.

23. Horrox,
Financial Memoranda of the Reign of Edward V
, p 216. The full text is in
Appendix B.