The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry (39 page)

37. In 1473 Duke Richard made her hand over her own estates to him by ‘coercion
and compulsion’. Her son had been attainted but she had done nothing wrong or
been accused of anything. There was snow and ice when Richard threatened to
send the old lady to Middleham and keep her there. ‘She could not endure to be
conveyed there without great jeopardy to her life.’ See M. Hicks,
The Last Days of
Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford
, p 91.

38. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé,
François II, Duc de Bretagne, et l’Angleterre
, vol. ix, p 433.

39. Sanceau,
The Perfect Prince
, p 206.

40. Ross,
Richard III
. Dr Hicks believes that Richard ‘used his flair for public relations
to make his case as convincing as possible’ and so ‘our history of April to June
1483 is very much Richard’s creation’ (
Richard III: The Man Behind the Myth
.)

41. Philibert de Chandée was an enthusiastic soldier who talked later of taking his
retinue to Spain with Edward Woodville. He was created Earl of Bath on 6
January 1486 and awarded 100 marks a year. He was still in England in March
1487 but then returned to French service.

42. Scottish records (John Major and Pittscottie) have Alexander Bruce and John de
Haddington as the commanders of the Scots contingent of 1,000 at Bosworth
(Macdougall,
James III
, pp 215–16). Bernard Stewart (Lord d’Aubigny), the
Franco-Scot commanding Charles VIII’s Scots Guards, was particularly
honoured when he visited England in 1508. The presence of the Scots companies
also seems to be confirmed by the award by King Henry to Sir Alexander Bruce
of Earlshall of £20 a year on 7 March 1486; Bruce joined Henry’s household in
1485.

43. There are various views on the size and composition of Henry Tudor’s army. The
4,000-man view is expressed in
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty
by R.A. Griffiths
and R.S. Thomas (p 129) and in
Richard III
by C.D. Ross (p 201). However,
C.S.Davies in ‘The Wars of the Roses in the European Context’ (
The Wars of the
Roses
, ed A.J. Pollard, p 244) reckons there were no more than 2,000, including
the 400–500 Englishmen, who sailed in seven ships. Vergil reports 2,000, and
de Valera (a Spanish observer writing to Ferdinand in March 1486) reported
2,000 who had been paid for four months. To have two different contingents –
each of 1,800 – joining up, as Molinet reports, seems too much of a coincidence,
so I would discount that. On balance, the probability seems to me to be between
2,000 and 2,500, probably sailing in 15 ships. The French naval commander was
Admiral Coulon.

44. Redlich,
The German Military Enterpriser
, vol. 1, p 107, and chapters 1 and 2.

45. Edward Hall (
Chronicle
) reports this remark being made in Richard’s pre-battle
speech.

Chapter 8. Blood and Roses

1. The main source for this chapter is Polydore Vergil.
The Battle of Bosworth
by
Michael Bennett and
The Making of the Tudor Dynasty
by R.A. Griffiths and R.S.
Thomas have been particularly helpful. Some of the detail of the battle (which
may be a touch romantic) is taken from
The Battle of Bosworth Field
by William
Hutton, first published in 1788.

2. ‘So violent and motley was life that it bore the mixed smell of blood and roses’:
Johan Huizinga on the late Middle Ages.

3. The translation is taken from the (Breeches) Bible of 1606.

4. To John ap Meredith of Eifionydd in Gwynedd.

5. The Scots were commanded by Sir Alexander Bruce of Earlshall and John de
Haddington. See Macdougall,
James III
, pp 215–16.

6. The army landed on 8 August and marched the 176 miles from Dale to Bosworth
in the following 12 days. Various Welsh gentry joined; one was Dafydd Saisylt,
who became David Cecil and whose grandson was William Cecil, the great Lord
Burghley.

7. George, Lord Strange, who was married to a niece of Edward Woodville.

8. King Richard travelled with his own bed, which he left behind at the White
Boar, the inn in Leicester where he had spent the night. The bed had a false
bottom in which he left £300 in gold. The cash was not discovered until 100
years later and the bed stayed in the inn for 200 years. See Gardener,
Richard III
,
p 293.

9. Robert Lindsay of Piscottie,
The History and Chronicles of Scotland, from the
Slauchter of King James I to the ane 1575
, ed A.J.G. Mackay (Edinburgh: Scottish
Text Society, 1899–1911), vol. i, pp 190–9. It seems that Highlanders had a
particular reputation. A fifteenth-century poem in the Bannatyne Manuscript is
titled, ‘How the first heilandman of God was made, of ane horse’s turd in Argyll
as is said.’ It runs: ‘Quoth God to the Helandman, where wilt thou now? / I will
doun to the lowland, Lord, and there steill a cow.’

10. A gilt processional cross of fine workmanship was found at Bosworth in 1778.

11. Hutton,
The Battle of Bosworth Field
, p 85.

12. King Henry subsequently paid compensation to the farmers who lost their corn.

13. Hutton,
The Battle of Bosworth Field
, p 89.

14. The sequence of events is far from certain, as it happened in the helter-skelter of
the battle and there are no eyewitness accounts. It was even muddled for those
who were there, e.g. Sir James Blount sought, fought and killed John Babington,
thinking his wife, who was a Babington niece, would inherit. But Sir James got
the wrong John Babington, which was disappointing for the Blounts and bad luck
for the wrong John.

15. Goodman,
The Wars of the Roses: The Soldiers’ Experience
, p 107.

16. ‘La malice des Francs-Archers (1448–1500)’,
Revue des Questions Historiques
, LXI
(1897), p 474.

17.
Richard III
, Act 5, Scene 4, written 100 years after the battle. Shakespeare would
probably have known people who had talked to men who had fought there.

18. Lady Bessie was Princess Elizabeth of York, and the song probably dates from the
early sixteenth century.

19.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VII, 1485–94
, 1485 and 1486.

20.
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VII, 1485–94
, pp 112, 117.

21. W. Campbell (ed),
Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII
(Rolls Series,
1873–77), vol. ii, p 562.

22. Cloth of gold for the King was bought at £8 a yard and £2 a yard for the lords;
purple velvet for the King was £2 a yard and Lord Oxford’s was £1-10s; even
the new confessor wore russet costing 12/6 a yard. It is difficult to put this into
modern value but an archer was paid 6 pence a day; there were 240 pennies in a
pound, so £2 or 480 pennies was nearly three months’ wages for a skilled man.

23. Dated 6 December 1485,
Calendar of State Papers at Venice
, p 158.

24. Jasper died in 1495 and Catherine then married Sir Richard Wingfield of Suffolk,
ten years her junior.

25. National Portrait Gallery.

26. The summary of the papal bull recognizing Henry states: ‘His Holiness
confirmeth...by reason of his highest and undoubted title of succession as by his
most noble [victory] and by election of the lords spiritual and temporal and other
nobles of his realm and by the ordinance and authority of parliament made by the
three estates of his land.’
Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers
, proc. 5.

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

28. E. Foss,
A Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England
(London: Murray, 1870),
vol. v, pp 46–8.

29. There is very little archive material for the period and it is impossible to
determine whether the rather careful approach to policy was due to Henry’s
inexperience or to pragmatic civil servants; probably the latter, which meant
middle-class professional administrators were exercising power.

30. After the death of a feudal tenant in chief (a direct tenant of the crown) a writ
was issued to the local escheator who inquired into what lands were held and
who should succeed. Campbell (ed),
Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII
,
vol. i, p 85.

Chapter 9. Local Affairs

1. The near contemporary works of Polydore Vergil (Book xxiv), Bernard André
(
Memorials of King Henry VII
, pp 49–52) and Jean de Molinet (
Chroniques
, chapter
CLVIII) have been particularly useful, although Molinet, being Burgundian, is
partisan while Vergil ignores Edward Woodville at Stoke, even though records
confirm him as one of the five main commanders. Vergil names the other four
and lists 67 of the captains. M. Bennett in
Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke
gives a clear account which has been useful.

2. Sanceau,
The Perfect Prince
, p 294.

3. For a good telling of the story see Ann Wroe,
Perkin
(Cape, 2003).

4. The accuracy is well illustrated by a sixteenth-century example: 12 soldiers at a
range of six yards all fired at a man and missed, which was fortunate as they were
mutineers and their target was their officer. The longbow in trained hands would
remain infinitely superior to the hand-held gun until well into the nineteenth
century. The first muzzle-loading percussion rifle was introduced in 1851 but it
was not until 1874, when the Martini-Henry breech action was issued, that the
British soldier could surpass his medieval forebears in range, rapidity of fire and
accuracy.

5.
Accounts of Gonzalo de Baeza
, ed Torre and Torre (Madrid: CSIC, 1955), p 164.
The value would be a little over £2 (37 maravedis equalled one gold ducat, which
was worth about four shillings and three pence in London).

6. J. Leyland,
Collectanea
(London, 1787) (‘The Herald’s Report’, vol. iv), p 205.

7. It has also been suggested that Edward Woodville wished to promote a Spanish
marriage for his newly born nephew (R.B. Merriman,
American Antiquarian Society
,
1904) but no authority is given to substantiate the idea and it would be a little
premature, as Prince Arthur was born on 20 September 1486, after Edward’s
return. Negotiations for Arthur’s engagement started in 1488; he married
Catherine of Castile and Aragon (born December 1485) in November 1501. He
died five months later and she subsequently married his younger brother Henry,
later Henry VIII.

8. PRO E 405/76, mem.2v.

9. Thornbury was their principal residence, which they started rebuilding. In
1510 dinner could be given to ‘besides guests, 134 gentry, 188 yeomen and 197
garçons’. Young Buckingham seems to have taken after his father, with too much
royal blood and arrogance; he lost his head in 1521.

10. Gwyn Williams,
Madoc: The Making of a Myth
(Methuen, 1979), p 35.

11. Campbell (ed),
Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII
, vol ii, pp 130, 202.

12. John Heron’s accounts for 1492 and 1493 (all countersigned by the King) in the
British Museum, reproduced in C. Falkus (ed),
Private Lives of the Tudor Monarchs
(London: Folio Society, 1974).

13. The son of King Edward’s and King Richard’s sister, Elizabeth, and her husband
John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk.

14. Polydore Vergil,
Anglica Historia
, ed D. Hay (London: Camden Society, 1950), p
17.

15. Redlich,
The German Military Enterpriser
, vol. 1, chapters 1 and 2, and p 107.

16. P.L. Hughes and J.F. Larkin (eds),
Tudor Royal Proclamations
(Yale, 1964), 5 and 6
June 1487.

17. Leyland,
Collectanea
(‘The Herald’s Report’, vol. iv), p 210.

18. ‘Deux mille chevaux’ is certainly an exaggeration. So are Molinet’s other
numbers that add up to about 40,000 for Henry’s army, about four times the
correct number. So divide by four? If so, then perhaps Edward had 500 horsemen.

19. An arquebus is a portable long-barrelled gun, inaccurate except at close quarters.

20. Archers could shoot six aimed arrows a minute, or ten unaimed up to 300 yards.

21. The next Earl of Lincoln, his second brother, was beheaded, the third was kept
prisoner in the Tower and the fourth escaped to France where he was called
the Duke of York and the ‘White Rose’. King Francis I recognized him as King
Richard IV of England but he was known as the ‘Count of Suffolk’. He had a
successful career as a military entrepreneur commanding a company of ‘several
thousand’ called the Black Band. It finished at the battle of Pavia (1525) when
he was killed and the Black Band annihilated fighting for France. The Band was
recruited in Lower Germany but met their match when they fought the imperial
mercenaries of Frundsberg, who had been recruited in Upper Germany.