The Princes in the Tower, page 49
44 For the spy, see Wroe, p. 44, from PRO, E 404/80 (numbered 467). Henry’s spy was ‘a Scot with a beard’. (For the transcription, thanks to Marie Barnfield.) For Woodville’s plans to travel to Portugal, see the updated translation by António S. Marques of his article ‘Álvaro Lopes de Chaves: A Portuguese Source’, Notes Bulletin, Autumn 2008, p. 27, from MS 1163/Codex 443 da Colecção Pombalina da Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa: ‘… and while [we were] waiting for the coming of this Count Scales who had written to the king [John II] that he should bring this marriage and other matters to conclusion, he [Woodville alias Scales] went to Brittany’.
45 TNA, PRO E 154/2/4, 10 December 1484, for list of Catesby’s armour and weaponry.
46 Daniel Williams, ‘The Hastily Drawn-up Will of William Catesby, Esquire, 25 August 1485’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological & Historical Society, Vol. 51, 1975–76, pp. 43–51.
47 Ibid., p. 49. ‘My lordis Stanley Strange and all that blod help and pray for my soule for ye haue not for my body as I trusted in you.’
48 Penn, op. cit., pp. 82–83.
49 Maligned King, pp. 307–08; Calendar of Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain and Ireland: Vol. 14, 1484–1492, ed. J.A. Twemlow (London, 1960), British History Online; Richard Mackinder, Bosworth: The Archaeology of the Battlefield (2021), pp. 49–50; Glenn Foard and Anne Curry, Bosworth 1485: A Battlefield Rediscovered (2013), pp. 50, 56.
50 Ellis, Three Books of Vergil, pp. 224–25. John Stow, The Annals of England (1592), p. 783 follows Vergil: Catesby executed with ‘diverse others’.
51 John Throsby, The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Town of Leicester (1792), p. 63.
52 Crowland, p. 183; Vergil-1, p. 58; Ellis, op. cit., p. 225.
53 Howard had fought at Barnet in 1471, was wounded and unable to fight at Tewkesbury. In 1482, he took part in the invasion of Scotland, then helped quell the October 1483 uprising against King Richard. In 1513, he would command the English army at Flodden.
54 Buc, p. xvii. John Buck (sic) (Sir George’s great-grandfather) may have been a retainer of Thomas Howard’s wife, Elizabeth Tilney, given his family’s earlier Tilney connections. His children were taken into Howard’s protection after Bosworth and brought up at his manor in Suffolk. Robert Buck (sic), Sir George’s grandfather, knew Howard well and fought for him at Flodden; see also Buc, p. 116. John Buck is listed among those attainted for high treason in Henry VII’s first Parliament (PROME, ‘Henry VII: November 1485, Part 1’).
55 Buc, p. xvii.
56 Ibid., pp. 107–08. Thomas Howard was attainted for high treason at Henry VII’s first Parliament, losing his title and lands. All who fought against Henry could be indicted for treason following Henry’s back-dating of his reign to the day before Bosworth. Thomas was third to be named in the Act of Attainder (after Richard III and John Howard) – Rot. Parl., vi, pp. 257–58 (n. xxix).
57 Buc, pp. xvii–xix (also notes 54 and 55).
58 Vergil-2, pp. 5, 7.
59 Buc, p. 108.
60 Campbell, Vol. 1, pp. 208, 392. Payment for Howard, as Earl of Surrey, for his imprisonment in the Tower, dated 9 December 1485, and 8 March 1486 for special pardon permitting detention in any prison at the Crown’s pleasure.
61 York Books, Vol. 2, loc. cit., pp. 735–36. Henry Tudor’s proclamation after the battle (read in York on 25 August) was a particularly clever ruse in immediately presenting the Yorkist cause as hopeless, flushing out Howard. A dead man could not protect family and affinity, nor hope to retain lands and titles. Viscount Lovell and the Earl of Lincoln also appeared among the dead, whereas both clearly survived.
62 Buc, p. 108. Interestingly, Buc makes it clear that according to his grandfather, Robert Buck (sic, a friend of Howard’s), many Yorkists were executed in Leicester and, had Howard been captured, he would have suffered similarly. This seems to accord with Throsby and suggests more executions at Leicester than were supposed. For more on the hanging of the Bracher father and son after the battle, see Crowland, p. 183.
63 Mancini, p. 63: ‘she surrendered the boy, trusting in the word of the cardinal of Canterbury, that the boy should be restored after the coronation: indeed the cardinal, suspecting no treachery, had so persuaded the queen’.
64 Linda Clark, ODNB. Bourchier appointed as his steward the king’s close associate Robert Brackenbury (Constable of the Tower of London) in March 1484. Brackenbury and his wife Agnes were also enrolled in the confraternity of Christ Church, Canterbury, a great honour (Horrox, ODNB). From F.R.H Du Boulay (ed.), Registrum Thomas Bourgchier … 1454–1486, CYS, 54 (1957).
65 Horace Walpole, Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third (1768, repr. 1974), pp. 59–61.
66 Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Thomas Langton’s Letter to William Selling’, p. 61 n. 51.
67 All Hallows, Bread Street, and All Hallows, Gracechurch (Lombard Street): D.P. Wright, ODNB.
68 D.P. Wright (ed.), ‘The Register of Thomas Langton, Bishop of Salisbury 1485–1493’, Canterbury and York Society, 1985, p. xii.
69 Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Thomas Langton’s Letter’, p. 64.
70 D.P. Wright, ODNB.
71 Susan Troxall, ‘Thomas Langton, Richard III’s Bishop’, Part Two, Bulletin, March 2018, pp. 33–39 (p. 37 n. 32). From R. Percival Brown, ‘Thomas Langton and his Tradition of Learning’, Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, New Series, Vol. 26, 1926, pp. 15–246, for full Latin transcription of Langton’s will.
72 David Johnson, ‘Reluctant Groom’, Bulletin, March 2020, pp. 37–41; P.D. Clarke, ‘English Royal Marriages and the Papal Penitentiary in the Fifteenth Century’, EHR, Vol. 120, No. 488, September 2005, p. 1025.
73 Buc, p. 139. Rastell (1529) also seems to indicate a search, see Chapter 5; also Chapter 8, n. 48.
74 CPR 1485–94, pp. 12, 126. Lynom was appointed Receiver at Middleham on 29 July 1486 (thanks to Ian Rogers).
11 In Living Memory: The Mortimer Heirs – A Blueprint
1 Grant of 19 February 1401: 330 marks for Edmund and Roger from the lordship of Clare, Suffolk: J.L. Kirby (ed.), Calendar Signet Letters, Henry IV and Henry V (1399–1422) (HMSO, 1978), pp. 25–26 (C81/1356, No. 8); CPR 1399–1401, p. 380. First noted 20 Sept 1400 – Sara Kondol-Hanna, TMPP Research Report, ‘Mortimer Chronology: Original Sources’ (2.11.2019), p. 7.
2 Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (2016), p. 264.
3 Under the care of Sir John Pelham (d. 1429), CPR 1405–08, p. 276; CPR 1408–13, pp. 149, 202: Kondol-Hanna, op. cit., pp. 22–23, 28, 30.
4 Horrox, ODNB – York returning to favour by October 1405 and in favour on 8 December when his land was restored; James Tait, DNB, Vol. 45 – on 7 October, Henry IV ordered York brought to him after apparent rumours of his death.
5 R.A. Griffiths, ODNB (2008).
6 In 1402, with the king’s children, John (13) and Philippa (8), Edmund was 11 and Roger 10 (CPR 1401–05, p. 108; Kondol-Hanna, op. cit., p. 12).
7 CFR 1399–1405, p. 61; CFR 1405–13, pp. 230, 241; CPR 1399–1401, p. 380; CPR 1401–05, pp. 108, 406; CPR 1405–08, p. 408; CPR 1408–13, pp. 149, 202, 350; CPR 1413–16, p. 45; Kondol-Hanna, pp. 6, 9–10, 12, 25, 28, 30–34.
8 CPR 1401–05, p. 30; CCR 1399–1402, pp. 527–28; CPR 1399–1401, pp. 546–47; Kondol-Hanna, pp. 8–9, 11.
9 Margaret Pollard was nursemaid to both boys. She and her husband were former servants of their father, Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March (d. 1398) (CPR 1399–1401, p. 475; Kondol-Hanna, pp. 7, 11).
10 CPR 1405–08, p. 173 (13 May 1406); Kondol-Hanna, p. 22. The girls’ mother Eleanor, Countess of March, died in October 1405.
11 www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mortimer-257 Douglas Richardson. From various sources, including Harpenden’s tomb monument, Westminster Abbey.
12. Edward V: Proof of Life
1 For a list of all those attainted at Henry VII’s Parliament of 1487 and pardoned, see David Baldwin, Stoke Field: The Last Battle of the Wars of the Roses (2006), Appendix 1, pp. 123–25. As key supporters of the house of York, the Irish lords and Earls of Kildare and Desmond might be added to this list.
2 Jan Reygersbergh, Dye Cronijck van Zeelandt [The Chronicle of Zeeland] (1551), (digital) p. 123: ‘In the same year [1487] in the month of May, the fifteenth day, captain Merten de Swarte [Martin Zwarte] went from Aremuyen [Arnemuiden] with many men of war to England, where he was defeated a short while later’, objects.library.uu.nl/reader/index.php?obj=1874-214708&lan=en#page//25/73/41/25734125922173294290517646744035980316.jpg/mode/1up.
3 The date of the crowning of King Edward is on Sunday, 27 May 1487, and not Thursday, 24 May (as recorded by Henry VII’s Parliament). This is derived from a number of sources, including the Red Book of Ireland; Randolph Jones in Bulletin, June 2009, pp. 42–44 and Bulletin, September 2014, pp. 43–45. See also Academia (2015), pp. 185–209, esp. Appendix 1: ‘The Revised Coronation Date of Lambert Simnel’, pp. 207–09. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a Sunday was the appropriate day for a coronation. If Reygersbergh is correct about the date of departure of the Yorkist fleet from Middelburg (Arnemuiden) on 15 May 1487, then this supports the supposition that the coronation took place on 27 May, rather than 24 May. In the Middle Ages, a ship could sail by sea at an average speed of 2 knots, measured over day and night. This rule is also used about the fleet of Henry V by Ian Friel in Henry V’s Navy: The Sea-Road to Agincourt and Conquest 1413–1422 (2015). In twenty-four hours, a ship could sail approx. 50 nautical miles or 90km. However, this was seldom the case because medieval ships could not sail close to the wind as do modern yachts. They also suffered from leeway, i.e., displacement as a result of the set and drift of currents, but it does provide some tools to determine travel time. The distance from Middelburg (Arnemuiden) to Ireland (Wexford, in the south) around the point of Cornwall is more than 621 nautical miles (1,150km), so it could be done in ten days if everything went well. The final leg from Land’s End to Dublin could have gone fast with a good wind. Knowing this, it is highly unlikely the Yorkist fleet arrived before the (widely accepted) coronation date of 24 May, for which the sailing route would need to have been completed in less than nine days; this is highly unlikely given the above explanation. Special thanks to Dutch historian Ad van der Zee for sharing his expertise on ‘Maritime Heritage in the Late Middle Ages’ with the Dutch Research Group.
4 Bennett, pp. 89–103.
5 ‘[King Richmond] marched against him, with a large army and won the battle and killed the boy who would be king’ – Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘Caspar Weinreich’s Danzig Chronicle 1461–1495’, Ricardian, December 1986, pp. 310–20 (p. 317). Weinreich was a seagoing merchant during the years of Yorkist rule, who made contemporary notes – though neither official nor especially reliable – recording news and rumours of the day. In his two entries for 1487, Weinreich identifies this ‘boy who would be king’ as the son of the Duke of Clarence (as he is often described in European records), but nowhere does Weinreich suggest that the pretender was an impostor. Of interest is his offering two strangely incorrect versions of a name attached to the pretender (‘Jores’ and ‘Jorgen’), not encountered as his Christian name in any other report of his identity. However, the chronicle survives only in a copy made, and in places ‘improved’, by a sixteenth-century transcriber, who may have had difficulty making out the writing in Weinreich’s manuscript. It is possible that in the original, the author wrote the Dutch word for ‘York’: not a name the transcriber would automatically have expected, which may explain why he made two different attempts at transcribing it. Weinreich could have rendered the name ‘York’ in Middle Low German (the language of the Hanseatic League) in a bewildering variety of medieval spellings, all beginning with the letter ‘J’ (e.g., ‘Jorick’, ‘Jor(c)k’ or ‘Jorgk’). Understandably, English translations have followed the transcriber’s logic in assuming it was a Christian name and have rendered it ‘George’. This is unlikely to have been Weinreich’s intention, as elsewhere when he means ‘George’, he actually writes ‘Georg(e)’. See State Archives of Gdańsk, copy of the notes of sea captain Caspar Weinreich (by Stenzel Bornbach): APG 300, R/LI, q 32, pp. 57–76 (1486/1487), 135–46 (1494/1495). The identification of this word as ‘York’ is supported by Weinreich’s consistent references to Henry VII, not by his regnal name but by his title ‘Richmond’. Thus, his likely intention was to identify the dynastic challenger to ‘King Ritzmundt’, in the name of the previously ruling house of York.
6 However, Adrien De But (see note 12) says the ‘Dublin King’ was led away to safety from the battlefield by his cousin, Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (1471–1513) and taken to Guînes – ‘The Young Duke of Clarence was also captured, but the Duke of Suffolk, who liberated him by stealth, took him overseas and took refuge in Guînes’ (pp. 674–75, trans. from Latin by Dr Betty Knott for TMPP). Edmund de la Pole succeeded to the ducal title in 1492, being the younger brother of John, Earl of Lincoln, who died at Stoke. For potential battlefield injury (facial), see Appendix 3, The Coldridge Investigation.
7 For the early contradictory accounts from Henry VII’s government regarding the identity of the pretender in Ireland, see Gordon Smith, ‘Lambert Simnel and the King from Dublin’, Ricardian, Vol. 10, No. 135, December 1996, pp. 499, 514, 520; three accounts for the identity, p. 518.
8 The Register of the Archbishop of Canterbury contains a record of this imposture of Warwick, being the confession of a priest (William Simonds) before the convocation of Canterbury on 17 February 1487 in (medieval) St Paul’s Cathedral, London: ‘… he [Simonds] himself abducted and carried across to places in Ireland the son of a certain organ-maker of the university of Oxford; and this boy was there reputed to be the earl of Warwick’. See Bennett, p. 9, Appendix (a). Henry VII’s subsequent decision to publicly show the real Warwick immediately afterwards, also at St Paul’s (described in Vergil-2, pp. 18–19), seems to confirm his underlying propaganda motives.
9 The earliest surviving source that gives ‘Lambert Simnel’ as the name of the Dublin King is the Act of Attainder against John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, in November 1487 (after the Battle of Stoke). See John Ashdown-Hill, The Dublin King (2015), Chapter 5: ‘Lambert Simnel’, p. 77. An extract of this attainder (from Rot. Parl., vi, pp. 397–98) is added as Appendix (f ) in Bennett, pp. 124–26.
10 The son of a ‘joiner’ appears in the Act of Attainder 1487 (Bennett, p. 125; Ashdown Hill, Dublin King, p. 77; Lewis, The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, p. 109). The ‘Son of a baker or tailor’ is from Bernard André (in Dublin King, p. 22). For ‘son of either a baker or a shoemaker’, see Bennett, Appendix ( j), p. 132.
11 Hitherto attributed to 1486, the date is now amended to 1487: Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal and Koen Vermeulen, TMPP Research Report, 7.8.2020, from City Account Mechelen (Malines) 1486–1487 (from f.153r), ‘Gifts with the procession of Saint Rumbold and of the Holy Sacraments’. The relevant entry says, ‘Also 8 stopen of whine presented to the son of Clarentie (Clarence) from England …’ (information from Koen Vermeulen, archivist, Malines City Archive). The City Account runs from 1 November 1486 (All Saints Day) to 1 November 1487. The two processions of Saint Rumbold each year normally took place on the Wednesday after Easter and on or around 1 July. Though undated in the City Accounts for 1486–87, the missing dates can be narrowed down to 18 April 1487 (the Wednesday after Easter) and 1 July 1487. As preparations for the Yorkist invasion took place in spring 1487, prior to Stoke Field in June 1487, if we assume ‘the son of Clarence’ to have been its leader, this points to the gift of wine being presented to him during the Easter-tide procession of April 1487. However, the identity of ‘the son of Clarence’, as understood in the Low Countries, remains somewhat unclear when we consider that the Yorkist rebellion in 1487 was in favour of Edward V, not a real or counterfeit Edward of Warwick. It may simply have been a misnomer that took hold in common parlance.
12 De But (b. 1437), pp. 674–76, 678. The chronicle is his original work, continued until his death on 24 June 1488. It describes events he witnessed or learnt from reliable sources. When he wrote, he was living in Ter Duinen Abbey, Koksijde, on the Flemish west coast, near Calais and Guînes, which were both under English Tudor rule at the time. It seems likely he received his ‘first-hand’ information from the English who were present there. See also Véronique Lambert, Chronicles of Flanders 1200–1500, ‘Chronicles written independently from “Flandria Generosa”’, pp. 128–30, published in Verhandelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent XIX (1993).
13 NAH, The Hague, County Accounts of Holland (Grafelijkheidsrekenkamer), Margaret of York’s Domain Account Voorne, Account of Jan Michielszoon, 5 January 1487–5 January 1488, register number access: 3.01.27.02, inv. nr 3337, f.105r. This describes all the income and expenses of Margaret’s Dutch domain, Voorne. The specific entry describes heavy costs for a large group of men to help ‘De Hertoghe van Clarens [The Duke of Clarence], who was of their noble blood and her brother’s son and by right succession and honour entitled to the crown of England’. (NB: In comparison with the Lille document, it is unsigned, undated and written by a clerk.)
14 See note 8.
15 John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was also in London at the time and saw the young Earl of Warwick on this occasion (Bennett, p. 51), ‘which himself [Lincoln] knew and daily spoke with him at Sheen before his [Lincoln’s] departing [from England]’ (Heralds’ Memoir, p. 109). In his September 1496 proclamation from Scotland, Richard of England (Edward V’s brother) confirms that his ‘Right entirely wellbeloved’ cousin, Edward (Earl of Warwick) has long been held a prisoner by Henry VII and ‘yet keepeth’ there. See Appendix 9. Transcription by Judith Ford available at www.revealingrichardiii.com/two-pretenders.html.
16 For in-depth analysis of the contemporary materials for the Dublin King and his identification as Edward V, see Gordon Smith, pp. 498–536, and Matthew Lewis, Lambert Simnel and Edward V (July 2018), pp. 1–10 at www.revealingrichardiii.com/two-pretenders.html and at mattlewisauthor.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/lambert-simnel-and-edward-v.
45 TNA, PRO E 154/2/4, 10 December 1484, for list of Catesby’s armour and weaponry.
46 Daniel Williams, ‘The Hastily Drawn-up Will of William Catesby, Esquire, 25 August 1485’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological & Historical Society, Vol. 51, 1975–76, pp. 43–51.
47 Ibid., p. 49. ‘My lordis Stanley Strange and all that blod help and pray for my soule for ye haue not for my body as I trusted in you.’
48 Penn, op. cit., pp. 82–83.
49 Maligned King, pp. 307–08; Calendar of Papal Registers Relating To Great Britain and Ireland: Vol. 14, 1484–1492, ed. J.A. Twemlow (London, 1960), British History Online; Richard Mackinder, Bosworth: The Archaeology of the Battlefield (2021), pp. 49–50; Glenn Foard and Anne Curry, Bosworth 1485: A Battlefield Rediscovered (2013), pp. 50, 56.
50 Ellis, Three Books of Vergil, pp. 224–25. John Stow, The Annals of England (1592), p. 783 follows Vergil: Catesby executed with ‘diverse others’.
51 John Throsby, The History and Antiquities of the Ancient Town of Leicester (1792), p. 63.
52 Crowland, p. 183; Vergil-1, p. 58; Ellis, op. cit., p. 225.
53 Howard had fought at Barnet in 1471, was wounded and unable to fight at Tewkesbury. In 1482, he took part in the invasion of Scotland, then helped quell the October 1483 uprising against King Richard. In 1513, he would command the English army at Flodden.
54 Buc, p. xvii. John Buck (sic) (Sir George’s great-grandfather) may have been a retainer of Thomas Howard’s wife, Elizabeth Tilney, given his family’s earlier Tilney connections. His children were taken into Howard’s protection after Bosworth and brought up at his manor in Suffolk. Robert Buck (sic), Sir George’s grandfather, knew Howard well and fought for him at Flodden; see also Buc, p. 116. John Buck is listed among those attainted for high treason in Henry VII’s first Parliament (PROME, ‘Henry VII: November 1485, Part 1’).
55 Buc, p. xvii.
56 Ibid., pp. 107–08. Thomas Howard was attainted for high treason at Henry VII’s first Parliament, losing his title and lands. All who fought against Henry could be indicted for treason following Henry’s back-dating of his reign to the day before Bosworth. Thomas was third to be named in the Act of Attainder (after Richard III and John Howard) – Rot. Parl., vi, pp. 257–58 (n. xxix).
57 Buc, pp. xvii–xix (also notes 54 and 55).
58 Vergil-2, pp. 5, 7.
59 Buc, p. 108.
60 Campbell, Vol. 1, pp. 208, 392. Payment for Howard, as Earl of Surrey, for his imprisonment in the Tower, dated 9 December 1485, and 8 March 1486 for special pardon permitting detention in any prison at the Crown’s pleasure.
61 York Books, Vol. 2, loc. cit., pp. 735–36. Henry Tudor’s proclamation after the battle (read in York on 25 August) was a particularly clever ruse in immediately presenting the Yorkist cause as hopeless, flushing out Howard. A dead man could not protect family and affinity, nor hope to retain lands and titles. Viscount Lovell and the Earl of Lincoln also appeared among the dead, whereas both clearly survived.
62 Buc, p. 108. Interestingly, Buc makes it clear that according to his grandfather, Robert Buck (sic, a friend of Howard’s), many Yorkists were executed in Leicester and, had Howard been captured, he would have suffered similarly. This seems to accord with Throsby and suggests more executions at Leicester than were supposed. For more on the hanging of the Bracher father and son after the battle, see Crowland, p. 183.
63 Mancini, p. 63: ‘she surrendered the boy, trusting in the word of the cardinal of Canterbury, that the boy should be restored after the coronation: indeed the cardinal, suspecting no treachery, had so persuaded the queen’.
64 Linda Clark, ODNB. Bourchier appointed as his steward the king’s close associate Robert Brackenbury (Constable of the Tower of London) in March 1484. Brackenbury and his wife Agnes were also enrolled in the confraternity of Christ Church, Canterbury, a great honour (Horrox, ODNB). From F.R.H Du Boulay (ed.), Registrum Thomas Bourgchier … 1454–1486, CYS, 54 (1957).
65 Horace Walpole, Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third (1768, repr. 1974), pp. 59–61.
66 Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Thomas Langton’s Letter to William Selling’, p. 61 n. 51.
67 All Hallows, Bread Street, and All Hallows, Gracechurch (Lombard Street): D.P. Wright, ODNB.
68 D.P. Wright (ed.), ‘The Register of Thomas Langton, Bishop of Salisbury 1485–1493’, Canterbury and York Society, 1985, p. xii.
69 Sutton & Visser-Fuchs, ‘Thomas Langton’s Letter’, p. 64.
70 D.P. Wright, ODNB.
71 Susan Troxall, ‘Thomas Langton, Richard III’s Bishop’, Part Two, Bulletin, March 2018, pp. 33–39 (p. 37 n. 32). From R. Percival Brown, ‘Thomas Langton and his Tradition of Learning’, Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, New Series, Vol. 26, 1926, pp. 15–246, for full Latin transcription of Langton’s will.
72 David Johnson, ‘Reluctant Groom’, Bulletin, March 2020, pp. 37–41; P.D. Clarke, ‘English Royal Marriages and the Papal Penitentiary in the Fifteenth Century’, EHR, Vol. 120, No. 488, September 2005, p. 1025.
73 Buc, p. 139. Rastell (1529) also seems to indicate a search, see Chapter 5; also Chapter 8, n. 48.
74 CPR 1485–94, pp. 12, 126. Lynom was appointed Receiver at Middleham on 29 July 1486 (thanks to Ian Rogers).
11 In Living Memory: The Mortimer Heirs – A Blueprint
1 Grant of 19 February 1401: 330 marks for Edmund and Roger from the lordship of Clare, Suffolk: J.L. Kirby (ed.), Calendar Signet Letters, Henry IV and Henry V (1399–1422) (HMSO, 1978), pp. 25–26 (C81/1356, No. 8); CPR 1399–1401, p. 380. First noted 20 Sept 1400 – Sara Kondol-Hanna, TMPP Research Report, ‘Mortimer Chronology: Original Sources’ (2.11.2019), p. 7.
2 Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (2016), p. 264.
3 Under the care of Sir John Pelham (d. 1429), CPR 1405–08, p. 276; CPR 1408–13, pp. 149, 202: Kondol-Hanna, op. cit., pp. 22–23, 28, 30.
4 Horrox, ODNB – York returning to favour by October 1405 and in favour on 8 December when his land was restored; James Tait, DNB, Vol. 45 – on 7 October, Henry IV ordered York brought to him after apparent rumours of his death.
5 R.A. Griffiths, ODNB (2008).
6 In 1402, with the king’s children, John (13) and Philippa (8), Edmund was 11 and Roger 10 (CPR 1401–05, p. 108; Kondol-Hanna, op. cit., p. 12).
7 CFR 1399–1405, p. 61; CFR 1405–13, pp. 230, 241; CPR 1399–1401, p. 380; CPR 1401–05, pp. 108, 406; CPR 1405–08, p. 408; CPR 1408–13, pp. 149, 202, 350; CPR 1413–16, p. 45; Kondol-Hanna, pp. 6, 9–10, 12, 25, 28, 30–34.
8 CPR 1401–05, p. 30; CCR 1399–1402, pp. 527–28; CPR 1399–1401, pp. 546–47; Kondol-Hanna, pp. 8–9, 11.
9 Margaret Pollard was nursemaid to both boys. She and her husband were former servants of their father, Roger Mortimer, 4th Earl of March (d. 1398) (CPR 1399–1401, p. 475; Kondol-Hanna, pp. 7, 11).
10 CPR 1405–08, p. 173 (13 May 1406); Kondol-Hanna, p. 22. The girls’ mother Eleanor, Countess of March, died in October 1405.
11 www.wikitree.com/wiki/Mortimer-257 Douglas Richardson. From various sources, including Harpenden’s tomb monument, Westminster Abbey.
12. Edward V: Proof of Life
1 For a list of all those attainted at Henry VII’s Parliament of 1487 and pardoned, see David Baldwin, Stoke Field: The Last Battle of the Wars of the Roses (2006), Appendix 1, pp. 123–25. As key supporters of the house of York, the Irish lords and Earls of Kildare and Desmond might be added to this list.
2 Jan Reygersbergh, Dye Cronijck van Zeelandt [The Chronicle of Zeeland] (1551), (digital) p. 123: ‘In the same year [1487] in the month of May, the fifteenth day, captain Merten de Swarte [Martin Zwarte] went from Aremuyen [Arnemuiden] with many men of war to England, where he was defeated a short while later’, objects.library.uu.nl/reader/index.php?obj=1874-214708&lan=en#page//25/73/41/25734125922173294290517646744035980316.jpg/mode/1up.
3 The date of the crowning of King Edward is on Sunday, 27 May 1487, and not Thursday, 24 May (as recorded by Henry VII’s Parliament). This is derived from a number of sources, including the Red Book of Ireland; Randolph Jones in Bulletin, June 2009, pp. 42–44 and Bulletin, September 2014, pp. 43–45. See also Academia (2015), pp. 185–209, esp. Appendix 1: ‘The Revised Coronation Date of Lambert Simnel’, pp. 207–09. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a Sunday was the appropriate day for a coronation. If Reygersbergh is correct about the date of departure of the Yorkist fleet from Middelburg (Arnemuiden) on 15 May 1487, then this supports the supposition that the coronation took place on 27 May, rather than 24 May. In the Middle Ages, a ship could sail by sea at an average speed of 2 knots, measured over day and night. This rule is also used about the fleet of Henry V by Ian Friel in Henry V’s Navy: The Sea-Road to Agincourt and Conquest 1413–1422 (2015). In twenty-four hours, a ship could sail approx. 50 nautical miles or 90km. However, this was seldom the case because medieval ships could not sail close to the wind as do modern yachts. They also suffered from leeway, i.e., displacement as a result of the set and drift of currents, but it does provide some tools to determine travel time. The distance from Middelburg (Arnemuiden) to Ireland (Wexford, in the south) around the point of Cornwall is more than 621 nautical miles (1,150km), so it could be done in ten days if everything went well. The final leg from Land’s End to Dublin could have gone fast with a good wind. Knowing this, it is highly unlikely the Yorkist fleet arrived before the (widely accepted) coronation date of 24 May, for which the sailing route would need to have been completed in less than nine days; this is highly unlikely given the above explanation. Special thanks to Dutch historian Ad van der Zee for sharing his expertise on ‘Maritime Heritage in the Late Middle Ages’ with the Dutch Research Group.
4 Bennett, pp. 89–103.
5 ‘[King Richmond] marched against him, with a large army and won the battle and killed the boy who would be king’ – Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘Caspar Weinreich’s Danzig Chronicle 1461–1495’, Ricardian, December 1986, pp. 310–20 (p. 317). Weinreich was a seagoing merchant during the years of Yorkist rule, who made contemporary notes – though neither official nor especially reliable – recording news and rumours of the day. In his two entries for 1487, Weinreich identifies this ‘boy who would be king’ as the son of the Duke of Clarence (as he is often described in European records), but nowhere does Weinreich suggest that the pretender was an impostor. Of interest is his offering two strangely incorrect versions of a name attached to the pretender (‘Jores’ and ‘Jorgen’), not encountered as his Christian name in any other report of his identity. However, the chronicle survives only in a copy made, and in places ‘improved’, by a sixteenth-century transcriber, who may have had difficulty making out the writing in Weinreich’s manuscript. It is possible that in the original, the author wrote the Dutch word for ‘York’: not a name the transcriber would automatically have expected, which may explain why he made two different attempts at transcribing it. Weinreich could have rendered the name ‘York’ in Middle Low German (the language of the Hanseatic League) in a bewildering variety of medieval spellings, all beginning with the letter ‘J’ (e.g., ‘Jorick’, ‘Jor(c)k’ or ‘Jorgk’). Understandably, English translations have followed the transcriber’s logic in assuming it was a Christian name and have rendered it ‘George’. This is unlikely to have been Weinreich’s intention, as elsewhere when he means ‘George’, he actually writes ‘Georg(e)’. See State Archives of Gdańsk, copy of the notes of sea captain Caspar Weinreich (by Stenzel Bornbach): APG 300, R/LI, q 32, pp. 57–76 (1486/1487), 135–46 (1494/1495). The identification of this word as ‘York’ is supported by Weinreich’s consistent references to Henry VII, not by his regnal name but by his title ‘Richmond’. Thus, his likely intention was to identify the dynastic challenger to ‘King Ritzmundt’, in the name of the previously ruling house of York.
6 However, Adrien De But (see note 12) says the ‘Dublin King’ was led away to safety from the battlefield by his cousin, Edmund de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (1471–1513) and taken to Guînes – ‘The Young Duke of Clarence was also captured, but the Duke of Suffolk, who liberated him by stealth, took him overseas and took refuge in Guînes’ (pp. 674–75, trans. from Latin by Dr Betty Knott for TMPP). Edmund de la Pole succeeded to the ducal title in 1492, being the younger brother of John, Earl of Lincoln, who died at Stoke. For potential battlefield injury (facial), see Appendix 3, The Coldridge Investigation.
7 For the early contradictory accounts from Henry VII’s government regarding the identity of the pretender in Ireland, see Gordon Smith, ‘Lambert Simnel and the King from Dublin’, Ricardian, Vol. 10, No. 135, December 1996, pp. 499, 514, 520; three accounts for the identity, p. 518.
8 The Register of the Archbishop of Canterbury contains a record of this imposture of Warwick, being the confession of a priest (William Simonds) before the convocation of Canterbury on 17 February 1487 in (medieval) St Paul’s Cathedral, London: ‘… he [Simonds] himself abducted and carried across to places in Ireland the son of a certain organ-maker of the university of Oxford; and this boy was there reputed to be the earl of Warwick’. See Bennett, p. 9, Appendix (a). Henry VII’s subsequent decision to publicly show the real Warwick immediately afterwards, also at St Paul’s (described in Vergil-2, pp. 18–19), seems to confirm his underlying propaganda motives.
9 The earliest surviving source that gives ‘Lambert Simnel’ as the name of the Dublin King is the Act of Attainder against John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, in November 1487 (after the Battle of Stoke). See John Ashdown-Hill, The Dublin King (2015), Chapter 5: ‘Lambert Simnel’, p. 77. An extract of this attainder (from Rot. Parl., vi, pp. 397–98) is added as Appendix (f ) in Bennett, pp. 124–26.
10 The son of a ‘joiner’ appears in the Act of Attainder 1487 (Bennett, p. 125; Ashdown Hill, Dublin King, p. 77; Lewis, The Survival of the Princes in the Tower, p. 109). The ‘Son of a baker or tailor’ is from Bernard André (in Dublin King, p. 22). For ‘son of either a baker or a shoemaker’, see Bennett, Appendix ( j), p. 132.
11 Hitherto attributed to 1486, the date is now amended to 1487: Nathalie Nijman-Bliekendaal and Koen Vermeulen, TMPP Research Report, 7.8.2020, from City Account Mechelen (Malines) 1486–1487 (from f.153r), ‘Gifts with the procession of Saint Rumbold and of the Holy Sacraments’. The relevant entry says, ‘Also 8 stopen of whine presented to the son of Clarentie (Clarence) from England …’ (information from Koen Vermeulen, archivist, Malines City Archive). The City Account runs from 1 November 1486 (All Saints Day) to 1 November 1487. The two processions of Saint Rumbold each year normally took place on the Wednesday after Easter and on or around 1 July. Though undated in the City Accounts for 1486–87, the missing dates can be narrowed down to 18 April 1487 (the Wednesday after Easter) and 1 July 1487. As preparations for the Yorkist invasion took place in spring 1487, prior to Stoke Field in June 1487, if we assume ‘the son of Clarence’ to have been its leader, this points to the gift of wine being presented to him during the Easter-tide procession of April 1487. However, the identity of ‘the son of Clarence’, as understood in the Low Countries, remains somewhat unclear when we consider that the Yorkist rebellion in 1487 was in favour of Edward V, not a real or counterfeit Edward of Warwick. It may simply have been a misnomer that took hold in common parlance.
12 De But (b. 1437), pp. 674–76, 678. The chronicle is his original work, continued until his death on 24 June 1488. It describes events he witnessed or learnt from reliable sources. When he wrote, he was living in Ter Duinen Abbey, Koksijde, on the Flemish west coast, near Calais and Guînes, which were both under English Tudor rule at the time. It seems likely he received his ‘first-hand’ information from the English who were present there. See also Véronique Lambert, Chronicles of Flanders 1200–1500, ‘Chronicles written independently from “Flandria Generosa”’, pp. 128–30, published in Verhandelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent XIX (1993).
13 NAH, The Hague, County Accounts of Holland (Grafelijkheidsrekenkamer), Margaret of York’s Domain Account Voorne, Account of Jan Michielszoon, 5 January 1487–5 January 1488, register number access: 3.01.27.02, inv. nr 3337, f.105r. This describes all the income and expenses of Margaret’s Dutch domain, Voorne. The specific entry describes heavy costs for a large group of men to help ‘De Hertoghe van Clarens [The Duke of Clarence], who was of their noble blood and her brother’s son and by right succession and honour entitled to the crown of England’. (NB: In comparison with the Lille document, it is unsigned, undated and written by a clerk.)
14 See note 8.
15 John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was also in London at the time and saw the young Earl of Warwick on this occasion (Bennett, p. 51), ‘which himself [Lincoln] knew and daily spoke with him at Sheen before his [Lincoln’s] departing [from England]’ (Heralds’ Memoir, p. 109). In his September 1496 proclamation from Scotland, Richard of England (Edward V’s brother) confirms that his ‘Right entirely wellbeloved’ cousin, Edward (Earl of Warwick) has long been held a prisoner by Henry VII and ‘yet keepeth’ there. See Appendix 9. Transcription by Judith Ford available at www.revealingrichardiii.com/two-pretenders.html.
16 For in-depth analysis of the contemporary materials for the Dublin King and his identification as Edward V, see Gordon Smith, pp. 498–536, and Matthew Lewis, Lambert Simnel and Edward V (July 2018), pp. 1–10 at www.revealingrichardiii.com/two-pretenders.html and at mattlewisauthor.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/lambert-simnel-and-edward-v.
