PART II.
ON THE PROBABLE PERIOD OF THE EXTINCTION OF WOLVES IN ENGLAND. {287a}
“Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave! Burning for blood! bony and gaunt, and grim! Assembling wolves in raging troops descend; And pouring o’er the country, bear along, Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snow. All is their prize. They fasten on the steed, Press him to earth, and pierce his mighty heart, Nor can the bull his awful front defend, Or shake the murd’ring savages away.”
THOMSON’S _Winter_.
SEVERAL descriptions of wild animals were, at one period, inhabitants of Great Britain, which, with the increase of population and civilization, have become extinct, amongst which may be mentioned, the wolf, bear, {287b} and wild boar. {287c} We may, however, perhaps regret the extinction of other animals, which were not of a destructive kind; for example, the beaver {288a} is generally admitted by naturalists, to have been, and the roe deer certainly was, formerly, a native of England. The beaver is no longer to be found amongst us; and the roe deer is not now to be met with in any part of this country to the south of Scotland: the latter, however, remained wild in England and Wales, until the reign of King Henry VIII. {288b} The fox would probably have also disappeared ere now, if it had not been for his superior cunning, and his conducing to the sports of the field; the otter is become rather scarce; and the seal is now rarely found upon the coasts of England. The poor harmless badger, although still occasionally met with in some unenclosed or wild parts, has, notwithstanding his inoffensive and unobtrusive habits, been exterminated in several of the English counties, and is become rare in most of them.
The inquiries pursued in this paper will, however, be with reference to the wolf only.
It is admitted by all writers upon the natural history of the British Isles, that wolves once abounded in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and it is an interesting circumstance, that we know with tolerable exactness, something of the dates of their extinction in Scotland and Ireland. The last wolf that is known to have been wild in Scotland, was killed about the year 1680; {288c} and the last presentment for killing wolves in Ireland, was made in the county of Cork, about the year 1710. {288d}
It is remarkable, that when Buffon wrote in the last century, he or Daubenton, who assisted him, did not believe that wolves had become extinct in Great Britain. The following remarkable passage occurs in Button’s _Natural History_:—“Les Anglais pretendent en avoir purgé leur Isle, cependant on m’a assuré, qu ’il y en avait en Ecosse. Comme il y a peu de bois, dans la partie meridionale, de la Grand Bretagne, on a eu plus de facilité pour les detruire.”—Buffon’s _Natural History_, vol. vii. p. 50, title “Du Loup”; in which work Buffon was assisted by Daubenton, the naturalist. As Buffon was born in 1707, and Daubenton in 1716, it is quite possible that one or both of them, received the information upon that point, from some person, who had lived in Scotland, before the extinction of wolves in that country; and, consequently, it might easily be believed by either of them, that wolves were to be found there, at the time when that passage was written.
Holinshed wrote his _Chronicles_ in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and he mentions, that wolves then abounded in Scotland:—
“First of all therefore in the fields and wild places of the country, there is great plenty of hares, red deere, fallow deere, roes, wild horsses, wolves and foxes.”
* * *
“The wolves are most fierce and noisome to the heards and flocks, in all parts of Scotland, saving in one parcell of Angus, called Glennorsdale, where these beasts doo no manner of hurt unto the domesticall catell, but preie onlie upon the wild.”—Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, _Description of Scotland_, vol. ii. p. 14.
We also know from Camden, who likewise wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, that at the time when he wrote, wolves were very common in Scotland. {289} He also informs us in another place, that Scotland was “grievously infested with fierce wolves, which not only make dreadful havoc of cattle, but even fall upon men, with such inveteracy and mischief, not only in this but in many other parts of Scotland, that by act of Parliament, the sheriffs and inhabitants in every county, are obliged to go out three times a year, to destroy the wolves and their young ones.” {290a}
We also learn from Camden, that at that time, Ireland swarmed with wolves. {290b}
Although it appears to be known with some degree of certainty, about what period they ceased to exist in Scotland and Ireland, there is a great difficulty in ascertaining, at what date they became extinct in England; and in consequence of its greater population, its not having many mountainous and wild districts, and, as suggested in Buffon’s work, its not having extensive woods, it is certain, that wolves would be much sooner exterminated in England, than in Scotland or Ireland.
At the time of the Anglo-Saxon sway, wolves abounded in great numbers in England; and in the tenth century, in the reign of Athelstan, a place of retreat was erected at Flixton, in Yorkshire, in order to protect travellers from being devoured by wolves. {290c}
It has been said, that in the reign of Edgar, also in the tenth century, an annual tribute was imposed upon the Welsh princes, of three hundred wolves’ heads, in order to effect their destruction. If that be true, it is only reasonable to suppose, that considerable numbers would be destroyed, by the adoption of that expedient; but it is strange that some authors, copying from one another, and without giving themselves the trouble of searching into authorities, have stated, that the extinction of wolves in England and Wales was caused by it. Nothing can be further from the truth, as will be presently shown. Mr. Hume, in his _History of England_, indeed, even goes far beyond other writers, in his unqualified assertions on that subject, without any proof; and shows, as is too often the case in his work, his ignorance of the authorities relative to it; and he has not adduced, and in fact he seems to have been unable to adduce, any authority for making the following assertion, viz.:—“Another remarkable incident of this [Edgar’s] reign, was the extirpation of wolves from England. This advantage was attained by the industrious policy of Edgar. He took great pains in hunting and pursuing those ravenous animals; and when he found that all that escaped him had taken shelter in the mountains and forests of Wales, he changed the tribute of money imposed on the Welsh princes by Athelstan his predecessor, into an annual tribute of three hundred heads of wolves; which produced such diligence in hunting them, that the animal has been no more seen in this island.” {291a} It is surprising that Mr. Hume should have ventured to make an assertion so easily refuted; and it is remarkable, that his _History of England_ should find a prominent place in so many libraries, when it is now admitted, that its author is very frequently incorrect as a historian, and that the statements in it, when he omits, as he often does, to quote authorities, cannot be relied on. That work has never been regularly reviewed, which ought even yet to be done. Lord Brougham, in his _Lives of Men of Letters and Science_, who flourished in the time of George III., very properly exposes the faults and incorrectness of Mr. Hume’s _History of England_, thus:—
“There is continual proof, that he took what he found set down in former works, without weighing the relative value of conflicting authorities, and generally resorted to the most accessible sources of information. There have been instances without number, adduced of his inaccuracy in citing even the authorities to which he confined his researches.
“Nor can we acquit him on another charge, not rarely brought against him, and partaking of the two former: neglect or carelessness about the truth, and infidelity in relating it.” {291b}
The Abbey of Fors, in Wensleydale, in Yorkshire, was founded in the year 1145, which is nearly two centuries after the reign of Edgar; and some time afterwards, Alan Earl of Bretagne, gave to the monks of that abbey the privilege of taking, by themselves or their servants, the remains of the deer which had been killed and partly devoured by the wolves, in the forest of Wensleydale. {292a}
In the 10th year of the reign of William I. (1075), Robert de Hurfravill, lord of Tours and Vian, otherwise called Robert with the Beard, being a kinsman to the King, obtained from him a grant of the lordship, valley, and forest of Riddesdale, in the county of Northumberland, with all the castles, manors, lands, woods, pastures, waters, pools, and royal franchises, which were formerly possessed by Mildred, the son of Akman, late lord of Riddesdale, and which came to that king upon his conquest of England, to hold, by the service of defending that part of the country, for ever, from enemies, and wolves. {292b}
In the 1st year of King John (1199), he granted to William Briwere, a license, “to hunt the hare, fox, cat, and wolf, throughout all Devonshire; and likewise the goat out of the regard [sight] of the forest; and to have free warren throughout all his own lands, for hares, pheasants, and partridges.” {292c}
In the 9th year of Edward I. (1281), wolves existed in such numbers in several parts of England, that a royal commission was issued by him, to Peter Corbet, for the destruction, by means of men, dogs, and engines, of wolves, in all forests, parks, and other places, in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire; and all bailiffs, &c., were commanded to be aiding and assisting Peter Corbet, in the destruction of wolves in those counties.
The commission is alluded to by Bingley, the Naturalist; but it is remarkable that he has altogether omitted to give the date or any reference, where an account of it was to be found. Dr. Whitaker does not notice it, although he more than once, in his _History of Craven_, adverts to the existence of wolves in England after the reign of Edgar. As the mandate is a curiosity, it is given here precisely as it appears in the _Fædera_.—
A.D. 1281. _An_: 9 _Edwd._ I. Pat. 9 Edw. I. m 20 in _Turr_: _Lond_:
“Rex omnibus Ballivis etc: Sciatis quod injunximus dilecto & fideli nostro Petro Corbet, quod in omnibus forestis, & parcis, & aliis locis, infra comitatus nostros Gloucestr’ Wygorn’ Hereford’ Salop’ et Stafford’ in quibus lupi poterunt inveniri, lupos, cum hominibus, canibus & ingeniis suis, capiat, & destruat, modis omnibus quibus viderit expedire.
“Et ideo vobis mandamus quod eidem Petro in omnibus, quæ ad captionem luporum in comitatibus prædictis, pertinet, intendentes sitis & auxiliantes, quotiens opus fuerit, & prædictus Petrus vobis scire faciet ex parte nostra.
“In cujus &c. duratur’ quamdin nobis placuerit. Teste Rege apud Westm’ decimo quarto die Maii.” {293}
(TRANSLATION.)
The King, to all bailiffs, &c. Know ye, that we have enjoined our dear and faithful Peter Corbet, that in all forests, parks, and other places, within our counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, and Stafford, in which wolves may be found, that he take and destroy wolves, with his men, dogs, and engines, in all ways, in which it shall seem expedient; and we command you therefore that you be aiding and assisting the said Peter, in all things that relate to the capture of wolves, in the aforesaid counties, as often as occasion may require, and the said Peter may make known to you on our part.
In witness, &c., so long as it shall be our pleasure. Witness the King, at Westminster, the 14th day of May.
Enough has now been stated, for the purpose of showing that it was an idle tale to assert that the extinction of these animals occurred in the reign of Edgar. Evidence has been already adduced to show that they existed here, in a wild state, a considerable period after the Conquest; but it is the intention of the author of this paper to go much further, and some proofs will be brought forward of their being in existence for centuries after that event; and some conjectures will be hazarded, respecting the probable period of their final extinction in England.
In the 25th year of Edward I. (1296), John de Engaine, Lord of Blatherwic, died, seized of lands in Pightesse, or Pytesse, in Northamptonshire, found to be held of the King, by service of hunting the wolf, fox, and badger. {294a}
In the reign of Edward II. (1820), John le Wolfhunt, or Wolfhurt, son and heir of John le Wolfhunt, or Wolfhurt, held lands at Wormhill, in Derbyshire, by the service of chasing and taking all wolves that might come into the King’s Forest of the Peak, in that county. {294b}
In the 11th year of Edward III. (1336), John Lord Roos, of Hamlake, had a charter granted to him, by the King, of free warren in lands in Nottinghamshire and Oxfordshire, and also to hunt the fox, wolf, hare, and cat, throughout the King’s forest of Nottinghamshire. {294c}
In the 33rd year of Edward III. (1358), Vitalis Engaine died, seized of part of the lordships of Laxton and Pichesse, in Northamptonshire, held by petit serjeanty, to hunt the wolf whensoever the King should command. {294d}
In the 41st year of Edward III. (1366), Thomas de Engaine, Lord of Blatherwic, died, seized of lands, meadows, and rent, in Pightesse, in Northamptonshire, held by the service of “finding, at his own proper costs, certain dogs, for the destruction of wolves, foxes, martrons [marten cats], cats [wild cats], and other vermine,” within the counties of Northampton, Rutland, Oxford, Essex, and Buckingham. {295a}
Of course it is not pretended, that upon the deaths of any of the before-mentioned personages, who died seized of lands, held by the tenure of hunting or destroying wolves, such a tenure is conclusive evidence that those animals existed at the times of the deaths of those personages respectively, because it may have happened that the lands may have descended from father to son, several times, after the dates of the original royal grants or charters creating such tenures; still, even in that case, enough has been shown to prove that they were not extinct until centuries after the time of King Edgar. Besides which, it must not be forgotten, that the charter before mentioned, of the 11th year of Edward III. (1836), to John Lord Roos, of Hamlake, then gave him a license to hunt the wolf in the King’s Forest of Nottinghamshire, &c., which would have been useless if there had not then been any such animal to hunt. We therefore have some evidence that wolves existed in England in the fourteenth century; but it is very probable that they had been destroyed in the more populous and cultivated counties, although for more than a century longer they might continue to be occasionally met with, in the wild and thinly peopled parts of England, especially in the northern counties.
In the fifteenth century they probably became scarce.
In the 14th year of Edward IV. (1474), that monarch invaded France, and negotiations for a truce were commenced between Louis XI. and Edward, and we learn, from Baker’s _Chronicles_, that King Louis then presented Edward with the handsomest horse which Louis had in his stable, and an ass, and also “a wolf and a wild boar, beasts at that time rare in England.”{295b} Those are the exact words of Baker, and are very interesting, and, with reference to the objects of this paper, very valuable. It will be remarked, that he does not state or insinuate that wolves had been exterminated, or had ceased to exist in England, but merely that they had then become rare. We therefore have got so far towards the latter part of the fifteenth century, and appear not yet to have reached the period of their extinction. I have read somewhere, that it is traditionally stated that they were to be found either in the Forest of Dean or in the Forest of Dartmoor, as late as in the time of Queen Elizabeth; but unfortunately I omitted to take a note of the publication in which it was mentioned; and, although I have since devoted some time in endeavouring to discover it, I have not yet succeeded.
Shakespeare wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and his allusion to England, and also to wolves, is worthy of notice, as showing his impression of their having at one period abounded in England, viz.:—
“O, thou wilt be a wilderness again, Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants.”
SHAKESPEARE’S _Henry IV._ 2nd part, act 4, sc. 4.
Some passages in a very learned and celebrated work—the _Institutes of the Law of England_—by Sir Edward Coke (afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, from that circumstance often called Lord Coke), who was a lawyer of great talents, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, will perhaps excite surprise, and are very important with reference to the subject of this inquiry.
He was born in 1551; was made Solicitor General by Queen Elizabeth in 1592, and Attorney General in 1594. He was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas by James I. in 1606, and Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench in 1613. His celebrated works—the _Commentary upon Sir Thomas Littleton’s Treatise_, and _the Institutes of the Laws of England_—required vast time and labour; and it is almost incredible that they could have been written after he became a judge; and consequently, it may be admitted, as is generally believed, that they were written whilst he was at the bar, and in the reign of Elizabeth.
It is well known that the precincts of the forests in England had courts of their own, and were governed by different laws from the rest of England; and of course, in treating upon the laws of this country, so learned and so accurate a writer, as Coke is admitted to have been, could not avoid noticing them. In the part of his _Institutes_ upon the Forest Courts, he describes the jurisdiction and functions of those tribunals, and the animals to be met with in the forests of England; and, in the quaint and peculiar language incident to writers of the time of Queen Elizabeth, he proceeds to mention the beasts of chase and of the forest. The following are extracts from his work upon that subject:—
“There be many beasts of the forest by the laws of the forests of England. The hart in summer, the hinde in winter, and all that proceed as of them: the buck in summer, the doe in winter, and the proceed of them; the hare, male and female, and their proceed; the wild boar, male and female, and their proceed; and the wolf, male and female, and their proceed; the fox, male and female, and their proceed; the martin, male and female; capreolus the roe, as it appeareth before, is no beast of the forest, but it is a beast of chase.”
“The proceads of the hare, the first year a leveret, the second a hare, the third a great hare. Of a wilde boar: a pig, a hogge, a hog-stear, a boar, and after a sanglier.”
“No beast of the forest that is _solivagum et nocivum_, is venison, as the fox, the wolf, the martin, because they be no meat, but _caro eorum est nociva_.”
“So as the red deer, the fallow deer, the wilde boar, and the hare, are venison. Whereupon these two conclusions in the law of the forest do follow: first, whatsoever beast of the forest is for the food of man is venison, and therewith agreeth Virgil, describing a feast:—
“‘Implentur veteris bacchi pinguisq: ferinæ.’” {297}
It is to be presumed, that a writer, whose works are so accurate as Coke’s are admitted to be, would not have stated that the wolf was an animal of chase in England, at the time when he wrote, in the sixteenth century, in the reign of Elizabeth, if it had then been extinct; and it must be borne in mind, that he has used the present tense in writing of it; which it is not likely that he would have done, if he had intended to write respecting an animal which had formerly been a beast of chase, but which had ceased to exist in England. We have, therefore, got to the point, that the wolf may fairly be believed not to have become extinct in England until at least some time in, or perhaps soon after, the reign of Elizabeth. I am, however, far from contending that it then existed in the southern or midland counties. On the contrary, it appears probable, that when Coke wrote, it had become extinct in all parts of England, except in some few of the most northern counties, of which two are contiguous to Scotland. In the southern parts, it may perhaps be presumed to have ceased to exist about, or soon after, the period of the accession of the Tudors to the throne; and it will be borne in mind that only seventy-three years elapsed between the accession of the first of that family, Henry VII. in 1485, and that of Elizabeth, who was the last of them, in 1558; and that no very extraordinary change took place in the cultivation or population of England, during that period. As we have the clear evidence of writers of such authenticity as Holinshed and Camden, that in the time of Elizabeth, all parts of Scotland abounded with wolves, and as there was nothing to prevent those animals from rambling across the Border, either in search of prey, or for bringing forth their young, or in consequence of any other natural instinct, it would be impossible, at that time, with a scanty population, and with the desolation incident to the unsettled state of the Borders, to keep the northern counties of England always free from them, and to prevent their breeding there. {298} Those parts of England were exposed to the incursions of Borderers and freebooters from Scotland, whose lawless and dangerous habits were almost as intolerable to their own countrymen as to the English, and who principally subsisted by pillage, and rendered life and property insecure, and, as a natural consequence, those parts were very thinly inhabited. Many very large districts in the northern counties consisted of wild wastes, forests, hills, woody valleys, and swamps, with a very scanty and semi-barbarous population: disadvantages which militated very much against the early extermination of savage animals. A change for the better, however, took place in the population, the civilization, and the appearance of the country, about the close of the reign of Elizabeth. I, however, am not aware that any English writer, since the time of Coke, has given us any reason to suppose that wolves were to be found in England after the termination of her reign. We can scarcely suppose that Coke was incorrect in mentioning wolves as beasts of chase in England at the time when he wrote; it seems, however, only reasonable to believe, under all the circumstances, that they were at that time extinct in all the southern parts; but that a few then remained in their fastnesses and retreats in forests, hills, and wild districts, in some of the northern counties of England, and especially in the parts adjacent to Scotland, and furnished employment and sport to the hunters, and that, with the increase of population and cultivation, the clearing away of woods and forests, and the more general use of firearms, they at last became extinct in the northern counties, about the commencement of the seventeenth century, which was near the period of the close of the reign of Elizabeth.
APPENDIX.
No. I.
Extract from the Act of Attainder of the 1st Edward IV., passed against the Lancastrians who had taken part in the second Battle of St. Alban’s, the Battle of Wakefield, and the Battle of Towton.—_Rot. Parl._ 1 Edward IV. (A.D. 1461), vol. v. p. 476, 477, and 478.
“FOR asmoche as Henry, late Kyng Henry the sixt, ayenst the honoure and trouth that owe to be stablisshed in every Christien Prynce, dissimilyng with the right noble and famous Prynce Richard Duc of York, to whome it lyked at the grete and speciall instaunce of the same Henry, and of the Lordes Spuelx and Temporelx, and Commyns of the Reame of Englond, solempnely to hym made, and for the tender and naturall zele and affection that he bare unto the commyn wele, good pollitique, and restful governaunce therof, to take his viage from the Cite of London, toward the North parties of the seid Reame, to represse, subdue and resist the unleefull and inordynat commotion and riotte there bigonne, to the subversion of the seid Cõen wele, politique and restfull governaunce: Natheles procured, stered and excited, ayenst his promisse, and the forme of the Convention and Concorde made bitwene hem of and uppon the right and title of the seid Coroune, roiall power, dignite, estate, preemynence and possession of the seid Reame, the murdre of the same Duc. And where the seid Henry Usurpour, dissimilyng the destruction of other lordes and persones of the same reame, by his writts, called to assist hym to attend uppon his persone, to resiste and represse another commocion of people, by his assent and wille gadered, and waged not oonly in the North parties, but also oute of Scotlond, commyng from the same parties with Margarete late called Quene of Englond, and hir son Edward, late called Prynce of Wales, extendyng to the extreme destruction of the seid Reame, namely of the South parties therof, wherof experience sheweth the clerenes, respect had to the spoile by theym of Godds chirch, of Chalesses, Crosses of sylver, Boxes for the Sacrament, and other onourments longyng therunto, of defoulyng and ravisshing religious wymmen, wedowes and maydens, of unmanly and abhomynable entretyng of wymmen beyng in the naturall labour and bataille of travailyng of child, by the moyne therof piteously disperaged, Heven sorowyng the lost therby of the Soules that shuld have been of the felauship of Cristendom and of the blisse of Heven, not abhorryng of unmanly, unnaturall and beestly cruelte to drawe wymmen beyng in childebedde from their bedds naked, and to spoile hem of all her goods, a piteous desolacion. The same Henry, actour, factour and provoker of the seid commocion, and assentyng of covyne with the seid Margarete, Henry Duc of Somerset, and Henry late Erle of Northumberlond, in a battaille to be shewed unto hym, and offered of fraudulent dissimilacion, in a feld beside the toune of Seint Albones, the XVII day of Feverer last past, not joynyng his persone and blode to the defence, tuition and salvacion of the same Lordes and persones commen to assist hym by his auctorite and commaundement, lyke a victorious and a noble captayne, but lyke a disseyvable coward, ayenst princely and knyghtly duetee, sodenly, privately and shamefully refused theym, sufferyng and procuryng to disseivably th’effucion of their blode, and horrible murdre and deth, not havyng therof sorowe, pitee or compassion; adheryng to the seid Margaret, and to the seid Duc of Somerset, and other Lordes and persones that committed the seid orrible and cruell murdre of the seid Duc of York, and of the Erles of Rutlond and Salesbury, and also of the seid people, in the seid felde beside the seid toune of Seint Albones, yevyng therfor to the seid Duc and other assistyng theym therin, a speciall laude and thank; from thensforth appliyng to theym and to their outrageous and unlawfull riotts and misgovernaunce; after that sufferying wilfully thoo worthy and good Knyghtes, William Lord Bonvile, and Sir Thomas Kiryell, for the prowesse of knyghthode approved in their persones called to the order of the Garter, and William Gower Squier, the Berer of oon of his Baners, whom to he made feith and assurans under Kynges word, proeedyng from his mouth, to kepe and defend theym there from all hurt, joupardie and perell, to be murdred, and after that tyrannyously heded, with grete violence, withoute processe of lawe or any pitee, contrary to his seid feith and promysse, abhomynable in the heryng of all Christen Prynces. For asmoch also as Henry Duc of Somerset, purposyng, ymaginyng and compassyng, of extreme and insaciate malice and violence, to destroy the right noble and famous Prynce of wurthy memorie, Richard late Duc of York, fader to oure Liege and Soverayne Lord Kyng Edward the fourth, and in his lyf verrey Kyng in right of the reame of Englond, singuler protectour lover and defensour of the good governaunce, pollicie, commyn wele, peas and tranquillite therof; and also Thomas Courteney late Erle of Devonshire, Henry Erle of Northumberlond, Thomas Lord Roos, John late Lord Nevill, John Whelpdale late of Lychefeld, Clerk, Philip Lowes late of Thouresby in the counte of Lincoln Clerk, Bawdewyn Fulforth Knyght, Alexander Hody Knyght, Nicholas Latymer Knyght, James Loterell Knyght, Edmund Mountford Knyght, Thomas Fyndern Knyght, Henry Lewes Knyght, John Heron of the Forde Knyght, Richard Tunstall Knyght, Henry Belyngeham Knyght, Robert Whityngham Knyght, William Grymmesby late of London late Squier, Thomas Tunstall late of Thurland in the shire of Lancastr’ Squier, Symond Hammes Knyght, Thomas Dalton late of Lilbourne in the counte of Northumberlond Gentilman, James Dalton late of the same Gentilman, George Dalton late of the same Gentilman, John Clapam late of Skipton in Craven in Yorkshire Yoman, Andrew Trollop late of Guysnes Squier, Antony Notehill Knyght, John Botiller late of Howke in the counte of Dorset Squier, Gawen Lampleugh late of Warkeworth in the shire of Northumberlond Gentilman, Edmund Fyssh late of York Taylleour, Thomas Frysell late of the same Smyth, John Smothyng late of the same Yoman, John Caterall late of Brayton in the counte of York Gentilman, Thomas Barton late of Helmesley in the counte of York Gentilman, William Fyppes late of Sonthduffeld in the counte of York Yoman, Henry Clyff th’ elder late of Lokyngton in the counte of York Yoman, Robert Tomlynson late of Helagh in the counte of York Yoman, and Thomas Barton late of York Mason; at Wakefeld in the shire of York, on Tywesday the xxx day of Decembr’ last past, with grete despite and cruell violence, horrible and unmanly tyrannye, murdred the seid right noble Prynce Duc of York. And where also Henry Duc of Excestr’, Henry Duc of Somerset, Thomas Courteney late Erle of Devonshire, Henry late Erle of Northumberlond, William Vicecount Beaumont, Thomas Lord Roos, John late Lord Clyfford, Leo late Lord Welles, John late Lord Nevill, Thomas Gray Knyght Lord Rugemond Gray, Randolf late Lord Dacre, Humfrey Dacre Knyght, John Morton late Person of Blokesworth in the shire of Dorset Clerk, Rauff Makerell late Person of Ryseby in the shire of Suff’ Clerk, Thomas Mannyng late of New Wyndesore in Berkshire Clerk, John Whelpdale late of Lychefeld in the counte of Stafford Clerk, John Nayler late of London Squier, John Preston late Wakefield in the shire of York Preest, Philip Wentworth Knyght, John Fortescu Knyght, William Tailboys Knyght, Edmund Mountford Knyght, Thomas Tresham Knyght, William Vaux Knyght, Edmund Hampden Knyght, Thomas Fyndern Knyght, John Courteney Knyght, Henry Lewes Knyght, Nicholas Latymer, Knyght, Waltier Nuthill late of Ryston in Holdernes in the shire of York Squier, John Heron of the Forde Knyght, Richard Tunstall Knyght, Henry Belyngeham Knyght, Robert Whityngham Knyght, John Ormond otherwise called John Botillier Knyght, William Mille Knyght, Symonde Hammes Knyght, William Holand Knyght called the Bastard of Excestr’, William Josep’ late of London Squier, Everard Dykby late of Stokedry in the shire of Ruthlond Squier, John Myrfyn late of Suthwerk in the shire of Surr’ Squier, Thomas Philip late of Dertyngton in Devonshire Squier, Thomas Brampton late of Guysnes Squier, Giles Seyntlowe late of London Squier, Thomas Claymond, the seid Thomas Tunstall Squier, Thomas Crawford late of Caleys Squier, John Aldeley late of Guysnes Squyer, John Lenche of Wyche in the shire of Worcestre Squier, Thomas Ormond otherwise called Thomas Botillier Knyght, Robert Bellyngeham late of Burnalshede in the shire of Westmerlond Squier, Thomas Everyngham late of Newhall in the shire of Leycestr’ Knyght, John Penycok late of Waybrigge in the counte of Surr’ Squier, William Grymmesby late of Grymmesby in the shire of Lincoln’ Squier, Henry Ross late of Rokyngham in the shire of Northampton Knyght, Thomas Danyell late of Rysyng in the shire of Norff’ Squier, John Doubiggyng late of the same Gentilman, Richard Kirkeby late of Kirkeby Ireleth in the shire of Lancastr’ Gentilman, William Ackeworth late of Luton in the shire of Bed’ Squier, William Weynsford late of London Squier, Richard Stucley late of Lambehith in the counte of Surr’ Squier, Thomas Stanley late of Carlile Gentilman, Thomas Litley late of London Grocer, John Maydenwell late of Kirton in Lyndesey in the counte of Lincoln, Gentilman, Edward Ellesmere late of London Squier, John Dauson late of Westmynster in the shire of Midd’ Yoman, Henry Spencer late of the same Yoman, John Smothyng late of York Yoman, John Beaumont late of Goodby in the shire of Leyc’ Gentilman, Henry Beaumont late of the same Gentilman, Roger Wharton otherwise called Roger of the Halle, late of Burgh in the shire of Westmerlond Grome, John Joskyn late of Branghing in the shire of Hertf’ Squier, Richard Litestr’ the yonger late of Wakefeld Yoman, Thomas Carr late of Westmynster Yoman, Robert Bollyng late of Bollyng in the shire of York Gentilman, Robert Hatecale late of Barleburgh in the same shire Yoman, Richard Everyngham late of Pontfreyt in the same shire Squier, Richard Fulnaby of Fulnaby in the shire of Lincoln Gentilman, Laurence Hille late of Moch Wycombe in the counte of Buk’ Yoman, Rauff Chernok late of Thorley in the counte of Lancastr’ Gentilman, Richard Gaitford of Estretford in Cley in the shire of Notyngh’ Gentilman, John Chapman late of Wymbourne Mynster in Dorset shire Yoman, and Richard Cokerell late of York Marchaunt; on Sonday called comynly Palme Sonday, the xxix day of Marche, the first yere of his reigne, in a feld bitwene the townes of Shirbourne in Elmett, and Tadcastr’ in the seid Shire of York, called Saxtonfeld and Tawtonfeeld, in the shire of York, accompanyed with the Frensshmen and Scotts, the Kynges Ennemyes, falsely and traiterously ayenst their feith and liegeaunce, there rered werre ayenst the same Kyng Edward, their rightwise, true, and naturall liege Lord, purposyng there and then to have distroyed hym, and deposed hym of his roiall estate, coroune and dignite; and then and there, to that entent, falsely and traiterously moved bataille ayenst his seid astate, shedyng therin the blode of a grete nombre of his subgetts: In the which bataille, it pleased Almyghty God to yeve unto hym, of the mysterie of his myght and grace, the victorie of his ennemyes and rebelles, and to subdue and avoyde th’ effect of their fals and traiterous purpose. And where also the seid Henry, late called Kyng Henry the Sixt, Margarete his wyf, late called Quene of Englond, and Edward her Son, late called Prynce of Wales, and also Henry Duc of Excestre, Henry Duc of Somerset, Thomas Lord Roos, Thomas Grey Knyght Lord Rugemond Gray, in the fest of Seint Marc Evangelist last past, purposyng and ymaginyng the destruction of oure seid Soverayne Lord Kyng Edward, to depose hym of his roiall astate and dignite, procured of James Kyng of Scotts, and of his subgetts, then ennemyes of oure seid Soverayne Lord, their eyde, assistence and armed power, to entre uppon the same oure Soverayne Lord into his seid reame, to put hym from the reigne therof, and to distroy hym; and to that entent, convened with the same James Kyng of Scotts, and ayeinst their feith and liegeaunce, delyvered to hym to his possession and obeisaunce, in the seid Fest, the toune and castell of Berwyk, of oure seid liege Lordes, then beyng their rightwisse, true, and naturall liege Lord, to that ende and effect, that the seid Kyng of Scotts soo than possessed of the seid toune and castell, the key of the Estmarches of Englond, shuld therby have entre, to execute the unjust, untrue, and malicious purpose and entent of the same Henry, Margaret and Edward. And for asmoch also as the seid Margarete, and also Henry Duc of Excestr’, Henry Duc of Somerset, Jasper Erle of Pembroke, James late Erle of Wilteshire, Robert Lord Hungerford, Thomas Mannyng Clerk, John Lax, late Parsoune of Walton in the shire of Somerset Clerk, Henry Lewes Knyght, Robert Whityngham Knyght, John Ormond otherwise called John Botillier Knyght, Frere Robert Gasley, of the ordre of the Freres Prechours, and Thomas Cornewayle Squier, have ayenst their feith and liegeaunce, dyvers tymes sith the fourth day of Marche last past, stured, laboured and provoked the ennemyes of oure seid soverayne Lord Kyng Edward the Fourth, of outeward landes, to entre into his seid reame with grete bataille, to rere werre ayenst his astate within this seid reame, to conquere the same from his possession and obeysaunce, to depose hym of roiall astate, corounes and dignite, and to destroy his moost noble persone and subgetts. And where also the same Margarete, and Edward her son, and also the seid Henry Duc of Excestr’, Thomas Grey Lord Rugemonde Grey, Humfrey Dacre Knyght, Edmund Hampden Knyght, Robert Whityngham Knyght, Henry Bellyngeham Knyght, and Richard Tunstall Knyght, adheryng to the Scotts, ennemyes of oure seid soverayne Lord Kyng Edward the Fourth, convened with the same Scotts, procuryng, desiring and wagyng theym to enter into his seid reame, to make there werre ayenst his Roiall Majeste, bringyng the same Scotts and ennemyes to his cite of Carlile, besegyng and envirounyng it, brennyng the subarbes therof, distroiyng the howses, habitacions and landes of his subgetts nygh therunto, in manere of conquest; purposyng, ayenst their feith and liegeaunce, to have delyvered the seid cite, the key of the Westmarches of Englond, into the possession and obeysaunce of the seid Kyng of Scotts, and to have spoiled the coroune of Englond therof, as they didde of the seid toune of Berwyk. And over that, where the seid Henry, late called Kyng of Englond the Sixt, and also Thomas Lord Roos, Thomas Gray Lord Rugemond Grey, Humfrey Dacre Knyght, John Fortescu Knyght, William Tailboys Knyght, Edmund Mountford Knyght, Thomas Nevill late of Brauncepath in the Bisshopryke of Durham Clerk, Humfrey Nevill late of the same Squier, and Thomas Elwyke late of Caleys Squier, the XXVI day of Juyne last past, at Ryton and Brauncepath in the Bisshopryke of Durham, with standardes and gyturons unrolled, rered werre ayenst oure seid Lord Kyng Edward, purposying to have deposed hym of his roiall astate, coroune and dignite, ayenst their feith and liegeaunce. And for asmoch also as Henry Duc of Excestre, Jasper Erle of Pembroke, and Thomas Fitz Herry late of Herford Squier, at a place called Tutehill, besid’ the toune of Carnarvan in Wales, on Friday next after the fest of Translacion of Seint Edward last past, rered werre ayenst the same oure soverayne Lord, purposyng then and there to have proceeded to his destruction, of fals and cruell violence, ayenst their feith and liegeaunce.”
The act then declares Henry, late called King Henry the Sixth, convicted of high treason, and to forfeit all castles, manors, lordships, lands, &c. &c., parcel of the Duchy of Lancaster; and the said Margaret, late called Queen of England, convicted of high treason; and the said Margaret, and also the said Edward her son, disabled from having or enjoying any name of dignity, pre-eminence, &c. &c.; and declares the said Margaret, and Edward her son, to forfeit all castles, manors, lordships, lands, goods, &c. &c.; and also declares the noblemen comprised in it disabled from having or enjoying any name of dignity, pre-eminence, &c. &c.; and the noblemen, knights, and other persons comprised in the act, convicted of high treason, and to forfeit all their manors, lordships, lands, possessions, &c. to the King; except such as were within the liberty of the Bishop of Durham, which were declared forfeited to the Bishop, who claimed them in right of the Cathedral Church of St. Cuthbert of Durham; within which liberty the Bishops of Durham were alleged to have had immemorially the right to all forfeitures of that description.
No. II.
Extract from the Act of Attainder of 14th Edward IV. passed against some of the Lancastrians who had taken part in the Battles of Barnet, Tewkesbury, &c.—_Rot. Parl._ 14th Edward IV. (A.D. 1475), vol. vi. fos. 144, 145, 146.
“AND also where John Veer late Erl of Oxford, late of Wyvenho in the counte of Essex Knyght, George Veer, late of the same toune Knyght, Thomas Veer late of the same toune Knyght, Robert Harlyston, late of Shymplyng in the counte of Suffolk Squyer, William Godmanston, late of Bromle in the counte of Essex, Squyer, John Durraunt, late of Colleweston in the counte of Northampton Yoman, and Robert Gybbon, late of Wyngfeld in the counte of Suffolk Squyer, in the solempne and high fest of Ester Day, the which was the XIIIIth day of Aprill, the XIth yere of the reigne of our said sovereigne liege Lord, at Barnet in the counte of Hertford, and there and thenne togider assembled theym, with grete multitude of his innaturall subgiettes, rebelles and traytours, felonsle falsle and traiterousle, levied werre agayns Kyng Edward the IIIIth, their naturall liege Lord, his roiall persone then and there beyng, and his baner displayed, entendyng traiterousle then and there the fynall distruction of his said moost roiall persone, purposyng to have distroyd’ hym, and deposed hym of his roiall astate, corone and dignitee, and there and then falsle and traiterousle made and reared werre agayns his astate, sheddyng there the blode of grete nombre of his subgiettes; in the which bataill, it pleased Almyghty God to gyf hym victorie of hys ennemyes and rebelles, and to subdue the effecte of their fals and traiterous purpose. And also where Thomas Tresham late of Sywell in the counte of Northampton Knyght, John Delves, late of Uttokeshater, in the counte of Stafford Squyer, and Robert Baynton, late of Farleston in the counte of Wilteshire Knyght, with grete nombre of rebelles and traytours, assembled theym the IIIth day of the moneth of May, the said XIth yere of the reigne of oure said sovereigne Lord, at Tewkesbury in the counte of Gloucestr’, and there and then felonsle falsle and traiterousle levied werre agayns Kyng Edward the IIIIth, their naturall liege Lord, his roiall persone then and there beyng, and his baner displaied, entendyng traiterousle then and there the fynall destruction of his said moost roiall persone.”
The act then declares the persons comprised in it convicted of high treason, and all their castles, manors, lordships, lands, &c., forfeited to the King, and also declares that they were disabled from having or enjoying any name of dignity, pre-eminence, &c. &c.
No. III.
Extract from the Act of Attainder of 1st Henry VII., passed against the Yorkists who had taken part in the Battle of Bosworth.—_Rot. Parl._ 1st Henry VII. (A.D. 1485), vol. vi. fos. 275 and 276.
“FORASMOCHE as every king, prince, and liege lord, the more hie that he be in estate and prehemenence, the more singularly he is bound to the advancement and preferring of that indefferent vertue justice; and promoteinge and rewardinge vertue, and bi oppressinge and punishinge vice: Wherefore oure soveraigne lord, calleinge unto hys blessed remembraunce thys high and grete charge adjoyned to hys royall majestie and estate, not oblivious nor puttinge out of hys godly mind the unnaturall, mischeivous, and grete perjuries, treasons, homicides and murdres, in shedding of infants blood, with manie other wronges, odious offences, and abominac̃ons ayenst God and man, and in es̃pall oure said soveraigne lord, committed and doone by Richard late Duke of Glouc’, callinge and nameinge hymself, by usurpac̃on, King Richard the IIId; the which, with John late Duke of Norff’, Thomas Erle of Surrie, Francis Lovell Kñt Visc’ Lovell, Walter Devereux Kñt, late Lord Ferrers, John Lord Zouche, Robert Harrington, Richard Charleton, Richard Ratcliffe, William Berkley of Welley, Robert Brakenbury, Thomas Pillkinton, Robert Midletoune, James Harrington, Kñts, Walter Hopton, William Catesby, Roger Wake, William Sapcott, Humfrey Stafford, William Clerke of Wenlocke, Jeffrey St̃ Jermin, Richard Watkins, Herrauld of Armes, Richard Revell of Derbishyre, Thomas Poulter of the countee of Kent the younger, John Walsh otherwyse called Hastinges, John Kendale, late secretarie to the said Richard late Duke, John Buck, Andrew Ratt, and William Bramton of Burford, the XXIst daie of August, the first yere of the reigne of oure soveraigne lord, assembled to theyme atte Leicestre in the countee of Leicestre a grete hoste, traiterously intendinge, imagininge and conspireinge the destrucc̃on of the kinges royall ps̃oune, oure soveraigne leige lord. And they, with the same hoste, with banners spred, mightyly armed and defenced with all manner armes, as gunnes, bowes, arrowes, speres, gleves, axes, and all other manner articles apt or needfull to gef and cause mightie battaille agen oure said soveraigne lord, kept togedre from the said XXIId daie of the said month thanne next followinge, and theyme conduced to a feld within the said shyre of Leicestre, there bi grete and continued deliberacõne, traiterously levied warre ayenst oure said soveraine lord, and his true subjects there being in his service and assistance under a banner of oure said soveraine lord, to the subversion of this realme, and com̃on weale of the same.”
The act then proceeds to declare Richard Duke of Gloucester otherwise called King Richard III., and all the noblemen, knights, and other persons comprised in the act, convicted of high treason, and disabled and forejudged of all honours, dignity, pre-eminences, &c. &c., and all their castles, manors, lordships, lands, goods, &c., forfeited to the King.
No. IV.
Proclamation by Henry VII., for enforcing order and discipline in his Army; and Extract from a Journal of the March and Proceedings of Henry VII. previously to the Battle of Stoke; from a manuscript in the Cottonian Library.—Lelandi _Collectanea_, vol. iv. p. 210.
“THE King our souveraigne lorde straytly charge and comaunde, that no maner of man, of whatsoever state, degre, or condition he bee, robe ne spoyle any chyrche, ne take oute of the same any ornament theron belonging, nor touche ne sett hande on the pixe wherein the blessed sacrament is conteynede, nor yet robbe ne spoyle any maner man or woman, upon peyne of deth. Also that no maner of persones ne persones whatsoever they bee make no quarell to any man, nor sease nor vex ne troble any man by body or goodes for any offense, or by color of any offence hertofor doon or comyttede agenst the roial Majestie of the King our saide souveraigne lorde, withoute his auctoritie and especial comaundement geven unto hym or theym, that so doon in that behalfe upon peyne of deth. Also that no maner of persones ne persones whatsoever they bee, ravishe no religios woman, nor mannes wiff, doughter, maydene, ne no mannes ne womans servaunt, or take, ne presume to take, any maner of vytayll, horsemet, nor mannes mete, withoute paying therfor the reasonable pryce therof, assisede by the clerke of the market or other the king’s officers therfor ordeynede, upon peyne of deth. Also that no maner of persones ne persones, whatsoever thay bee, take uppon theym to logge theymsilfs, nor take no maner of logging, ne harbygage, but suche as shal be assignede unto hym or theym by the King’s herbygeours, nor disloge no man, nor chaunge no logging after that he be assignede, without advyse and assent of the said harbygeours, uppon peine of imprisonment and to be punyshede at the wille of our saide souveraigne lorde. Also that no maner of man, whatsoever he bee, make no quarell with any other man, whatsoever be bee, for no maner of cause, old ne newe; ne make no maner of fray, within the hooste ne withoute, upon peyne of imprisonment and to bee punishede according to ther trespas and defautes. And if ther happen any suche quarell of affray to be made by any evyll disposede personnes, that then no maner of man, for any acquentaunce or filiship that they bee of, take noo parte with no suche mysdooers in any suche affrayes or quarells, upon peyne of imprisonment and to be punyshed at the King’s wille. But that every man endevor hymsilf to take al suche mysdooers and brynge theym to the marshalls ward, to be punyshed according to ther desertes. Also that no maner of personne, whatsoever he bee, hurte, troble, bete, ne lette no maner of personne, man, woman, or childe bryngyng any vitayle unto the Kings hooste, upon payne of imprisonment and his bodye to bee at the Kings wille. And over this, that every man, being of the reteyne of our saide souveraigne lorde, at the furste sounde or blaste of the trumpet to saddil hys hors; at the 2d doo brydell; and at the 3d be redy on horsebake to wayte upon his highnesse, upon peyne of imprisonment. Also, that no maner of personne, whatsoever he bee, make no skryes, showtings, or blowing of hornesse in the Kings hooste after the wache bee sett, upon peyne of imprisonment and his bodye to be at the Kings wille. Also, that no vagabonde, nor other, folowe the Kings hooste, but suche as be reteynede, or have maisters within the same, upon peyne of imprisonment and to bee punyshede in example for other; and that no coman wooman folow the Kings hooste, upon payne of imprisonment and openly to be punyshede in example of al other. Also, whansoever it shall please the King our souveraigne lorde to comaunde any of hys officers of armes to charge any thing in his name, by hys high comaundement, or by the comaundement of his counstable or marshall, that it be observed and kept, upon payne of imprisonment and his body to be punyshed at the Kings pleasure.
“From thens” [Kenilworth] “the King procedede to Coventrye, wher the Bishop of Wynchester toke his leve and went to the Quene and the Prince, and the substance of his companye waytede upon the King, under the standerde of his neveu th Erle of Devonshir. From Coventrie the King remeved unto Leycester, wherby the comaundement of the mooste Reverende Fader in God, th Archbishop of Canterbury, then Chanceller of England, the Kings proclamations were put in execusion. And in especyal voydyng comen women and vagabonds, for ther wer imprisonede great nomber of both. Wherfor ther was more reste in the King’s hooste, and the better rule. And on the morow, which was on the Monday, the King lefte ther the forsaide Reverende Fader in God and roode to Loughborough; and the saide Lorde Chancellors folks were commyttede by his neveu, Robert Morton, unto the stander of th Erle of Oxinforde, in the fowarde. And at Loughborough, the stokks and prisonnes wer reasonabley fylled with harlatts and vagabonds. And after that were but fewe in the hooste unto the tyme the felde was doon. On Tewsday the King remevede and lay al nyght in the felde, under a wode called Bonley Rice. And on the Wednesday the King’s marshalls and herbigers of his hoste did not so welle ther diligence that way, for when the King remevede ther was no propre grounde appoyntede wher the Kings hooste shulde logge that nyght hen following, but it was a royal and a marvelouse faire and a wele tempered day. And the King, with his hooste, wandrede her and ther a great espace of tyme, and so came to a fayre longe hille, wher the King sett his folks in array of batell, that is to say, a bow and a bill at his bak, and al the fowarde were wele and warely loggede under the hille to Notyngham warde. And when the King hade sene his people in this fayr array, he roode to a village 3 myles a this side Notingham, on the highway syde, wher in a gentilmannes place his grace logede. And in that village, and in a bene felde to Notingham warde, lougede al his batell; whiche evening wer taken certeyn espies, whiche noysede in the contrey that the King had ben fledde. And sume were hangede on the ashe at Notyngham Brygge ende. And on the morowe, whiche was Corpus Christi day, after the King had harde the dyvyne servyce in the pariche chirche, and the trumpetts hadde blowne to horse, the King, not letting his hoste to understand his entente, rode bakewarde to see, and also welcome the Lord Strannge, whichc brought with hym a great hoste, inow to have beten al the Kings enemies, only of my Lorde his faders th’ Erle of Derbye folks and his. And al wer fayre embaytailled, whiche unknowne turnyng to the hooste, causede many folks for to marvaille. Also the Kings standerde and muche cariage folowde after the King, unto the tyme the King was advertysede by Garter King of Armes, whom the King comaunded to turne them al ageyn, whiche so dide theym al in bataile on the hef heder side of the great hille a this side Notingham, unto the tyme the King came. That nyght the Kings hooste lay under the ende of all that hille towarde Notingham to Lenton warde, and his fowarde befor hym to Notyngham Bruge warde. And th Erle of Derbyes host on the Kings lifte hand to the meadowes besides Lenton. And that evenyng ther was a great skrye, at wiche skrye ther flede many men; but it was great joy to see how sone the King was redye and his true men in array. And from thens, on the Friday, the King, understanding that his enemyes and rebelles drew towards Newarke warde, passing by Southwelle and the furside of Trente, the King with his hoste remevede thedarwards, and logged that nyght beside a village callede Ratcliff, 9 miles oute of Newarke. That evening ther was a great skrye, whiche causede many cowards to flee; but th Erle of Oxinforde, and al the nobles in the fowarde with hym, wer sone in a good array and in a fayr bataile, and so was the King and al the very men that ther wer. And in this estrye I harde of no man of worship that fledde but raskells.
“On the morne, which was Satirday, the King erly arros and harde 2 masses, wherof the Lorde John Fox, Bishop of Excester, sange the ton; and the King had 5 good and true men of the village of Ratecliff, whiche shewde his grace the beste way for to conduyt his hoost to Newark, whiche knew welle the countrey, and shewde wher wer marres, and wher was the river of Trent, and wher wer vilages or grovys for bushements, or strayt weyes, that the King might conduyt his hoost the better. Of whiche guides the King gave 2 to th’ Erle of Oxinforde to conduyt the fowarde, and the remanent reteyned at his pleasure. And so in good order and array, before 9 of the clok, beside a village called Stook, a large myle oute of Newarke, his fowarde recountrede his enemyes and rebells, wher by the helpe of Almighty God, he hadde the victorye. And ther was taken the lad that his rebells callede King Edwarde, whos name was indede Lambert, by a vaylent and a gentil esquier of the Kings howse, called Robert Bellingham. And ther was slayne th’ Erle of Lincoln John, and dyvers other gentilmen, and the Vicount Lorde Lovell put to flight. And ther was slayne of Englishe, Duche, and Irishemen M IIII. And that day the king made 13 baneretts and LII knyghts, whose names ensueth.
“Theis bee the names of the baneretts:
Sir Gilbert Talbot, Theis III wer made byfor the batell. Sir John Cheyny,
Sir William Stow,
“And after the batel were made the same day:
Sir John of Aronndell, Sir Richard Crofte,
Sir Thomas Cokesay, Sir Humfrey Stanley,
Sir John Forstin, Sir Richarde de la Ver,
Sir Edward Benyngfelde, Sir John Mortymer,
Sir James Blount, Sir William Trouthbek.
“The names of the knyghts made at the same bataill:
Sir James Audley, Sir James Harrington,
Sir Edward Norres, Syr John Devenyshe,
Sir Robert Clifforde, Sir John Sabarotts,
Sir George Opton, Sir Thomas Lovell,
Sir Robert Abroughton, Sir Humfrey Savage,
Sir John Paston, Sir Antony Browne,
Sir Henry Willoughby, Sir Thomas Grey,
Sir Richard Pole, Sir Nicholas Vaux,
Sir Richard Fitzlewes, Sir William Tyrwytt,
Sir Edwarde Abrough, Sir Amyas Pallet,
Sir George Lovell, Sir Rauff Langforth,
Sir John Longvile, Sir Henry Bould,
Sir Thomas Terell, Sir William Redmyll,
Sir Roger Bellyngam, Sir Thomas Blount,
Sir William Carew, Sir Robert Cheyny,
Sir William Trouthbeck, Sir John Wyndan,
Sir Thomas Pooll, Sir John A. Musgrove,
Sir William Vampage, Sir George Nevell,
Sir James Parker, Sir Raf Shirley,
Syr Edwarde Darell, Sir William Litilton,
Sir Edwarde Pykerynge, Sir William Norres, {315a}
Sir Thomas of Wolton, Syr Thomas Hanseide,
Syr William Sandes, Sir Christofer Wroughton,
Syr Robert Brandon, Syr Thomas Lyn,
Syr Mores Barkley, Sir Moses Aborough,
Sir John Dygby, Syr Thomas Manyngton.
No. V.
Extract from the Act of Attainder against John, Earl of Lincoln, and his Adherents.—_Rotul. Parl._ 3rd Henry VII. (A.D. 1487), vol. vi. fo. 397.
“FORASMOCH as the XIXth day of the moneth of Marche last past John, late Erle of Lincolne, nothyng consideryng the greate and sovereygn kyndnes that oure sovereygne leige lorde that nowe ys, at dyvers sundry tymes contynuelly shewed to the said late erle, but the contrarye to kynd and naturall remembraunce his faith trouth and allegeaunce conspired and ymagyned the most dolorouse and lamentable murder, deth, and destruction of the roiall psone of oure said sovereygne and leige lorde, and also distruction of all this realme, and to pform his said malicious purpose traiterously departed to the parties beyond the see, and ther accompanyed hymselfe with many other false traitours and enemyes to our said sovereygne leige lorde, by longe tyme contynuyng his malyce, prepared a grete navye for the coostes of Brabon, and arryved in the portes of Irland, where he, with Sr̃ Henry Bodrugan {315b} and John Beaumound, Squier, ymagyned and conspired the destruction and deposition of oure said sovereygne liege lorde; and for the execution of the same ther, the XXIIIIth day of May last passed at the cite of Develyn, contrarie to his homage and faith, trouth, and allegiaunce, trayterously renownced, revoked, and disclaymed his owne said most naturall sovereygene leige lord the kyng, and caused oone Lambert Symnell, a child of X yere of age, sonne to Thomas Symnell, late of Oxforde, joynonre, to be proclamed, erecte, and reputed as kyng of this realme, and to hym did feith and homage, to the grete dishonour and despite of all this realme, and frome thens contynuyng in his malicious and trayterous purpose arived with a greate navie in Furnes, in Lancashire, the IIIIth day of June last past, accompanyed with a greate multytude of straungers with force and armes, that ys to saye, swerdys, speris, marespikes, bowes, gonnes, harneys, brigandynes, hawberkes, and many other wepyns and harneys defensible, and frome thens the same day he, with Sr̃ Thomas Broughton, knyght, Thomas Haryngton, Robert Percy, of Knaresburgh, in the countie of Yorke, Richard Harleston, John a Broughton, brother unto the said Sr̃ Thomas Broughton, knyght, Thomas Batell, James Haryngton, Edward Frank, Richard Middelton, squiers; Robert Hilton, Clement Skelton, Alexander Apilby, Richard Banke, Edmund Juse, Thomas Blandrehasset, gentilmen; John Mallary, of Lichbarowe, in the countie of Northton, Robert Mallary, of Fallesley, in the same countie, Gyles Mallary, of Grevysnorton, in the same countie, William Mallary, of Stowe, in the same countie, Robert Mannyng, late of Dunstaple, Willyam Kay, of Halyfax, gentilman, Roger Hartlyngton, Richard Hoiggessone, John Avyntry, Rowland Robynson, yomen; with many other ill-disposed psones and traytours, defensible and in like warrely maner arrayed to the nomber of VIIIM persones ymagynyng, compassyng, and conspiryng the deth and deposition, and utter destruction of oure said soveraygne leige lorde the kyng, and the subversion of all this realme, for the execucion and pfourmyng of the said myschevous and traiterous purpose contynuelly in hostyle maner passed fro thens from place to place to they come to Stoke, in the countie of Notyngham; where the XVI day of June last past, with baners displayed, levied warre ayenst the psone of his sovereygne and naturall leige lorde, and gave to hym myghty and stronge batell, trayterously and contrarie to all trouth, knyghthode, honour, allegeaunce, feith, and affyaunce, intendyng utterly to have slayne, murdred, and cruelly destroyed oure foresaid leige lorde and most Cristen prynce, to the uttermost and grettest adventure of the noble and roiall persone of oure seid leige lorde, destruction, dishonour, and subversion of all this realme. For the which malicious compassed greate and heynous offence, not alloonly commytted ayen oure said sovereygne lorde, but also ayenst the unyversall and comen wele of this realme, ys requisite sore and grevous punycion; and also for an example hereafter that non other be bold in like wise to offend: Therfore be it enacted by oure sovereygne lorde the Kyng by the advyse of all the lordes sp̃uall and temporall, and the com̃ons in this present parliament assembled, and by the auctorite of the same, that the said John, late Erle of Lincoln, Sr̃ Henry Bodrugan, Thomas Broughton, knyghtes; John Beaumond, Thomas Haryngton, Robert Percy,” &c. &c., “be reputed, jugged, and taken as traytours, and convicte and attaynte of high treason,” &c. &c. And the act proceeds to declare all their castles, lordships, manors, lands, goods, &c. &c. forfeited to the King.
No. VI.
Extract from the Act of Attainder of 11th Henry VII., against Francis Lovel, late Lord Lovel.—_Rot. Parl._ 11th Henry VII. (A.D. 1495), vol. vi. fo. 502.
“FORASMOCH as John, late Erle of Lincoln, Fraunces Lovell, late Lord Lovell, and divers other with theym, trayterously ymagynyng and compassyng the deth and destruccion of our sovereign lord the king, assembled themself with other evil disposed peopull, to the nombre of VM p̃sones, at Stoke, in the countie of Notyngham, the XXth day of June, the IId yere of the reigne of our said sovereign lord the kinge that nowe is, and then and there, for the pformaunce of their cursed myschevous and wreched purpose, in pleyne feild, at the same Stoke, in the said countie, with their baners displayed, contrary to theyr alligeaunce ayenst the king our and their naturall sovereign lord, levied and rered warre and made bataille ayenst him, for whiche traiterous and unnatural dede the said John, Erle of Lincolne, with dyvers other then and there traiterously offendyng, were late by auctorite of parliament, in a parliament holden at Westm’, the IIIde yere of the reigne of the king our sovereigne lord that now is, deemed convict and atteynt of high treason; in the whiche acte of atteyndre the said Fraunces Lovell was ignorauntly left oute and omitted, to the moost perillous ensample of other being of suche traiterous myndes. Wherfore be it ordeyned, enacted, and established, by the lordes sp̃uall and temporall, and the comons in this p̃sent parliament assembled, and by auctorite of the same, that the said Fraunces stande and be deemed adjuged, convicte, and atteynte of high treason, for his rehersed trayterous dede, and forfeite to the kinge,” all the honours, castles, manors, lordships, possessions, hereditaments, &c. &c., which he possessed on the 20th June, in 2nd Henry VII.
This is a most extraordinary statute. It commences with calling Lord Lovel, the “late Lord Lovell,” without there appearing to be any certain proof of his death; and it is contradictory of the act attainting the Earl of Lincoln and others (see Appendix No. V.), which alleges, that their forces amounted to 8000 men, and that the battle took place on the 16th of June; whilst in this the insurgent troops are only stated to be 5000, and the 20th of June is mentioned as the day of the battle. It is also scarcely credible, that the attainder of Lord Lovel could have been, as alleged, inadvertently omitted in the former statute; nor is it easy to assign any plausible reason, why an avaricious sovereign like Henry VII. should allow eight years to elapse after the insurrection, without passing this act of attainder, when the unhappy nobleman’s large possessions offered so tempting a bait. Indeed, if Henry’s object, in passing it, were to be enabled legally to seize upon them, such a statute appears unnecessary, because Lord Lovel was attainted by the act of 1st Henry VII., for fighting at Bosworth (see Appendix No. III.); and there is no reason to suppose that this attainder was ever reversed, or that he ever submitted himself to allegiance to Henry.
There is a tradition, that Lord Lovel escaped from the field of battle of Stoke, and took refuge in the north of England, and there, like Lord Clifford, lived several years in obscurity, concealed from his enemies; but it does not appear to be authenticated or supported by any historical authority.
No. VII.
Copy of a Letter given in Banks’s _Dormant and Extinct Baronage_, vol. ii. p. 321, from William Cowper, Esq., Clerk of the Parliament.
“_Hertingfordbury Park_, 9_th_ _August_, 1737.
“Sir,—I met to’ther day with a memorandum I had made some years ago, perhaps not unworthy your notice. You may remember that Lord Bacon, in his _History of Henry VII._, giving an account of the battle of Stoke, sais of the Lord Lovel, who was among the rebels, that he fled, and swame over the Trent on horseback, but could not recover the further side by reason of the steepenesse of the banke, and so was drowned in the river. But another report leaves him not there, but that he lived long after in a cave or vault.
“Apropos to this; on the 6th of May, 1728, the present Duke of Rutland related in my hearing, that about twenty years then before, viz., in 1708, upon occasion of new laying a chimney, at Minster Luvel, there was discovered a large vault or room under ground, in which was the entire skeleton of a man, as having been sitting at a table, which was before him, with a book, paper, pen, &c. &c.; in another part of the room lay a cap, all much mouldered and decayed. Which the family and others judged to be this Lord Luvel, whose exit has hitherto been so uncertain.”
See also, Additions to Camden’s _Magna Britannia_ (by Gough), edition of 1789, vol. ii. fo. 289, where the same circumstance is narrated, with the addition, that the clothing of the body seemed to have been rich; that it was seated in a chair, with a table and a mass-book before it; and also that, upon the admission of the air, the body soon fell to dust.
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. {321}
Page 1, note 2, After the words, “and May, 1856,” add “and also in September, 1856, which was after part of this work had been sent to the press.”
„ 2. In the last line of note *, after the words, “according to,” insert the name, “Fabyan.”
„ 3. Before “Market Drayton,” insert “Hodnet, and.”
„ 5. After the words, “offered battle to his enemies,” add “2,” and at the foot of the page, insert as note “2”: “A portion of the suburbs of Shrewsbury was intentionally burnt; that measure being considered requisite for the safety of the town, in consequence of the approach of Hotspur’s army.—_Rot. Parl._ 9 Henry IV., vol. iii. fo. 619.”
„ 5. For note “2,” substitute “3.”
„ 10. Instead of “fragments of human bones, armour, spurs,” read “human bones, fragments of armour, spurs.”
„ 10. For “the Rev. J. O. Hopkins,” read “the late Rev. J. O. Hopkins.”
„ 11, note 4. For “very many of the bones of men,” read “the bones of many men.”
„ 22, note 2. Instead of “18th of February, 1477,” read “18th of February, 1477–8.”
„ 28, note 2. For “the 16th of February, 1495,” read “the 16th of February, 1494–5.”
„ 35. Insert the figures “35” at the head of the page.
„ 39, note 3. For “28th of April, 1442,” read “29th of April, 1441.”
„ 44, note 2. Before the name “Hall,” insert “Fabyan.”
„ 49. For “1459,” read “1460.”
„ 50. In the second line of the continuation of the note, before the name “Hall,” insert “Fabyan.”
Page 53, note 4. Add, “Dugdale and Stow state that the Duke of York left London on the 2nd of December, and arrived at Sandal on Christmas eve. If he consumed twenty-two days in his march from London to Sandal, the delay seems very extraordinary.”
„ 54, note 3. Instead of “Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset (the son of Edmund Beaufort, grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster), after the death,” read “Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was the son of Edmund Beaufort (grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster), who, after the death.”
„ 54. In the seventh line of the same note, instead of “his eldest son, Henry,” read “The eldest son, Henry.”
„ 55, note 1. After the words, “fighting on behalf of Henry VI., and there buried,” add, “Leland, in his _Itinerary_, vol. vi. fo. 93 [p. 82], also states that Thomas Earl of Devonshire was slain at Tewkesbury, and buried there.”
„ 58. Instead of “His army, surrendered and overwhelmed with numbers,” read “His array nearly surrounded and overwhelmed by numbers.”
„ 64, note 2. Instead of “_Quære_, has not the lane been,” read “The lane is;” and instead of “which formerly stood,” read “which stands, or very recently stood.”
„ 68. In the continuation of the note, after the words, “vol. v. fo. 464,” add, “and Fabyan, fo. 218.”
„ 72. In the continuation of the note, for “21st of December, 1493,” read “21st of December, 1495.”
„ 73. For “his forces courageously attacked the army,” read “his army courageously attacked the forces.”
„ 73. At the end of note 4, add, “Fabyan, fo. 627, calls him a knyght of Wales.”
„ 92, note 1. Instead of “the Rev. George Townsend,” read “the Rev. George Fyler Townsend;” and instead of “p. 12,” insert “pages 12 to 16.”
„ 99, note 1. After the words, “each horseman,” add, “in marching order.”
„ 103, note 4. After the words, “battles of Wakefield,” insert “[See Chap. IV. p. 60.]”
Page 104, note 1. After the words, “Dugdale’s _Baronage_,” add “vol. i.;” and after the passage, “Leland’s _Coll._ vol. ii. p. 715,” omit “[500],” and insert “[498], in which is the following statement, ‘Syr John Nevel the Erle of Westmerlandes brother and Andrew Trollop were killid at this tyme.’”
„ 111. After the words, “were restored,” add, “4,” and as a note at the foot of the page, insert, “4 Leland mentions the titles and rank conferred by Edw. IV. upon his friends and adherents, as follows:—
Thomas Blunte made Lord Montejoy William Hastinges made Lorde Hastinges.
“‘Edward at his coronation creatid his brother George Duke of Clarence; and Richard the younger, Duke of Gloucester; the Lord Montacute, the Erle of Warwike’s brother, the Erle of Northumbreland; William Stafford Esquier, Lord Staford of Southwike; Syr [William] Herbart, Lord Herbart; and after Erle of Pembroke; and the saide Lord Staford Erle of Devonshire; the Lord Gray of Ruthine, Erle of Kent; the Lord Bourchier Erle of Essex; the Lord John of Bokingham, {323} Erle of Wyltshire; Syr Thomas Blunt Knight, the Lord Montjoye; Syr John Haward, Lord Haward; William Hastinges, Lord Hastinges and Greate Chambrelayn; and the Lorde Ryvers; Denham Esquyer, Lord Deneham; and worthy as is afore shewid.’—Lel. _Collect._, vol. ii. p. 715, 716 [449].”
“It is of course admitted, that Edward at his coronation ennobled his brothers the Duke of Clarence and Duke of Gloucester; but Leland appears to have expressed himself either not clearly, or not with his usual accuracy, with respect to the dates of the conferring of the titles upon several of the other personages, before mentioned, as may be easily ascertained by a reference to the works of Ralph Brooke, or Dugdale; from which it plainly appears, that although Edward did not forget eventually to reward many of his supporters and adherents with rank and titles, yet in some instances several years elapsed, after his coronation, before they were ennobled, or, as the case might be, were advanced in the peerage.”
Page 117, note 2. Instead of “ocnnected,” read “connected.”
„ 123. Instead of “called by Stow,” read “called by Leland and Stow.”
„ 123, note 2. Add before the name “Stow,” the words, “Lel. _Itinerary_, vol. vi. fo. 17 [p. 16].”
„ 127, note 4. Instead of “des Mœurs,” read “sur les Mœurs.”
„ 140. For “right hand to be,” read “right hard to be.”
„ 142, note 1. For “The mills were,” read “The Mills are.”
„ 143, note 1. After the words, “in the abbey church there,” add, “Leland, in his _Itinerary_, vol. vi. fo. 92 [p. 81], states that she died at the Castle of Warwick, on the 22nd of December, 1476, and was buried at Tewkesbury, of which she was the patroness.”
„ 145, note 1. For “Sanderson’s,” read “Sandford’s.”
„ 149, note 3. For “Holme Castle,” read “Holme Ground.”
„ 162. Introduce as note 1, to the words, “third husband of his mother,” 1 as follows:—
“Margaret Beaufort, sole daughter and heiress of John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, became Countess of Richmond by her marriage with her first husband, Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond; her second husband was Sir Henry Stafford (a son of Humphrey Stafford, first Duke of Buckingham, slain at the battle of Northampton, and a brother of Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Stafford, slain at the first battle of St. Alban’s, and also a brother of John Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire); and her third husband was Thomas Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby. The Countess of Richmond had only one child, viz., Henry Earl of Richmond, afterwards King Henry VII., by her marriage with Edmund Earl of Richmond (see Pedigree No. 4, chap. ix. p. 201); and she had not any children either by her second or third husband, as if, to use the words of Sandford, in his _Genealogical History_, p. 319, ‘she had been designed to be the mother of a king onely.’ She lived to see her son Henry VII. and her grandson Henry VIII. successively kings, and died in the first year of the reign of the latter, on the 3rd July, 1509, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.”
Page 162. For note “1” read “2,” and in the note, for “Ann Beam” read “Anne Beam.”
„ 170. After the words, “town’s people,” add, “and there is reason to believe that they were got rid of, by being thrown into the river at the end of Bow Bridge, at Leicester;” “borne out of the city, and contemptuously bestowed under the end of Bow Bridge, which giveth passage over a branch of Stoure, upon the west side of the towne.”—See Speed’s _Annals_, fo. 936; see also Thorsby’s _Views in Leicestershire_, p. 338: and instead of the words, “were deposited,” insert “had been deposited.”
„ 170, note 1. After “Hutton, 143,” add “Sandford’s _Genealogical History_, p. 410. A tablet has been recently (in 1856) put up on one of the new buildings near Bow Bridge, with an inscription treating the locality as if it were the supposed place of the final interment of Richard III.; but although it may perhaps be a disappointment to those who have caused the tablet to be placed there, to learn that the correctness of their theory is not admitted by others, still it is only proper to mention, that there does not appear to be any authority for such a supposition: indeed, after his remains had been pulled out of the grave and got rid of at the river, it is not likely that anybody would know or care what became of them.”
„ 173. Instead of “which he afterwards gave,” read “which was afterwards given.”
„ 180. In note 1, instead of “chap. iv.” read chap. “v.”
„ 189. For “the cliff occupied by his left wing, was, as before observed, almost inassailable,” read, “the cliff occupied, as before observed, by his left wing, was almost inassailable.”
„ 193, note 1. Instead of “[500],” read “[498].”
„ 203. After the words, “in the fifteenth century,” insert “and had no relation to the wars of York and Lancaster.”
„ 210, note 2, add “_MS. Chronicle_, by Warkworth, p. 16.”
„ 274. Instead of “the Brooke Farm estate,” read “the Brooke Farm.”
Page 289. For “ou m’a assuire,” read “on m’a assuré.”
„ 294. After the words, “in that county,” add the figure “2.”
„ 296. For “the Institutes of England,” read “the Institutes of the Laws of England.”
„ 298, note 1. Instead of the words, “there were not any wolves in England,” insert “wolves did not appear in England.” He uses the following expression respecting them: “though none of those animals appear at present in England, nor on the borders toward Scotland, though very common in that kingdom.”
INDEX.
A.
ACTON, Robert, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 148.
Act of attainder of 1st Edward IV., against persons who had been engaged at the second battle of St. Alban’s, the battle of Wakefield, and the battle of Towton, 107, 301.
Act of attainder of 38th Henry VI., against persons who had been engaged at the battle of Blore Heath, and other alleged offences, 28.
Act of attainder of 14th Edward IV., against persons who had been engaged at the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury, 308.
Act of attainder of 1st Henry VII., against persons who had been engaged at the battle of Bosworth, 309.
Act of attainder of 3rd Henry VII., against John Earl of Lincoln, and others, who had been engaged at the battle of Stoke, 315.
Act of attainder of 11th Henry VII., against Francis Lord Lovel, for having been engaged at the battle of Stoke, 317.
Adbright, Hussee, 18, 19.
Alban’s, St., first battle of, 2 (note), 23 (note), 43 (note), 54 (note).
Alban’s, St., second battle of, 82.
Alderley, Cheshire, 245.
Amyon (or Ambien) Hill and Wood, near Market Bosworth, 160, 162.
Anjou, Margaret of.—_See_ “Queen Margaret.”
Anjou, René Duke of, 42 (note), 147.
Anne, Queen, wife of Richard III.—_See_ “Queen Anne.”
Arquebuse, harquebus, hacquebut, hackbut, or hagbut, 214 to 244.
Artillery, occasional use of, by the English, in sieges of the fourteenth century, 213 to 216.
Artillery, general use of, by the English, in war, in the fifteenth century, 217 to 244.
Arundel, Sir John, 133.
Audley, James Touchet, Lord, 25; slain at Blore Heath, 26.
Audley, Sir Humphrey, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146.
B.
Banbury, battle of, 193, 199.
Barnet, battle of, 205.
Barrow, Henry, slain at Tewkesbury, 148.
Basilisk, 220.
Battlefield, and Battlefield Church, 7 to 19.
Battlewell House and Battlewell Gate, near Evesham, 203.
Bear, formerly wild in England, 287.
Beauchamp, of Powick, William Lord, 185.
Beauchamp, Sir Richard, governor of the city and castle of Gloucester, 135.
Beaufort, Lord John, slain at Tewkesbury, 133, 142.
Beaumont, John Viscount, slain at Northampton, 46.
Beaumont, William Viscount, 103.
Beaver, formerly wild in England, 288.
Bedford, Jasper Tudor, Duke of, previously Earl of Pembroke, 69, 133, 166, 180, 186; extraordinary and abrupt changes of fortune of, 69 (note).
Berners, John Bourchier, Lord, 118.
Blore Heath, battle of, 21.
Blount, Sir Walter, slain at Shrewsbury, 7, 8, 111 (note).
Boar, wild, formerly in England, 287, 295, 297.
Bombard, 219 to 244.
Bonvile, William Lord, put to death after the second battle of St. Alban’s, 82, 83.
Booth, Sir Robert, said to have been slain at Blore Heath, 264, 265.
Bosworth, battle of, 157.
Bourchier, Thomas, Cardinal, and Archbishop of Canterbury, 40, 83.
Bourchier, Henry Viscount (originally Earl of Ewe, and afterwards Earl of Essex), 41, 44.
Bourchier, Humphrey Lord Cromwell, slain at Barnet, 194.
Bourchier, Sir Edward, slain at Wakefield, 29 (note), 58.
Bourchier, Sir John (afterwards Lord Berners), 29 (note), 118.
Bourchier, Sir Thomas, 161 (note).
Bourchier, Sir Humphrey, slain at Barnet, 118, 209.
Bourchier, William, Earl of Ewe, 40 (note 1), 118 (note 4), 209 (note 3).
Bourgeoise, 220.
Bouverie, Edward, Esq., battle of Northampton fought upon the estate of, 50 (note).
Brackenbury, Sir Robert, slain at Bosworth, 166.
Brandon, Sir William, slain at Bosworth, 167, 168.
Brandon, Thomas, 167 (note), 186.
Brecher, two gentlemen of that name put to death by Henry VII., after the battle of Bosworth, 171.
Brereton, Cheshire family of, 269.
Brereton, Sir William, Bart., the distinguished Parliamentary commander, 270.
Bromley, Sir Robert, Bart., battle of Stoke fought upon the estate of, 185, 190.
Broughton, Sir Thomas, slain at Stoke, 178, 187.
Bows and arrows used in war in this country as late as in the Civil War of Charles I. and the Parliament, 214.
Bows and arrows, option given by an act of Parliament of Philip and Mary, to provide a bow and arrows, or a haquebut, 215.
Buckingham, Lord Henry Stafford, of, 106.
Buckingham, Humphrey Stafford, first Duke of, 43; slain at Northampton, 46.
Buckingham, Henry Stafford, second Duke of, beheaded in first year of Richard III., 48 (note), 49, 50 (note).
Buckingham, Edward Stafford, third Duke of, beheaded in 13th year of Henry VIII., 50.
Bull, Black, a standard of Edward IV. at the battle of Towton, 117.
Burgundy, Charles Duke of, slain at the battle of Nancy, 23 (note), 177, 194, 199.
Burgundy, Margaret Duchess of, 23 (note), 177, 199.
Burton, Sir John, slain at Towton, 106.
Byron, Sir John, 167.
C.
Calverley, Sir John, 8.
Cannons, occasional use of, by the English, in sieges, in the fourteenth century, 213 to 216.
Cannons, and other firearms, general use of, by the English, in war, in the fifteenth century, 213 to 244.
Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier, Cardinal, and Archbishop of, 40, 83.
Canterbury, John Morton, Cardinal, and Archbishop of, 107.
Cary (_quære_ Car), Sir William, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146, 148.
Catesby, William, put to death by Henry VII., after the battle of Bosworth, 171.
Cecily Duchess of York, extraordinary afflictions and calamities in her family, 192 to 197.
Chapel commenced at Towton Field, by Richard III., 100.
Chapel Garth, or Chapel Hill, at Towton Field, 101.
Cheadle Church, Cheshire, 267 to 281.
Cheney, Sir John, 168, 186.
Clarence, George Duke of, 110, 139, 143; put to death in the Tower, 194, 199.
Clarence, Lionel Duke of, 22, 68, 198.
Clarence, Thomas Duke of, slain at Beaugé, in France, 171.
Clifford, John Lord, slain at Dintingdale, 56, 86, 115.
Clifford, Thomas Lord, slain at the first battle of St. Alban’s, 56 (note), 86 (note).
Clifton, Sir Gervase, 106 (note).
Clifton, Sir Gervase, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 106, 146.
Clifton, Sir Gervase, slain at Bosworth, 166.
Clifton, Sir John, 8.
Clinton, John Lord, 41, 111.
Cobham, Sir Edward Brooke, of, called Lord Cobham, 40, 42.
Cock River, near Towton, 88, 113.
Cockaine, Sir John, 8.
College and Hospital at Battlefield, 17.
Corbet, Peter, commission to destroy wolves, 293.
Courtenay, Sir Hugh, 133; executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 148.
Courtenay, Henry, beheaded at Salisbury, 55 (note).
Courtenay, Walter, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 148.
Coventry, Parliament of, in 38th of Henry VI., 28, 41 (note), 111.
Coventry, proceedings of the Parliament of, annulled in 39th of Henry VI., 41 (note), 111.
Crackenthorpe, Sir Thomas, 106.
Crackenthorpe, Sir John, 106.
Crofts, Sir Richard, captured Edward Prince of Wales, 143.
Cromwell, Humphrey Bourchier, Lord, slain at Barnet, 194, 209.
Culverin, and hand culverin, 214 to 244.
D.
Dacre, Ralph Lord, slain at Towton, 96, 105; tomb of, at Saxton, 123, 125.
Delapré Abbey, near Northampton, 43, 50, 51.
Delves, Sir John, slain at Tewkesbury, 142, 147 (note).
Delves, John, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146, 147.
Denham, or Dinham, John Lord, 100, 103, 110.
Derby, Thomas Earl of, previously Thomas Lord Stanley, 28, 167.
Devonshire, Thomas Courtenay, Earl of, 55, 103; executed at York, after the battle of Towton, 106.
Devonshire, Thomas or John Courtenay, Earl of, slain at Tewkesbury, 55 (note), 133, 142, 322.
Dintingdale, engagement at, 86, 89, 90, 115.
Done, Sir John, slain at Blore Heath, 27.
Done, Richard, slain at Blore Heath, 27.
Dorset, Thomas Grey, Marquis of, 139.
Douglas, Archibald Earl, 3, 8.
Drayton, 23.
Dudley, John de Sutton, Lord, 27.
Dunbar, Earl of, 4.
Dutton, John, 27.
Dutton, Sir Thomas, 26.
E.
Edward Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI., 47, 85, 132; murdered after the battle of Tewkesbury, 144.
Edward Prince of Wales, son of Richard III., 195, 199.
Edward IV., 67, 68, 83, 84, 119, 142, 199.
Edward V., believed to have been murdered in the Tower, 195, 199.
Egerton, Sir John, 27.
Egremont, Thomas Percy, Lord, slain at Northampton, 46.
Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV.—_See_ “Queen Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth, Queen of Henry VII.—_See_ “Queen Elizabeth.”
Elston Fields, 181.
Engines used by the English in war, 218, 221.
Essex, Henry Bourchier, Earl of, 193, 194.
Evesham, battle of, 203.
Ewe, Henry Earl of, afterwards Viscount Bourchier, and subsequently Earl of Essex.—_See_ “Essex, Henry Bourchier, Earl of.”
Ewe, William Bourchier, Earl of, 118 (note), 209 (note).
Exeter, George Neville, Bishop of, 41, 83.
Exeter, Henry Holland, Duke of, 54, 195, 207, 208.
F.
Falconberg, William Neville, Lord, afterwards Earl of Kent, 41, 44, 48, 84, 100, 110.
Falstaff, Sir John, an imaginary character, 229 (note).
Fastolf, Sir John, a distinguished commander in the wars with the French, 228.
Ferrers of Chartley, Walter Devereux, Lord, slain at Bosworth, 166.
Ferrybridge, engagement at, 86, 114.
Fielding, Sir William, slain at Tewkesbury, 142.
Firearms, general use of, by the English, in the fifteenth century, 213 to 244.
Firearms used by cavalry in the French army in 1495, 218 (note).
Fitzgerald, or Geraldine, or Kildare, Lord, slain at Stoke, 187.
Fitzhenry, Sir Thomas, slain at Tewkesbury, 142.
Fitzhugh, Henry Lord, 105.
Fitzwalter, Lord, slain at Ferrybridge, 86, 114.
Fiskerton, near Stoke, 179, 188.
Flore, John, standard-bearer of the Duke of Somerset, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 148.
Fortescue, Sir John, Chief Justice, 107.
Foster, Chief Justice, 148.
Fowler, 219, 220.
G.
Gastons, near Tewkesbury, 149, 154.
Gausel, Sir Nicholas, 8.
Gausel, Sir Robert, 8.
Gerardine, or Fitzgerald, or Kildare, Lord, slain at Stoke, 187.
Glendowr, Owen, 3, 5, 7.
Gloucester, Richard Duke of, afterwards King Richard III., 110, 139, 141, 158, 324, 325; slain at Bosworth, 169.
Gower, John, sword-bearer of Prince Edward, slain at Tewkesbury, 148.
Grey, Lord Richard, beheaded at Pontefract, 41 (note), 105 (note).
Grey of Ruthin, Edmund Lord, afterwards Earl of Kent, 45.
Grey of Rugemont, Thomas Lord, 105.
Grey, Richard Lord Powis, 29 (note).
Grey Friars, Monastery at Northampton, 47.
Grimsby, Sir William, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146.
Gunpowder, early use of in war, 215 (note).
Guns, occasional use of by the English in sieges, in the 14th century, 213 to 216.
Guns, general use of by the English, in war, in the 15th century, 213 to 244.
Gupshill, near Tewkesbury, 149, 150, 152.
H.
Hall, Sir David, slain at Wakefield, 58.
Hallidown Hill, battle of, 3.
Hamden, Sir Edmund, slain at Tewkesbury, 142.
Hammes, Sir Edmund, 106.
Hand culverin, or hand cannon, or hand gun, 214 to 244.
Handeley, Humphrey, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 147.
Handford Hall, Cheshire, 267.
Hanson, Captain, put to death after the battle of Wakefield, 65 (note).
Hardingstone, near Northampton, 44, 50.
Harrill, Sir William, 106.
Harrington, William Bonvile, Lord, slain at Wakefield, 58, 83 (note), 194 (note), 200.
Harrington, Sir Thomas, 27, 29 (note), 33.
Harrow, John, put to death after the battle of Wakefield, 65 (note).
Hartry, Sir Nicholas, slain at Tewkesbury, 142.
Harquebus, arquebuse, hacquebut, hackbut, or hagbut, 214, 215.
Hastings, Edward Lord, 186.
Hastings, William Lord, 110, 139; put to death in the Tower of London, 110.
Hastings, Sir Hugh, slain at Wakefield, 58.
Havarde, Sir Edmund, 147.
Hawkstone, Roman station near, 37 (note).
Hawthorn Hall, near Wilmslow, 257, 258.
Hemp Mill Brook, at Blore Heath, 26, 34.
Henry IV., 4, 7, 8.
Henry V., 171.
Henry VI., 21, 82, 198.
Henry Prince of Wales, son of Henry IV., 7.
Hereford, imprisonment of the Bishop of, 43 (note).
Heron, Sir John, of the Ford, 60, 103; slain at Towton, 106.
Hotspur (Henry Percy), 1, 2, 7; slain at the battle of Shrewsbury, 7.
Hungerford, Robert Lord, also called Lord Molyns, 105 (note), 118.
Hungerford, Sir Walter, 161 (note).
I.
Inscription at Barnet, 211.
— Blore Heath, 35.
— Bosworth, 174.
— Evesham, 204.
— Mortimer’s Cross, 80.
— Tewkesbury, 144.
— Wybonbury, 147.
Isabel, wife of George Duke of Clarence, 139, 143, 199, 200.
Isabel, wife of Henry Earl of Ewe, afterwards Earl of Essex, 193, 198.
Ive, Roger, principal or master of the College at Battlefield, 17.
J.
Jaquette of Luxembourg, daughter of Peter of Luxembourg, Earl of St. Paul, 41 (note), 105 (note).
Joan, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, second wife of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, 24, 199.
Joan Neville, daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and wife of William Earl of Arundel, 24 (note), 200.
Joan, wife of Edward the Black Prince, 198.
K.
Kent, Edmund Grey, Earl of, previously Lord Grey of Ruthin, 45.
Kent, William Neville, Earl of, previously Lord Falconberg, 41, 44, 84, 100, 110.
Kettleman’s Bridge, near Towton, 89 (note).
Kildare, or Gerardine, or Fitzgerald, Lord, slain at Stoke, 187.
King Edward IV., descent of, 67, 68, 199.
King Edward V., descent of, 199.
King Henry VI., descent of, 22, 82, 198.
King Henry VII., descent of, 158, 201.
King Richard III., descent of, 139, 158, 199.
Kiriel, Sir Thomas, put to death after the second battle of St. Alban’s, 83.
L.
Lancaster, House of, heraldic devices and badges of, 22.
Lancaster, House of, 22.
Latimer, Richard Neville, Lord, 186.
Legh, Sir John, 26.
Leicester, Simon de Montford, Earl of, slain at Evesham, 203, 204.
Lermouth, Sir William, slain at Tewkesbury, 142.
Lewkener, Sir John, slain at Tewkesbury, 142.
Lincoln, John de la Pole, Earl of, 177, 178, 191, 199; slain at Stoke, 187.
Lions, lionesses, and leopards, kept in the Tower of London in the reign of Edward IV., 283.
Little Warford, Cheshire, 247.
Longstrother, John, Prior of St. John of Jerusalem, 132; executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146.
Lovel, Francis Viscount, 166, 178; slain at or not heard of after the battle of Stoke, 187, 317, 318.
Lucy, Sir William, slain at Northampton, 46.
M.
Mackerel, Doctor, 107, 148.
March, Earl of, afterwards King Edward IV., 67, 83, 84, 119, 199.
March, Edmund Earl of, 3 (note), 198.
Marchers, the Lords, 78.
Marches of Wales, Court of, 78, 79.
Margaret, Queen of Henry VI.—_See_ “Queen Margaret.”
Margaret Duchess of Burgundy, widow of Charles Duke of Burgundy, 23, 177, 199.
Margaret’s Camp, near Tewkesbury, 149.
Massey, Sir John, 8.
Menagerie, Royal, in the Tower of London, 283.
Milwater, John, slain at Barnet, 208.
Molyneux, Sir Richard, slain at Blore Heath, 26.
Molyns, or Molins, Lord, also called Robert Lord Hungerford, 106 (note).
Molyn, Sir Roger, 106.
Montague, John Neville, Marquis of, previously Lord Montague, then for a short time Earl of Northumberland, 27, 110, 118 (note); slain at Barnet, 208.
Montjoy, Walter Blount, Lord, 111.
Mortar, 219.
Mortimer, Sir Hugh, slain at Shrewsbury, 8.
Mortimer, Sir Hugh, slain at Wakefield, 58.
Mortimer, Sir John, slain at Wakefield, 58.
Mortimer’s Cross, battle of, 67.
Morton, John, Cardinal, and Archbishop of Canterbury, 107.
N.
Narbohew, Sir Henry, 106.
Nen, or Nene, river, near Northampton, 43, 46, 50.
Neville, George Bishop of Exeter, afterwards Archbishop of York, 41, 83.
Neville, John Lord, slain at Towton, 104, 193.
Neville, William Lord Falconberg, afterwards Earl of Kent, 41, 44, 84, 100, 110.
Neville, Sir Henry, put to death after the battle of Banbury, 193, 199.
Neville, Sir John, afterwards Lord Montague, afterwards Earl of Northumberland, afterwards Marquis Montague, 27, 110, 118 (note); slain at Barnet, 208.
Neville, Sir Thomas, slain at Wakefield, 27, 58, 200.
Newborough, Sir William, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146.
Nor Acres, at Towton, 96, 97.
Norfolk, John Howard, Duke of, 164, 165; slain at Bosworth, 165.
Norfolk, John Mowbray, Duke of, 82 (note), 84, 102.
Northampton, battle of, 39.
Northumberland, Henry Percy, first Earl of, 1, 3; beheaded at York, 2 (note).
Northumberland, Henry Percy, second Earl of, slain at the first battle of St. Alban’s, 2 (note).
Northumberland, Henry Percy, third Earl of, 99; slain at Towton, 103.
Northumberland, Henry Percy, fourth Earl of, 164, 165.
Northumberland, John Neville Earl of (for a short period), afterwards Marquis Montague, 27, 110, 118 (note); slain at Barnet, 208.
O.
Offenham Ferry, near Evesham, 203.
Ordnance, Clerk of the, 223, 225.
Ordnance, Master of the, in the reign of Henry V., Edward IV., and Richard III., 219, 223, 241.
Ordnance, occasional use of, by the English, in sieges, in the fourteenth century, 218 to 216.
Ordnance commonly used by the English in war in the 15th century, 217 to 244.
Ormonde, Sir John, 106.
Owen Glendowr, 3, 5, 7.
Oxford, John de Vere, Earl of, 165, 166 (note), 180, 186, 194.
P.
Pedigrees, 198, 199, 200, 201, 282.
Parhelion, or mock sun, seen at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, 72.
Parr, Sir Thomas, 29 (note).
Parr, Thomas, slain at the battle of Barnet, 208.
Pembroke, Jasper Tudor, Earl of, afterwards Duke of Bedford, 69, 133, 166, 180, 186; extraordinary and abrupt changes of fortune of, 69 (note).
Percy, Henry, called Hotspur, 1, 2, 7, 198.
Percy, Sir Richard, slain at Towton, 106.
Pickering, Sir James, 29 (note).
Pigot, Sir Ralph, 106.
Pole, John de la, Earl of Lincoln, 177, 178, 191, 199; slain at Stoke, 187.
Pole, John de la, Duke of Suffolk, married a sister of Edward IV., 177 (note), 191, 199.
Powis, Richard Grey, Lord, 29 (note).
Q.
Queen Anne, wife of Richard III., 139 (note), 158, 196, 199, 200.
Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV., 41 (note), 105 (note), 199.
Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII., 158, 199, 201.
Queen Margaret, wife of Henry VI., 25, 42, 53, 82, 132, 146, 198, 201.
Queen Eleanor’s Cross, 48, 51.
R.
Ratcliffe, Sir Richard, slain at Bosworth, 166.
René, Duke of Anjou, 42 (note), 147.
Richard III., 139, 158, 199; slain at Bosworth, 169, 196.
Richmond, Henry Tudor, Earl of, afterwards Henry VII., 71 (note), 158.
Richmond, Margaret Countess of, 324.
Rivers, Anthony Wodevile, Earl, previously Lord Scales, 40 (note), 105; beheaded at Pontefract, 41 (note), 105 (note).
Rivers, Richard Wodevile, Earl, 40 (note), 105 (note).
Roe deer, formerly wild in England, 288, 297.
Roos, Thomas Lord, 56, 104.
Rose (_quære_ Roos), Sir Henry, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146, 148.
Rostherne, parish of, in Cheshire, 247.
Rouse (_quære_ Rowys), Sir William, slain at Tewkesbury, 142, 148.
Rugemont, Thomas Lord Grey of, 105.
Ruthin, Edmund Lord Grey of, afterwards Earl of Kent, 45 (note).
Rutland, Edmund Earl of, murdered after the battle of Wakefield, 59, 193, 199.
S.
Sabbath days, three battles fought on, 127 (note).
Salisbury, Richard Neville, Earl of, 24; put to death after the battle of Wakefield, 58, 59.
Salisbury, Thomas de Montacute, Earl of, 24 (note), 39 (note), 228.
Salisbury, Bishop of, pacific exertions of, before the battle of Northampton, 44.
Sandal Castle, 54, 58, 63.
Savage, Sir John, 167.
Saxton, 86, 87; church and parish, 122.
Saye, James Fienes, Lord, put to death by Jack Cade, 209 (note).
Saye, William Fienes, Lord, fought at Northampton, and slain at Barnet, 42 (note), 209.
Scales, Anthony Wodevile, Lord, afterwards Earl Rivers, 40 (note), 105; beheaded at Pontefract, 41 (note), 105 (note).
Scales, Thomas Lord, 40, 42 (note); murdered in 1460, 40 (note).
Serpentine, 219.
Seymour, Sir Thomas, slain at the battle of Tewkesbury, 142, 148.
Shirley, Sir Hugh, 8.
Shrewsbury, battle of, 1.
Shrewsbury, John Talbot, first Earl of, slain at Castillon, 46 (note), 103 (note 6).
Shrewsbury, John Talbot, second Earl of, slain at Northampton, 46, 103 (note).
Shrewsbury, George Talbot, fourth Earl of, 180.
Simnel, Lambert, the impostor, 178, 187.
Simnel, Thomas, a joiner at Oxford, 178.
Simons, Richard, 178, 187.
Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of, slain at the battle of St. Alban’s, 43 (note), 54 (note).
Somerset, Henry Beaufort, Duke of, 43, 54, 103; taken prisoner and beheaded after the battle of Hexham, 43 (note), 54 (note).
Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of, 133, 141; executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146.
Soss Moss Hall, Cheshire, 245 to 251.
St. Alban’s, first battle of, 2 (note), 23, 43 (note), 54 (note).
St. Alban’s, second battle of, 82.
St. John, Hospital of, at Northampton, 48.
St. John of Jerusalem, Knights of, 132.
St. John, John Longstrother, Prior of, 132, 140; executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146.
St. Ledger, Sir Thomas, executed and attainted, 191, 195, 199.
Stafford, Edmund Earl of, slain at Shrewsbury, 8.
Stafford, Humphrey Earl of, slain at the first battle of St. Alban’s, 48 (note), 49, 199.
Stafford, Lord Henry, of Buckingham, 106 (note).
Standard of Edward IV., 117.
„ Henry VII., 117 (note).
„ Richard III., 117 (note).
Stanley, Sir William, 28, 31, 168.
Stanley, Thomas Lord, afterwards Earl of Derby, 28 (note), 167, 180.
Stoke, battle of, 177.
Stoke, village of, 180, 190.
Strange, George Lord, 162, 180.
Stutton, bridge of, 89.
Suffolk, John de la Pole, Duke of, married Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV., 177 note, 191, 192, 199.
Surrey, Thomas Howard, Earl of, 165.
Swartz, Martin, 178; slain at Stoke, 187.
Swartz Moor, in Lancashire, 178.
T.
Talbot, Sir Christopher, slain at Northampton, 46.
Talbot, Sir Gilbert, 165, 167.
Tewkesbury, battle of, 131.
Throgmorton, John, 148.
Towton, battle of, 81.
Towton Hall, 101.
Towton village, 87, 89, 100 note.
Tresham, Henry, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146, 148.
Tresham, Sir Thomas, executed after the battle of Tewkesbury, 146, 148.
Trollop, Sir Andrew, 99, 103; slain at Towton, 106.
Trollop, Sir David, slain at Towton, 106.
Troutbeck, Sir William, slain at Blore Heath, 26.
Tudor, Sir Owen, slain at Mortimer’s Cross, 73, 201.
U, V.
Urnan (_quære_ Urman), Sir John, slain at Tewkesbury, 142, 148.
Vaughan, Sir Thomas, beheaded at Pontefract, 41 (note), 105 (note).
Vaux, Sir William slain at Tewkesbury, 142, 147.
Venables, Sir Hugh, 26.
Venables, Sir Richard, 8.
Vernon, Sir Richard, 8.
Vestynden, Ralph, bearer of Edward’s the Fourth’s standard of the Black Bull at the battle of Towton, 117.
Veuglaire, 219 to 244.
W.
Wakefield, battle of, 53.
Wakefield Green, 58, 62, 63.
Wales, Edward Prince of, son of Richard III., 195, 199.
Wales, Edward Prince of, son of Henry VI., 47, 54 (note), 198; murdered after the battle of Tewkesbury, 144.
Warford, Little, Cheshire, 247.
Warwick, Anne Countess of, 133, 200.
Warwick, Edward, Earl of, imprisoned and afterwards put to death by Henry VII., 172, 175, 196, 199.
Warwick, Richard Neville, Earl of (the King-Maker), 24, 39, 100, 205, 207; slain at Barnet, 208.
Wateley, Henry, slain at Tewkesbury, 148.
Well, King Richard’s, 159, 160, 164, 173.
Welles, Leo Lord, slain at Towton, 104.
Welles and Willoughby, Richard Lord, 104.
Wenlock, John Lord, 42, 100, 133, 140; death of, at the battle of Tewkesbury, 142.
Wensleydale, Fore Abbey, in, remarkable grant to the monks of, 292.
Westmoreland, Ralph Neville, first Earl of, 24 (note), 199.
Wharfe, River, 88, 113.
Wichingham, Sir William, 147.
Widevile, or Wodevile, family of, 40 (note), 105 (note).
Wigmore Castle, 76, 77, 78.
Willoughby, Robert Lord, 104.
Wilmslow Church, Cheshire, 253 to 266.
Wiltshire, James Boteler, Earl of, 56, 69; taken prisoner and beheaded, 56 (note).
Wittingham, Sir William, slain at Tewkesbury, 142.
Wolves, probable period of the extinction of, in England, 287 to 299.
Worcester, John Tibtoft, Earl of, executed in 1470, 193 (note).
Worcester, Thomas Percy, Earl of, 2; taken prisoner and executed, 8.
Wroughton, 148.
Wyche, or De la Wyche, ancient Cheshire family of, 245.
Y.
York, heraldic devices and badges of the House of, 22, 117.
York, Cecily Duchess of, strange and mournful afflictions and calamities in her family, 192 to 197.
York city, surrendered to Edward IV., 118.
York, House of, descent of the, 22.
York, Richard Duke of, 22; slain at Wakefield, 58, 64.
York, Richard Duke of, son of Edward IV., believed to have been murdered in the Tower, 195, 199.
Z.
Zouch, John Lord, 166.
* * * * *
THE END.
* * * * *
* * * * *
F. PICKTON, Printer, Perry’s Place, 29, Oxford Street.
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. {0}
Page 24, note 1. Instead of “Richard the oldest son, Earl of Salisbury, and afterwards Earl of Warwick,” read, “Richard the eldest son, Earl of Warwick, and after his father’s death, also Earl of Salisbury.” „ 329, Index. After “Bourchier, William, Earl of Ewe,” instead of “118 (note), 209 (note),” insert, “40 (note 1), 118 (note 4), 209 (note 3).” „ 339, Index. After “Shrewsbury, John Talbot, first Earl of, slain at Castillon, 46 (note),” add “103 (note 6).”
FOOTNOTES.
{0} This errata slip, inserted before page 1 of the book, has been applied in this transcription.—DP.
{v} It has been considered advisable to commence this work with an account of the battle of Shrewsbury, which was a prelude to, and had so close a relation to, the wars of York and Lancaster, that it may, without much impropriety, be considered as one of them.
{vi1} Fenn’s _Collection of Original Letters of the Reigns of Henry VI._, _Edward IV._, _and Richard III._, Preface, p. vii.
{vi2} _Ibid._, Preface, p. viii.
{vii} Most of the papers relating to the fields of battle have been transmitted to, and read, from time to time, before meetings of the Society of Antiquaries of London. In consequence of further information, obtained in my subsequent visits to the respective scenes of action, and derived from other sources, additions in some instances, and alterations in others, have however been made in several of the papers. For example: my visits to Towton Field amount altogether to nine; and since the paper upon it was read before the meetings of the Society, considerable additional information has been acquired respecting if, which has naturally caused some alterations to be made.
{viii} Ralph Brooke (York Herald), William Dugdale (Norroy King at Arms), Francis Sandford (Lancaster Herald at Arms), and, in some instances, John Leland the Antiquary, are the principal authorities relied upon respecting the personages, families, and other genealogical matters mentioned in this work.
{1a} The paper upon the Field of the Battle of Shrewsbury was read before a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, on the 25th of March, 1852, and the thanks of the meeting were voted for it to the author.
{1b} I visited the field of battle in September and October 1851, August 1852, June 1853, June 1854, May 1855, and May 1856 and also in September, 1856, which was after part of this work had been sent to the press.
{1c} Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, son of Henry Lord Percy and Mary his wife, sister of Henry Duke of Lancaster, was created the first Earl of Northumberland of that surname, at the coronation of King Richard II. in 1377. He and Henry Percy his son, called Hotspur, gained the battle of Hallidown Hill, against the Scotch, in 1402. After the battle of Shrewsbury, being supposed to be disaffected, he was committed to the Tower of London; but having been liberated from thence, he, with Lord Bardolph, came out of Scotland in the ninth year of Henry IV. with considerable forces against Henry; and at Bramham Moor was encountered by Thomas Rokeby, sheriff of Yorkshire, where the earl was taken prisoner, and Lord Bardolph dangerously wounded; and they were brought to York, where they were both beheaded in 1408. He married two wives: the first was Margaret, daughter of Ralph Lord Neville of Raby, by whom he had issue Henry Percy (called Hotspur) slain at the battle of Shrewsbury; Thomas Percy, the second son; Ralph Percy, the third son; and Alan Percy, the fourth son, who died young. The earl’s second wife was Maud, daughter of Thomas Lord Lucy, by whom he had not any issue. Henry Percy (Hotspur) left issue, by his wife Elizabeth, oldest daughter of Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, a son Henry, afterwards second Earl of Northumberland, who in the third year of Henry V. was restored to his honours; a staunch supporter of the Lancastrian party, and was slain at the first battle of St. Albans, on the 22nd of May, 1455; {2c} and a daughter, Elizabeth, married to John Lord Clifford, and, after his death, to Ralph Neville, second Earl of Westmoreland of that surname.
{2a} Sir Thomas Percy, Knight, a younger brother of Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland, was created Earl of Worcester and Lord High Admiral of England in 1397, and taken prisoner at the battle of Shrewsbury, and beheaded in that town in 1403.
{2b} Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, vol. i. p. 186; Carte’s _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 659. The battle is stated, in Gough’s edition of Camden’s _Britannia_, vol. ii. p. 418, to have “began in Oldfield or Bulfield, a little north of the north gate, and raged as far as what is now called Battlefield.” In Stow’s _Annals_ the place is “called Oldfield, _alias_ Bulfield, not farre from a place called Barwike.”
{2c} The 22nd of May, according to Dugdale, vol. i. p. 166 and 342, and Sandford, p. 321; but the 23rd of May, according to Fabyan, Hall, Holinshed, and Grafton.
{3a} The accounts are but meagre and incomplete respecting the precise object of the insurrection; but it is usually treated by historical writers as having been set on foot with a view to dethrone Henry IV., and to place Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, a descendant of Lionel Duke of Clarence, son of Edward III., upon the throne of England.
{3b} Hall, Holinshed, Grafton.
{4a} Holinshed, Walsingham.
{4b} Hall, Holinshed, Grafton.
{4c} Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, vol. i. p. 185.
{4d} A proclamation of Henry, issued at Burton-upon-Trent on the 16th of July, on the occasion of the rebellion of Percy, has been preserved.—See Rymer’s _Fædera_, vol. viii. fo. 313.
{4e} A proclamation or royal mandate was issued at Lichfield by Henry, on the 17th of July.—See Rymer’s _Fædera_, vol. viii. fol. 314.
{4f} Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, vol. i. p. 185.
{5a} Hall, Grafton.
{5b} “A portion of the suburbs of Shrewsbury was intentionally burnt; that measure being considered requisite for the safety of the town, in consequence of the approach of Hotspur’s army.—_Rot. Parl._ 9 Henry IV., vol. iii. fo. 619.”
{5c} Stow’s _Annals_, Speed’s _History_. It is stated in Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, although their authority for it does not seem altogether satisfactory, that Percy retired to a place called Bull Field, a short distance from Shrewsbury, an extensive common, which stretched from Upper Berwick to the east, and to have encamped there during the night of the 19th, and to have marched the next day by Harlescot and Abright Hussee, to Hateley Field, where he made a stand at the spot now called Battlefield.—See Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, vol. i. p. 186, 187.
{7} Hall, Holinshed, Walsingham, Speed, Stow, Grafton, Sandford, p. 265; Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. part 3, p. 1426.
It is remarkable, that although in Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 280, it is stated that the battle was fought on the eve of St. Mary Magdalen (21st of July, 1403;) yet on p. 168 he states that it was fought on St. Mary Magdalen’s day (22nd of July). See also Rymer’s _Fædera_, tome viii fo. 320.
It is stated in Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, vol. i. p. 187, 188, for which Otterburne is cited as their authority, that a portion of Percy’s forces was posted behind a field of peas, which would naturally form some obstacle to the attack of the royal army—“Oportebat regis exercitum, si pugnare vellet, accedere super aream satam pisis adultis; quas pisas ita nexuerant et tricaverant ut impedimento forent accedentibus prætensi laquei eorundem.”
{8a} To save repetition, it is well to mention, that this account of the battle has been collected from Hall, Holinshed, Walsingham, Grafton, Speed, Stow, and Monstrelet, c. 7.
{8b} Edmund Stafford, Earl of Stafford, was the third son of Hugh Earl of Stafford, and his wife Philippa, daughter of Thomas Beauchamp, the elder Earl of Warwick, and the heir of his brothers Thomas and William, and was after their deaths without issue, the fifth Earl of Stafford and Lord of Tunbridge. He married Anne, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, sixth son of Edward III. He was the father of Humphrey Stafford, first Duke of Buckingham, slain at the battle of Northampton fighting for the Lancastrian party in 1459. The strange and mournful fatality which attended the principal members of this powerful and celebrated family, will be noticed in treating upon the latter battle, in Chap. III.
{8c} Lelandi _Collectanea_, vol. ii. p. 389 [313].
{9} In note 5 of Owen and Blakeway’s _Shrewsbury_, vol. i. p. 194, it is stated that the church is in length 126 feet, and in breadth (with the cemetery) 65 feet.
{10a} Lel. _Coll._ vol. i. p. 388.
{10b} Grose, vol. ii. p. 356, plate 28, fig. 8. Meyrick’s _Ancient Armour_, vol. i. p. 33.
{11a} Some articles discovered there came under the notice of the Archæological Institute in August 1855.
{11b} Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. part 3, p. 1427.
{11c} See _Frontispiece_.
{11d} Similar to the trench or pit on the north side of Saxton Church, mentioned in my paper read before the Society of Antiquaries in 1849, relative to the field of the battle of Towton, which pit contained the bones of many men of men slain at that sanguinary battle. See Chap. VI.
{11e} In a note (5) to Owen and Blakeway’s _History of Shrewsbury_, vol. i. p. 194, referring to a MS., it is stated that a pit was made there for the slain, 160 feet long, 68 feet broad, and 60 feet deep, over which the church was afterwards built; but those dimensions, and especially the depth, are evidently very greatly exaggerated. In modern warfare, much smaller pits suffice for the dead.
{11f} Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. iv. p. 181 _a_.
{12} When I visited the church in May 1856, I was very sorry to hear that a subscription had been entered into, for the purpose of what was termed “renovating” this curious and interesting edifice. As far as respects removing the modern pillars, and the plastered ceiling from the chancel, and making the latter appear more in accordance with its ancient state, few persons would object to that measure; but it ought to be borne in mind that the chancel will accommodate, and much more than accommodate, the whole number of church-goers of the very scanty population of Battlefield parish; and that the renovation or rebuilding of any other part is wholly unnecessary, with reference to the spiritual requirements of the parishioners. It would evince great want of taste and judgment to renovate or restore the ancient nave and tower. The remains are most valuable to the historian and archæologist. The interval was so very short, comparatively speaking, between the erection of the church in the reign of Henry IV., and the seizure of the edifice and its contiguous college and hospital in the reign of Henry VIII., that we cannot doubt that the remains are now an authentic and interesting example of church architecture of the reign of the former monarch. The parties who wish for or recommend the renovation of the nave, or the restoration of the whole of Battlefield Church, may possibly find some architect, who, like an old-clothes man, may undertake to “renovate” the article which he is accustomed to deal in, or, in other words, to make it “as good as new”; but when the alterations in this church are finished, they may probably furnish an example of a lamentable destruction of a very ancient, curious, and historical relic of times gone by. As a proof of the mischief which may be done by so-called restorations, let any person of good taste, who has paid even moderate attention to archæology and church architecture, look around, and say whether, out of the numerous ancient churches which have been attempted to be restored or renovated, during the last quarter of a century, there can be found more than some five or six, where bad taste or presumption has not been evinced in the attempts of the various architects to restore or renovate them. If this tasteless system is allowed to proceed, we may, ere long, hear of some ignorant architect who may offer to rebuild or beautify Tintern Abbey, or restore or renovate Kenilworth Castle.
{13a} There were in 1856 only two pinnacles on the north aide, and three on the south side of the tower.
{13b} Of the description usually called a Newel staircase.
{14a} See _Frontispiece_.
{14b} The figure of the Virgin with the dead Christ in her lap, is usually designated a “pieta,” and it is said that the sculptors of the fifteenth century were very fond of the subject. It is mentioned in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, vol. lxii. p. 893, and vol. xliv. September, 1855, p. 296, in noticing the Proceedings of the Archæological Institute. A view of the church is also engraved in vol. lxii. p. 898.
{17a} Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. part iii. p. 1426. Dukes’ _Antiquities of Shropshire_, p. 34, and Appendix xxxv. Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. iv. fo. 181 _a_.
{17b} Dukes’ _Antiquities of Shropshire_, p. 34.
{18a} “Quandam placeam terræ cam omnibus ædificiis super-edificatis, infra dominium de Adbrighton-Hussee, juxta Salopiam, jacentem in campo qui vocatur Bateleyfield, in quo campo, bellum inter nos et Henricum Percy defunctum, et cæteros rebelles nostros, super extitit, et per Dei gratiam victoriam habuimus et triumphum; quæ quidem placea terræ fosso includitur, continens in longitudine et latitudine duas acras terræ, unacum duobus ingressibus et egressibus; uno, viz., extendente in longitudine de Hadenallestone directè super terram Recardi Hussee domini de Adbrigton-Hussee, in comitatu Salopiæ,” &c. &c. In another part of the charter is the following passage: “Habendum et Tenendum dictam placeam terræ, fosso sic inclusam,” &c. &c.—Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. part iii. pp. 1426, 7.
{18b} “Idem Bogerus nuper de licentiâ regiâ habuit, ex dono et feoffamento prædicti Ricardi.”—Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. part. iii. p. 1426.
{19a} Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. part iii. p. 1426.
{19b} “et animabus illorum, qui in dicto bello interfecti, et ibidem humati existunt, et animabus omnium fidelium defunctorum celebraturis imperpetuum.”—Dugdale’s _Monasticon_, vol. vi. part iii. p. 1427.
{19c} Communicated by the Rev. J. O. Hopkins. The author only heard of his death after this work had been sent to the press.
{19d} Psalm lxxiv. 6, 7.
{21} The paper upon the Field of the Battle of Blore Heath was read before a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, on the 8th of December, 1853, and the thanks of the meeting were voted for it to the author.
{22a} The armorial bearings, devices, and badges of the various members of the rival Houses of York and Lancaster are fully stated in Sandford’s _Genealogical History_.
{22b} The Duke of York was the son of Richard Plantagenet (called of Coningsburg) Earl of Cambridge, and Anne his wife, daughter of Roger Mortimer Earl of March and Lord of Wigmore and Clare, the son of Edmund Mortimer, third Earl of March, &c. by Philippe, only daughter and heiress of Lionel Duke of Clarence, third son of King Edward the Third. Besides which, the Duke of York was descended from Edward III. by his father’s side, in consequence of being the only son of Richard Earl of Cambridge, who was the son of Edmund (of Langley) Duke of York and Earl of Cambridge, fifth son of Edward III., by Isabel, the daughter of Peter, King of Castile and Leon. The Duke of York married Cecily, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, by Joan his second wife, daughter of John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster. By that marriage he became related to or connected with most of the great noblemen of England. His wife had for brothers, Richard Neville Earl of Salisbury (father of Richard Neville Earl of Warwick, called the King Maker), William Neville Lord Falconberg, George Neville Lord Latimer, Edward Neville Lord Abergavenny, and Robert Neville Bishop of Durham; and for half brothers, Ralph Neville Earl of Westmoreland, and — Neville Lord of Ousley or Oversley, in Warwickshire, in right of Mary his wife. The Duke of York’s power, with the additional aid of that of his wife’s relations, soon enabled him to bring forward his claims to the throne; and although he was cut off by death in battle, before he could compass his views, his son Edward succeeded in obtaining the crown. The Duke left by his wife, eight sons and four daughters. The sons were—first, Henry, who died young; second, Edward Earl of March, born at Rouen on the 29th of April, 1441, afterwards King Edward IV.; third, Edmund Earl of Rutland, murdered after the battle of Wakefield in 1460, by Lord Clifford; fourth, William, born at Fotheringay, in Northamptonshire; fifth, John, born at Fotheringay; both of the two last died when infants; sixth, George Duke of Clarence, born in the Castle of Dublin, put to death in the Tower of London on the 18th of February, 1477–8; seventh, Thomas, who died in his infancy; eighth, Richard, born at Fotheringay, 2nd of October, 1452, afterwards King Richard III., slain at the battle of Bosworth in 1485. The daughters were—first, Anne, married to Henry Holland Duke of Exeter, but, being divorced from him in 1472, she then married Sir Thomas St. Ledger, by whom she had issue, Anne, married to George Manners Lord Roos, by whom she had Thomas Manners Earl of Rutland; second, Elizabeth, married to John de la Pole Duke of Suffolk; third, Margaret, married in 1468 to Charles Duke of Burgundy, called the Bold, or the Rash; and Ursula, of whom nothing is said by historical writers, and it is, therefore, presumed that she died young.
The Duke of York was the first nobleman in the kingdom, in point of family and power. His claim to the throne of England was grounded on his descent from Lionel, third son of King Edward III. Lionel’s first wife was Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, in Ireland, in whose right, he (Lionel) was created Earl of Ulster; and because he had with her the honour of Clare, in the county of Suffolk, as parcel of the inheritance of her grandmother (Elizabeth, coheir of the last Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford), he was in 1362, created Duke of Clarence, {23b} from which duchy the name of Clarencieux King of Arms, of the south parts of England, is derived. He had issue by Elizabeth his wife, one only daughter, Philippe, before mentioned, who married Edmund Mortimer, third Earl of March, grandfather of Anne Countess of Cambridge, who was the mother of Richard Duke of York, and grandmother of King Edward IV. and of King Richard III.
The Duke of York enjoyed vast possessions in England and Ireland, in right not only of his paternal line of the houses of York and Cambridge, but also of his descent from the great and powerful families of Mortimer (Earls of March), Clare (Earls of Gloucester and of Hertford), and de Burgh (Earls of Ulster). He was closely allied to the great and noble family of Neville, from having married Cecily, daughter of Ralph Neville Earl of Westmoreland, besides being connected with several other noble and powerful families.
{23a} Some historians mention the 23rd of May, as the day on which that battle was fought.
{23b} From a place in Suffolk, called Clare, or Clarence.
{24a} Richard Neville Earl of Salisbury was the son of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland (by Joan, his second wife, daughter of John of Gaunt Duke of Lancaster, and widow of Sir Robert Ferrers of Oversley), and was created Earl of Salisbury after the death of Thomas de Montacute Earl of Salisbury, his wife’s father, in the fifteenth year of King Henry VI., and made Lord Chancellor in the 32nd year of his reign. He married Alice, daughter and heir of Thomas de Montacute Earl of Salisbury, and had issue by her, four sons and six daughters: Richard the eldest son, Earl of Warwick, and after his father’s death, also Earl of Salisbury, the King Maker, slain at the battle of Barnet in 1471; second, John, Marquis Montague, also slain at the battle of Barnet; third, Thomas, married the widow of Lord Willoughby, and was slain at the battle of Wakefield; fourth, George, Bishop of Exeter, and Lord Chancellor, and afterwards Archbishop of York; Joan, the oldest daughter, was married to William Fitzalan Earl of Arundel; second, Cecily, married to Henry Beauchamp Duke of Warwick; third, Alice, married Henry Lord Fitzhugh Baron of Ravenswath; fourth, Eleanor, married Thomas Lord Stanley, afterwards the first Earl of Derby of that surname; fifth, Katherine, married William Bonvile, son and heir to William Lord Bonvile and Harrington; sixth, Margaret, married John De Vere Earl of Oxford. Richard Earl of Salisbury was wounded and taken prisoner at the battle of Wakefield, and beheaded at Pontefract, and his body was first interred there, and afterwards removed to Bisham Abbey, in Berkshire, which had been founded by, and was the place of interment of the Montacutes, and where the bodies of his sons, the Earl of Warwick and Marquis Montague, were also interred, after the battle of Barnet.
{24b} Richard Neville, eighteenth Earl of Warwick, called the King Maker, was the son and heir of Richard Neville Earl of Salisbury, by Alice, daughter of Thomas de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, and married Anne, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, sixteenth Earl of Warwick. His power was so great, that he was mainly instrumental in placing King Edward IV. upon the throne in 1461, and again in dethroning him, and replacing Henry VI. upon the throne in 1470; and he was slain fighting against Edward at the battle of Barnet, on 14th of April, 1471. He left issue two daughters: Isabel, married to George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence, brother of King Edward IV.; and Anne, married, first, to Edward Prince of Wales, son of King Henry VI., murdered at Tewkesbury in 1471; and secondly, to Richard Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard III.
{25a} Queen Margaret, usually called Margaret of Anjou, was the Queen of Henry VI., to whom she was married on the 22nd of April, 1445.
{25b} Edward Prince of Wales was the only child of Henry VI. and Queen Margaret. He was born on the 13th of October, 1453, and was murdered after the battle of Tewkesbury, on the 4th of May, 1471.
{25c} James Touchet Lord Audley (the son and heir of John Touchet Lord Audley, who died in the tenth year of Henry IV.) was summoned to Parliament in the eighth year of Henry V., as Lord Audley. He attended Henry V. in his wars in France. In the reign of Henry VI., he took part with the House of Lancaster, and was sent by Queen Margaret to intercept the Earl of Salisbury at Blore Heath, which was not more than ten or twelve miles from Lord Audley’s possession of Red Castle at Hawkstone, now belonging to the Viscount Hill, in Shropshire. After Lord Audley’s death in that battle, his body was interred in Darley Abbey, in Derbyshire. He left a son, John Lord Audley, who adhered to the Yorkist party, and had some offices of importance conferred upon him by Edward IV. and Richard III., and died in 1491, in the sixth year of Henry VII., leaving issue.
{25d} For the historical authorities, see Hall, Holinshed, Grafton, Baker, Speed, Stow, Dugdale’s _Baronage_, Sandford’s _Genealogical History_, Kennett’s _Lives of the Kings and Queens_; Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. vii. fo. 32; _Rot. Parl._ 38 Henry VI. (A.D. 1459), vol. v. p. 348. The latter contains the following passage:—“the sonday next after the fest of Seint Mathewe th’ Apostle, the 38 yere of youre moost gracious reigne, at Blore, in youre shire of Stafford, in the feldes of the same towne, called Blore-heth,” &c. &c.; see also _ibid._ p. 369, in which it is stated, that Queen Margaret and Edward Prince of Wales had been at Chester, and afterwards at Eccleshall, previously to the battle; and that Lord Stanley was directed, before it took place, to come with his forces, and join the Lancastrians; and that he sent his servant to the Queen and the Prince with a promise to do so in all haste, but failed, and by his failing to join them, the Lancastrians were defeated, although he was, with 2000 men, within six miles of Blore Heath, and that he staid three days at Newcastle, only six miles from Eccleshall, where the Queen and Prince of Wales then were; and that in the morning after the defeat of the Lancastrians, Lord Stanley sent a letter to the Queen and Prince, extenuating his not having assisted them with his forces; and that he then departed home again; and also that the people and tenants of the King and of the Prince, in the hundreds of Wirral and of Macclesfield, had been prevented by Lord Stanley from going to the assistance of the King; and he was also accused of having, on the night ensuing the battle, sent a letter of congratulation to the Earl of Salisbury. If those charges were true, it looks very much as if he had been a Yorkist at heart, but disposed to keep fair with both sides.
{26a} Sir Richard Molyneux was an ancestor of the Earl of Sefton.
{26b} It is remarkable that Ormerod, in his _Cheshire_, vol. i. p. xxxii., mentions that it was Sir William Troutbeck who was slain in the battle; but in vol. ii. pp. 27 and 28, his son, Sir John Troutbeck, is mentioned as the person who was slain there; and it is stated that the former had been, and that the latter was at that time, Chamberlain of Chester.
{27a} Stow’s _Annals_, p. 405. See also Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, p. 649.
{27b} _Rot. Parl._ vol. v. 38th of Henry VI. p. 348. Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. vii. fo. 32.
{27c} John De Sutton Baron of Dudley (called in the act of Parliament of 38th of Henry VI. (1459) John Lord Dudley), being a firm adherent to the Lancastrian interest, and being surprised at Gloucester in the 29th year of Henry VI., by Richard Duke of York (upon his return at that time out of Ireland), was sent prisoner to the Castle of Ludlow. (Stow’s _Annals_; and Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. ii. p. 215.) He was wounded at the battle of Blore Heath. (Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. vii. fo. 32.) The imprisonment of the Baron of Dudley in the Tower of London in 1455, is mentioned in Fenn’s collection of original letters (sometimes called the _Paston Letters_), vol. i. p. 107. It should seem, therefore, that he was twice imprisoned at the instance of the Duke of York. After the accession of Edward IV., Dudley was, however, reconciled to the House of York, and he does not appear to have ever afterwards assisted the opposite party. By his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Berkley of Beverstan in Gloucestershire, he had issue three sons: Edmund, who died in his father’s lifetime, leaving issue John, from whom the Earls of Warwick and Leicester derived their descent; and William Bishop of Durham; he had also a daughter, Margaret, married to George Longueville, of Little Billinge, Northamptonshire, Esq.
{27d} Sir John Neville was afterwards Marquis Montague, and slain at the battle of Barnet in 1471; and Sir Thomas Neville was slain at the battle of Wakefield in 1460.
{27e} Hall’s _Chronicles_, fo. 173; Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, fo. 649; Baker’s _Chronicles_, fo. 195; Stow’s _Annals_, fo. 405.
{28a} Afterwards John Lord Wenlock.
{28b} William Stanley (afterwards Sir William Stanley, Knight) was the second son of Sir Thomas Stanley, Chamberlain to Henry VI. Sir Thomas Stanley was summoned to Parliament as Lord Stanley, on the 20th of January, 1455–6, in the 34th of Henry VI., and died in the 37th year of that King’s reign, 1459; he married Joan, the daughter of Sir Robert Goushill, of Hoveringham, in the county of Nottingham, by whom he had three sons and three daughters, and was succeeded by his oldest son Thomas (afterwards first Earl of Derby), who was summoned to Parliament amongst the barons of this realm, on the 24th of May, 1461, in the first year of Edward IV., by the title of Baron Stanley of Latham. (Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. iii. p. 248; Collins’s _Peerage_, vol. iii. p. 41, 42; and the _Memoirs of the House of Stanley_, published by J. Harrop in 1767, p. 31.) It is remarkable that Dugdale does not mention any one of the family having been summoned to Parliament amongst the barons of the realm, or having been ennobled, prior to Thomas Lord Stanley, afterwards first Earl of Derby. Edmundson, in his _Peerage_, states that the latter was summoned to Parliament as Lord Stanley, in 1456; but it should seem that he means the father of the latter. It is certain that the father had a title as Lord Stanley, some time during the reign of Henry VI., from the passage in the act of the Parliament of Coventry, 38th Henry VI. (1459): “William Stanley Squier sonne to Thomas late Lord Stanley;” and from “Lord Stanley” being also repeatedly mentioned, in the proceedings of that Parliament (38th Henry VI.), and William Stanley being there called the brother of Lord Stanley; which it is impossible to apply to any other Lord Stanley, except Thomas Lord Stanley, afterwards first Earl of Derby, who was his brother, and who was also the son of the late Lord Stanley.—_Rot. Parl._ 38 Henry VI. (1459), vol. v. pp. 348, 369, 370. See also _Rot. Parl._ 39 Henry VI. (1460), vol. v. p. 382; in which the Lord Stanley then living (who was afterwards first Earl of Derby), is called “Thomas Stanley, Lord Stanley;” and his deceased father is particularly designated as “Thomas Stanley, late Lord Stanley his Fader;” besides which, the deceased is more than once called “Thomas, late Lord Stanley.” Thomas Lord Stanley, by his defection and opportunely going over, with his forces, at the battle of Bosworth, to the Earl of Richmond, was of the utmost service to him, and was the principal cause of his gaining the victory and the crown, was for so doing, created first Earl of Derby of that name, by Henry VII., in 1485, and died in 1504. Sir William Stanley (brother of the last-mentioned Lord Stanley) also commanded a considerable body of troops, at that battle. The aid of Sir William Stanley against Richard III. on that occasion, contributed very greatly, to place Henry upon the throne of England; yet Henry, forgetful of benefits received, caused Sir William Stanley to be beheaded on Tower Hill, on the 16th of February, 1494—5, on a very questionable charge, not of any treasonable actions, but of some alleged disloyal words. He was of Holt Castle, in the county of Denbigh, where he had large landed possessions, besides great quantities of plate, money, jewels, and other personal property; and the forfeiture of his wealth, is generally supposed to have been no slight motive, in inducing that avaricious and tyrannical King, to put him to death. When he fought at the battle of Blore Heath, there was exhibited a melancholy and revolting but very common effect of civil war; relatives fighting against each other; for his brothers-in-law, Sir William Troutbeck, who had married Margaret, the oldest sister, and Sir Richard Molyneux of Sefton, who had married Elizabeth, the second sister of Sir William Stanley, were both slain in that battle.
{29} A list of the Yorkist noblemen, knights, and other persons who were by that act of attainder declared guilty of high treason, and their possessions forfeited, for having taken arms against Henry VI., or for other alleged offences, and their titles or names, are given here, in the order in which they appear in the act, viz.:—The Earl of Salisbury; Sir Thomas Neville, Sir John Neville, sons of the Earl of Salisbury; Sir Thomas Harrington, Sir John Conyers, and Sir Thomas Parr; William Stanley, Esq., Son of the late Thomas Lord Stanley [and brother of Thomas, the then Lord Stanley], and Thomas Mering, Esq., for being engaged at the battle of Blore Heath, on Sunday next after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, in the 38th year of Henry VI.; also the Duke of York, the Earl of March, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Rutland, John Clinton Lord Clinton, Sir John Wenlock, Sir James Pickering, the said Sir John Conyers, and the said Sir Thomas Parr; John Bourchier and Edward Bourchier, Esqrs., nephews of the Duke of York; Thomas Colt, of London, Gentleman; John Clay, of Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, Esq.; Roger Eaton, of Shrewsbury, Esq.; and Robert Bold, brother of Sir Henry Bold, for having been in arms with the Yorkists on Friday, the vigil of St. Edward the Confessor, in the 38th year of Henry VI., at Ludford, near Ludlow; Alice, the wife of the Earl of Salisbury; Sir William Oldhall, and Thomas Vaughan, of London, Esq., for having, the former at Middleham, on the 1st of August, in the 37th year of Henry VI., and the two latter at London, on the 4th of June, compassed and imagined the death of the King, and abetted and incited the Duke of York, and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, to rebellion. Richard Grey Lord Powis, {29b} Sir Henry Radford, and Walter Devereux, Esq., who had appeared in arms at Ludford with the Yorkists, but upon the dispersion of the latter had immediately made submission to Henry VI., and had solicited mercy, had their lives spared, but the act, as originally drawn, declared all their possessions forfeited. {29c} _Rot. Parl._ 38 Henry VI. (1459), vol. v. fo. 348.
{29b} Richard Grey Lord Powis, was an adherent to the house of York, for which he was attainted by the Parliament of Coventry of 38th Henry VI.; but of which the acts and proceedings were annulled by the act of 39th Henry VI. He was with the Earls of Warwick and Kent at the siege of Alnwick Castle, then held by the Lancastrians in 2nd Edward IV. He married Margaret, daughter of James Lord Audley, and died in the 6th Edward IV., leaving issue.
{29c} The King, however, did not give his assent to the latter part of it, against Richard Grey Lord Powis, and Walter Devereux.
{30a} _Rot. Parl._ 38 Henry VI. (1459) vol. v. fo. 348.
{30b} Ibid. vol. v. fo. 369.
{34a} _Rot. Parl._ 38th Henry VI. (1459), vol. v. p. 369, 370.
{34b} I visited the field of battle on the 28th of August, 1852, the 17th of June, 1853, the 10th of June, 1854, the 11th of May, 1855, the 16th of May and the 30th of September, 1856.
{35} Chap. x. soc. 85.
{36} Mr. George Goodall lives upon a farm at Moreton Say, in Shropshire, three miles from Market Drayton. He showed me the sword, and stated that he had had it 28 years, and that it had previously been for a long period in the possession of his uncle, and was said to have been dug up upon the field of the battle of Blore Heath, but that he did not know at what date it had been discovered. He also informed me, that some pieces of armour had been formerly found in a pit near to, but not upon, the field of battle.
The blade of the sword is 2 feet 10¾ inches long, and close to the hilt, it is about 1⅛ inch wide. The blade is fluted on both sides, and with one edge, to within 11 inches of the point, and from thence it has two edges, as if it had been calculated for thrusting and not for cutting. The pommel is ornamented with a ribbed sloping pattern, and the guard is also ornamented, and is 4½ inches in length. The whole is of steel or iron. The hilt is 5½ inches long, and 3 inches in circumference; and there is a substance resembling the hard shell-like skin or covering of some kind of fish remaining round the gripe of the hilt. The whole of the sword is tolerably perfect, except that for some inches from the point it is injured by rust.
I cannot possibly doubt the veracity of those who spoke to me respecting it, but they may have been misinformed as to its history. It certainly may have been found at Blore Heath, but does not bear any ancient marks upon it, and from its appearance, make, and state of preservation, I am disposed to think, that it is of a date considerably more modern, than that of the battle of Blore Heath.
{37} Any person desirous of visiting both the fields of battle of Shrewsbury and of Blore Heath, may easily do so, by going from Shrewsbury to Battlefield, and from thence to Hodnet, and then proceeding by Market Drayton, and Blore Heath, to the Whitmore station, in Staffordshire, upon the London and North-Western Railway; or _vice versâ_. In either ease, he will have an opportunity, if disposed to archæological pursuits, of visiting on the way, a remarkable and curious relic of antiquity, called the Bury Walls, upon the estate of the Viscount Hill, and not more than half a mile from his park (Hawkstone). The place called Bury Walls, is generally believed to have been a Roman station, and its extraordinary and almost perfect ramparts, mounds, and ditches, are very interesting, and rarely to be found equalled in this country. The beautiful scenery of Hawkstone Park and grounds, well merits the attention of persons travelling in that vicinity, whether they are archæologists or not; and, thanks to the liberality and kindness of the noble owner, strangers are allowed access to the walks and views, without any other restriction, than some trivial ones, with respect to the mode of enjoying themselves, such as taking refreshments or convivial practices, which are generally considered objectionable, and are much better avoided in a nobleman’s park.
{39a} The paper upon the Field of the Battle of Northampton was read by the author in person, before a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on the 31st of January, 1856, and the thanks of the meeting were voted for it to the author.
{39b} Richard Neville, the great Earl of Warwick, called the King-Maker, the son and heir of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, by Alice his wife, daughter of Thomas de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, was slain at the battle of Barnet, on the 14th of April, 1471.—_See_ Chap. II.
{39c} Edward Earl of March, born on the 29th of April, 1441, was the oldest son of Richard Duke of York, by Cecily his wife, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland; and after the death of his father he claimed the throne, in consequence of being descended from Lionel Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward III. He was afterwards King Edward IV.—_See_ Chap. V., and Pedigrees Nos. 1 and 2, Chap. IX.
{39d} Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, third son of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, by Joan, his second wife, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was put to death after the battle of Wakefield, in 1460.—_See_ Chap. IX
{40a} Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, was of the blood royal of England, being a son of William Lord Bourchier, (Earl of Ewe in Normandy) and Anne his wife, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester (sixth son of Edward III.), and Eleanor his wife, daughter of Humphry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Constable of England, and widow of Edmund Earl of Stafford. He was a brother of Henry Bourchier, Earl of Ewe, afterwards of Essex, and became Bishop of Ely, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1454, and retained that see until he died, very aged, in 1486, having held it thirty-two years, and in the reigns of five kings. He was also Lord Chancellor and a cardinal.
{40b} Called “Lord Cobham” by Hall and Holinshed; and by Sandford, p. 296; and “Edward Broke Lord Cobham” by Dugdale, in his _Baronage_, vol. ii. p. 159. But see Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. iii p. 281, where he is called “Sir Edward Brooke, Knight, called Sir Edward Brooke of Cobham,” the son of Sir Thomas Brooke and Joan his wife. According to Dugdale, he favoured the title of the Duke of York, upon his return out of Ireland, in the 29th year of Henry VI.; took part with the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, on purpose to raise an army, which, under the pretence of removing evil counsellors from the King, might advance the duke to the throne. He fought against the Lancastrians at the first battle of St. Alban’s, in 1455; and, after the accession to the throne of Edward IV., attended him into the North, when the Lancastrians were endeavouring to make head again, and had got possession of some strong places in Northumberland, in 1462. He died in the fourth year of Edward IV., and was succeeded by John Brooke, his son and heir, who had first summons to Parliament by the title of Lord Cobham, in the twelfth year of Edward IV.; consequently, although the son was ennobled, there does not appear to be any good authority for Hall’s and Holinshed’s designating the father as Lord Cobham. “Now, as they passed through Kent, there came to them the Lord Cobham, John Gilford, William Pech, Robert Horne, and manie other gentlemen.”—Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, vol. i. fo. 653.
{40c} Thomas Lord Scales, of Nucels, in Herefordshire, was a commander of celebrity in the French wars. After being compelled to surrender the Tower of London, subsequently to the battle of Northampton, in 1460, he endeavoured to escape by water; but, being discovered by some of the Earl of Warwick’s men, was captured and put to death by them. His daughter and heiress, Elizabeth, was married, first, to Henry Bourchier, second son of Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex; and afterwards to Anthony Wideville or Wodeville, eldest son of Richard Wideville or Wodeville, Earl Rivers, by Jaquette his wife, daughter of Peter of Luxembourg, Earl of St. Paul, and widow of John Duke of Bedford, Regent of France and third son of King Henry IV., who succeeded to the earldom of Rivers after his father’s death. Anthony Wodeville became, in right of his wife Elizabeth (daughter of Thomas Lord Scales), Lord Scales, and afterwards Earl Rivers. He was brother of Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV. (See Fenn’s _Collection of Original Letters_, vol. i. p. 139, note 3; Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 618, vol. iii. pp. 231–233; _Catalogue of Nobility_, by Ralph Brooke, pp. 193, 194.) He was, when Earl Rivers, beheaded at Pontefract, by order of the Council, during the Protectorate, and, as is believed, at the instigation of Richard Duke of Gloucester, without any trial, on the 13th of June, 1483. Lord Richard Grey (son of the Queen Dowager Elizabeth, by her first husband, Sir John Grey of Groby, son of Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers, of Groby) and Sir Thomas Vaughan were executed there at the same time. The Wodevilles were originally of the Lancastrian party; and Sir John Grey of Groby, the first husband of Elizabeth, lost his life fighting for that party, at the first battle of St. Alban’s, in 1455; but, after Elizabeth’s charms had made a conquest of the heart of Edward, and he had married her, the Wodevilles became staunch Yorkists.
{41a} William Neville, Lord Falconberg, afterwards Earl of Kent, was a younger son of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, by Joan his second wife, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and was an uncle of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, called the King-Maker. He was a decided Yorkist, distinguished himself at the battle of Towton, and was created Earl of Kent in the first year of Edward IV., and died in the second year of that king’s reign.
{41b} John Clinton, Lord Clinton, served in more than one expedition into France, was originally a Lancastrian, but forsook that party in the thirty-eighth year of Henry VI. for that of the Duke of York, for which he was attainted, and his lands declared confiscated by the Parliament of Coventry, in the thirty-eighth year of Henry VI., 1459; but all the acts and proceedings of that Parliament were declared void by an act of Parliament of 39th Henry VI. (See _Rot. Parl._ 39 Henry VI. (1460), vol. v. p. 374.) His estates and honours were restored on the accession of Edward IV.
{41c} Henry Bourchier, originally Earl of Ewe in Normandy, afterwards Lord Bourchier, son and heir of William Lord Bourchier, Earl of Ewe, by Anne, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, sixth son of Edward III., was brother of Thomas Bourchier, Bishop of Ely, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was created Viscount Bourchier in the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI., and was also created Earl of Essex in the first year of Edward IV., and died in 1483.
{41d} George Neville was consecrated Bishop of Exeter in 1455, became Lord Chancellor in 1460, and was afterwards Archbishop of York, in 1466. He was the fourth son of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and brother of Richard Neville, the great Earl of Warwick. He was Bishop of Exeter before he was twenty-five years old, and Lord Chancellor in 1460, before he had completed his thirtieth year, and died in 1476.
{42a} Hall, Holinshed, Stow.
{42b} Hall, fo. 176; Holinshed, vol. i. fo. 654. “Then the Earles of March and Warwike, with the Lords Fauconbrige, Clinton, Bourcher called the Earle of Ewe, the Pryor of Saint John’s, Audley, Burgavenny, Say, and Scrope, the Archbishop, the Pope’s Legate, the Bishops of Excester, Ely, Salisbury, and Rochester, addressed them forth to the King at Northampton, leaving the Earle of Salisbury to be governour of the citie in their absence. The Lord Scales and Hungerford, that before the comming of the Earles were in the citie of London, and would have had the governance thereof, went to the Tower of London, and with them the Lords Vessy, Lovell, Delaware, Kendale a Gascoigne; Knights, Sir Edmond Hampden, Thomas Brune Sherife of Kent, John Bruin of Kent, Gervais Clifton Treasurer of the King’s House, Thomas Tyrell, the Dutches of Excester, and many other. Then was the Tower of London besieged both by water and land, that no victualls might come to them. And they that were within the Tower cast wild fire into the city, and shot many small gunnes, whereby they brent and slew men, women, and children, in the streetes; also they of the city layd great guns on the further side of the Thames against the Tower, and brake the walls in divers places.”—Stow’s _Annals_, pp. 408 and 409.
{42c} Margaret, usually called Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI., was the daughter of Renè, Duke of Anjou; was married to Henry VI. at Southwick, in Hampshire, on the 22nd of April, 1445, and was crowned at Westminster on the 30th of May following. On the 13th of October, 1453, Edward, the only child of the marriage, was born. After the defeat of the Lancastrians at the battle of Tewkesbury, and his murder, on the 4th of May, 1471, Margaret fled, and took sanctuary in a poor religious house, and was brought from thence prisoner to London, and Henry died in the Tower very soon after the battle. A considerable time afterwards she was sent home to her father, Duke Renè, having been ransomed by Louis XI. King of France for 50,000 crowns; and nothing more, connected with England, occurred respecting her, during the remainder of her life, which was passed in retirement, and she died in France, in 1482.
{43a} Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, the eldest son of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset (slain at the first battle of St. Alban’s on the 22nd of May, {43g} 1455), by Eleanor his wife (daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick), had a military command and served in the wars in France. He fought at the battle of Towton, in 1461, on the side of the Lancastrians, and after the defeat there, escaped with Henry VI. into Scotland, was afterwards pardoned by Edward IV., but, having revolted, was taken at the battle of Hexham, and beheaded in 1463. After his death, his brother Edmund (the second son) was also Duke of Somerset, and was beheaded after the battle of Tewkesbury, in 1471, in which battle John (the third son) was slain.
{43b} Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was the son and heir of Edmund Stafford, Earl of Stafford, by Anne Plantagenet, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, sixth son of Edward III., and was created first Duke of Buckingham, of that family, in 1443, and declared to take precedence of all other dukes in England. He married Anne, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland.
The strange and mournful fatality which attended the principal members of fire generations of this nobleman’s powerful and eminent family, will be mentioned afterwards in this chapter.
{43c} Stow’s _Annals_, fo. 409.
{43d} Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, vol. i. fo. 654
{43e} The Bishop of Hereford also encouraged the King’s adherents to fight, for which he was, after the battle, imprisoned in Warwick Castle, and remained a long time a prisoner.—Stow’s _Annals_, fo. 409.
{43f} Stow’s _Annals_, fo. 409.
{43g} The 22nd of May according to Dugdale, in his _Baronage_, vol. i. pp. 166 and 342; and Sandford, p. 321; but the 23rd of May according to Hall, Holinshed, and Grafton.
{44a} “She caused her army to issue out of the towne and to passe the ryver of Nene; and there in the newe felde, betweene Harsyngton [Hardingstone] and Sandifford, the capitaynes strongely emparked themselfes with high bankes and depe trenches.”—Hall’s _Chronicles_, fo. 176. See a similar account in Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, fo. 654. The meadows and Delapré Abbey are in the pariah of Hardingstone. I have not been able to learn that there is any place or ford there, called Sandiford. It probably was a ford of the river Nen, the name and situation of which are now forgotten.
{44b} Fabyan Hall, Holinshed, Grafton, Speed, and Dugdale, vol. i. p. 305, and vol. ii. p. 161. It is remarkable that Dugdale, in different parts of his _Baronage_, does not always give the date consistently. He calls it the 9th of July, in vol. i. p. 305, and vol. ii. p. 161; the 27th of July, in vol. i. p. 166; the 10th of July, in vol. i. p. 331 (where he professes to give a copy of the epitaph of the Earl of Shrewsbury, slain in the battle of Northampton); and the 10th of July, in vol. ii. p. 54; and Ralph Brooke, p. 197, and Stow, p. 409, also call it the 10th of July.
{45a} Edmund Lord Grey, of Ruthen, was the grandson and heir of Sir Reginald Grey (being the son of Sir John Grey, his eldest son, who died in his lifetime, by his first wife Margaret, daughter of William Lord Roos), and was created Earl of Kent, in the fifth year of Edward IV. His desertion from the cause of Henry VI. is mentioned by Leland, who states that “In the tyme of the civile war, betwixt King Henry the VI. and King Edwarde the IV., there was a battaille faught hard without the south suburbes of Northampton,” and that the Lord Fanhope took King Henry’s part; and Leland proceeds thus:—“The Lorde Gray, of Ruthine, did the same in countenance. But a litle afore the feeld he practisid with King Edward, & other, saying that he had a title to the Lorde Fannope’s landes at Antehil and there aboute, or depraving hym with false accusations, so wrought with King Edwarde, that he, with al his strong band of Walschemen, felle to King Edwardes part, upon promise that if Edwarde wan the feelde, he shaul have Antehil and such landes as Fannope had there.”
“Edwarde wan the feelde, and Gray opteinid Antehille _cum pertinentiis_: and stil encreasing in favour with King Edwarde, was at the laste, made by hym Erle of Kente.”—Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. i. fo. 120 [113].—Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, is the place meant as having belonged to Lord Fanhope.
{45b} Holinshed’s _Chronicles_, vol. i. fo. 654.
{45c} Stow’s _Annals_, fo. 409. Speed’s _History_, fo. 844.
{46a} The number of the slain and drowned is stated to have amounted to nearly 10,000. There seems to have been, from times of very remote antiquity, a bridge over the river at Northampton, near the castle; but from the narrow and inconvenient form of bridges at the date of the battle, it could not afford much chance of escape to many of the fugitives. The present bridge is modern, and not upon the site of the old one.
{46b} “The Erles of March, Warwick, and Salisbyri, cam from Calays to Dovar, and so to London and Northampton, and there faute with owte the town, where the Duke of Bokingham, the Erle of Shrobbesbyri, the Viscount Beaumont, the Lorde Egremont, were slayn, and many knighttes and squyers with other, and the King taken prisoner.”—Leland’s _Coll._ vol. ii. fo. 497 [714].
{46c} John Talbot, second Earl of Shrewsbury, was the son and heir of John Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, the celebrated commander, renowned for his warlike exploits in France, and slain by a cannon shot at the battle of Castillon, near Bourdeaux, on the 7th {46f} of July, 1453, and of his wife Maud, daughter and heiress of Thomas Neville, Lord Furnival.
{46d} He was originally John Lord Beaumont, son of Henry Lord Beaumont and Elizabeth his wife, daughter of William Lord Willoughby of Eresby, and was in the eighteenth year of Henry VI. advanced to the dignity of a Viscount (a title not previously used in England), by the title of Viscount Beaumont, with precedence over all Barons of the realm; after his death at the battle of Northampton, he was succeeded in his title, and his principles, by his son and heir, William Viscount Beaumont, who fought on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Towton, for which he was included in the act of attainder of 1st Edward IV., but was restored by Parliament in the first, and died in the twenty-fourth year of Henry VII.
{46e} Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, originally Sir Thomas Percy, Knight (the third son of Henry, the second Earl of Northumberland, who was slain at the first battle of Saint Alban’s in 1455, and Eleanor his wife, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, and widow of Richard Lord Spencer), was created Lord Egremont, in the twenty-eighth year of Henry VI.
{46f} On the 7th of July, 1453, according to Ralph Brooke, p. 196; on the 20th of July, according to Dugdale, vol. i. p. 330; but on the 7th of July, on the same page, where he professes to give a copy of the epitaph of the Earl of Shrewsbury, slain in the battle near Bourdeaux, from his monument at Whitchurch, in Shropshire.
{47a} Edward Prince of Wales was the only child of King Henry VI. and Queen Margaret (usually called Margaret of Anjou). He was born in the King’s palace at Westminster, on the 13th of October, 1453, in the thirty-first year of Henry VI., and was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on the 16th of March, in the thirty-second year of his lather’s reign. At the age of seventeen he was affianced in France to Anne Neville, the second daughter of Richard Earl of Warwick, called the King-Maker. The murder of Prince Edward, immediately after the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, will be noticed in Chapter VII. After his death, Anne, his widow, was married to Richard Duke of Gloucester, afterwards King Richard III.
{47b} _Catalogue of Nobility_, by Ralph Brooke. The Grey Friars Monastery was in the north-east quarter of the town, but is now demolished, and most of its site is built upon; but it stood in that part of the town which now lies between Newland and Victoria Streets, and to the eastward of the upper end of Grey Friars Street and of Lady’s Lane: a small portion of an ancient wall, with buttresses, and some little remains of masonry, built up in the walls of the adjoining houses, are now visible, contiguous to a deep hollow or depression, which lies on the northward side of Victoria Street, and formed part of the monastic edifice. Its site has also been identified by stone coffins discovered near there, in excavating the soil for building purposes.
{48a} _Catalogue of Nobility_, by Ralph Brooke.
{48b} The Hospital of St. John in Bridge Street, is one of the old charitable institutions which is still kept up. The ancient edifice, with its handsome rose window, and its curious little chapel, are well worth a visit.
{48c} Leland states:—“There was a great bataille faught in Henry the 6th tyme at Northampton on the Hille withoute the southe Gate, where is a right goodly Crosse, caullid as I remembre the Quene’s Crosse, and many Walschmen were drounid yn Avon Ryver at this conflict. Many of them that were slayn were buried at De la pray: and sum at St. Johns Hospitale.”—Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. i. fo. 9 [10]. The battle was certainly fought at the southward side of the town, and near Queen Eleanor’s Cross, yet there seems to be some want of care on Leland’s part, in stating that the battle was fought on a hill near the cross. Although not far from the cross, the place where it was fought is not a hill, although the ground has a gradual ascent from the river and Delapré Abbey, up to the cross, which stands rather elevated, and is a conspicuous object from the abbey, and its park and grounds. Again, he is evidently incorrect in mentioning the river Avon, instead of the river Nen or Nene.
{48d} The descent of the Duke of Buckingham from King Edward III. was as follows:—Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, a nobleman of immense possessions, had two daughters, his coheiresses. Eleanor, the eldest daughter, married Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, sixth son of King Edward III. Thomas Duke of Gloucester had by her, amongst other issue, a daughter Anne, whose first husband Edmund Stafford, fifth Earl of Stafford, was slain at the battle of Shrewsbury. They had a son, Humphrey, first Duke of Buckingham, who married Anne, daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland, and was slain at the battle of Northampton. Their eldest son was Humphrey Earl of Stafford, who married Margaret, daughter of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and was slain at the first battle of Saint Alban’s. Their son Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, married Katherine, daughter of Richard Wideville or Wodeville, Earl of Rivers, and was executed in the first year of Richard III. Besides the descent of Henry Stafford, second Duke of Buckingham, from Edward III., as above mentioned, he was also descended from him, through his (the Duke of Buckingham’s) mother, Margaret Beaufort, from John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset (son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III.), by Katherine Swinford, but born before their marriage, in which defect of a legitimate title, by his maternal descent, his case resembled that of King Henry VII. The Duke of Buckingham, however, from one or both of those sources of descent, probably flattered himself with the hope of one day being King of England; and it has been very reasonably suggested, that it was fortunate for the Earl of Richmond, afterwards King Henry VII., that his first expedition and attempt to land in England, was a total failure, and terminated in the execution of the Duke of Buckingham; for if that powerful and ambitious nobleman had succeeded in deposing Richard III., it is very probable that he would have attempted to have seized the throne, in his own right.
Mary, the second daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, married Henry Earl of Derby, afterwards King Henry IV.; and it should be here observed, that the Duke of Buckingham was entitled, by descent from Eleanor, eldest daughter of the Earl of Hereford, to at least half of his great possessions. After the line of Henry IV. had become extinct, the other half was vested in Edward IV. and his heirs; but Buckingham considered himself entitled to it, as heir at law of Mary, the second daughter of the Earl of Hereford. Shakespeare seldom wrote without a meaning, and from what is above stated, his object in the drama of _Richard III._ will be at once apparent, in causing the Duke of Gloucester to offer the following inducement to the Duke of Buckingham to support his claim to the throne:—
“And look when I am King, claim thou of me The earldom of Hereford, and all the moveables Whereof the King, my brother, was possessed.”
SHAKESPEARE’S _King Richard III._, act iii. scene 1.
It seems probable that in Shakespeare’s time the word “moveables” was not used in the same sense in which we now use it, for at present that word would be considered strangely inapplicable to lands, castles, manors, &c.
{49} Historians have not always agreed, respecting the place where the Duke of Buckingham was executed: some have stated that the execution took place at Salisbury, and others at Shrewsbury. It is certain that he was captured in Shropshire. The most authentic of the old historical writers, however, state, and apparently upon good grounds, that he was sent a prisoner to Salisbury, where Richard III. then was; and that he was beheaded upon a new scaffold in the open market-place of Salisbury, on the 2nd of November, 1483.—See Fabyan Hall, Holinshed, Grafton, Speed, and Stow.
It is well worthy of notice, that in the year 1838, an interesting discovery took place at Salisbury. Under a brick floor, about eight inches below the surface, at the Saracen’s Head Inn, in that city, during some repairs then in progress, the remains of a man were discovered interred there; but the skull and the bones of the right arm were not with the rest of the skeleton. The bones had belonged to a man who appeared to have been decapitated, and were supposed to have been those of the Duke of Buckingham.—See the Liverpool _Courier_ of the 12th of September, 1838, in which the above particulars appear copied from the Salopian _Journal_. There is nothing surprising in the fact of the bones of the arm, as well as the skull, being wanting, because formerly the different members and quarters, as well as the heads of persons executed, were not unfrequently severed from the bodies, and fixed up in conspicuous places. That was done even as recently as in the time of the wicked Judge Jeffreys, after the suppression of the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion. In the case of the Duke of Buckingham, it was very probable, as he was beheaded in 1483 for high treason, in taking arms and making war against the King, that the duke’s right arm would also be fixed up wherever his head was placed.
{50a} Hall, Holinshed; Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. i. fo. 9 [10]. “The King, lying in the Friers at Northampton, ordained a strong and mighty field in the meadows beside the Nunry, having the river at his back.”—Stow’s _Annals_, fo. 409.
{50b} I beg to tender my thanks to Edward Bouverie, Esq., for the courtesy and attention which I received from him, when inspecting the mansion, and visiting the park and grounds, in the hope of discovering some indications of the position, occupied by one or both of the hostile armies. I visited the field of battle on the 29th and 30th of May, 1855; and on the 31st of May, 1856.
{51} Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. See Chap. II.
{53a} The paper on the Field of the Battle of Wakefield was read before a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London on the 20th of January, 1853, and the thanks of the meeting were voted for it to the author.
{53b} Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York. See Chap. II.
{53c} Queen Margaret, usually called Margaret of Anjou, was the Queen of Henry VI., to whom she was married in 1445. See Chap. III.
{53d} “appointing his son, the Earl of March, to follow him, with all his power, and came to his Castle of Sandale, near Wakefield (in Yorkshire), on Christmas Eve.”—Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. ii. Title York, p. 161. Stow’s Annals, fo. 412. Dugdale and Stow state that the Duke of York left London on the 2nd of December, and arrived at Sandal on Christmas eve. If he consumed twenty-two days in his march from London to Sandal, the delay seems very extraordinary.
{54a} According to Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. iii. p. 161, Edward, the young Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI. and Queen Margaret, accompanied her.
{54b} Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon, the son of John Holland, Duke of Exeter, by his first wife, Anne, daughter of Edmund Earl of Stafford, was one of the principal leaders of the Lancastrian party; he fought at the battle of Wakefield, and at that of Towton; and after the disastrous result of the latter, fled with Henry VI., Queen Margaret, the Duke of Somerset, and others, to Scotland; was attainted in the first year of Edward IV., and his lands and possessions were forfeited. He afterwards again appeared in turbulent scenes in England, fought at the battle of Barnet, was wounded and left for dead, from seven in the morning, until four in the afternoon, when he was brought to the house of one of his servants named Ruthland, where he was attended by a surgeon; he was conveyed to sanctuary at Westminster; and afterwards went abroad, where he lived in such poverty and distress, as to be obliged at one time to beg his bread; and in 1473, his corpse was found stripped naked on the seashore, near Dover. It is shocking to think that he fought at the battle of Wakefield against his wife’s father, and at those of Towton and Barnet against her brother; besides fighting against some of his own near relations on several occasions. He married Anne, daughter of Richard Duke of York, and sister of Edward IV., but had no issue; she was divorced from him, and she afterwards married Sir Thomas St. Ledger, and was the ancestress of the House of Manners, Dukes of Rutland.
{54c} Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was the son of Edmund Beaufort (grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster), who, after the death of his eldest brother, John Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, without issue male, was created first Marquis of Dorset, and in the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI. was made Duke of Somerset, and was slain at the first battle of St. Alban’s, on the 22nd of May, {54d} 1455, fighting on the part of Henry VI., and had issue by his wife Eleanor, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, four sons and several daughters. The eldest son, Henry was, after his father’s death, Duke of Somerset, Marquis of Dorset, and Lord of Chirk and Chirkland, in the marches of Wales. He was one of the Lancastrian commanders at the battle of Wakefield, and, as there is every reason to believe, also at the second battle of St. Alban’s, although that circumstance is not distinctly mentioned by historians. He was also a principal commander and fought at the battle of Towton; and after the defeat there, escaped into Scotland, and was afterwards pardoned by Edward IV.; but having revolted from Edward to the Lancastrians, and having, with the Lords Roos, Molyns, and Hungerford, Sir Henry Neville, Sir Thomas Wentworth, and Sir Richard Tunstal, fought at the battle of Hexham, he was taken prisoner by John Marquis Montague, and was beheaded in 1463. Edmund, the second son, was also Duke of Somerset after his brother, and was beheaded after the battle of Tewkesbury, in 1471; John, the third son was slain in that battle; and Thomas, the fourth son, died without issue. The family was noted for its strong attachment and exertions in the cause of the House of Lancaster.
{54d} The 22nd of May, according to Dugdale, vol. i. pp. 166 and 342; and Sandford, p. 321; but the 23rd of May, according to Hall, Holinshed, and Grafton.
{55} Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, a strong supporter of the House of Lancaster, fought at the battle of Wakefield. He afterwards fought at the battle of Towton, on the 29th of March, 1461, was taken prisoner, and beheaded at York. Some degree of confusion seems to exist, respecting the Earl of Devonshire who fought at Wakefield and at Towton, and the Earl of Devonshire who afterwards fought at Tewkesbury. The old historians state, that the former, being taken prisoner, was beheaded after the battle of Towton; and that seems to be in no small degree confirmed by the act of attainder against him and the other Lancastrian leaders, of the 1st of Edward IV., in which he is called “Thomas Courtenay, late Earl of Devonshire;” the word “late” being also used with reference to other noblemen, and persons who were dead, and were attainted for having been engaged in that battle. In the _Catalogue of Nobility_, by Ralph Brooke, p. 61, it is stated that Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, son of Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, being at the battle of Towton, “was taken prisoner, and beheaded at York;” that he married Margaret, daughter of John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset and Marquis of Dorset, by whom he had issue three sons and two daughters; that “Thomas, the eldest sonne, being at the battle of Towton with King Henry VI. against King Edward IV., was there taken prisoner, and his head smitten off;” that Henry, the second son, was also beheaded at Salisbury, in the 8th of Edward IV.; and that John, the third son, was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury. It seems probable, that that account is correct; and it is rather corroborated by the act of attainder of 1st Edward IV., in which “Thomas Courteney, late Earl of Devonshire,” and also “Sir John Courtney,” were attainted for having been engaged at the battle of Towton.
But the account given by Sandford in his _Genealogical History_, page 313, differs in some respects from it. He states that Thomas Courtenay, seventh Earl of Devon, married Margaret, second daughter of John Earl of Somerset, and, siding with King Henry VI. against the Yorkists, was by King Edward IV. taken prisoner at the battle of Towton, and beheaded at York, the 3rd of April (_an._ 1 Edward IV.), in the year 1461; and that their children were, Thomas Earl of Devon, made prisoner at the same battle, and being attainted in a Parliament at Westminster, the 4th of November, _an._ 1 Edward IV., soon after lost his head; that Henry Courtenay, the second son, had his head cut off in the same quarrel at Salisbury; and that John Courtenay, the third son, fell in the battle of Tewkesbury. Dugdale, in his _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 641, however, states, that Thomas Earl of Devonshire was, for being at the battle of Towton with his father, attainted by the act of 1st Edward IV., but did not suffer death, as it seems, for it appears that he was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury, fighting on behalf of Henry VI., and there buried. Leland, in his _Itinerary_, vol. vi. fo. 93 [p. 82], also states that Thomas Earl of Devonshire was slain at Tewkesbury, and buried there. It is stated in Banks’ _Dormant and Extinct Baronage_, vol. iii, p. 249, that Thomas Earl of Devon, a firm Lancastrian, died just before the accession of Edward IV. to the throne, and had by his wife Margaret, daughter of John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, five daughters and three sons: Thomas, his successor; Henry, beheaded for his attachment to the House of Lancaster; and John, slain on the same side, at the battle of Tewkesbury. Is it not probable, that the personage who fought at Tewkesbury, called the Earl of Devonshire, was only the nominal earl of that title, and that he was the same person who, as Sir John Courteney, fought at Towton, and was attainted in the 1st of Edward IV., and who was afterwards called by the Lancastrians, the Earl of Devonshire?
{56a} James Boteler or Butler, the son and heir of James, fourth Earl of Ormond, was created Earl of Wiltshire in the 27th of Henry VI. In the 30th of Henry VI., by the death of his father, he also became Earl of Ormond. He was a staunch Lancastrian, and fought for that party at the first battle of St. Alban’s, in 1455; also at the battle of Wakefield, and again at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross. He appears also to have been at the battle of Towton. (See Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. iii. p. 235.) After that battle he was captured by the Yorkists, and was beheaded upon the 1st of May, 1461, at Newcastle. It is very remarkable, that although historians state that he fought on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Wakefield, and although he was attainted by the act 1st Edward IV. (1461), his name is not included amongst those of the noblemen and others, who were attainted for taking a part in the battle of Wakefield. His attainder was, ostensibly at least, for a different offence; viz., for inducing the enemies of the King to enter the realm, and make war against him. {56d} The fact of the Earl of Wiltshire having fought at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, is mentioned not only by the old historians, but also in _Rot. Parl._ 1 Edward IV. vol. v. p. 462; but that is not alleged in the act, as the reason for his attainder. It does not seem easy to understand how he could be engaged at the battle of Wakefield, and be so soon afterwards at the head of forces fighting at Mortimer’s Cross. See, however, Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. ii. p. 235; Stow’s _Annals_, fo. 412; and Speed’s _History_, fo. 847.
{56b} John Lord Clifford (son of Thomas Clifford, Lord Clifford, by Joan his wife, daughter of Thomas Lord Dacre of Gillesland, who took part with Henry VI., and was slain at the first battle of St. Alban’s, on the 22nd {56e} of May, 1455) fought at the battle of Wakefield for the Lancastrian party, and was slain at the engagement at Dintingdale (between Ferrybridge and Towton, and near the latter place), on the 28th of March, 1461, being the day before the battle of Towton. He left by Margaret his wife, daughter and heiress of Henry Bromflete Lord Vesci, Henry his son and heir, who, when a little child, was placed with a shepherd in the north of England, and brought up as a poor boy, in careful concealment, for fear of the enemies of his family, and could not read or write; he remained in obscurity, until the first year of Henry VII., when he was restored to his rank and possessions.
{56c} Thomas Lord Roos, or Ros, or Ross (it has been occasionally spelt each way), of Hamlake, son of Thomas Lord Roos, by his wife Eleanor, daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, was a supporter of the House of Lancaster; and was at the battle of Wakefield, and was also with Henry VI. at York, when tidings came of the complete defeat of the Lancastrians at the battle of Towton; and then escaped with him into Scotland. He returned again into England, and died at Newcastle in the first year of King Edward IV. He was attainted in the first year of that King’s reign, and his possessions of Belvoir Castle, &c., were bestowed upon Lord Hastings; who, on first going to view the latter, was repelled by a gentleman named Harrington, a person of some power in those parts, a friend of Lord Roos; but Lord Hastings went there again with some forces, and greatly injured the castle and roofs, and took away the lead to his house at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which he was building at considerable cost; and Belvoir Castle remained in a state of ruin, and uninhabitable, until the Earl of Rutland [in Henry VIII.’s time] repaired it. (See Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. i. fo. 114 [107].) Thomas Lord Roos married Philippa, daughter of John Lord Tiptoft and Powis, and Joyce his wife (daughter of Edward Charlton, Lord Powis, and sister of John Earl of Worcester), by whom he had several children: the eldest son, Edmund, from his fidelity to the House of Lancaster, was constrained to flee beyond the sea. It seems that Edmund afterwards got privately into England, and joined the Duke of Somerset, Sir Ralph Percy, and others, in the insurrection in the North, in the fourth year of Edward IV. Little more seems to be known of him, except that he was not within the realm in the first year of Henry VII., when he petitioned for, and obtained, an act of Parliament for the reversal of the attainder, and he died at Enfield in the year 1508.
{56d} 1 _Rot. Parl._ 1 Edward IV. (1461), vol. v. fo. 478.
{56e} Called the 23rd of May by some writers.
{57} Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. See Chap. VI.
{58a} See Speed, Stow, Grafton; Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. iii. p. 236, Title “Bonvile”; Sandford’s _Genealogical History_, pp. 297, 372. Fabyan, however, states it to have been on the 30th of December; and it is so stated twice in _Rot. Parl._ 1 Edward IV. vol. v. pp. 466, 477.
{58b} Sandford, pp. 297, 373; Baker’s _Chronicles_. The battle is stated by Hall, Holinshed, Grafton, and Stow, to have taken place upon the plain field or ground between the castle and the town of Wakefield; which corresponds with the place where Wakefield Green was, before it was enclosed.
{58c} William Bonvile, Lord Harrington, married Katharine, fifth daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury; was the son of William Bonvile, and Elizabeth his wife, daughter and heir of William Lord Harrington, and was the grandson of William Lord Bonvile, who survived his son and grandson, but was put to death after the second battle of St. Alban’s, in 1460–1. William Bonvile, Lord Harrington, left by Katharine his wife, a daughter, Cecily, who became the wife of Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and afterwards of Henry Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire.
{58d} Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury. (See Chap. II.) In the second year of Edward IV., the Earl of Salisbury’s body, with that of Alice his wife, and that of Thomas his son, were interred at Bisham Abbey, in Berkshire.
{59a} Shakespeare’s _Third Part of Henry VI._ act. 1, scene 4 (Sandal Castle, near Wakefield).
{59b} See Chap. VI.
{60a} See Chap. VI.
{60b} See Chap. VI.
{60c} _Rot. Parl._ 1st Edward IV. (1461), vol. v. fo. 447. See Appendix No. 1.
{61a} That was my impression on the occasion of my first visit to Sandal, and I so communicated it in my paper on the Battle of Wakefield, read before the Society of Antiquaries; but after a second and third visit to Sandal, and to the field of battle, I altered my opinion, and I now consider it certain, that the Lancastrians advanced on the westward side of the Calder, and that Wakefield and the bridge were in their possession at the time of the battle.
{61b} On the 29th of July, 1853, I paid a second visit, and on the 4th of August, 1854, a third visit, to Sandal, and to the field of the battle of Wakefield.
{62} Leland, in his quaint language, gives a tolerably accurate account of the place where the battle was fought, when he says:—“There was a sore Batell faught in the South Feeldes by this Bridge, and yn the flite of the Duke of Yorkes parte, other the Duke hymself or his Sone the erle of Rutheland was slayne a litle above the Barres beyond the Bridge going up into the Toune of Wakefeld that standith ful fairely upon a clyving ground. At this place is set up a crosee, ‘in rei memoriam,’”—Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. i. fo. 34 [40].
{63} See Chapters I. and VI.
{64a} Additions to Camden’s _Britannia_, Gough’s edition of 1789, vol. iii. fo. 39. Leland says, “at this place is set up a crosse, ‘in rei memoriam’”—Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. i. fo. 45 [42]; but whether he means in memory of the Duke of York, or of the young Earl of Rutland, or of the battle, seems to admit of doubt.
{64b} _Quære_?—The lane is occasionally called “Cock and Bottle Lane,” from the sign of an old public-house which stands, or very recently stood in the neighbourhood?
{64c} His body was ultimately interred at Fotheringay. Dugdale’s _Baronage_, vol. ii. p. 161. Ralph Brooke seems to intend to make a similar statement in his _Catalogue of Nobility_, fo. 267; and see Sandford’s _Genealogical History_, p. 373. It was first interred at Pontefract, and afterwards at Fotheringay; and it seems extraordinary that the Lancastrians, who practised such an indignity to his memory, as fixing his head upon the gate of York, should take the trouble of carrying his headless corpse to Pontefract for interment; but we learn from more than one historical source, that the corpse was first buried at Pontefract, and afterwards removed, and interred at Fotheringay. After the battle of Towton, Edward IV. had the Duke of York’s head taken down from York gate, and interred with the body. Leland adverts to the removal of the duke’s body from Pontefract to Fotheringay by Edward IV., as follows:—
“causid the body of his father Duke of York to be brought from Pontefract thither” [Fotheringay], “and to be layid on the north side of the Highe Altare, where is also buried, King Edward IV.’s mother, in a vaulte, over the which is a pratie chappelle.” {65b} The body of the young Earl of Rutland was also first interred at Pontefract, and afterwards at Fotheringay.—Sandford’s _Genealogical History_, pp. 374 and 375. _Catalogue of the Nobility_, &c., by Ralph Brooke, p. 189.
{65a} John Harrow of London, and a Captain named Hanson, were taken prisoners at the battle, and were beheaded with the Earl of Salisbury, at Pontefract, and their heads were set upon the gates of York.—See Fabyan’s _Chronicles_, fo. 210.
{65b} Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. i. fo. 6.
{67a} The paper upon the Field of the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross was read before a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of London, on the 18th of January, 1855, and the thanks of the meeting were voted for it to the author.
{67b} Edward was Earl of March and Ulster, and Lord of Wigmore and Clare, and afterwards King Edward IV.; and, although not usually called Duke of York by historians, there does not seem to be any reason why he was not so called, between the time of his father’s death, and his accession to the throne of England. Edward was the eldest son of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and Cecily his wife, and was born at Rouen, in Normandy, on the 29th of April, 1441. His claim to the throne of England was founded upon his being descended from Lionel Duke of Clarence, third son of King Edward III. (See Pedigrees Nos. 1 and 2, in Chap. IX.) His reign commenced on the 4th of March, 1461 (see _Rot. Parl._ 1 Edward IV. vol. v. fo. 464 and Fabyan, fo. 218); he was crowned at Westminster on the 29th of June, 1461, and died on the 9th of April, 1483, in the forty-second year of his age, and the twenty-second of his reign.
{69a} James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire. See Chap. IV.
{69b} The following it a copy of a paper upon the extraordinary and abrupt changes of fortune of Jasper Earl of Pembroke, afterwards Duke of Bedford, in the fifteenth century, written by the author of this work, and read by him in person, on the 31st of March, 1856, before a meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, for which the thanks of the meeting were voted to him:—
“Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, often called Jasper of Hatfield, from the place of his birth, was a nobleman celebrated for his descent, and for the royal and illustrious alliances of his family. He was one of the noble personages who lived and distinguished himself in the fifteenth century: a period memorable in the history of England, for foreign and domestic wars, and civil dissensions, and for the strange mutations of fortune, which its princes and nobles were doomed to experience; and perhaps we may search the pages of history, in fruitless endeavours to discover an instance of any nobleman, who experienced such abrupt and extraordinary vicissitudes, and such sudden and astonishing transitions, on several occasions, from power and wealth, to exile and poverty, and again from the miseries of a poor outlaw and fugitive, to rank, possessions, and honours, as fell to the lot of Jasper Earl of Pembroke.
“It matters now little to us, whether in the wars of York and Lancaster, and the violence and exasperation of the contending factions, the one party or the other was in the right; but under every possible circumstance, whether the cause which he espoused was successful or unfortunate, he uniformly supported the Lancastrian interest; and when we consider how many personages of high rank fought during those lamentable conflicts, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, and joined the winning party, as seemed best to suit their own interests, we must at least give him credit for consistency, and perhaps for sincerity. One reason of some moment, may, however, be found for his strenuous and consistent support of the Lancastrian party. He was half-brother of King Henry VI., being the son of Sir Owen Tudor, who was descended from persons of the first consideration, and of a family of great antiquity in Wales, by his wife Queen Katherine, daughter of Charles VI. King of France, and widow of Henry V. King of England, and had by Queen Katherine, two sons, the oldest of whom was Edmund Earl of Richmond, usually denominated Edmund of Hadham, who married Margaret, daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, son of John Earl of Somerset, a son of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III., by whom he had a son, Henry Earl of Richmond, who was afterwards King Henry VII.; and the second son of Sir Owen Tudor was Jasper Tutor, who was, in consequence of his father’s marriage with Queen Katherine, uncle of King Henry VII. King Henry VI. created Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke; and in consequence of his recovering the castle of Denbigh, and other strongholds in Wales, out of the hands of the adversaries of Henry, he obtained a grant of 1000 marks, payable out of the lordships of Denbigh and Radnor.
“The Earl of Pembroke appeared in 1460–1, in arms, with James Butler, Earl of Wiltshire, and a considerable army, as supporters of Henry VI.; and on the 2nd of February, in that year, fought at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, against the Yorkists, under the command of Edward Earl of March, afterwards King Edward IV.; but the Lancastrian army was completely defeated, and the two earls were compelled to escape by flight. It may be fairly presumed, that he was not present at the battle of Towton in 1461, as he was not included in the list of those persons who were attainted by the act of Parliament of 1st Edward IV. (1461), _Rot. Parl._ vol. v. fo. 477, for taking a part in that battle; yet he seems nevertheless to have been exerting himself in arms for Henry VI. about that time, because in a subsequent part of the same act of Parliament, he was attainted for having with others, as alleged, at different times since the 4th of March in that year, incited the enemies of King Edward IV. to enter the realm and to commence hostilities against him; and also for having made war against the King ‘at a place called Tutehill, besid’ the Toune of Carnarvan, in Wales, on Friday next after the Fest of Translacion of Seint Edward last past, rered werre ayenst the same our Soverayne Lord, purposying then and there to have proceeded to his destruction, of fals and cruell violence ayenst their feith and Liegeaunce.’ From that passage it can scarcely be doubted, that an engagement between some forces of the hostile factions, took place near Carnarvon, in 1461, but I am not aware that any historian has handed down to us, any account of it, or even noticed it: an additional proof, if any were wanting, that much more bloodshed and misery were experienced in this country, during the Wars of the Roses, than our old annalists and chroniclers have recorded. The Earl of Pembroke lost his rank, his possessions, and, in a word, his all, by the attainder, for all that he had was confiscated. His earldom was conferred upon William Herbert of Ragland; and Jasper Tudor became an outlaw and a fugitive, and, as is very forcibly expressed by Baker, in his _Chronicles_, ‘The Earl of Pembroke went from country to country, little better than a vagabond.’
“Again the scene suddenly changed. In 1470, William Herbert, the rival Earl of Pembroke, was captured by the Lancastrians at the battle of Edgecott, in Northamptonshire (usually called the battle of Banbury, from its contiguity to that town), and was beheaded. Jasper Tudor, who still claimed the title of Earl of Pembroke, landed in the west with George Duke of Clarence (who then sided with the Earl of Warwick in the Lancastrian interest), and King Edward was driven from his throne and kingdom by the Earl of Warwick. Jasper Tudor was shortly afterwards restored to his rank and title, and a second time became Earl of Pembroke, resumed his possessions in Wales; and finding his nephew, Henry Earl of Richmond, then scarcely ten years of age, in the care of the widow of his deceased rival, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, he removed him from her superintendence, took him and presented him to Henry VI., who, on seeing him, is said (with what truth may well be doubted) to have made a speech almost prophetic of Richmond’s future fortunes.
“Another sudden and startling change occurred in this strange and wonderful drama. Edward IV. returned to England in 1471, and obtained a decisive victory over the Earl of Warwick, at Barnet. Queen Margaret landed at Weymouth; the Lancastrians once more took up arms, and Pembroke proceeded to raise forces in Pembrokeshire, with the intention of succouring her. The disastrous battle of Tewkesbury, and the consequent utter ruin of the Lancastrian party, compelled him to retire to Chepstow, and to disband his forces. He then had a very narrow escape with his life. Edward IV. sent Roger Vaughan, a valiant person, to surprise Pembroke there; but he captured Vaughan, beheaded him, and proceeded from thence to the town of Pembroke. Still he was in imminent danger. Morgan ap Thomas pursued him, and commenced the siege of that town; but David ap Thomas, who was the brother of Morgan ap Thomas, although of the opposite party, came to his assistance, and succeeded in raising the siege, and Pembroke got from thence in eight days, and sailed with his nephew, the young Earl of Richmond, from Tenby, intending to proceed to France. His ill fortune still prevailed: the winds drove them upon the coast of Brittany; they were forced to put into a port of that country, and could not be well excused from paying their respects to the Duke of Brittany; but when they would have taken their departure, they were given to understand, that they were not at liberty to proceed. The Duke of Brittany considering, that these two noblemen might be of some advantage to him, assigned to them the town of Vannes for their residence. They were outwardly treated with all respect due to their birth and rank, but were narrowly watched. Pembroke’s exile was a protracted one, and he remained abroad, an outlaw, a fugitive, and in poverty, during several years, most of which he passed in Brittany, but a short time was spent in France, just before his return to England as after mentioned. His earldom was conferred by Edward IV. upon his son, Prince Edward, and was afterwards held by Richard III. At length, in consequence of the death of Edward, the odium and unpopularity in which Richard was held by many, and the English nation being at last weary of civil war, violence, and bloodshed, the prospect was opened, of his return to England, and of the accession to the throne of his nephew, Henry Earl of Richmond.
“In October, 1483, an attempt was made, to effect a hostile landing in England, by the Earl of Richmond, with some forces, which were intended to have been supported by the rising of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and others. That expedition was an utter and disastrous failure. Richmond’s fleet was dispersed by a storm; and although the ship in which he sailed appeared off Poole, in Dorsetshire, he found it dangerous, as well as useless, to attempt to land, and was compelled to return to Brittany. The insurrection was suppressed, the duke was executed, and Jasper Tudor, with the bitterness of disappointed hopes, was doomed for some time longer, to remain in banishment. The old historians do not expressly mention his having been with Richmond, in that expedition; but it seems quite impossible, to doubt the fact, of his having accompanied him.
“Once more the scene changed in this most strange and eventful drama. In 1485, the Earl of Richmond, with Jasper Tudor and some few troops from France, landed at Milford, in South Wales, and having been joined by their friends and supporters, the battle of Bosworth (at which the latter had a principal command) placed Richmond on the throne of England, by the title of Henry VII.
“By that event Jasper Tudor found himself for the third time, Earl of Pembroke. He was restored to his honours and possessions, created Duke of Bedford, made one of the Privy Council, and one of the Commissioners for executing the office of High Steward of England, on the occasion of the ceremony of the coronation of Henry; also Justice of South Wales, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and had besides considerable and valuable possessions, lands, and offices, conferred upon him.
“In 1487, he was joint general, with John De Vere, Earl of Oxford, at the battle of Stoke, where the Earl of Lincoln was defeated. He was afterwards again appointed joint general with the Earl of Oxford, of the army sent into Flanders, in aid of the Emperor Maximilian, against the French. He married Katharine, sixth daughter of Richard Widevile or Wodevile, Earl of Rivers, sister of Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV., and widow of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who was executed, as before mentioned, in 1483.
“He continued to enjoy his titles, ranks, and great possessions, until his death, which took place on the 21st of December, 1495. He did not leave any issue, and was interred in the Abbey of Keynsham. Is it possible to find, in the whole history of the English peerage, a nobleman who experienced more strange and astonishing vicissitudes of fortune? Well may it be said that truth is stranger than fiction!”
{72a} _Rot. Parl._ 1 Edward IV. (1461), vol. v. fo. 462.
{72b} The year, according to the present style, was 1461; but at that time the legal year did not commence until the 25th of March following; and until that day arrived, the then year would be called 1460.
{72c} I have three times visited the field of battle of Mortimer’s Cross: viz., in May 1854, May 1855, and May 1856.
{73a} On the occasion of my last visit to the field of battle, on the 24th of May, 1856, I witnessed there a rare and very beautiful natural phenomenon; a species of rainbow, of remarkable grandeur, appeared, not as an arch in the sky, as is usual, but forming a splendid and broad border to the horizon, and encircling and appearing to rest with its under edge upon the earth, towards the north, and to touch with its upper edge a canopy of clouds, the darkness of which formed a striking contrast, which set off its brilliant prismatic colours to great advantage. Its beauty and singularity strikingly brought to my mind, the remarkable phenomenon, seen by Edward, on the same spot, so many years before.
{73b} Many years afterwards, at the battle of Barnet, Edward’s device was accidentally of great service, because in the mist, the star with rays, the device of the Earl of Oxford, who was fighting on the side of Lancaster, was mistaken for that of Edward, the sun in splendour; and the Lancastrian archers, deceived by the resemblance, shot at the followers of the Earl of Oxford, and the mistake contributed considerably to the loss of the battle by the Lancastrians.
{73c} Hall says, “he fiercely set on his enemies, and them shortly discomfited.”
{73d} He is called Sir Owen Tudor by Hall, Holinshed, Speed, and Grafton, in their respective accounts of the battle, and he is also so called by Sandford in his _Genealogical History_, p. 297, and Sir Owen ap Merydeth ap Tudor, _ibid._ p. 242, which are certainly high authorities for believing that he was a knight; but Sandford elsewhere calls him “Owen Tudor” only, _ibid._ p. 283, 284. Yet Baker, in the part of his _Chronicles_ in which the marriage of Owen Tudor with Katherine, widow of King Henry V., is mentioned, calls him “Owen Tudor an Esquire of Wales.” He is also called “a Squyer of Wales” in Leland’s _Collectanea_, vol. ii. fo. 492 [708]. Ralph Brooke, in his _Catalogue of the Nobility_, &c., says that Katherine married “a noble Gentleman named Owen Theoder of Wales.” Fabyan, fo. 627, calls him a knyght of Wales.
{73e} “Owen Meredith, _alias_ Tudor, buried in the Grey Freyers in navi Ecclesiæ, in sacello sine ulla sepulchri memoria.—Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. iv. fo. 175 _a_ [83].
“Owen Meridik, corruptly cawlled Owen Thider, Father to Edmund Erle of Richemount, and Graund Fathar to Kynge Henry the Seventhe, buried in the Grey Freres, in the Northe Syde of the Body of the Churche in a Chapell.”—Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. viii. fo. 76 _b_ [35].
{74a} The authorities for the historical parts of the paper, are Holinshed, Hall, Grafton, Baker, Leland, Ralph Brooke, Dugdale, and Sandford. It is remarkable, that Fabyan does not give an account of the battle of Mortimer’s Cross.
{74b} This spot is sometimes called West Field.
{75a} It seems to be very clear that the taking of that route was to enable them to ravage the Earl of March’s possessions there.
{76a} Politely communicated by the Rev. R. D. Evans, rector of Kingsland, who stated that the discovery of them took place when he was a boy. I visited in 1855 a large mount in front of the rectory-house, in which, as he informed me, he had found (but not of late years) pieces of iron. Leland states, “There was a Castle at Kingesland a 2 miles West North West from Leominster, the ditches whereof and part of the Keepe be yet seene by the West part of Kingsland Church. Constant Fame sayth that King Merewald sometimes laye at this place since of later tymes it longid to the E. of Marche, now to the King.”—Leland’s _Itinerary_, vol. iv.