THE HISTORY GALS: Daily Mail: Richard III may have been INNOCENT of ‘Princes in the Tower’ murders by Mary Ann Bernal and Vivienne Brereton

 Following the Adventures of Jen and Lucy

Jen Hailing from New York City

Lucy Hailing from the Cotswolds

Breaking News from the Daily Mail spreads ripples across the pond where Lucy’s favorite Anglophile is doing a happy dance after reading the article about Richard III. The ecstatic American has only recently returned from Britain but still has one foot remaining firmly in Leicester.

Replying to Lucy’s email, Jen’s nimble fingers can’t type fast enough, prompting a video call between them to discuss the latest development furthering Richard III’s cause.

Jen is sitting in front of her computer, her excitement evident to Lucy when making the connection.

“I told you Richard was a nice young man with a kind face and couldn’t possibly be guilty,” beams Lucy. “And how wonderful that a historian from Leicester University believes the younger prince, the King’s nephew, and namesake, little Richard of Shrewsbury, was returned to his mother and lived out his life in peace. What a happy ending!”

“Who would have thought proof about the King’s lack of involvement with the princes would come up so soon after we visited Bosworth Field,” Jen replies. “Have to love historians!”

“We certainly do,” nods Lucy, lifting a cup of Earl Grey to her lips. “I think Philippa Langley has done an absolutely splendid job with her Missing Princes Project. That shows real dedication.”

“But what about the Queen not letting the scientists examine those infamous bones found under the stairwell in the Tower. We have better technology since they were last examined. It’s a cover-up if you ask me.”

Lucy gives a guilty glance over at the two porcelain corgis in pride of place on the mantelpiece as if they can hear the blasphemous words. With Charles and Camilla living only a mile or so away at Highgrove, one never knew who might pop in. A lifelong royalist, Jen’s words feel almost treasonous, but she can’t help wholeheartedly agreeing. “I would like to know the Queen’s reasons, I must say.”

“Me, too. So, what do you think? Is this John Evans really Edward V?”

Lucy picks up an organic lemon biscuit from the Highgrove shop, deciding she can’t imagine Camilla baking them. “Well, I must admit, the arguments are very convincing. Especially his name starting with E for Edward and V for the fifth king. And AS for ‘asa’ in Latin, which means sanctuary. Someone certainly had a sense of humour.”

Jen looks thoughtful. “Probably Richard himself? To show the boys’ mother he was still honoring their royal status. After all, he must have been the one who originally came up with the plan.”

“It’s odd that there are only two other glass portraits of Edward V and one is in the royal window at Canterbury Cathedral. Why is there one in a rural church in Devon in the middle of nowhere? It doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Lucy can’t help herself. “Oh, Jen, how I wish you were here now. I could take you for supper at the Snooty Fox. Wouldn’t it be fun to catch up with all this? I’ve been thinking how hard it must have been for the princes’ grieving mother to strike a bargain with her brother-in-law after the death of her beloved husband, King Edward.”

“I don’t think Elizabeth Woodville was easily swayed. She must have known in her heart that a Protectorship was extremely dangerous to her son’s well-being. Edward would never rule; he’d be taken prisoner or killed because he stood in the way. And Richard must have mentioned the battles destroying the Houses of York and Lancaster. The country needed peace, and Richard had proven himself in the north. He could govern wisely, and that’s what England needed, a strong leader. She had no choice but to trust her brother-in-law.”

“That makes sense, Jen. As a mother of two sons myself and looking back from our time, I, too, would think it was safer if Richard, as Edward’s surviving brother, and an adult, took over.”

“If that’s what happened, score a point for Richard. Unfortunately, when he was killed, Henry VII’s mother, that conniving Margaret Beaufort, decided to blacken Richard’s name, saying it was better for her son if everyone thought the princes were dead. So, Yorkist Richard became a murderous uncle and the devil incarnate. And Henry Tudor, an angel from heaven. The House of York to whom the new Queen belonged - vilified - and the new King’s House of Tudor - praised to the skies. What bull! Excuse my French.”

Lucy sighs. “Poor Elizabeth Woodville. She didn’t stand a chance against that schemer. There certainly wasn’t room at court for a Queen’s Mother as well as a King’s Mother. But galling as it is, Margaret Beaufort was probably right. If everyone thought the boys were dead, no one would come looking for them. And there could be no factions. Elizabeth’s daughter would be married off to Margaret’s son.”

“Yep. A win-win situation for everyone except for Richard! Of course, I also loved the DaVinci code reference in the article. So exciting. It reminded me a bit of Indiana Jones and “digging in the wrong place.” There were so many clues no one bothered to check. Why? Because they didn’t want the truth! Looking the other way kept them in power – yeah, I’m talking about the Tudor upstart and his mother. Too convenient if you ask me. And let’s not forget that cunning Margaret had the boys’ mother packed off to Bermondsey Abbey. I’m sure that wasn’t in the original deal with Richard. She was probably jealous that Elizabeth was still beautiful and a King of England had lost his heart to her, a commoner.”

Lucy suddenly thinks of the wonderful courtship between the Queen and Prince Philip portrayed in The Crown, and her eyes mist over. “Actually, I think their story is very romantic.”

“I agree. Edward and Elizabeth’s marriage is a storybook happy ending. On the other hand, I don’t think Margaret was ever truly in love. She seemed like such a cold fish, hiding behind piety! Yet, in all fairness, Margaret probably had no choice and made the best of a bad situation. But I still think she is as guilty as sin! Her fingerprints are over everything, including this deal if it ever existed.”

“Well, we’ve got a real mystery on our hands now. As good as any episode of Midsummer Murders.”

“I love John Nettles. And he always got his man.” Jen giggles. “The cops caught many criminals by following the money. With us, we follow the documents! As for Thomas More, he was only five when the princes in the Tower disappeared. He was nothing more than a Tudor puppet. Until the day arrived when he wasn’t.”

“You mean when he lost his head,” says Lucy in a solemn voice.

“Exactly. No one said no to Henry VIII and lived to tell the tale! So, anything More wrote about Richard was total hearsay, not admissible in a court of law.”

Lucy is full of admiration for her friend. “Didn’t you study law at university, Jen? You always seem to know so much. I met Giles right after I left boarding school. He was a few years older and persuaded me not to bother continuing with my studies. I had a place at Durham University to study history.”

Jen notices a fleeting sadness when looking directly into Lucy’s eyes. She isn’t sure she likes the sound of Giles, whom she suspects is overbearing and controlling. He probably didn’t want Lucy to go to college to prevent her from outgrowing their relationship and running off with someone else smarter than him! She wonders if he approves of Lucy’s passion for history. Almost certainly not. Jen is more determined than ever to help her friend pursue her hobby. “On my next trip over, we must visit Coldridge and St. Matthew’s church and check out the clues mentioned in the article. What do you think?”

Lucy claps her hands together. “Oh, yes, I’d love that. I can’t wait to visit the church and see all the clues Edward or, should I say, John Evans left there. Ones that will absolve his uncle of all guilt. I wonder what all the naysayers are thinking now. The ones who are so vocal about Richard III being guilty. Good King Richard! We’re riding to the rescue. Your name will soon be cleared.”

Read the Daily Mail article HERE

 ¸.•*´¨)✯ ¸.•*¨) ✮ ( ¸.•´✶

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 Vivienne Brereton

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Mary Ann Bernal

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The Princes in the Tower

Source:  Wikipedia Commons

King Richard III Feasted on Wine and Swans

Seeker

BY ROSSELLA LORENZI

 In the last three years of his life, King Richard III consumed up to three liters of alcohol per day and feasted on swan, egret and heron, analysis of the monarch’s teeth and bones has revealed.

 Researchers from the British Geological Survey and the University of Leicester examined changes in chemistry in the bones of the last Plantagenet king, whose remains were found buried beneath a parking lot in the English city of Leicester in 2012.

 “We applied multi-element isotope techniques to reconstruct a full life history,” Angela Lamb, isotope geochemist at the British Geological Survey, Richard Buckley from the University of Leicester Archaeological Services, and colleagues wrote in the latest issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science.

 Born in Northamptonshire in 1452, Richard became King of England in 1483 at the age of 30, ruling for just two years and two months.

 The king, depicted by William Shakespeare as a bloodthirsty usurper, was killed in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth, which was the last act of the decades-long fight over the throne known as War of the Roses. He was defeated by Henry Tudor, who became King Henry VII.

 The researchers measured the levels of certain chemicals, such as strontium, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and lead that relate to geographical location, pollution and diet in three locations on the skeleton of Richard III.

 They analyzed bioapatite and collagen from sections of two teeth, which formed during childhood and early adolescence, and from two bones: the femur, which represents an average of the 15 years before death, and the rib, which remodels faster and represents between 2 and 5 years of life before death.

 “The isotopes initially concur with Richard’s known origins in Northamptonshire, but suggest that he had moved out of eastern England by age seven, and resided further west, possibly the Welsh Marches,” the researchers wrote.

The isotope changes became evident between Richard’s femur and rib bones, revealing “a significant shift” in the nitrogen isotope values towards the end of Richard life, coinciding directly with his time as King of England.

 The shift would correspond to an increase in consumption of luxury items such as game birds (swans, herons, egret) and freshwater fish.

 “The Late Medieval diet of an aristocrat consisted of bread, ale, meat, fish, wine and spices with a strong correlation between wealth and the relative proportions of these, with more wine and spices and proportionally less ale and cereals with increasing wealth,” the researchers said.

 Another significant shift was recorded in Richard’s oxygen isotope values, which also rose towards the end of his life.

 “As we know he did not relocate during this time, we suggest the changes could be brought about by increased wine consumption,” Lamb and colleagues wrote.

 The analysis showed there was a 25 percent increase in Richard’s consumption of wine when he became king.

 This would equal to a bottle of wine per day, in addition to the large quantities of beer most medieval men consumed at that time, giving Richard an overall alcohol consumption of two to three liters per day.

 Indeed, Richard began to indulge in food and wine since his coronation banquet, noted for being particularly long and elaborate. The excesses are likely to have continued throughout his short lived reign.

 “It is not unexpected that his consumption of wine and rich foods increased over the last few years of his life,” the researchers wrote.

 Richard III will be finally reburied in Leicester Cathedral on March 26, 2015 at the end of a seven-day program of events in Leicester and Leicestershire to honor the king.

 Image: Late 16th century portrait of Richard III, housed in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Credt: Wikimedia Commons.

The 5 greatest mysteries behind the Wars of the Roses

History Extra

The Young Princes in the Tower, 1831, by Paul de la Roche (1910). (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

5) What was really wrong with King Henry VI? Henry VI (1422–60 and 1470–71) was comfortably the most incompetent king of the whole Plantagenet line, and his benign but ultimately disastrous rule began the series of conflicts that we now call the Wars of the Roses.

 The crisis broke in 1453 when Henry appears to have suffered a near-complete mental collapse. He stopped responding to other people; he didn’t recognise his own wife or newborn son; and for several months he was completely helpless and utterly withdrawn from the world. One contemporary said the king was “smitten with a frenzy”.

 The obvious comparison was with Henry’s grandfather Charles VI of France, who had suffered similarly long bouts of madness in which he attacked his courtiers, smeared himself in his own waste and screamed that he felt thousands of sharp needles piercing his flesh.

 So was Henry’s illness hereditary? And how would we diagnose it today? Catatonia? Schizophrenia? Severe depression? Medical diagnoses across the centuries are fraught with difficulties, and it is quite possible that we will never be able to say for sure. What we do know is that Henry’s debilitating illness had a correspondingly dreadful effect on both the man and his kingdom, as his subjects fought at first to save the realm, and then to steal control of it for themselves.

 4) Were the Tudors really Tudors? The great survivors of the Wars of the Roses were a strange little half-Welsh, half-French family who took the surname Tidyr, or Tudur, or Tudor. Famously, it was Henry Tudor who emerged victorious from the battle of Bosworth in 1485 and, as Henry VII of England, went on to establish the most famous royal dynasty of them all.

 But the origins of this remarkable family are surprisingly foggy. Their first connection to the English crown came through Henry VII’s grandmother, Catherine de Valois, widow of Henry V and mother of Henry VI. As dowager queen Catherine had caused quite a stir by secretly marrying her lowly servant, Owen Tudor. Plenty of romantic rumours have swirled around that union, but whatever the case, during the early 1430s Catherine gave birth to several children who took the Tudor name, most notably Henry VII’s father, Edmund Tudor, and another boy named Jasper Tudor.

 But were they really Tudors? Intriguingly, shortly before Catherine became involved with Owen, there was a widespread suggestion that she was having an affair with Edmund Beaufort, the future duke of Somerset, who would be killed at the battle of St Albans in 1455. This rumour was taken so seriously that parliament took up the matter and issued a special statute restricting the right of queens of England to remarry.

Edmund Beaufort, c1450. Engraving taken from portrait painted by Hans Holbein the Younger. (Photo by Kean Collection/Getty Images)

 It has been speculated that Catherine’s marriage to the lowly Owen Tudor was contracted to cover up her politically dangerous relationship with Edmund Beaufort. In that case, is it possible that Edmund Tudor was not a Tudor at all, but was actually given the forename of his real father? 

The great 15th-century expert Gerald Harriss made precisely this suggestion in a fine footnote written in 1988:

 “By its very nature the evidence for Edmund ‘Tudor's’ parentage is less than conclusive, but such facts as can be assembled permit the agreeable possibility that Edmund ‘Tudor’ and Margaret Beaufort [ie Edmund Tudor’s wife and Henry VII’s mother] were first cousins and that the royal house of ‘Tudor’ sprang in fact from Beauforts on both sides.”

 Wouldn’t that be something?

 3) Who was Edward IV’s real wife?
The history books usually state that Edward IV’s wife was Elizabeth Woodville (or ‘Wydeville’). That in itself is a delicious fact: when Edward married Elizabeth in 1464 she was of lowly rank, a widow with two children from her previous marriage and one of the king’s subjects, rather than a foreign princess. What’s more, Edward’s choice of queen upset his closest political ally, the earl of Warwick; caused diplomatic trouble with more than one other country; and annoyed a significant number of other English noble families.

 But nothing caused quite so much trouble as the suggestion that Edward IV had in fact married someone else. Following the king’s death in 1483, his brother Richard duke of Gloucester claimed that, before the Woodville marriage took place, Edward IV had promised to marry Lady Eleanor Boteler (née Talbot), a daughter of the famous soldier John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury.

 In 1483 Richard argued that since Edward had once promised to marry Lady Eleanor, he had not subsequently been legally entitled to marry Elizabeth Woodville. This in turn made their union invalid, and their children bastards.

Elizabeth Woodville, 1463. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

 This claim was the basis of Richard’s usurpation of the crown. He made it known that Edward IV’s young son and successor, Edward V, was illegitimate, and instead claimed the throne for himself, as Richard III.

 But was it true? Conveniently, in 1483 the case could not be properly tested, since Lady Eleanor had died 15 years previously. But today, those seeking to rehabilitate Richard III’s reputation frequently rely on the ‘pre-contract’ argument to defend his actions.

 2) Did Richard III really kill the princes in the Tower?
Perhaps the greatest mystery of them all, and certainly the question most likely to start a fistfight among any given group of medievalists.

 For centuries Richard III’s name has been blackened thanks to his usurpation of the throne in 1483 and the subsequent disappearance of his nephews, Edward V and Richard duke of York – better known as ‘the princes in the Tower’.

 Did the boys really die? And if so, who was to blame? Did Richard have them murdered? Or did they die of natural causes? Were there other agents at work? And if so, who? Could it be, as one contemporary source suggested, that Richard’s sometime ally, the oily and feckless Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham, was the prime mover behind the boys’ deaths? Or was there an even more sinister conspiracy, perhaps involving Henry Tudor’s wily mother, Margaret Beaufort?

 Readers of my book The Hollow Crown (2014) will know where I stand on this, and you can find out more by watching the third episode of Channel 5’s Britain’s Bloody Crown. But I do not pretend that the case is closed. For many Ricardians, the charge of murdering the princes in the Tower is a heinous and unjust accusation levelled at a grievously misunderstood monarch… Where do you stand?

 1) Was Perkin Warbeck really Richard IV? An odd young man with an even odder name, Perkin Warbeck is usually described as either a ‘pretender’ or an ‘imposter’. Who was he really?

 We usually think of the Wars of the Roses as having ended in 1485 at the battle of Bosworth. In fact, the threat of a revived dynastic war to put a Yorkist king back on the English throne haunted England deep into the Tudor years – well into the 1520s, in fact.

 One of the most dangerous times was the 1490s, when the threat of Yorkist plots sponsored from the continent seriously unsettled the fragile Tudor regime. For several years the figurehead for these plots was a young man who claimed to be Richard, duke of York – the younger of the princes in the Tower. If he were crowned, he would have taken the throne as King Richard IV.

Perkin Warbeck, c1495. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 It is easy now to scoff at all this. But at the time, this supposed Richard IV had serious support from rulers in Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Scotland and the Holy Roman Empire, and he attempted several sea invasions of England.

 Events came to a head in 1497 when the pseudo-Richard finally succeeded in landing in England and joined up with rebels in the west country. He was captured and brought before Henry VII, where he confessed that he was not, in fact, Richard duke of York, but a French-Flemish merchant’s son, a troublemaker and a puppet for enemies of the Tudor regime.

 At first Henry VII was merciful, keeping Warbeck at court and parading him in public to assure people that he was not the real Richard duke of York. But this peaceful situation did not last long. In 1498 Warbeck escaped. He was recaptured and placed in the Tower of London. But while there he was caught up in further plotting against the crown, this time in league with another Yorkist claimant, Edward earl of Warwick.

 Again the plotting was foiled and in 1499 Warbeck was forced once more to confess his imposture, and was hanged at Tyburn.

 Yet doubt remains. Was Warbeck a pretender? Or were his confessions made under duress? The plots against Henry VII have more than a whiff of a set-up about them: could it be that really was the young Richard duke of York, entangled in a nightmare of Henry VII’s concoction and forced to deny his own birthright?

 Most historians would say not. But the possibility remains tantalizing enough to consider…

Bosworth: the dawn of the Tudors

History Extra

The battle depicted in a 16th-century frieze. (Stowe House)

Wales, 7 August 1485. As the sun lowered beneath the horizon across the Milford estuary, a flotilla of ships drifted across the mouth of the Haven. It had been a week since the fleet had sailed from the shelter of the Seine at Honfleur, but the ships had made fast progress in the balmy August weather. Onboard, the soldiers waited. They included a rabble of 2,000 Breton and French soldiers (many only recently released from prison and, according to the chronicler Commynes, “the worst sort… raised out of the refuse of the people”). There were also a thousand Scottish troops and 400 Englishmen, whose last sight of the country had been two years previously, when they had fled in fear of their lives.

 

The ships entered the mouth of the estuary where, looking leftwards, the dark red sandstone cliffs, several hundred feet in height and impossible to scale, gave way to a small cove hiddenrom sight from the cliffs above. High tide had passed an hour previously, enabling the ships to creep silently to the edge of the narrow shoreline, allowing the troops to disembark. Their arrival stirred no one. The waters soon clouded with sand as the men began to heave cannon, guns and ordnance from the boats, leading horses from the ships and onto land.

 

From one of the boats stepped a 28-year-old man. Pale and slender, above average height with shoulder-length brown hair, he had a long face with a red wart just above his chin. Yet his most noticeable feature to those who met him was his small blue eyes, which gave out the impression of energy and liveliness whenever he spoke. 

 

Stepping from his boat, the man took a few steps forward on land upon which he had last set foot 14 years before. Kneeling down in the sand, he took his finger and drew a sign of the cross, which he then kissed. Then, holding up his hands to the skies, he uttered words from the first line from the 43rd Psalm: “Judge and revenge my cause O Lord,” which the soldiers now began to sing. As the words of the psalm echoed around Mill Bay in the darkening evening, one line in particular must have stood out above all others: “O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.”

 

^{Henry VII pictured at the the Tower London, in a contemporary illustration. (Topfoto)}

 

Moment of reckoning

The journey across Wales to win a kingdom had only just begun. For Henry Tudor, his arrival to claim the crown of England was the end of a journey that had lasted his whole life. The moment of reckoning had arrived.

 

The remarkable rise of the Tudors to prominence is shrouded in fable. Long before Henry Tudor’s landing in 1485, the family had nearly driven itself into annihilation due to their support of Owain Glyndwr’s disastrous rebellion in 1400. It would take a scandalous affair to trigger a remarkable turnaround in the Tudors’ fortunes. 

 

Owen Tudor was a household servant in Henry V’s court. After the king’s premature death, his widowed queen, Katherine of Valois, took a shine to the handsome Welsh page, supposedly after he had drunkenly fallen into her lap dancing at a ball. Their illicit union, later formalised by a secret marriage, produced several children, including Edmund and Jasper Tudor, recognised by Henry VI as his half-brothers when he created them the earls of Richmond and Pembroke.

 

Edmund had his own ambitions for self-enrichment: his means would be marriage, namely to the wealthiest heiress in the land, Margaret Beaufort, the sole inheritor of the Beaufort family fortune, who had her own claim to the throne. Margaret was just a child, but when it came to marriage, land took precedence over love for Edmund. Aged just 12, Margaret found herself pregnant. Edmund, however, would not live to see the birth of his heir.

 

Although Edmund Tudor is reported to have died of the plague, this obscures the fact that he had been recently arrested by adherents of the king’s rival, Richard, Duke of York; his treatment in prison, many suspected, hastened his death. Already divisions between the houses of Lancaster and York had been exposed to full glare at the first battle of St Albans in 1455, where Jasper Tudor himself witnessed the Lancastrian king Henry VI being injured in the fight. Civil war would soon erupt as the Duke of York claimed the throne for himself.

 

With Edmund’s death, Jasper Tudor would assume the mantle of the head of the family. He had Margaret swiftly married to Henry Stafford, the second son of the wealthy Duke of Buckingham. But any newfound stability was to be short-lived. Despite an attempt at reconciliation, factionalism between the Lancastrian court and York’s supporters erupted into open warfare in the late 1450s and into 1460, when the Yorkists secured a crushing victory at Northampton, capturing Henry VI. York was declared Henry’s successor, only for a dramatic reversal in fortune when the duke was executed after the battle of Wakefield in December 1460. York’s son and heir, Edward, Earl of March, wreaked his revenge two months later when, at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross in early 1461, he routed the Lancastrian forces, killing 3,000 Welshmen. One of the victims was an elderly Owen Tudor, who was executed at the market cross in Hereford, his last words reportedly being “That head shall lie on the stock that was wont to lie on Queen Katherine’s lap”. Jasper was forced to flee, promising to avenge his father’s death “with the might of the Lord.”

 

Vengeance would be a long time coming. Edward’s crushing victory at the battle of Towton a month later heralded a decade of Yorkist rule, as Edward acceded to the throne as Edward IV. In exile first in Wales and later France, Jasper was stripped of his earldom, while his young nephew Henry was placed in the charge of the new Earl of Pembroke, William Herbert, where he was brought up at Raglan Castle, under the care of Herbert’s wife, Anne. His mother, Margaret, paid occasional visits to her son. However, mother and son weren’t reunited until 1470, when the defection of Warwick ‘the Kingmaker’ forced Edward IV from power and returned Henry VI to the throne. Margaret could now pay for a bow and sheaves of arrows to keep Henry amused. She even arranged for an audience with Henry VI, who is reported to have foretold that Henry Tudor would one day inherit the kingdom.

 

Jasper was restored to his earldom and given extensive powers under the restored Lancastrian regime, but it was not to last. In March 1471, Edward IV launched a remarkable comeback, returning from exile in Holland. Within the space of a month, two critical battles at Barnet and Tewkesbury resulted in the deaths of Warwick, Margaret Beaufort’s husband Stafford and Henry VI’s son Prince Edward, shortly followed by Henry VI’s own suspicious end in the Tower. The Lancastrian dynasty had run into the sand. Through the brutal consequences of war, Henry Tudor was rapidly becoming one of the last remaining members of the royal family, although his claim to the throne was hardly taken seriously at the time.

 

Blown off course

After the crushing defeat of the Lancastrian forces at Tewkesbury, Jasper had no choice but to flee into exile again. This time, sailing in a small boat from Tenby bound for French shores where he hoped to enlist the support of Louis XI, he took his 14-year-old nephew Henry with him. Yet when a storm blew them off course, they found themselves washed up on the shores of Le Conquet in neighbouring Brittany. At the time, Brittany was an independent duchy separate to France and relations between the two were openly hostile, perfectly understandable given French ambitions to unite the two countries. 

 

The Breton ruler, Duke Francis II, recognising the value of the Tudors as diplomatic pawns, welcomed Jasper and Henry to his court. Francis understood that these new arrivals could be used to bargain with Edward IV, who was desperate to have both returned to England. He remained determined to keep both under close supervision, separating uncle and nephew, with Henry sent to the isolated Tour d’Elven, where he was imprisoned on the sixth floor of its keep. Henry’s exile in Brittany over the next 14 years would be spent as a prisoner, albeit with household expenses totalling £2,000, along with £620 for his own personal use. 

 

Edward IV made repeated failed attempts to entice Francis to hand over the Tudors. In 1476, he persuaded the duke that he intended for Henry to marry his daughter Elizabeth and requested his return. Francis fell for the trap and Henry was taken to St Malo, ready to be boarded onto a ship to transport him back to England. But Henry feigned illness and, in the ensuing delay, managed to escape into sanctuary in the town. 

 

Edward IV’s death in April 1483 marked a turning point in Henry’s fortunes. Following the mysterious disappearance of Edward V and his brother in the summer of 1483, together with Richard III’s seizing of the crown, a massive rebellion led by the Duke of Buckingham broke out in October 1483. Spurred on by his mother, Margaret Beaufort, who appears to have been strongly involved with the organisation of the rebellion, Henry decided to sail to the English coast with a fleet of Breton ships in the hope of invading. But the rebellion collapsed and, with Buckingham’s execution, Henry had no option but to return to Brittany. 

 

^{Henry VII's seal, depicting the monarch riding into battle. (Mary Evans)}

 

Silver linings

Henry’s aborted attempt to claim the crown may have ended in disaster, but its consequences were to prove highly advantageous. Hundreds of exiles fleeing from England soon arrived at Henry’s ‘court’, many of whom were former household men of Edward IV, distraught at Richard’s usurpation. They had now switched sides, backing the Lancastrian Henry Tudor. Henry also pledged an oath on Christmas Day 1483 to marry Elizabeth of York, Edward IV’s eldest daughter, thereby uniting the houses of Lancaster and York. 

 

But Henry’s time in Brittany was soon to be cut short. When Richard offered to provide a force of several thousand archers to aid Brittany in their conflict with France, in return Henry and Jasper were to be arrested. Henry was tipped off about the plan with just hours to spare and managed to flee to France where he was received by the French court of Charles VIII. As a pawn in the diplomatic chessboard played out between France, Brittany and England, Henry’s arrival was a gift for the French regime, who agreed to equip Henry with money, ships and mercenaries “of the worst sort” to launch an attack on Richard. At the last moment, though, they held back on their promises of funding, forcing Henry to borrow from brokers in Paris. He set sail with his army on 1 August 1485. 

 

Richard III was reportedly “overjoyed” at news of Henry’s landing. Yet, as Henry’s march along the coastline of Wales went unhindered, Richard grew nervous, becoming suspicious of the involvement of Henry’s step-father, Thomas Stanley (who had become Margaret Beaufort’s third husband), and his brother Sir William Stanley in the lack of resistance to Henry’s growing band of men as he travelled through north Wales and to the gates of Shrewsbury. The key defections of Welsh landowner Sir Rhys ap Thomas and Sir Gilbert Talbot provided Henry with the momentum he needed to push forward towards London, planning to march down Watling Street, the current-day A5. 

 

Richard had spent the summer at Nottingham, waiting to see where Henry might land, but now he hurried down to Leicester where he amassed a force of some 15,000 men – at the time, one of the largest armies ever assembled on one side. On 21 August, both armies drew closer, camping the night overlooking the marshy terrain known as ‘Redemore’ near the villages of Dadlington, Stoke Golding and Upton. 

 

Still, Henry could not be sure of the Stanleys’ final support at Bosworth. Suspecting treachery, Richard had kept Thomas Stanley’s son, George Lord Strange, imprisoned as a hostage to ensure his father’s good behaviour. Henry held a clandestine meeting with both brothers the night before, and when morning came, Stanley refused to march his forces into line, preferring to remain upon the brow of the surrounding hills, between both armies.

 

Richard, meanwhile, had slept badly, supposedly haunted by nightmares. He woke to find that his camp was unprepared to hear mass or eat breakfast. As both sides lined up for battle in the early hours of 22 August, it was clear that Richard’s army was vastly superior, with his “countless multitude” of men. In contrast, Henry had at best 5,000 men, of which his French mercenaries had to be kept apart from his native soldiers, for fear of them falling out.

 

Henry’s vanguard was led by the Earl of Oxford, the Lancastrian commander who had managed to escape imprisonment to join Henry in France. Oxford’s expertise saw Richard’s vanguard routed and the death of its commander, the elderly Duke of Norfolk. By now, Richard had begun to realise that many on his own side, particularly those led by the Earl of Northumberland in his rearguard, were standing still, refusing to fight. He was offered the chance to flee yet refused, preferring to fight to the death. 

 

Spotting Henry at the back of the battlefield, surrounded only by a small band of soldiers, Richard charged on horseback towards its ranks. After unhorsing Sir John Cheney, at 6ft 8ins one of the tallest soldiers of the day, Richard’s men managed to kill Henry’s standard-bearer, Sir William Brandon, while Richard’s own standard-bearer, Sir Percival Thirlwall, had both his legs hacked away beneath him. 

 

With Henry fearing imminent death, the sudden charge of Sir William Stanley’s 3,000 men saw Richard swept into a nearby marsh, where he was killed as the blows of the halberds of Henry’s Welsh troops rained down on him. Thanks to Richard’s remains having recently – and finally – been discovered under a Leicester car park, we know that the king suffered massive trauma to the head, including one wound which cut clean through the skull and into his brain. With the king dead, after two bloody hours the battle was over: on the nearby ‘Crown Hill’, Henry was proclaimed king by Thomas Stanley. 

 

Two months later, Henry was officially crowned Henry VII at Westminster Abbey. The following January, he married Elizabeth of York, thereby fulfilling his promise to unite the houses of Lancaster and York. After decades of uncertainty and exile, the Tudor dynasty was finally born.   

 

 

Three notable figures in Henry VII’s life  

Jasper Tudor 

 

The loyal uncle of Henry Tudor – it was through Jasper’s care and devotion that the Tudor dynasty was born. The second son of Owen Tudor, Jasper found himself embroiled in the civil wars as he defended his half-brother Henry VI. When Henry lost the throne, Jasper went into exile, taking his nephew with him. He remained a constant presence in Henry Tudor’s life, his loyalty rewarded after Bosworth with the dukedom of Bedford. 

 

John de Vere, Earl of Oxford 

 

A stalwart Lancastrian, whose father and brother had been executed by the Yorkists, the Earl of Oxford came to prominence at the battle of Barnet in 1471 when, on the cusp of victory, his troops were defeated by Edward IV after they became confused in the mist and began attacking their own side. Oxford fled, only to reappear three years later when he seized St Michael’s Mount. In 1484, he joined Henry in exile in France. Making the journey to Bosworth, Oxford was placed in command of Henry’s vanguard. His military knowledge – in particular manoeuvring his troops to ensure that the sun and the wind were against Richard’s forces – may have proved critical in winning the battle. 

 

Margaret Beaufort

 

Henry Tudor’s “dearest and most entirely beloved mother”, Margaret was barely a teenager when she gave birth to her only son. Suspected to be one of the driving forces behind Buckingham’s rebellion, she encouraged her son to invade, sending money and support. After Henry’s assumption of power, Margaret became one of the most important figures at court. She died two months after her son. 

 

Chris Skidmore is an author, historian, MP for Kingswood and vice-chairman of the All-Party Group on History and Archives.

Murder, conspiracy and execution: six centuries of scandalous royal deaths

History Extra

The execution of Charles I, 30 January 1649. Charles’s death signalled the abolition of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic in England. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Royal status brings with it privilege and power – but also danger, particularly the risk of assassination by those craving that power. From the Norman conquest to Charles’s execution in 1649, many British men, women and children of royal blood died in extraordinary circumstances. Deaths early in that period were often shrouded in mystery, but by the 17th century circumstances had changed to an extraordinary extent – for the first time an executioner severed the head of a king of England: Charles I, condemned by his own people…

William II meets his fate in the forest

On 2 August 1100 King William II, third son of William the Conqueror, was hunting in the New Forest. The chronicler William of Malmesbury reported that after dinner the king, nicknamed ‘Rufus’, went into the forest “attended by few persons”, notably a gentleman named Walter Tirel. While most of the king’s party “employed in the chase, were dispersed as chance directed,” Tirel remained with the king. As the sun began to set, William spotted a stag and “drawing his bow and letting fly an arrow, slightly wounded” it.
In his excitement the king began to run towards the injured target, and at that point Tirel, “conceiving a noble exploit” in that the king’s attention was occupied elsewhere, “pierced his breast with a fatal arrow”. William fell to the ground and Tirel, seeing that the king was dead, immediately “leaped swiftly upon his horse, and escaped by spurring him to his utmost speed”.
Upon discovering William’s body, the rest of his party fled and, in an attempt to protect their own interests, readied themselves to declare their allegiance to the next king. It was left to a few countrymen to convey the dead king’s corpse to Winchester Cathedral by cart, “the blood dripping from it all the way”.
Was William’s death an accident, or was it murder? An accident was possible, but there were many who believed otherwise. William’s younger brother immediately assumed the throne and swiftly had himself crowned Henry I. Henry had much to gain from his brother’s death, and Tirel may have been in his employ. William had, however, been an unpopular king, and his death was “lamented by few”.

_{King William II of England, aka William Rufus, c1100. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

 

The Lionheart and eyeless Art

Almost 100 years later, Henry I’s great-grandson, Richard I, also met a violent end at the point of an arrow, but in very different circumstances. Richard had spent the majority of his 10-year reign fighting abroad on crusade; he was a brave solider who inspired loyalty in his men. In 1199, while he was besieging the Château de Châlus-Chabrol, a crossbow bolt struck him in the shoulder. Though the shot did not kill him, it penetrated deep into his body. Though removal of the bolt by a surgeon was a painful ordeal, Richard survived – but before long the wound became infected and gangrene set in. It became clear that the king’s days were numbered, and on 6 April, 11 days after he was shot, “the man devoted to martial deeds, breathed his last.”
Richard was succeeded by his younger brother, John. However, though John was accepted as king of England he had a rival for his French lands: Arthur of Brittany, son of John’s brother, Geoffrey, who had died over a decade earlier. In 1202, John’s forces captured Arthur at Mirebeau, where the latter had been attempting to besiege the castle in which his grandmother (John’s mother), Eleanor of Aquitaine, was sheltering. Arthur was taken to Falaise, where – it was later claimed – John gave orders for his 16-year-old nephew to be “deprived of his eyes and genitals”, but the jailer refused to obey such a cruel command. Shortly afterwards, the boy was moved to Rouen where, on the evening of 3 April 1203, it seems that John himself, “drunk with wine and possessed of the Devil”, killed Arthur personally. The young boy’s lifeless body was reputedly weighed down with a heavy stone and thrown into the river Seine.
In the two centuries after the murder of Arthur of Brittany, both Edward II and Richard II were deposed. The latter was almost certainly starved to death in Pontefract Castle, but controversy still surrounds the end of Edward II – he may have been murdered in Berkeley Castle, but several modern historians are of the opinion that he escaped abroad.

^{Richard I, aka ‘Richard the Lionheart’, depicted plunging his fist into a lion's throat, c1180. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

The bloody Wars of the Roses

In the middle of the 15th century, the Wars of the Roses broke out, causing a profusion of bloodshed that did not exclude royal or noble families. After a struggle that saw the Lancastrian King Henry VI deposed in favour of the Yorkist Edward IV, and a brief period of restoration for Henry VI (commonly referred to as the readeption), on 4 May 1471 the armies of Lancaster and York met at Tewkesbury, where Edward IV won “a famous victory”. It was a fierce battle during which around 2,000 Lancastrians were slain, and the battlefield is still referred to as ‘Bloody Meadow.’
For Henry’s son and heir, the 18-year-old Prince Edward of Lancaster, Tewkesbury had been his first experience of war, and one that he would not survive. Reports of the precise manner of the prince’s death vary: most sources state that the he was killed in the field, whereas the Yorkist author of the Arrivall of Edward IV, who claimed to be a servant of Edward IV’s and a witness to many of the events about which he wrote, asserts that Edward “was taken fleeing to the townwards, and slain in the field”. Later Tudor historians, however, implied that the prince had been murdered “by the avenging hands of certain persons,” on the orders of Edward IV. Whatever the circumstances, the Lancastrian heir had been removed; now all that remained was for his father to be eliminated.
While the battle of Tewkesbury raged, Henry VI was a prisoner in the Tower of London. Following his victory, Edward IV travelled to London in triumph, arriving on 21 May. That same evening, Henry VI was reportedly praying in his oratory within the Wakefield Tower when he “was put to death”. Though the author of the Arrivall stated that Henry died of “pure displeasure and melancholy” as a result of being told of the death of his son, there is little doubt that he died violently. The examination of his skull in 1911 revealed that to one piece “there was still attached some of the hair, which was brown in colour, save in one place, where it was much darker and apparently matted with blood,” consistent with a blow to the head. Many believed that Henry had been murdered at the hands of the king’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, but though Richard may have been present, the order undoubtedly came from Edward IV.

_{Henry VI , c1450. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}
The slaughter also extended to Edward’s own family. The relationship Edward shared with his younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, was tumultuous, to say the least. After several estrangements and reconciliations, in 1477 Clarence finally went too far. Convinced that his brother was conspiring against him, Edward had Clarence arrested; at the beginning of February 1478, he was tried and condemned to death. On 18 February Clarence was executed within the confines of the Tower of London. According to several contemporary sources, at his own request the duke was drowned after being “plunged into a jar of sweet wine” in the Bowyer Tower. Clarence’s daughter, Margaret Pole, was later painted wearing a bracelet with a barrel charm, which appears to support this story. The duke’s death orphaned both Margaret and her younger brother Edward, Earl of Warwick. Like their father, both would meet violent ends.

 

The princes in the Tower

Edward IV died unexpectedly on 9 April 1483, leaving as successor his 12-year-old son, also Edward, at that time staying at Ludlow Castle. After his father’s death, the young Prince Edward set out for London but was intercepted en route by his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who lodged Edward and his brother Prince Richard in the Tower of London. Having been declared illegitimate, on 26 June Edward was deposed in favour of his uncle, who took the throne as Richard III.
Rumours about the fate of the ‘princes in the Tower’ soon began to circulate. Many believe that they were murdered “lying in their beds” on the orders of Richard III, and the skeletons of two youths discovered in the Tower in 1674 seems to support this theory. Some, however, insist that the boys did not die in the Tower but managed to escape. Though their ultimate fate is still obscure, one thing is certain: after the coronation of Richard III on 6 July, neither boy was seen alive again.

_{‘The Young Princes in the Tower', 1831. After a painting by Hippolyte De La Roche (1797–1856), commonly known as Paul Delaroche. From the Connoisseur VOL XXVII, 1910. (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)}
Richard III did not hold his throne for long. In 1485 his army was confronted by the forces of the Lancastrian Henry Tudor at Bosworth in Leicestershire. Richard fought bravely in his attempt to defend his crown, but was “pierced with many mortal wounds”, and became the last king of England to be killed on the battlefield. Thanks to the discovery of his skeleton in Leicester, we now know that a blow to the head killed Richard, and that his body was subjected to a number of “humiliation” wounds after his death.
Richard’s successor, Henry VII, ordered the execution of the Duke of Clarence’s son, the Earl of Warwick, beheaded In 1499 for conspiring with the pretender Perkin Warbeck to overthrow the king. Warwick’s sister, Margaret Pole, was executed in 1541 by command of Henry VIII on charges of treason. In her late sixties and condemned on evidence that was almost certainly falsified, Margaret’s death shocked her contemporaries, one of whom observed that her execution was conducted by “a wretched and blundering youth” who “literally hacked her head and shoulders to pieces in the most pitiful manner” so that she bled to death.

 

Henry VIII’s wives

Henry VIII also notoriously executed two of his wives. Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard were both condemned on charges of adultery, treason, and, in Anne’s case, incest with her own brother. Anne was almost certainly innocent of the crimes of which she was accused; nevertheless, on the morning of 19 May 1536 she became the first queen of England to be executed. Although her death within the confines of the Tower of London was intended to be a private affair, conducted away from the eyes of curious Londoners, around 1,000 people watched as her head was struck from her body with one strike of a French executioner’s sword.
In 1554 Lady Jane Grey also met her fate at the headsman’s axe. So, too, did Mary, Queen of Scots, executed in February 1587 on the orders of Elizabeth I. The first queen regnant to be beheaded, Mary was decapitated at Fotheringhay Castle in a bloody scene: it took three strokes of the axe to remove her head.

_{The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay Castle, 1587. From ‘The Island Race’, a book written by Sir Winston Churchill and published in 1964 that covers the history of the British Isles from pre-Roman times to the Victorian era. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)}
Mary’s grandson was to suffer a similar ignominious end the following century. Having been defeated in the Civil War, in January 1649 Charles I became the first English monarch to be tried and condemned for treason – there was no precedent for the lawful killing of a king. On the date of his execution, 30 January, Charles stepped out of Banqueting House in Whitehall on to a public scaffold. His head was removed amid a great groan from the crowd, and it was observed that many of those who attended dipped their handkerchiefs in the late king’s blood as a memento.
Charles’s death signalled the abolition of the monarchy, and the establishment of a republic in England. In a public display of contempt for the monarchy, he became the only king of England to be murdered by his subjects. It was a far cry from the dark and mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of William ‘Rufus’ and those other ill-fated royals who came before.

Nicola Tallis is a British historian and author. Her new book Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey is published by Michael O’Mara Books on 3 November 2016.

Where history happened: the Wars of the Roses

History Extra

Bamburgh Castle. © Darren Turner | Dreamstime.com

During the second half of the 15th century, the people of England witnessed three regional revolts, 13 full-scale battles, ten coups d’etats, 15 invasions, five usurpations, five kings, seven reigns, and five changes of dynasty. Little wonder then that the Wars of the Roses – the name given to the exceptional period of instability that occurred between 1450 and 1500 – have long been regarded as one of the most compelling and, above all, confusing, periods of British history.
If there’s two facts that people know about the Wars of the Roses, it is that they pitched the Red Rose of the House of Lancaster against the White Rose of the House of York – and that they dragged on for a very long time, taking almost a century to peter out.
Fewer people will be aware that the conflict was sparked by a cataclysmic train of events in 1450 that saw England blighted by a massive slump, a government quite without credit, defeat abroad, a parliamentary revolt and a popular rebellion. It was an inability to resolve these issues over the following ten years that brought the Yorkists and Lancastrians to blows.
The Wars of the Roses are best conceived as three individual conflicts. The First War, from 1459–61, witnessed the Yorkist Edward IV (1461–83) overthrowing the Lancastrian Henry VI (1422–61). The Second War, from 1469–71, led to the restoration of Henry VI in 1470, but ended with Edward IV back on the throne in 1471.
The Third War, from 1483 until at least 1487, saw Edward IV’s son Edward V (1483) deposed by the new king’s uncle, Richard III (1483–5), who was himself defeated at Bosworth in 1485 by the first Tudor king, Henry VII (1485–1509). Enemies of the new Tudor dynasty continued to scheme until 1525 – though, in the eyes of the paranoic Henry VIII (1509–47), the threat remained until 1541.
The three principal wars consisted of lightning campaigns that were resolved quickly on the field of battle. Each of these battles bears a name, and we know roughly where they happened. Modern archaeological surveys have revealed scatterings of artefacts on the fields of Towton and Bosworth, but nothing much to see. There were very few sieges: London was threatened three times and the Tower of London taken twice. For long periods, 1461–69, 1471–83, and after 1485, most of the kingdom – all the south, Midlands, East Anglia and West Country – was at peace.
So how did the wars start? The clash between Henry VI and Richard Duke of York at Ludford Bridge in 1459 is sometimes cited as their opening act. Richard had long opposed the king but was routed at Ludford and died in 1460. However, his allies soon declared Henry – who had suffered mental illness – unfit to rule. In 1461 they replaced him with York’s son, Edward IV, and confined Henry to the Tower.
At first, Edward ruled through his elder cousin, Warwick (the Kingmaker), and then through a series of favourites. Prominent among them was William Herbert, the new ruler of Wales, whose power was soon seen as a threat to Warwick. In fact, it was largely to destroy Herbert that Warwick and Edward’s brother, Clarence, rebelled in 1469, deposing Edward and returning Henry to the throne.
But Edward wasn’t gone for long. He recovered his crown in 1471 – after destroying his enemies at Tewkesbury – and ruled for a further 12, relatively stable years. During this time, he moved between his palaces in the Thames Valley, settled on Windsor for his burial and embarked on the reconstruction of St George’s Chapel as the spiritual heart of the house of York.
He dispatched his eldest son, Edward Prince of Wales, to Ludlow Castle to govern Wales, and saw to it that his brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, became lord of the north.
This period of peace was to come to an abrupt end on Edward’s death in 1483. The king’s son and successor, Edward V, was deposed and consigned to the Tower by the Duke of Gloucester, who was himself to meet a violent death as Richard III two years later.
Richard may not have reigned long but he did have time to transfer Henry VI’s body to St George’s Chapel in a symbolic act of reconciliation with the Lancastrian line. That wasn’t enough to stop the bloodshed. In 1485, at the battle of Bosworth, Richard was killed and Henry VII (nephew of Henry VI) became the first Tudor king.
Shakespeare and almost everybody since has hailed Henry VII as England’s saviour and celebrated the battle as the end of the Wars of the Roses. In doing so, however, they have merely been regurgitating Tudor propaganda, promulgated at once to deter resistance.
In reality, Henry had to contend with a host of plots and a succession of rivals – this despite the fact that he had married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV. Their son, Henry VIII, was thus the heir of Lancaster and York, the red and the white rose.
Yet Henry VII decided not to join in death his father-in-law, Edward IV, and his uncle, Henry VI at Windsor, choosing instead to build a grand new Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey for himself. This splendidly florid structure proclaimed that the Wars of the Roses were over and that the new Tudor dynasty had arrived.

 

Where history happened

1) Ludlow Castle, Shropshire

The medieval history the Crowland Chronicle claims that the Wars of the Roses started with the rout of Ludford in 1459. Faced by Henry VI’s Lancastrian army, the Yorkists deserted their troops and fled abroad.
Ludlow Castle, near to Ludford, was the principal seat of Richard Duke of York. It was here that his elder sons, Edward (the future Edward IV) and Edmund, were brought up. When York fled, his duchess was arrested and the town was sacked.
Ludlow Castle was built by Richard’s Mortimer ancestors to contest the Welsh, and still towers above the river Teme. Wales was governed from here from 1473 in the name of Prince Edward, the future Edward V, by Henry VII’s son, Prince Arthur, and by the Council of Wales.
Ludlow’s walls, keep, chapel and apartments remain intact, but it is entirely roofless. What it also lacks now are the furnishings, hangings and other decorations that made a luxurious 15th-century palace out of a rugged fortress.
Tel: 01584 873355
www.ludlowcastle.com

_{Ludlow Castle. © Denis Kelly | Dreamstime.com}

2) Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland

The royal castle at Bamburgh rears up on a rocky outcrop over the North Sea and Holy Island. Built to defend the north against the Scots, Bamburgh was one of the Northumbrian castles that resisted the Yorkists after 1461.
Several times the castles of Alnwick, Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh and Warkworth were held against Edward IV, taken, and seized again by the Lancastrians. When the Earl of Warwick besieged the castle in 1464, his army was left starving, dispirited and sodden by the wintry Northumbrian rain.
After the Lancastrians’ final defeat at Hexham in 1462, Bamburgh fought on. The Yorkists bombarded it with their great guns and the garrison eventually surrendered. Its commander was excavated from the debris and suffered a traitor’s death at York. Only Harlech in north Wales held out.
Most of the buildings of Bamburgh Castle survive, albeit much restored. Visible for many miles around, this remains a glorious memorial both to the Scottish wars and to Northumbrian resistance to the Yorkists.
Tel: 01668 214515
www.bamburghcastle.com

3) Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire

Raglan Castle was the seat of William Herbert, the first Welshman to rise into the nobility after the English conquest of the country. He was the right-hand man in Wales both of Richard Duke of York and his son Edward IV. It was Herbert who captured Harlech Castle for the Yorkists and he was created Earl of Pembroke for his efforts.
The new earl made himself the greatest and richest man in Wales. Onto an existing castle, he added a prodigious tower that possessed every conceivable 15th-century mod con. However Herbert’s rise terrified the Earl of Warwick into rebellion in 1469 and, in the subsequent battle, Herbert was killed leading an army of Welshmen.
Herbert’s descendants occupied Raglan until it was slighted in the English Civil War. It now remains a splendid ruin. The great gatehouse still features impressive machicolations (through which objects could be thrown at attackers) and the great tower has large windows opening into what once was the most stately suite of rooms.
Tel: 01291 690228
www.cadw.wales.gov.uk

_{Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire. © Sandra Richardson | Dreamstime.com}

 

4) Gainsborough Old Hall, Lincolnshire

Gainsborough Old Hall was built by Sir Thomas Burgh, master of the horse to Edward IV. He made himself the greatest man in Lincolnshire during the eclipse of the local Lancastrian lords, Welles and Willoughby.
Yet the lords made their peace with Edward and were restored. They found Burgh in their way and late in 1469 they sacked his house at Gainsborough. When an angry Edward IV threatened vengeance, they rebelled in support of the Duke of Clarence. Defeated at Empingham in 1470, Lord Welles and his son were executed, leaving Burgh in charge as the king’s man in Lincolnshire.
Gainsborough Old Hall is the monument to his wealth, his eminence, and to civilian life at the heart of civil war. Certainly not defensible, it is a huge black-and-white, timber-framed house, now partly fronted with mellow red brick with a stone bay window and a tower.
Tel: 01684 850959
www.gainsborougholdhall.com

5) Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire

The Benedictine abbey of Tewkesbury, one of the greatest monasteries outside royal hands, was modernised by the Younger Despenser in the 1300s. Warwick the Kingmaker’s mother-in-law, Isabel Despenser, and son-in-law, Clarence, were both laid to rest here.
It was also at Tewkesbury, in 1471, that the Lancastrian army of Queen Margaret of Anjou was caught by Edward IV and decisively defeated in the fields overlooked by the abbey. Henry VI’s son, Prince Edward of Lancaster, was killed in the field or executed immediately afterwards.
The fleeing Lancastrians who took refuge in the abbey emerged when promised their lives, but were slaughtered nevertheless. Many of them were buried with the prince in the abbey church, which had to be reconsecrated.
Of the battle itself, there is little to see, but the abbey church, one of the greatest noble mausolea, was saved at the Reformation. It still contains a semi-circle of burial chapels and the marked graves, both of Prince Edward and Clarence.
Tel: 01455 290429
www.tewkesburyabbey.org.uk

_{Tewkesbury Abbey. © Chrisp543 | Dreamstime.com}

6) Middleham Castle, North Yorkshire

Middleham Castle mattered much more in the Wars of the Roses than its modest size suggests. It was originally built for a vassal of the Earl of Richmond at a time when the Scottish border was much closer than it is today. Gradually the lords of Middleham eclipsed those of Richmond and came to dominate the north.
In the 13th century, the castle came under the control of the Neville family.
Middleham was home to Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury – who took part in the battles of St Albans (1455) and Ludford (1459) – and his son, Warwick the Kingmaker.
Neville’s son-in-law, Richard Duke of Gloucester ruled the north from here before usurping the throne in 1483. Richard’s only son, Prince Edward, was born at Middleham. Although Henry VII confiscated the castle, he feared rebellions from this area in 1485–9 and probably later too.
The market town of Middleham has dwindled into a village and the parish church never became the college that Richard III planned. The ancient walls and keep remain as ruins, but Warwick of Gloucester’s 15th‑century additions – at least one storey of stately apartments and domestic buildings – have disappeared.
Tel: 01455 290429
www.middlehamonline.com

7) St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Berkshire

St George’s Chapel has links with four kings who ruled and fought during the Wars of the Roses. Edward IV set out to build a splendid new chapel here both for the Order of Garter and for his own burial. He completed the east end, railed off the north chancel chapel for himself, and awarded some of his favourites – including his friend and brother-in-arms, William Lord Hastings – burial here too.
Edward died before it was all finished but Richard III made use of it as well, having the saintly Henry VI moved to Windsor. Henry VII’s financial genius, Reginald Bray, completed the works and Henry himself was originally intended to be buried here.
Located within the lower castle ward, St George’s is a masterpiece of late perpendicular architecture, distinguished especially by fan vaulting throughout, plus Tudor arches, and huge windows. The choir stalls feature the coats of arms of almost every knight of the Garter.
www.stgeorges-windsor.org

_{St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. © Emotionart | Dreamstime.com}

8) The Tower of London, London

William I’s great tower was built to overawe London and was the royal palace from which coronation processions progressed to Westminster. Three times during the Wars of the Roses it was besieged: by Jack Cade (leader of a popular revolt) in 1450; by the Yorkists in 1460; and by the Lancastrians under Thomas Neville (known as ‘the bastard of Fauconberg’) in 1471.
It was during the wars that the Tower acquired its sinister reputation. Henry VI perished here in 1471 – a fate shared by Clarence in 1478, Edward IV’s ally Lord Hastings (1483) and Clarence’s daughter, Margaret (in 1541).
The pretender to Henry VII’s throne Perkin Warbeck was also imprisoned here. Most famously, it was here that Richard III lodged his nephews, the two Princes in the Tower, and here surely that they perished, probably in 1483.
The Tower of London is a great concentric castle around the Norman keep fronting the river Thames. What we can see now was already there in the 15th century, and almost no buildings have been lost. Because it continued in use, however, the furnishings and decorations are of later eras.
Tel: 0844 482 7777
www.hrp.org.uk

9) Bosworth Field, Leicestershire

The battle of Bosworth, where Richard III was killed and Henry Tudor became King Henry VII, is traditionally hailed as the last act of the Wars of the Roses and the Middle Ages.
It was here in Leicestershire that Henry’s Franco-Scottish army, which had landed at Milford Haven in Wales, destroyed the forces of the ruling king. Probably both wanted the battle for fear that the enemy would grow stronger with time. The clash appears to have taken a decisive turn when Richard led an assault on Henry’s lines. The attackers were destroyed by troops under Sir William Stanley and the king’s fate sealed.
Yet the Wars of the Roses didn’t die with Richard – invasions, battles and executions continued for more than 60 years. The course of the battle and even its precise location is obscure. Fifteenth-century clashes leave little impression on the landscape, and for centuries historians mistakenly believed that the battle was fought at Ambion Hill.
In 2009, archaeological investigations identified numerous small finds that suggest it was fought between Dadlington, Shenton, Upton and Stoke Golding.
Tel: 01455 290429
www.bosworthbattlefield.com

10) Westminster Abbey, London

The great Benedictine abbey of Westminster beside the royal palace has been the setting for the coronations and burials of monarchs since Edward the Confessor. Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III and Henry VII were all crowned here, and Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth, took sanctuary within these walls in 1470-1 and 1483-4.
No space remained for royal burials, so Edward IV and Richard III rest elsewhere. However, Henry VII made room for himself by replacing the eastern chapel with his own great Lady Chapel. Within it he built his tomb: a mausoleum for his new Tudor dynasty separate from that of York.
The abbey church is a masterpiece of the Decorated style. The huge Henry VII Chapel develops the Perpendicular style into something distinctively Tudor, characterised by its strange pendant vaults and casement windows, unprecedented but also without sequence. The brazen effigies of Henry, his queen and mother by Torrigiano are almost the first English examples of the new Italian Renaissance art.

Tel: 020 7222 5152
www.westminster-abbey.org
Michael Hicks is professor of medieval history at the University of Winchester and author of The Wars of the Roses (Yale University Press).

Lambert Simnel: Richard III’s heir who 'had a stronger claim to the throne than Henry VII'

History Extra

Lambert Simnel working in King Henry VII's kitchens. Simnel claimed to be Richard III’s heir and the rightful king of England, but was dismissed by the Tudor government as an imposter and he reputedly spent his teenage years as Henry VII’s prisoner in the Tower of London. (© SOTK2011/Alamy)

Claiming to be Richard III’s heir and the rightful king of England, this boy – supposedly Edward Earl of Warwick, the son of Richard III’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence – was crowned king of England in Dublin Cathedral, despite the Tudor government insisting that his real name was Lambert Simnel and that he was an imposter. Now, in his new book, author and historian John Ashdown-Hill questions the generally accepted Tudor view that this boy was a mere pretender to the throne.
In The Dublin King, Ashdown-Hill uses previously unpublished information to uncover the true identity of the Yorkist heir, who he concludes had a stronger claim to the throne than Henry VII. He also debunks the belief by some that the so-called ‘Dublin King’ himself claimed to be one of the ‘princes in the Tower’.
Here, Ashdown-Hill reveals the two conflicting life stories of Edward, 17th Earl of Warwick…
Born: 25 February 1475, Warwick Castle
Died: officially beheaded for treason, Tower Hill, 28 November 1499 – but his conflicting life story disputes this
Family: the third of four children of George, Duke of Clarence and his wife, Isabel Neville. Edward’s maternal grandfather was the famous ‘Kingmaker’ Earl of Warwick. His father’s brothers were the Yorkist kings, Edward IV and Richard III. Edward’s eldest sibling, Anne, and his younger brother, Richard, both died soon after being born. His mother, Isabel Duchess of Clarence, also died soon after Richard’s birth
Famous for: Reputedly spending his teenage years as Henry VII’s prisoner in the Tower of London, and suffering from a mental disability
Life: Edward’s father, George, believed his enemy Elizabeth Woodville (consort of his brother, Edward IV) was behind the poisoning of his wife and younger son. He became scared about the future of his surviving children – and himself.
Fear for his children led to plans to smuggle Edward out of the country - and to contacts with Ireland. Fear for his own future prompted George’s campaign against Elizabeth Woodville and her children. This resulted in George’s imprisonment and execution. Thus, as his third birthday approached, Edward Earl of Warwick found himself orphaned.
His uncle, Edward IV, sent for him. But King Edward IV had not seen his nephew and namesake for three years. Could the king have recognised the little boy who was handed over to him and then brought up as Earl of Warwick at the Tower of London?
In 1483, following the death of Edward IV, Richard III was offered the crown on the grounds that Edward IV had been legally married to Eleanor Talbot, daughter of Lord Shrewsbury. Thus Edward IV’s subsequent marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was bigamous and their children were illegitimate.
Richard III assumed care of young Warwick (then aged eight). He housed him at Sheriff Hutton Castle near York, with other Yorkist princes and princesses, and began training Warwick for a future position of power and influence.
In 1485 Richard III was killed at the battle of Bosworth. The usurper Henry VII had no real claim to the throne. To improve his weak position Henry decided to marry Elizabeth of York (eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville). He revoked the act of Parliament which stated that Edward IV’s real wife had been Eleanor Talbot, and then represented Elizabeth to the nation as the Yorkist heiress.
But Henry VII was worried about Warwick. In 1470 King Henry VI had recognised George Duke of Clarence as the next Lancastrian heir to the throne after his own son. As Henry VI and his son had died in 1471, and George had died in 1478, by 1485 Warwick was the legitimate Lancastrian heir – a claim arguably unaffected by his father’s execution at the hands of a Yorkist king.
So Henry VII took charge of Warwick. First he was placed under the guardianship of Henry VII’s own mother, and later he was consigned to the Tower of London.
But curiously, at the same time an alternative ‘son of Clarence’ was being entertained in Mechelen, at the palace of his putative aunt, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy: Margaret’s Edward Earl of Warwick had apparently been brought up in Ireland. Had George’s plot to smuggle his son and heir abroad in 1476 therefore succeeded?
Henry VII’s prisoner, or Margaret of York’s guest  – which of the two Earls of Warwick was genuine?
Margaret’s ‘Warwick’ returned to Ireland with an army and key Yorkist supporters, led by Warwick’s cousin, the Earl of Lincoln. In Ireland they combined forces with the great Earl of Kildare – former friend and deputy of Warwick’s father.
On 24 May 1487, Margaret’s ‘Warwick’ was crowned ‘Edward VI, King of England’ at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. Henry VII’s anxious government sent servants to inspect the new king. They hoped to prove the boy a fraud, but when the servants met ‘Edward VI’ they were confused.
Later, Henry VII’s government announced that the boy crowned in Dublin was an impostor, named either ‘John [BLANK]’ or ‘Lambert Simnel’. But the government’s accounts of the ‘pretender’ were also confused. Fortunately for Henry VII, when ‘Edward VI’ invaded England, he was defeated at the battle of Stoke – and possibly captured – although one account says he escaped! The young prisoner became a servant in Henry VII’s kitchen under the name of ‘Lambert Simnel’.
Meanwhile, the official Earl of Warwick remained in the Tower. In 1499 he was condemned to death, to clear the path for the projected marriage of Henry VII’s son, Arthur, Prince of Wales, to the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon. His body was buried at Bisham Priory.
So which is the true story of Edward Earl of Warwick?
If the remains of the young man executed by Henry VII in 1499 could be rediscovered on the site of Bisham Priory, DNA research (similar to my 2004 discovery which prompted the search for, and subsequent identification of, the remains of Richard III) could potentially be used to clarify the truth.

John Ashdown-Hill is a freelance historian with a PhD in history. His book, The Dublin King: The True Story of Edward Earl of Warwick, Lambert Simnel and the 'Princes in the Tower' is published by The History Press.

Tewkesbury Medieval Festival - July 11 and 12, 2015

Tewkesbury

This years event:

11th and 12th July 2015

Opening Hours:

Saturday 11am-6pm Sunday 11am-5pm

Battle reenactment 4pm Sat, 3pm Sun

 

New for this year:

A Medieval carnival style parade,

Sunday 12th, 11am from Tewkesbury High Street to the Festival. Contact us for more details

All the latest updates are on Facebook.

 

Armour At The Abbey will take place on the 2nd,3rd 4th May

 

On the 11th & 12th of July thousands of reenactors, entertainers and traders from all over Europe will gather in Tewkesbury for Europes largest annual Medieval reenactment. A fantastic and unique day out for all the family, with free admission.

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Where to stay for the Festival.

Coming to the Festival? Unsure where to stay?

Book now, Tewkesbury accommodation gets full...

Support the event by booking into our own campsite, 3 minutes away from the main site.

A relaxed campsite with good loos and hot showers included.
£20 per person for the two nights, £10 extra for motorhomes/campers
Book though Tewkesbury Tourist Infomation:
Tel 01684 855040

www.outofthehat.org.uk