Introduction

One well known publisher has commented that a book on Richard III can be published every year and this has certainly proved the case over recent years as is evidenced in the bibliography section. Richard also gets mentioned in non-Ricardian books as the Print Retrospective will demonstrate.

Print Retrospective

Winter 2005

New Books, ‘We met the author’, Guy Pringle meets up with Marika Cobbold:  ‘Q: Which are your three favourite literary villains and what is the secret of their appeal ?’ ‘A: … Richard III … Richard is also an arch bloke.  When he says to Elizabeth, who understandably is a little peeved at the fact that he’s murdered her sons, “Harp not on that string, Madam, that is past”, he sounds to me like just about everyman.’

Autumn 2005

Flashman on the March – George Macdonald Fraser, published April 2005, note 2 to page 3 (although this is a work of fiction, the notes are always factual).  One of the characters, who has a major problem, talks of being ‘in Dickie’s Meadow’. The note reads: ‘’Dickey’, meaning shaky or uncertain, has a currency centuries old, but ‘in Dickie’s Meadow’, meaning in serious trouble is, or was, a North Cumbrian expression, and it has been suggested that, since Richard III was in his younger days Warden of the West March with his headquarters in Carlisle, where he is commemorated in one of the city’s principal streets, Rickergate, the proverbial ‘meadow’ may be Bosworth Field’.

Contributed by JC Knights

From:  G K Chesterton The Flying Inn, Chapter XI:  Vegetarianism in the Drawing-room:  ‘Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that Richard III was called a ‘boar’ by an eighteenth-century poet and a ‘hog’ by a fifteenth-century poet.  What he did not know was the habit of sport and of heraldry. He did not know (what Joan knew instantly, though she had never thought of it before in her life) that beasts courageous and hard to kill are noble beasts, by the law of chivalry. Therefore the boar was a noble beast;  and a common crest for great captains.  Misysra tried to show that Richard had only been called a pig after he was cold pork at Bosworth’.

Contributed by Kirstin Fletcher

Summer 2005

Extract from Swimming with my father:  a memoir, Tim Jeal. Keith comments: ‘the extract relates to a reference to the author’s mother, Norah Pasley, daughter of Sir Thomas Pasley, Baronet, and his wife Constance Wilmot Annie Hastings, daughter of the 13th Earl of Huntingdon. The extract is quite interesting in terms of the stance the Hastings family appear to have towards Richard III and in the context of verbally transmitted recollection passed through the generations’.

“ .... my mother told me that her mother’s surname .. had been Hastings, and that her ancestor, William, Lord Hastings, had been the king’s Lord Chamberlain and his best friend. “It was during the Wars of the Roses” said my mother  ... “Then the king died and poor Hastings’s head was chopped off”. ... “But had he done something really bad?” ‘Quite the reverse.  He tried to stop the dead king’s brother, Duke Richard, from murdering the Princes in the Tower – they were the old king’s children. ... Richard wanted to be king himself and knew he couldn’t be if the children stayed alive.  So he decided to kill Hastings who would have tried to save them.” “Did the children die too, mummy?” “I’m afraid so”.  ... This true story was scarier and nastier ...  One moment Hastings had been walking about in his furs and fine clothes, being important and looking after the princes, and the next, a savage, unbelievable thing had been done to him when he wasn’t expecting it.  Realising she had upset me, my mother tried to soften the blow by telling me that Hastings’s grandson was made an earl to make up for what had happened, and that this reward for his family explained why four hundred years later my granny had been ‘a lady from birth’.  This was no comfort.  My grandmother was long dead, but I was alive and soon having nightmares. On several nights, I dreamed that the head was lying on the ground with its eyes wide open, staring at the spurting blood.”

Contributed by Keith Stenner

From Execution, a guide to the ultimate penalty, Geoffrey Abbott, Summersdale, 2005,  chapter  on ‘Suffocation’ – uses the story of the princes, based on More and the 1933 examination of the bones, claiming that this proves that Richard was the instigator, although the outset of the chapter states: ‘While their deaths were classed as murder rather than judicial execution, the instigator was nevertheless a king of England, his true identity still unproven’.   Interestingly in light of other references to John Howard, it also claims that Richard’s grants of the ‘vacant titles’ of Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Norfolk suggests that he knew the children were dead, and exhibits some confusion on Anne Mowbray:  ‘not only did the king confiscate the older boy’s property but also the property of the girl, a princess of the House of Plantagenet, the prince had been contracted to marry’

Contributed by Sylvia Sherwood


Richard’s Marriage Dispensation

A recent discovery by Peter D Clarke has solved a long-standing mystery about Richard’s marriage to Anne Neville. For Research Officer Peter Hammond takes up the story:

Most of the details surrounding Richard’s marriage are unclear, including the date.  However an article in the most recent issue of the English Historical Review (‘English Royal Marriages and the Papal Penitentiary in the Fifteenth Century’, Peter D Clarke, vol. 120, pp.1014-1029) has thrown some light on the matter and on three other marriages of interest to us.

The new information comes from work in the Vatican archives, in the records of the Papal Penitentiary, the functionary who dealt with everything relating to matters of conscience that appeared before the Pope.  These were matters that were reserved to the Pope for absolution and included dispensations from the provisions of canon law prohibiting marriage between couples related within four degrees of blood or marriage (this is second cousin or nearer). This was almost always the case with royal marriages in the fifteenth century.

The four marriages discussed in Clarke’s paper are those between Margaret of York and Charles of Burgundy, Anne Neville and Edward of Lancaster, Anne Neville and Richard of Gloucester and between Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor, all of great interest.  There has never been any doubt that the first two and the last marriages had received dispensations although this paper sheds much light on the politics surrounding the requests for dispensations. I will only mention here that, while we knew that Henry and Elizabeth had received a dispensation in early 1486 after the battle of Bosworth, Clarke’s research reveals that one was granted to them as early as 27 March 1484, nearly 18 months before Bosworth.

However the marriage concerning us here is that between Anne Neville and Richard.  They were certainly related within the normally forbidden degrees of kinship and since there appeared to be no record of a dispensation there has been speculation that they married without one.  This has always seemed unlikely since without a dispensation marriage within the forbidden degrees was always open to challenge.  The provision in the act dividing the Neville estates between Richard and his brother George saying that if Richard and Anne be subsequently divorced Richard could retain the estates whether or not they remarried (provided he did not remarry any one else) has been interpreted to mean that no dispensation had been obtained.  However speculation is now at an end. Richard and Anne did apply and one was granted to them on 22 April 1472.  It released them from the impediment of being related within the third and fourth degrees of kinship, for which relationship they also needed a littera declaratoria, also granted.  Richard was described as dux Glouirestere, laicus Lincolniensis diocesis (duke of Gloucester, layman of the Lincoln diocese) and Anne as Anna Nevile, mulier Eboracensis diocesis (woman of the York diocese).  Normally the diocese is the birth one.  Richard’s is correct, Fotheringhay is in the Lincoln diocese, but Anne was born in Warwickshire in the Worcester diocese.  She may have been described as from York because the Neville estates obtained by Richard were largely in Yorkshire.  These dispensations sometimes are very vague as to who the parties are, deliberately so in politically sensitive marriages.  For example in the first dispensation of Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor they are described as Henry Richemont and Elizabeth Plantageneta.

Although Richard and Anne received their dispensation on 22 April we still do not really know when they were married. In the religious sense they were free to marry from that date but political considerations, i.e. the question of the division of the Neville estates, might have prevented it and they may not have married until the dispute was finally settled in 1474.  At least we now know that they did receive a dispensation from the church to do so.


Recent Publications

The Three Richards: Richard I, Richard II and Richard III by Nigel Saul. 2005. Hambledon and London. London and New York £29.95

The Hollow Crown: A History of the Britain in the Late Middle Ages by Miri Rubin. 2005. Allen Lane. London £25

Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by Colin Richmond who commented ‘the two pages on the critical months between the death of Edward IV and Richard’s coronation in July are a tissue of nonsense’.

History of King Richard III by Thomas More. 2005. Hesperus, pbk, £6.99, (introduction by Sister Wendy Beckett. ‘... the received story was used to make a political point too dangerous to publish. .. It is famous for its tear-jerking account of the death of the princes, which may or may not have been based on an actual confession. ... Neither a source for the history of Richard III, nor a piece of Tudor propaganda;  it is quite simply sui generis’ – as reviewed by Tony Pollard in BBC History, April 2005)

The Catesbys of Ashby St Ledgers and their brasses
by Members of the Monumental Brass Society and Others
Edited by Jerome Bertram

The latest in the MBS’s series of occasional publications arose from the MBS Study Day held in May 2003 at the church of Ashby St. Ledgers, Northamptonshire, at which leading authorities in the field presented important new research on the church, the Catesby family and brasses to family members spanning the period 1404 to 1553. Most of the brasses are now in imperfect condition, but details of lost components are recorded in 17th and 18th century antiquarian notes transcribed in full in the volume.

Two brasses currently in Northamptonshire Record Office were newly identified as coming from Ashby, and as a result of this research are to be restored to the church. All known brasses from Ashby are studied in the volume and an overview given of their significance. In addition information is provided on an important lost heraldic glazing scheme which once graced the church. The whole is set in context by an essay on the family, incorporating information from hitherto unpublished sources. The volume is copiously illustrated in colour, with the contents comprising:

• Introduction
• Catalogue of Brasses at Ashby St Ledgers
• List of Coats of Arms
• ‘Never desire to be great about princes, for it is daungeros’: the rise and fall of the fifteenth-century Catesbys.  By Simon Payling
• The One(s) that got Away.  By Jane Houghton
• Nearly Headless Bill: The Mutilation of the Brasses in Ashby St Ledgers.  By Jerome Bertram       
• Magnificence Faded: The brass of Sir Richard Catesby, died 1552/3. By Robert Hutchinson                   
• The Catesbys’ Taste in Brasses, By Sally Badham and Nigel Saul               
• The Brass of Thomas Stokes and his Wife.  By Nigel Saul                               
• The Brass of William Smyght.  By Jon Bayliss                                        
• Appendix: the Church Notes for Ashby St Ledgers 1590-1721, transcribed and annotated by John A. Goodall.                                                             

The volume will be published in spring 2006 at a price of £20, but members of the Society are invited to subscribe at the pre-publication price of £10 (plus £5 postage and packing).  

All names and address of subscribers will be printed in the volume if remittances and details are received prior to 10 March 2006.

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