Richard III’s personal interests
by
Dr Livia Visser-Fuchs
A number of pieces of direct evidence
survive for Richard III’s personal interests, the ‘things he liked’.
Most personal of all, perhaps, is his ‘confession’ in his letter to
Louis XI, King of France, who had presented him, in 1480 when he was
still duke of Gloucester, with a ‘great bombard’, the largest and most
expensive gunpowder weapon available at the time. Richard thanked the
king in a letter and added ‘I have always taken and still take great
pleasure in artillery and I assure you it will be a special treasure
to me’. There was, of course, nothing unusual in a twenty-six-year-old
nobleman being fascinated by such weapons: they were part of the most
up-to-date military technology of the day.
Another
indication of what Richard liked can be found in the will of Sir John
Pilkington, a long standing servant of the house of York. He left a special
bequest to Richard of his ‘great emerald set in gold’ which during Sir
John’s lifetime Richard had admired so much that he offered 100 marks
( ¤66.66p.) for it. In the same context should be mentioned one
of those prejudices, or rather ‘myths’, about Richard III which have sprung
up over the years: the curious idea that he was a ‘fop’, a dandy. This
is based on the misunderstanding, by several generations of historians,
of the contents of the surviving Great Wardrobe accounts, which list among
other things the materials needed for the robes worn by the fifteenth-century kings. These
may appear unusually sumptuous but in fact merely illustrate the standard
norms of a medieval court and its splendours. We gain intimate information of a different
nature about Richard’s interests from the account of the Silesian traveller,
Nicolas von Popplau, who met the king in the spring of 1484. Von Popplau
reports how Richard was able to express admiration at his guest's mastery
of the Latin tongue; praises the choir employed by the king as ‘the sweetest
music he had ever heard’, describes the magnificence of king’s meal and
the great ceremony that accompanied it, but also his graciousness to his
guest. Their conversation, which almost made the king forget to eat, was
wide ranging: it went from the Latin origin of the name of Pontefract
to the exact date of the annual ceremony of feet-washing on Maundy Thursday.
The king asked von Popplau about continental princes and their affairs,
and about the Turks in particular. Having been told how the king of Hungary
had recently gained a great victory over them, enviously exclaimed, ‘I
would like my kingdom and land to lie where the land and kingdom of the
king of Hungary lies, on the Turkish frontier itself’, and continued,
‘Then I would certainly, with my own people alone, without the help of
other kings, princes or lords, completely drive away not only the Turks,
but all my enemies and opponents!’. His enthusiastic remark shows his
confidence in his own military abilities as well as his awareness of the
international situation, which made it impossible to create an alliance
between the ever-squabbling princes of western Europe and organise a concerted
attack on the Turks. The general impression of Richard that we get from
von Popplau's account is that of a magnificent and thoughtful princely
host, who took a great interest in many diverse matters.
Finally
and most importantly there is Richard’s undoubted liking for books. His surviving ‘library’ is a remarkable collection,
covering most medieval interests and fields of knowledge, except medicine,
law, and theology. Striking is the fact that he put his name in his books,
not as common a practice in his day as one might think. The bias of his
collection, if there is one, is towards history, and the history books
together covered nearly everything from mythical beginnings to his own
day: the story of Troy by Guido delle Collone and the lives of the British
kings by Geoffrey of Monmouth, both in Latin (St Petersburg, Saltykov-Shchedrin
State Public Library MS Lat. F IV 74 and 76), a chronicle of England,
in Latin, covering the period from the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons
to the coronation of King John in 1199 (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College
MS 96), and a history of France, in French, covering the period 1270-1380.
Five of his books were religious/devotional: his book of hours (London,
Lambeth Palace Library MS 474), a collection of Old Testament stories
in verse (Longleat House, Library of the Marquess of Bath, MS 257), the
New Testament in English translation, an unusual book for a prince to
own at the time (New York, Public Library, MS De Ricci 67), a life of
St Katherine in Latin by the Italian Pietro Carmeliano (Richard’s own
copy does not survive) and the English translation of work of St Mechtild
of Hackeborn, which may have been his wife’s (London, British Library,
MS Egerton 2006). On military and chivalric matters he had an English
translation of Vegetius’ De re militari, a standard work on the
training of soldiers and warfare in general (British Library, MS Royal
18 A xii), Ramon Lull’s Order of Chivalry, a manual on knighthood
translated and printed by William Caxton in 1484, William Worcester’s
Boke of Noblesse and his Documents on the War in France,
a treatise and a set of documents advertising the renewal of the war in
France (British Library MS Royal 18 B xxii, and Lambeth Palace Library
MS 506), and several rolls of arms. To these can be added a number genealogical
rolls and the most famous of medieval ‘mirrors for princes’, Giles of
Rome’s De regimine principum in Latin (Lambeth Palace, MS Arc.
L 40.2 / L 26). An unusual text probably owned by Richard was a collection
of letters on statecraft ascribed to the Sicilian tyrant Phalaris, edited
by Pietro Carmeliano (Dublin, Trinity College, MS 429). There are several interesting general aspects
to Richard’s collection of books: he had no preference for manuscript
over print, and did not demand that all his books were new, or sumptuously
decorated. Through the quirks of survival his collection includes one
of only two surviving copies of the English translation of Mechtild of
Hackeborn’s Book of Special Grace, the only extant copy of a prose
translation of the romance of Ipomedon (Library of the Marquess
of Bath, MS 257), the only manuscript copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia
regum Britanniae known to have belonged to a medieval king of England,
and one of the two surviving texts of the Prophecy of the Eagle
with a particular Commentary, which was added to the Historia.
The proportion of romances in Richard’s collection was unusually high:
Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Clerk’s
Tale, the Prose Ipomedon, (all in the marquess of Bath’s ms.)
the Prose Tristan in French (British Library, MS Harley 49).
Caxton was at the height of his production during Richard’s brief reign
and dedicated his Order of Chivalry to the king. Most important
of all in the context of printing: when Richard’s parliament took measures
to control alien workers and their goods in England, books and their makers
were specifically exempted. There can be little doubt that among the kings
of England, of any period, Richard’s interest in books and the booktrade
is unusual and remarkable.
Sources:
Anne F. Sutton, ‘”A Curious Searcher
for our Weal Public”: Richard III, Piety, Chivalry and the Concept of
the “Good Prince”’, in Richard III. Loyalty, Lordship and Law,
ed. P.W. Hammond, London 1986, repr. 2000.
Anne F. Sutton, ‘The Court and its Culture’,
in John Gillingham, ed., Richard III. A Medieval Kingship, London
1993.
Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs,
Richard III’s Books. Ideals and Reality in the Life and Library of
a Medieval Prince, Stroud 1997.
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