| Ricardian Churches Restoration Fund | ||
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| Grade 1 membership |
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Fotheringhay's
Early Royal Connections and the Richard III Society |
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According to historical record, Richard III was a deeply pious man and there are a number of churches that can claim a Ricardian connection, either as direct beneficiaries from his largesse or because he is known to have worshipped in them.
For many years, the Richard III Society has raised money for its causes - aiding the restoration of historic buildings, beautifying Ricardian sites, erecting monuments, etc. In 1975, the Ricardian Churches Restoration Fund, or RCRF, was founded, its guiding light for many years being the late Joyce Melhuish. Since its inception, the RCRF has received no money from the Society but has raised all its funds through members and the general public. For the most part, this has been by the sale of craft work made by the members. To date, the fund has made donations totalling well in excess of £30,000.
Any church that has a connection with Richard III is entitled to call upon the Fund for assistance, although obviously the amount that can be given is limited and very much dependent upon what is in the coffers at the time of asking.
Five churches qualify for 'Grade I' membership of the RCRF
Fotheringhay
Richard was born in the nearby castle and may have been baptised in the church. A permanent exhibition, costing £1500, was mounted in 1987-88 and in the ten years until 1992 members of the Society participated in a programme to embroider and sew kneelers. The Society has supported several other projects including a contribution of £2000 towards the cost of general works in 1995, £100 towards rehanging and additions to the church bells in 1990, £500 towards stonework restoration in 1983 and payments over the years amounting to nearly £4000 for work in the Chapel of All Souls.
For more on the Society's connection with Fotheringhay see Friends of Fotheringhay and about the village itself see Ricardian Sites. For a history of Fotheringhay’s royal connections see below.
Middleham
Richard spent much of his life in Middleham, having been sent there for his early chivalric training, the castle belonging to his cousin, the earl of Warwick. Later, Richard lived here when he was Edward IV’s deputy in the north. The castle was his favourite residence and it was here that he met Anne Neville, who he later married. Now in the care of English Heritage, the castle remains a truly evocative site, beloved of Ricardians.
Sadly, Richard III’s plan to found a college of priests in the church came to naught, but in 1934, the Society installed a memorial window, showing Richard and Anne, as well as their son, the Prince of Wales, and in 1963, it gave an altar frontal. These were amongst its earliest gifts to any heritage site. In the early 1980s, the RCRF gave £3500 towards a new lead roof.
Sheriff Hutton
The church contains an alabaster monument at one time believed to be that of Richard's son, Edward of Middleham, who died in 1484. Sadly, the monument has been badly damaged by the ravages of time and much of the heraldic detail has gone. (The exact place of the prince’s burial is uncertain but it was not at Sheriff Hutton.) It is possibly the only monument to a Prince of Wales to be found in a parish church and over the years, it has been set up in several places within the church. In 1949, Saxon Barton, founder of the Society, paid for the monument to be restored and in 1985, the RCRF contributed much of the cost of the extensive restoration and conservation plan, in total £2666.
Barnard Castle
Here is another church where Richard planned a college which also came to nothing. However, he was responsible for major rebuilding work, widening the aisles and putting in windows. His boar badge can be seen in the exterior stonework.
The RCRF contributed £500 towards the cost of the second-stage roof repairs in 1983, and more recently, in March 2001, it gave £1000 towards improving the existing sound system, adding an induction loop for the hard of hearing.
Sutton Cheney
Close to Bosworth Field, this is known as the church where Richard is said to have heard his last Mass. Sadly, the tradition was probably begun in the 1920s. No matter, it is now the principal venue for the annual memorial service, held on the Sunday nearest to the anniversary of the battle. A highlight of the service is the placing of wreaths around a bronze plaque inscribed 'Remember before God, Richard III, King of England, and those who fell at Bosworth Field, having kept faith. 22nd August 1485. Loyaulté me lie'. Recent gifts from the RCRF and the Society have totalled more than £4000 towards the replacement of the crumbling stonework of the medieval windows.
Other churches which have benefited from the RCRF include:
Lead Chapel, Towton
Built to commemorate the dead of the Battle of Towton, this received the very first RCRF donation in 1982, being £45 towards the cost of installing some stained glass for the boar quarry window. The chapel, standing isolated in a corn field, is the venue for an annual service held by the Yorkshire Branch of the Society.
Wingfield
The RCRF gave £2150 in 1990 towards the cleaning and repairs of the tombs of the Duke of Suffolk and his wife, the duchess having been Richard's sister, Elizabeth. In 1996, the Fund gave £100 towards restoration of a window.
Great St Helen's, Bishopsgate, London
Richard used this church when, as Duke of Gloucester, he was resident in London. In 1992, the RCRF gave £1000 towards the cost of repairs following a terrorist bomb which had lifted the roof.
Staindrop
Close to Raby Castle, the birth place of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, Richard's mother, Staindrop church is the burial place of Richard's ancestors, the first earl of Westmorland and his two countesses. The RCRF gave £2000 towards the restoration of their tomb in 2000.
York Minster
Richard had great plans for the Minster, planning a chantry chapel there for his son. In 1987, the RCRF gave £2000 towards replacing the stonework of the great west window, popularly known as ‘the Heart of Yorkshire’.
King’s College Chapel, Cambridge
In response to a national appeal for funds to carry out restoration work in 1982, a donation of £300 was given to match the sum that Richard had given. He was responsible for completing the first five bays of the chapel.
Other contributions have included £1000 to Brancepeth Church in response to its restoration appeal and the same amount to St Andrew's Church, Penrith for the protection of their stained glass windows, both in 2001.
In 2005, Stratford St Mary in Essex restored the de la Pole window, and the RCRF gave a contribution.
Other churches with Ricardian connections include Westminster Abbey, where Richard's queen, Anne Neville, was buried, the site marked now by a small memorial given by the Society; St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, where Edward IV and his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, are buried and Tewkesbury Abbey, which holds the remains of George, Duke of Clarence and his duchess, Isabel Neville.
For further information please contact:
Miss Elizabeth Nokes
4 Oakley Street, Chelsea, London SW3 5NN
E-mail: elizabeth_nokes@hotmail.com
or
Dr Phil Stone
181 Rock Avenue, Gillingham, Kent ME7 5PY
E-mail: ptstone@blueyonder.co.uk
Fotheringhay's Early Royal Connections and the Richard
III Society
By Dr Phil Stone
Fotheringhay's royal connections extend from the time of the Conquest, when the estate was given to William's niece, Judith, until the visit of Queen Mary in the 1930s. In between, there has been the ownership by the king of Scotland, who was Earl of Huntingdon; the birth of the future king, Richard III, in the castle in 1452; the visit of Queen Elizabeth I during a royal progress, and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587.
Foderingeia is mentioned in the Domesday Book, but the village preceded the Norman Conquest by many years. Before the coming of William the Conqueror, Foderingeia was held by the Saxon, Turchil, but the census records that, in 1086, it was part of the earldom of Huntingdon.
In 1124, the then earl became King of Scotland. Although monarch of another country David I did homage to the English king for the earldom. The title to Fotheringhay, as the property was now called, remained with the Scots until 1294, when John Balliol surrendered himself to Edward I who granted everything to his nephew, John of Brittany. On his death, it passed to his niece, Marie de St Pol, widow of the Earl of Pembroke.
| In 1377, Edward III bestowed Fotheringhay
upon his fifth son, Edmund of Langley. Ten years later, when he was created
the first Duke of York, Edmund brought the falcon, fetterlock and ostrich
feather into the Yorkist heraldry. He replaced the wooden castle with a stone building, the rather limited remains of which can be seen today. The keep was founded on a ground plan resembling a padlock - the fetterlock. This is an artist's representation of how the final arrangement may have looked. |
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In 1398, Edmund petitioned Pope Boniface IX for consent to found a College in honour of the 'Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin and St Edward the Confessor'. With a master, twelve chaplains and four clerks, it was to be established in a chapel to be built within the castle.
Edmund died in 1402, leaving his son, Edward, the second duke, to continue with the college project. The scale was reduced, it was moved into the parish church and the dedication was changed to 'The Annunciation of Our Lady and All Saints'. In 1412, the papal bull granting permission for the Foundation was finally issued. Three years later, the duke was one of only two English knights who died at Agincourt and he was brought back for burial in the choir of his new collegiate church, which continued eastwards of the present building.
With the death of Duke Edward, the title passed to his three-year-old nephew, Richard. During his minority, no further building took place at Fotheringhay, but, when he was 22, the duke took up the family interest in building. Details of a contract are known, dated to 1434, between William Horwood, freemason, and the duke's commissioners, William Wolston and Thomas Peckham. This contract was for a new church attached to 'the choir of the College of Fotheringhay'. A cloister is also mentioned, together with a porch to connect the new buildings with it.
Richard of York was killed at Wakefield on 30 December 1460. The father of kings, though never king himself, the third Duke of York claimed the throne through his mother, Ann Mortimer, the great-granddaughter of Edward III's second son, Lionel of Clarence. Richard's eldest son, the earl of March, inherited this Yorkist claim to the throne, and in 1461, he fulfilled his father's ambition, taking the crown himself as Edward IV.
In 1462, Edward changed the Foundation Charter for what was to be the last time, his intention being to reflect his father having been 'the true heir of the realm of England and France'. He also declared that he would complete the foundation.
In 1476, the Collegiate Church at Fotheringhay witnessed one of the most spectacular events of the Yorkist Age and one that would match any coronation. For nearly fifteen years, following the Battle of Wakefield, the bodies of Richard, Duke of York and his son, Edmund of Rutland, had lain in a plain tomb at Pontefract. The bodies were exhumed on the morning of 21 July 1476, and for the rest of that day, they lay in state in the choir of the church. Next day, the cortege set out for Fotheringhay, with Richard, Duke of Gloucester as principal escort.
The procession took a week to reach Fotheringhay, where King Edward and the Duke of Clarence, waited at the entrance to the churchyard. The king escorted the procession into the church, where hearses had been erected. Masses were then sung and the younger brothers watched over the coffins. The following day the coffins were placed in a vault beneath the chancel, the ceremonies being concluded with the giving of alms to some five thousand people, and the serving of dinner to two thousand or more.
For a more detailed account of the reburial, the reader is recommended to see the account in the Reburial of Richard Duke of York 21-30 July 1476.
Edward IV bestowed Fotheringhay upon his widowed mother, Cecily Neville, and she lived there until 1469, when she moved to Berkhamsted, where she died in 1495.
Following her death the Duchess of York joined her husband in the choir of Fotheringhay. With the death of Cecily, all connection between Fotheringhay, its castle, its church and college, and the royal house of York came to an end.
The church has changed little since the time of its truncation, and the effects of the Reformation. Externally, the great tower rises in solid square blocks, topped with the lantern, each level pierced by magnificent windows, with their lancets, traceries and transoms. The topmost of the square parts of the tower is completed by four small embattled turrets at the corners. Soaring lancets are set in the tracery of the lantern. Finally, there is another embattled parapet, crowned with eight pinnacles, and the gilded falcon and fetterlock, the badge of the House of York, which tops the flagpole.
The
side aisles have tall pinnacled buttresses set in the walls, while the
clerestory has flying buttresses, designed to take the thrust produced
by the roof of the nave. The collection of gargoyles and water spouts
are well worth a look, too, especially those on the south side, away from
the road.
Of
the fabled coloured glass, all that's left in the nave are small fragments
of blue and murrey - the livery colours of the House of York - in the
eyelets of the lancets of the side windows. Apart from these, and one
notable exception, all the glass is plain and floods the church with a
bright, clear light.