The Ricardian Volume 13 2003

‘You Know me by my Habit’: Heralds’ Tabards in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Adrian Ailes

The function, making, materials and cost of heralds’ tabards.

Jane with the Blemyssh: A Skeleton in the de la Pole Closet
Rowena E. Archer

A daughter of the family of the earls of Suffolk, disfigured in childhood, is married off to a farmer; her heirs could have made trouble not only for the Suffolk inheritance but the royal line itself.

The Lancastrian Claim to the Throne
John Ashdown-Hill

Explains among other things that the real claim of the house of Lancaster to the crown was based on Henry IV’s descent through his mother, Blanche of Lancaster, from the elder son of Henry III, not on John of Gaunt’s title; this would also nullify Henry VII’s claim through John of Gaunt.

Ellen Langwith: Silkwoman of London (died 1481)
Caroline Barron and Matthew Davies

The career and friends and relations of a London craftswoman in the fifteenth century.

Freston Tower: An Ipswich Mercer’s Landmark?
John Blatchly

Details and mysteries of the early history of a Tudor monument, now owned by the Landmark Trust. (Illustrated)

The Buckinghamshire Six at Bosworth
Lesley Boatwright

On the trail of six men who went to Bosworth Field – where it ended for all of them.  (Table)

Books and Readers in Calais: Some Notes
Julia Boffey

Links several books to Calais authors and owners, among them a Vegetius De re militari (Cambridge, Pembroke College 243) Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library 222) and a Secreta secretorum (Oxford, University College 85).

Jacqueline of Bavaria in September 1425, A Lonely Princess in Ghent?
Marc Boone

The life but especially the month of captivity at Ghent (in material comfort) in 1425 of the famous countess of Holland and Zeeland.

The Woollen Textile Industry in Suffolk in the Later Middle Ages
Richard Britnell

The development and specific trends in this industry between c. 1350 and c. 1530.

Paris – Mirror or Lamp to English Medieval Royal Goldsmiths?
Marian Campbell

Some facts and questions concerning the English taste for French goldsmiths’ work around 1300. (Illustrated)

Shows in detail how Richard of Gloucester’s seal was different from earlier ones.

Three Gigli of Lucca in England in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries: Diversification in a Family of Mercery Merchants

Cecil H. Clough

The background and lives of Carlo, a merchant, Giovanni, tutor to Edward IV’s children and bishop of Worcester, and Silvestro, who succeeded his uncle as bishop.

The career of a wealthy woman in the milieu of London book-owners, scribes and court officials, with emphasis on her book-ownership and the evidence of her will.

‘More Through Fear than Love’: The Herefordshire Gentry, the Alien Subsidy of 1483 and Regional Responses to Richard III’s Usurpation

Sean Cunningham

The composition of the Hereford commissions and how it reflects changing national circumstances.

The many and complicated aspects of the historiography of the saint.

Wide-ranging survey of medieval depictions of people reading, including St Mary, Christine de Pizan and St Jerome, and the meaning of these images.

The Chapel-of-Ease: Symbol of Local Identity and Ambition
David Dymond

The role of such chapels in the life of the parish, representing as it did considerable investment and initiative of lay men and women. (Maps)

John Stow and Lydgate’s ‘Order of Fools’
A.S.G. Edwards

Edition of the text with introduction and commentary.

The presentation scene of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes; it shows the young Henry V and – it is argued – John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. (Illustrated)

Edward IV’s mistresses, and their illegitimate children: Arthur, Viscount Lisle, ‘Mistress Grace’, Elizabeth Lumley, Isabel Mylbery, Mary Harman.

‘Our Trusty and Welbeloved Servant and Squire for Oure Body’, Nicholas Baker alias Spicer
Bill Hampton

The career of a particularly loyal servant of Richard III, who fought at Bosworth and may have lived to serve Richard’s heirs, the de la Poles.

Home or Away? Some Problems with Daughters
Alison Hanham

Detailed look at two fifteenth-century letters and the picture they present of young unmarried women living in other people’s households.

William Estfield, Mercer (died 1446), and William Alnwick, Bishop (died 1449): Evidence for a friendship

Rosemary Hayes

The intricate evidence for their relationship is to be found in the shared circle of relatives and acquaintances and their own wills and those of others.

Richard III, The Great Landholders and the Results of the Wars of the Roses
Michael Hicks

Proposes that it was the final ‘War of the Roses’, 1483 to 1487, that ‘sealed’ the wars as a whole, and that Richard III ‘made Henry VII possible’.

Medieval Vestments at Wells Cathedral
Jean Imray

Prints and analyses the evidence of the sixteenth-century Communars’ Accounts about medieval vestments.

‘For my Lord of Richmond, a Pourpoint … and a Palfry’: Brief Remarks on the Financial Evidence for Henry Tudor’s Exile in Brittany, 1471-1484

Michael C.E. Jones

The records used provide insight not only into the material side of Henry’s life before his invasion of England but also about the development of his political position.

‘My Image to be Made all Naked’: Cadaver Tombs and the Commemoration of Women in Fifteenth-Century England

Pamela King

The background and social milieu of the aristocratic ladies (and men) among whom such tombs were fashionable. (7 illustrations)

‘Morton’s Fork’? – Henry VII’s ‘Forced Loan’ of 1496
Hannes Kleineke

The ‘loans’ to Henry VII compared to similar financial enactments by the Lancastrian and Yorkist kings, and their geographical and social distribution. (Tables)

‘Plate, Good Stuff, and Household Things’: Husbands, Wives, and Chattels in England at the end of the Middle Ages

Janet Loengard

Investigates not the doctrine of law, but the attitudes behind the personal arrangements concerning the ownership and use of household goods at the end of a marriage.

The Career of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln
Wendy Moorhen

Overview of Lincoln’s life to provide the background for his decision to support the pretender Lambert Simnel in 1487.

The East Anglian Lollards Revisited: Parochial Art in Norfolk
Ann E. Nichols

Situates Norfolk Lollards within their parish churches and considers how parochial art, 1400-1425, shaped their attitudes.

St George of England: An Edition of the Sermon for St George’s Day from Mirk’s ‘Festial’

Susan Powell

Presents the text of the sermon with extensive introduction and commentary.

The Inventory of a Fifteenth-Century Necromancer
Carole Rawcliffe

Gives the full text of the 1491 list of household goods of Thomas Nandyke, chaplain and physician to the duke of Buckingham during the rebellion of 1483, and practitioner of the black arts.

Books and Pictures: An Unlikely Story of the Brothers Paston
Colin Richmond

The analysis of a ‘literary’ Paston letter takes us through Malory, contemporary book-ownership, and life at Bruges to Van Eyck’s Adoration of the Lamb.

Scraps from Bury St Edmunds
Nicholas Rogers

Some fragments of palimpsest brasses testify dramatically to the destruction of the abbey.

‘A Cloke not made so Orderly’: The Sixteenth-Century Minutes of the Merchant Taylors’ Company

Ann Saunders

Vivid evidence of the malpractices of tailors in sixteenth-century London.

John Baret of Bury
Margaret Statham

Detailed discussion of the very informative will of Baret (1463): his family, house, goods, ornaments, guild-membership and life in Bury St Edmunds, with a plea for its re-edition.