Gairdner J. History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third: To which is Added the Story of Perkin Warbeck from Original Documents

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I5O LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. V.

Bramburgh, 'a stranger born,' was commissioned to purvey

gunpowder for the king on January 28'.

One Breton ship appears to have been captured about or

before the beginning of the new year, and was brought into

Calais haven. It was given by the king to Sir Humphrey

Talbot, Marshal of Calais

. Others were detained at Lowes-

toft

, and certain Bretons, who had been taken prisoners of

war, received from the king a letter of passage to go back

to Brittany to procure money for the ransom of themselves

and some fellow-prisoners

It must be acknowledged that Richard had fair ground

of complaint against the Duke of Brittany. The treaties

between England and the duchy were supposed by many to

have expired on the death of Edward IV., and acts of pri-

vateering began to be committed, to the great injury of

commerce on both sides. To correct this evil, Richard, im-

mediately after his accession, sent Dr Hutton to Brittany,

proposing a diet or conference upon commercial affairs, to

be held in England between commissioners of both sides.

The Duke ^

ut wn

making this proposal, Richard had mis-

of Brittany givings as to the duke's intentions; besides the

English Earl of Richmond there were other English refu-

refugees. . . , ,

gees in Brittany, among whom was the naval com-

mander, Sir Edward Woodville, the queen dowager's brother;

and Hutton was instructed to use all possible means to ascer-

tain whether the duke was not conniving at some enterprise

against England by sea

After the receipt of Hutton's message, the duke sent an

envoy to Richard, thanking him for his cordiality and good-

will, and promising to send at the feast of All Saints a more

Hail. MS. 433, No. 1682.

Harl. MS. 433, f. 141. No. 1664 in Catalogue; but the Catalogue

erroneously reads ' the Bristen ship,' instead of' the Bryten (Breton) ship.'

/*. No. 1601. * 16. No. 1639.

Letters,

die.

of Richard III. and Henry VII. i. 22, 73.

A.D.

1484. THE DUKE OF BRITTANY. 151

dignified ambassador to treat on the subject of Hutton's

charge, which he was unable to do sooner in consequence of

an approaching meeting of the estates of the duchy. Mean-

while he desired that Richard would prohibit his subjects

from plundering those of the duke, as he understood there

was a large number of vessels arrayed in England against

the Bretons. The duke also desired to explain that King

Lewis XI. (who was actually dead at the time, though the

news had not reached him) had frequently solicited him to

deliver up to him the Earl of Richmond; but the duke had

persistently refused. The King of France, however, had great

forces at his command, and if he chose to invade Brittany

there was neither river nor brook on the confines of the duchy

to offer any obstacle. It was impossible the duke could

defend himself long against such an enemy without the aid

of England, and if Richard did not wish him to deliver up

the earl he would ask him for the aid of 4,000

English archers to be paid by England, and if asYfst^nce

necessary 2,000 or 3,000 more to be paid by the

duke. On these terms he was content to defy the power of

France rather than do anything to give displeasure to King

Richard

What answer Richard returned to this we do not know,

but it is certain that the duke's actual conduct, or that of

his government, was utterly at variance with his language. He

did not deliver the Earl of Richmond up to France, but he

furnished him with money and ships for the invasion of

England; and on the failure of that enterprise he still con-

tinued not only to give the earl an asylum in his duchy, but

to encourage him with the hope of further assistance.

When the Earl of Richmond recrossed the Channel he

at first landed in Normandy. After resting there

, , , ... , . Return of

three days, he and part of his company determined the

Eai-1

to repass into Brittany, and he sent to demand

1C mon

Letters of Richard III. &°r., i.

37-43.

152 LIFE OF RICHARD TIL CH. V.

a passport of Charles VIII., the young King of France, who

had just succeeded his father Lewis XI. Charles's council

not only granted what he asked, but supplied him with money

for his expenses. The earl accordingly returned into Brittany,

where he not only received certain information of the defeat

and death of Buckingham, but learned that Dorset and a

number of his other friends had been there making anxious

inquiries regarding him, and had gone to Vannes. He sent

word to them to come and meet him at Rennes, the capital of

the duchy, to which city they all immediately repaired, over-

joyed to find that their leader had not fallen into the tyrant's

hands.

A council was held regarding their future movements,

and it was quite determined to make another expedition at

some future opportunity. On Christmas Day the whole body

of the English lords went with great solemnity to the cathedral

and pledged themselves to be true to each other, the earl

for his part taking a corporal oath that he would marry the

Princess Elizabeth when once he should have obtained the

crown, and the rest swearing allegiance to him as if he had

been already king. The duke was then informed of these

proceedings, with a request that he would further aid the

earl with men and money. He was assured that the greater

part of the nobility and commons of England would welcome

the invader, who promised faithfully to repay the duke's past

and future outlay on his behalf on the successful achievement

of the enterprise. On these representations the duke seems

to have been convinced that the best hope of recovering the

money he had already advanced was by giving the earl ad-

ditional assistance, which he accordingly promised to do

Hall, 396-7. I have related this story as I find it in Hall; but I

suspect there is some error in the details, for I find that Henry was again

in Brittany as early as October 30. There is in the British Museum an

original receipt given by the Earl of Richmond to the Duke of Britanny for

a loan of 10,000 crowns of gold (Add. MS. 19, 398, f. 33); and it is dated

at Paimpol near Brehat, 'le penultime jour d'octobre,

1483. Paimpol is

A.D.

1484. PARLIAMENT. I S3

A Parliament was now summoned in England, which met

on Friday the 23rd of January. It was opened,

according to custom, by a sermon preached by the

Lord Chancellor, Bishop Russell, of which two drafts remain

in MS. in the British Museum. The first of these had been

written some months before, when it was intended to assemble

the Legislature on St Leonard's Day, the 6th of November.

The preacher had then selected his text from the Gospel- of

that day'; and it was expected that the king himself would

be present. But the outbreak of Buckingham's rebellion had

made it impossible for Parliament to meet so early; and the

preacher rewrote his discourse, adapting it to a text from the

Sunday Epistle of the week in which it was actually delivered,

that is to say, from the Epistle for the first Sunday after the

octave of Epiphany"—' We have many members in one body,

and all members have not the same office' (Rom. xii. 4).

After making some scholastic distinctions between the different

kinds of bodies, he declared that the condition of the body

politic required the care and attention of every member, and

especially of its three chief parts, the lords spiritual, the lords

temporal, and the commons. But it was expedient that each

particular member should have regard to his own special

position and functions; and with a tacit allusion to the old

fable he vindicated the importance of the belly or womb,

•on the English Channel aboul a hundred miles from Vannes, and not very

much less, by land, from the nearest part of Normandy.

The text was from Luke xi. 34, Lucerna corporis tui est oculus tuus,

taken, Mr Nichols says, from the Gospel for St Martin's Day, November 11.

But Mr Nichols unfortunately consulted a modern missal. The Salisbury

Missal then in use makes this the Gospel not for St Martin's, but for

St Leonard's Day, November 6; and in point of fact a warrant was issued

on September 12 for summoning Parliament to meet on that day. See

MS.

Add. 4616, f. 297.

It is the Epistle for the First Sunday after Epiphany in our Prayer

Book, but for the First Sunday after the octave of Epiphany in the

Salisbury Missal.

154

LIFE OF

RICHARD III. CH. V.

which received the food of the whole body and fed every part

from

itself.

The womb of this great public body of England

was the king

himself,

his court and council. 'This busy

womb of thought, care, and pensiveness, is waxed full great

in the days that we be in, not only by the sudden departing

of our old new-reconciled enemies,' alluding to the French,

' from such treaties, oaths, and promises as they made into

this land, but also by marvellous abusion within-forth of such

as ought to have remained the king's true and faithful sub-

jects.'

The most notable example of recent disloyalty was

then alluded to. ' It is too heavy to think and see what case

and danger by some one person, late a right great member

of this body, many other noble members of the same have

been brought unto. The example of this fall and righteous

punition would not be forgotten. Whoso taketh upon him,

being a member under the head, that that to his office and

fidelity appertaineth not, setting the people in rebellion or

commotion against the prince, be he never so great or noble

in his estate, he is, as it were, a rotten member of the body,

not able ne of might to save it from falling.'

In the end the Chancellor likened the state of England

to the woman in the parable who had lost one out of ten

pieces of silver. The number ten represented perfection, from

which the commonweal had sadly fallen away. It was their

duty therefore to get a light, and search diligently for the lost

piece of silver

It is remarkable that the whole object of this sermon,

Chan es

'*•

seems t0 nave Deen

actually delivered, was

in the to urge the importance of unity in the body

ceiior's politic, and to show the evils which had sprung of

erm

' rebellion. Little was said of external enemies, and

nothing at all about the internal economy of the kingdom.

Rolls of Parl. vi. 237. The two drafts of the sermon are printed by

Nichols at the end of his Introduction to the Grants of Edward V., pp.

1—lxiii.

A.D.

1484. PARLIAMENT. 155

But in the sermon prepared for delivery in November both

these subjects were touched upon. Before the outbreak of

Buckingham's rebellion, it was apparently intended to call the

attention of Parliament to the evils resulting from the en-

closure and imparking of lands and the driving away of

tenants, as well as unlawful assemblies and insurrections

Internal disturbances were in this way mentioned, in con-

junction with enclosures and imparking, as among the causes

by which the land had been depopulated, but not apparently

with any special reference to a recent outbreak; and the

'old new-reconciled enemies' were pointed at with greater

vehemence. ' Behold,' says the writer,' what is fallen of their

fair treaties, oaths, and promises of peace, truce and absti-

nence of war, of affinities and alliances, of paying of annual

censes, tributes, or pensions. Was not all this withdrawn

afore the decease of the king of blessed memory, Edward

the Fourth, brother to our sovereign lord that now is? Was

not his

pensivous

sickness increased by daily remembrance of

the dark ways that by his subtle faith [friends] had led him

in? What have we gotten by that blind bargain

?' Since

the rebellion of Buckingham, however, these remarks had

been suppressed. It was felt that some internal reforms must

now be postponed, and it was not thought advisable to reflect

too strongly on the conduct of the late King of France.

Richard had enough of enemies without provoking a foreign war.

Nichols' Grants, lii. I do not agree with the editor that Buckingham

is alluded to in this draft of the sermon. The writs for the summoning of

Parliament to meet on November 6 were dated on September 22, just

before the outbreak of Buckingham's rebellion, and when that event

occurred the Parliament must have been postponed, though the election for

the city of York actually took place on October 24 (Davies's York Records,

181-2).

It is not likely therefore that a sermon prepared for this intended

Parliament would have contained any allusion to Buckingham; nor does

the passage to which Mr Nichols calls attention appear so applicable

to a rebel leader as to an encloser of lands.

Nichols' Grants, Hi., liii.

156 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. V.

On the day after the meeting of Parliament, the Commons

William elected as their Speaker William Catesby, and pre-

sen ted him to the king on the following Monday.

The appointment was approved, as it had in all

probability been suggested by the king

himself,

for Catesby

was one of Richard's principal councillors. He had been,

according to More, a friend and dependent of Hastings, on

whom that unfortunate nobleman placed unbounded reliance

when he betrayed him to the Protector. Even at this time

he could hardly have been popular; already, indeed, he was

pointed at in mocking rhymes, which brought down fearful

punishment upon their author, representing him as the in-

strument of a tyrant and the chief ruler of the kingdom

An Act was then passed declaratory of the king's title,

The kin *s

as set

f°

petition presented to him at

firm

d°

Baynard's Castle, and settling the succession upon

the heirs of his body. It was therein set forth

that the king's right to the crown was grounded upon the

laws of God and nature, and also upon the ancient laws and

customs of the realm; nevertheless that, as the greater part

of the people was not learned in those laws, so that the truth

was not clearly known to all of them, it was desirable to

declare in Parliament that Richard was true king of the realm

by inheritance, election, consecration and coronation. Doubts,

it seems, had been entertained upon this subject, because at

the time of the petition presented at Baynard's Castle, the

three estates, from whom it professed to emanate, were not

truly assembled in the form of Parliament. But to set these

at rest it was enacted that all things affirmed, desired^ or

remembered in that petition should be of the same force as

if they had passed in a full Parliament

That any opposition should be made in Parliament itself

Rolls of Parl. vi. 238. Fabyan, 672.

Rolls of Parl. vi. 240-2.

A.D.

1484. PARLIAMENT. 157

to the passing of such an Act, was not to be expected. Par-

liament was not in those days the supreme power that dictated

at all times how government should be carried on. Still less

did it arrogate to itself a right to judge of kingly titles, but

only set them forth when so commanded. It was the king's

Parliament, not the people's. Nevertheless some scruples were

entertained in this case as to the confirmation of a title which

depended on a question of the canon law touching the validity

of a particular marriage. This was a question which properly

it did not become a secular court to entertain. Yet to have

referred it to a spiritual court, from which an appeal might

have been carried out of the realm to Rome, was a course

fraught with manifest inconvenience; and there was no desire

in any quarter to provoke that conflict of temporal power

with spiritual authority which half a century later gave birth

to the Reformation. However bad in fact the king's title

might be, and however objectionable in theory was the refer-

ence to Parliament of a question that should have come under

the cognisance of a spiritual court, the peace of the kingdom

required that his title should be confirmed; and the fears

entertained of new invasions or disturbances completely over-

ruled all other considerations

Besides confirming the king's title, Parliament proceeded

to declare the king's son, Prince Edward, heir

nce

apparent to the crown

; and in accordance with

^"j

that enactment the king immediately called most heir ap-

of the nobles, knights, and gentlemen of the

™

household then in London, to swear to the succession. One

day in February, shortly after midday, as the Croyland writer

particularly informs us, they were all assembled by the king's

special command ' in a certain lower room, near the passage

which leads to the queen's apartments; and here each sub-

scribed his name to a kind of new oath, drawn up by some

Cont. Cray I. 570.

Rolls of Parl. vi. 242.

158 LIFE OF RICHARD III. CH. V.

persons to me unknown, of adherence to Edward the king's

only son as their supreme lord, in case anything should

happen to his father

The next thing was to annul two previous Acts of Par-

liament, touching the property of the late Duchess of Exeter,

Act of

the king's sister, and to pass an Act of attainder

Attainder.

ams

t those who were concerned in the late

rebellion. The Duke of Buckingham, the Bishop of Ely, and

three others, one of whom is described as a necromancer of

Cambridge, as leaders of the revolt at Brecknock—the Earls

of Richmond and Pembroke, who attempted to invade the

kingdom—Sir George Browne, of Betchworth, Sir John Fogge,

and six-and-twenty others, who began the movement in Kent

and Surrey—Sir William Norris and Sir William Stonor, with

twelve others, who headed the rising in Berkshire—Sir John

Cheyne, and thirty-two others, who did the same in Wiltshire—

and finally the Marquis of Dorset and Sir Thomas St Leger,

with two of the Courtneys, and fourteen other persons, who

rose at Exeter—exactly a hundred persons in all, were named

in the Bill

. By another Act the Bishop of Ely and his two

brother prelates of Salisbury and Exeter, in consideration of

their being bishops, were pardoned the capital penalty they

had incurred by their rebellion, but were disabled from holding

temporal possessions, and forfeited their lands to the king

By another Act the Countess of Richmond, mother of the

Earl of Richmond, inasmuch as she had sent messages to her

son to make war upon the king, and had also raised great

sums of money for his use in London and elsewhere, was in

like manner condemned to lose all her lands, though con-

sidering the faithful service done to the king by her husband,

Thomas, Lord Stanley, she was spared the severe penalty

of attainder. Her lands were given to her husband during

her life, with remainder to the king*.

Cont. Croyl.

570-1.

Rolls of Parl. vi. 244-9.

Ib. 250.

Ib.

250-1.

A.D.

1484. PARLIAMENT. 159

It is a remarkable evidence of Richard's weakness, and of

the policy by which, as Sir Thomas More says of him, with

large gifts he procured for himself unsteadfast friendships, that

a considerable number of the persons attainted in

this Parliament received at a later date pardons ^attainted

under the Great Seal. Bishop Morton was par-

doned, probably without soliciting the favour

;

Sir John Fogge, after he had already once abused it". There

was also a Sir Richard Woodville, of Wymington (called of

London in the Act), doubtless a relation of the queen dowager,

who received a pardon in March

1485

besides many others

whose names are less remarkable

. These concessions, granted

in the hour of danger to those who had given him the most

annoyance, could have done little either to win or strengthen

the attachment of the people to his throne.

At a more advanced period of the session, the list of

attainders was completed by an Act against one Walter Roberd,

of Cranbrook in Kent, who had accompanied Sir George Browne

at Maidstone, and afterwards, as late as the 10th of February,

had harboured some of the traitors in his house

After this the king's adherents were rewarded. An Act of

restitution was passed in favour of the Earl of Northumberland,

whose ancestors were attainted for their rebellion against

Patent December 11,2 Richard III. (1484), p. 3, No. 109.

Patent February 24, 2 Richard III. (1485), p. 2, No. 135.

Patent 2 Richard III., p. 3, No. 81.

Among them we find Richard Haute, of Ightham, pardoned by patent

2 Richard III., p. 3, No. 171; Thomas Fenys, of Herstmonceaux, p. 1,

No.

98; Nicholas Gaynesford, of Carshalton, p. 1, No. 97; John Gaynesford,

of Alyngton, p. 1, No. 96; John Hoo, of Ashby de la Zouche (called in the

Act John Hoo, of London, but I doubt not he is the same person), p. 2,

No.

24; Sir Roger Tocotes, p. 2, No. 105; Amias Pawlet, p. 3, No. 97;

and John Trevilian junior, p. 2, No. 77. All these were named in the Act

of attainder, and were pardoned at different dates in the second year of

Richard's reign. The references are to the patent rolls of that year.

Rolls of Parl. vi. 251.