Yorkist Lord: John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, c. 1425 -1485

YORKIST LORD This page intentionally left blank Yorkist Lord John Howard, Duke of Norfolk c. 1425–1485 Anne Crawfo...

Author: Anne Crawford

195 downloads 594 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!

Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

YORKIST LORD

This page intentionally left blank

Yorkist Lord John Howard, Duke of Norfolk c. 1425–1485

Anne Crawford

Published by the Continuum International Publishing Group Continuum UK, The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX Continuum US, 80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © Anne Crawford 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. First published 2010 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1441-16551-0

Typeset by Pindar NZ, Auckland, New Zealand Printed and bound by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall, Great Britain

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

Abbreviations

ix

Illustrations

xi

The Howard Family Tree

xiii

Prologue: The Rise of the Howards

1

1 The Duke of Norfolk’s Chamberlain

9

2 The Yorkist Servant, 1461–1464

25

3 The Yorkist Servant, 1465–1471

43

4 The King’s Councillor, 1471–1475

65

5 The King’s Councillor, 1476–1483

83

6 The Reign of Edward V

101

7 The Reign of Richard III

117

8 Domestic Life

137

9 Shipping and Business Interests

161

Appendix: The Date of John Howard’s Birth

179

Endnotes

181

Bibliography

195

Index

201

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgements

My interest in the Howard family was ﬁrst aroused growing up close to Arundel Castle, their seat since the sixteenth century, and in John Howard, the ﬁrst duke, during Charles Ross’s seminars on the Yorkists at Bristol University. I completed a M.Phil. thesis on him in 1976 but he has remained a subject of further study and interest ever since, so this biography has been a long time in gestation and the debts I owe to fellow scholars are legion, too numerous to mention here, but they all have my grateful thanks. Particular gratitude is due to the late F.R.H. Du Boulay, who supervised my thesis, to Colin Richmond who allowed me access to papers of the late Roger Virgoe, and to James Ross who read a draft of the book and offered many helpful comments. Thanks are due to Geoffrey Wheeler and Patricia Connor for help with photographs and to the staff of the libraries of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Arundel Castle for allowing me to study the original Howard household books, and ﬁnally to members of the Richard III Society who have sat through various papers on aspects of Howard’s life and helped to reﬁne my views by their questions; speciﬁc debts are acknowledged in the footnotes. The book is dedicated to the memory of Charles Ross.

This page intentionally left blank

Abbreviations

BIHR BL CCR CPR EHR Ec.HR H.B.I

H.B.II

TNA TRHS

Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research British Library Calendar of Close Rolls, 1405–1485 (14 vols, HMSO, 1931–1954) Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1391–1485 (17 vols, HMSO, 1897–1911) English History Review Economic History Review ‘Household accounts of Sir John Howard, 1462–1471) in Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. T. H. Turner (Roxburghe Club, 1841). Household Books of John, Duke of Norfolk and Thomas, Earl of Surrey, 1481–1490, ed. J. Payne Collier (Roxburghe Club, 1844). H.B.I and H.B.II are reprinted as The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–1471, 1481–1483, Introduction by Anne Crawford (Alan Sutton for Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1992). The National Archives, Kew. All manuscript references are to the National Archives unless otherwise stated. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

In the text Middle English prose has, for the most part, been left unmodernised.

This page intentionally left blank

Illustrations

1 2 3

John Howard: stained glass image. Photograph, Geoffrey Wheeler.

26

Household Accounts: Society of Antiquaries, MS 77, vol. 1, f.101v (H.B. II, p. 138). Photograph, Patricia Connor.

85

John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Reproduced by kind permission of His Grace The Duke of Norfolk, Arundel Castle.

151

This page intentionally left blank

The Howard Family Tree Thomas Mowbray = Elizabeth, d. of Richard 1st Duke of Norfolk Earl of Arundel d. 1399 Thomas ex. 1405

John I = Catherine, D of Norfolk d of Ralph, Earl of Westmorland

Alice, d & h of Sir (2) = Sir John Howard = (1) Margaret, d & h of John William Tendring d. 1437 Lord Plaiz, d. 1391 d. 1426 Isabel = James Lord Berkley

John II = Eleanor, d of William D of Norfolk Ct of Eu d. 1461 John III D of Norfolk d. 1476

Margaret = Robert

William cr. E of Nottingham 1483 Margaret = Thomas Daniel

Elizabeth, d of John E of Shrewsbury

Anne = Richard of York Thomas d. 1481 s. of Edward IV d.c. 1483

Edmund

George

Henry = Mary d of Sir Wm Hussey

Henry = Elizabeth Wentworth

Catherine = Edward, Lord Abergavenny d. 1476 Ralph

Edward

John = Joan, d & h of d. 1410 Sir Richard Walton

Elizabeth = John, Earl of d. 1475 Oxford, ex.1462

Aubrey ex. 1462

John, E of = Margaret d Oxford of Richard, d. 1513 E of Salisbury

Margaret = John, Lord Cobham

Sir Wm Norris = Jane

Katherine, d of William (1) = JOHN HOWARD = (2) Margaret, d of Sir John = (1) Nicholas Wyfold = (2) John Norris Lord Moleyns d. 1485 Chedworth d. 1465 d. 1492 Isabel Lettice William Sir Humphrey (1) = Elizabeth = (2) Thomas Bourchier, d. 1471 d & h of Sir Fred. Tylney John, Lord Berners (see across)

Nicholas d.c. 1470

Dukes of Norfolk

Isabel = Robert Mortimer

Anne = Sir Edmund Gorges

Margaret = Sir John Wyndam

Jane = John Timperley

Catherine = John, Lord Berners (see across)

This page intentionally left blank

Prologue

The Rise of the Howards

Sir John Howard, Lord Howard and Duke of Norfolk, was one of the most important men of the Yorkist period. He was a consistently loyal supporter of the Yorkist dynasty from the late 1450s until his death at Bosworth in 1485. He was an indefatigable royal servant, active in the military ﬁeld, as an agent of the Crown at home in East Anglia, as a councillor at Westminster and as an ambassador who became England’s leading envoy to France. Coming from a family of substantial Suffolk gentry, he remained essentially a local man rather than a courtier, unlike most of his inﬂuential contemporaries, who were mostly either related to, or close personal friends of, the king. He was an extremely capable businessman, with many contacts among the merchant classes, and became one of the largest ship owners in the country and, consequently, a very rich man. With the exceptions of the kings he served, no other man of the ﬁfteenth century has left us so much in the way of evidence of his day-to-day life, not only of his royal service but also his domestic concerns. Information about other men of his time depends largely on well-documented political or administrative action; very little information is available on their private lives. This is not true of Howard. That so much is known about him and his family is due to the unparalleled records he left behind. These are chieﬂy four volumes of household memoranda or accounts covering the periods 1462–1471 and 1481–1483. These are referred to as the books of ‘daly percelles’ and were a day-by-day record of the money received and dispersed by Howard himself, his wives and senior household members. Sometimes the sums are totalled, sometimes not, and they are not accounts as we would recognize the term, but they were part of a sophisticated system of accounting practiced by his household; other sets of accounts are referred to within them i.e. the cator’s (the man in charge of household provisions), and the steward’s, which have since been lost. Miscellaneous pages from other accounts have survived, showing that they were identical in size and style. In February 1465 the accounts note that ‘2s. 1d. was paid for a boke containing vii quayres off fyne paper’, perhaps one of the books that survive.1 How far Howard’s system matched those kept by his contemporaries and how far they were unique to Howard, a highly efﬁcient business man, is impossible to tell, but the fact that nothing similar survives suggests the latter. The later volumes are kept in a more regular and orderly fashion, and if the general accounting system was one of

2

YO R K I S T LO R D

Howard’s own devising, it is clear that it was being improved and reﬁned as the years passed. The lack of distinction between business and domestic concerns and the great range of subjects, from payments for ships to laces for his wife’s gowns, are what make them so illuminating. To make use of all the information available in the memoranda would result in a book twice as long, and indeed whole papers could be written on subjects as varied as the purchase and equipment of horses, the cash economy, cloth and clothing, and arrangements for travelling. Because Howard’s home was in Suffolk, on a number of occasions what he did or said was of interest to those tireless correspondents, the Pastons. Taken together, these surviving records illustrate almost every aspect of his life and bring him alive: talented, efﬁcient, ambitious and not above some dishonourable dealings, short-tempered, paternalistic and loyal. The year of John Howard’s birth will never be more than an informed guess. At the end of the Middle Ages, only royal children or those from the highest families had speciﬁc note taken of their dates of birth. For other members of the land-holding classes, proof of age appears for many of those who were heirs to lands and titles. No such evidence is available for Howard and suggestions for his date of birth have varied between 1420 and 1430 (see Appendix). His parentage, however, is unquestionable. He was the only son of Robert Howard, esquire, and Lady Margaret Mowbray, daughter of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk. This was a clearly unequal marriage, and to understand how it came about requires a closer look at both families. The Howards had been a prominent gentry family in Norfolk since the late thirteenth century. For generations they had lived at East Winch, near King’s Lynn, marrying well and adding to their estates. By the late fourteenth and early ﬁfteenth centuries the head of the family, Sir John Howard, was one of the most important men in East Anglia. The term East Anglia can be deﬁned in a number of ways, but for the purposes of writing about the Howards, it is taken to include the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Sir John married Margaret, daughter and eventual heiress of John, 4th Baron Plaiz. Margaret brought her husband substantial estates in Essex, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, and Sir John left the family home in East Winch to live on her property. He served extensively in local public ofﬁces as MP and sheriff, and was then made a knight of the royal chamber and standard bearer to Richard II. He was an extremely wealthy man for one of his rank; his wife’s Essex and Cambridgeshire estates alone were worth more than £400 p.a. at a time when the average baronial income was between £500–£1,000, and his connections with the Scales (his mother was a Scales heiress) and Plaiz baronial families caused him to be described in the Privy Council as a man ‘wel ykynde and of gret allyaunce’.2 His son, also John (II), married a local heiress, Joan Walton, but died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1410, leaving an infant daughter and only child, Elizabeth, as eventual heiress to her

PROLO GUE

3

Howard grandfather, her Plaiz grandmother and her Walton mother. It has been calculated that this inheritance was worth approximately £700 p.a. and made her the greatest East Anglian heiress of her day.3 It is hardly surprising that she made a very grand marriage to John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford, carrying with her the Howard lands already settled on her parents and the prospect of inheriting most of the Howard lands, built up so steadily over a century and a half, on the death of her grandfather. Margaret Plaiz, however, was not Sir John Howard’s only wife. She died in 1391, and in about 1395 her widower married another, lesser, heiress.4 Alice Tendring was the only child of Sir William Tendring and she brought her husband an estate in the Stour valley in Suffolk, centred on the village of Stokeby-Nayland. Sir John and his new wife took up residence there, and by Alice, Sir John had two more sons, Robert and Henry. Of the second, Henry, little is known, save the manner of his death. He was apparently murdered in 1446 and his widow, Mary, impeached John, the son and heir of Lord Scrope of Masham, and others of malice for having murdered her husband, before the king and many magnates, but the accused were pardoned by the king.5 Henry’s elder brother, Robert, is not much better documented. Somewhat grand claims have been made on his behalf by earlier Howard historians, namely that he commanded a ﬂeet of 3,000 men which sailed from Lowestoft to ravage the French coast below Calais and served in Henry V’s French campaigns.6 There appears to be no documentary proof of any of this and certainly, if he had indeed commanded a ﬂeet, there should be. If Robert did serve in France, it is possible that he served there with John Mowbray, Earl Marshal and later second Duke of Norfolk, whose extensive estates in Suffolk made him the local lord. Mowbray had a train of 60 men at arms, which included four knights and 45 squires, and 150 archers, but there is no record of Howard in any of the Mowbray lists of retainers that survive. Two pieces of evidence, however, suggest he was not in Mowbray’s military train, but a member of his household. The ﬁrst is his spectacular marriage to Margaret, John Mowbray’s youngest sister, the second is a reference to him as one of the Duke of Norfolk’s gentlemen who survived drowning on 8 November 1428 when their boat hit a pier of the bridge over the Thames and capsized; a number of their company were not so lucky.7 While this proves he was in the household after his marriage, of course, it is not evidence that he was there before it. In the Howard histories, Robert is always referred to as a knight, but in this account and another piece of documentary evidence that survives, he is called an esquire. How did Robert Howard come to marry his lord’s sister? Hitherto the Howards had only married into the lower ranks of the peerage, and only to beneﬁt the heir. Margaret was the daughter of a duke, a direct descendent of sons of Henry III and Edward I. Although Robert’s father was very wealthy, he himself was heir only to

4

YO R K I S T LO R D

his mother’s small estate, because the bulk of the Howard lands were destined to go on his father’s death to Robert’s niece, Elizabeth, future Countess of Oxford (she married the earl in the summer of 1425, shortly after the death of her mother). In contrast, Margaret’s father, Thomas Mowbray, already Earl of Nottingham and Earl Marshal, was created Duke of Norfolk in 1397. Soon afterwards, however, he was exiled by Richard II and died of the plague in Venice in 1399 on his return from the Holy Land. The creation of his dukedom was annulled. He and his wife, Elizabeth Fitzalan, daughter of Richard, Earl of Arundel, had six children, Thomas, John, Esmond, and three daughters, Elizabeth, Isabel and Margaret, before Thomas left England for good in October 1398. Thomas (born 1385) succeeded to the earldoms of Norfolk and Nottingham only, and was executed for treason in 1405. Luckily for the Mowbrays he was not attainted and his younger brother, John (born 1392), succeeded to the earldoms. While there is no proof, it is highly likely that Margaret was the youngest daughter, but her date of birth is not known. Both her sisters were married long before her, Elizabeth in 1402 to the Earl of Suffolk (a match which may have been arranged before her father’s exile) and Isabel before 1415 to Sir Henry Ferrers, heir to Lord Ferrers of Groby. Since girls usually married in order of seniority, this conﬁrms the likelihood that they were older than Margaret. Although most medieval aristocratic girls were married in their early teens, there were always exceptions. Some were married as children, others not until their twenties, either because marriage negotiations had broken down, or a betrothed had died before the wedding, or simply because no suitable match had been found. Lady Margaret, still unmarried by the time she was 20, was therefore unusual, but not remarkably so. After the death of Duke Thomas, Duchess Elizabeth remarried twice. Her last husband, Sir Gerard Usﬂete, refers to Margaret in his will, dated September 1420, though not to his wife’s married daughters, suggesting that she may have been living with them at least for some of the time. In the will, he directs his administrators to return to the Lady Margaret a considerable amount of silver plate belonging to her which was in his custody.8 Margaret was not with her mother when Sir Gerard wrote his will, however, but in France. She had been accorded the considerable honour of being chosen to join the household of Henry V’s new bride, Katherine of Valois. English custom did not permit a foreign queen to bring ladies to attend her from her own country, and her new household in England was formed from several aristocratic wives and a similar number of equally well-born girls. Those chosen for Katherine’s household travelled to France for her wedding on 2 June 1420. It was with her new ladies that the queen was likely to form her friendships and bestow patronage, and places in her household were therefore much coveted. Margaret owed her appointment to her brother, John. He had been part of Henry’s invasion force, but was among those who had to be invalided home sick during the siege of Harﬂeur and consequently

PROLO GUE

5

missed the Agincourt campaign, where their sister Elizabeth’s husband, Suffolk, died. Once recovered, John Mowbray returned to France, and an eyewitness at the siege of Rouen referred to him as ‘a manful man’.9 His military role in France led to his appointment to the Order of the Garter in May 1421 and the restoration of the dukedom in April 1425. John had brought the Mowbrays back into favour and his sister was one of the beneﬁciaries. The new queen was only a year or two younger than Margaret, and it is possible that the latter’s comparative maturity was part of the reason she was chosen. The negotiations for the king’s marriage were protracted and exactly when Margaret and her companions travelled to Troyes for the wedding on 2 June 1420 is uncertain. The Treaty of Troyes, which had arranged Katherine’s marriage, had also settled the future of France in favour of the victorious Henry. He was appointed Regent forthwith, Katherine’s brother, the Dauphin, was disinherited and the crown of France was to pass to the heirs of Henry and Katherine. This was the zenith of English invasions of France during the Hundred Years War. The Dauphin fought back: much of the country was still in the hands of his supporters and there could be no return to England for the king and his new queen. At the subsequent siege of Melun, the ladies were accommodated at nearby Corbeil and the king visited them when he could, but then he found it more convenient to have quarters specially built for the queen near his tent. Katherine and her household were living in the midst of an army. While Margaret had her brother near at hand, her position was one any medieval parent would have dreaded, since who knew what unsuitable men she might meet? It was not until December 1420 that Henry, Katherine, and the French king and queen returned to Paris. Late in January 1421 the English royal party were at Calais and on 1 February 1421 they landed at Dover. Katherine was crowned amid scenes of splendid pageantry and enthusiastic rejoicing by her new subjects. By May, Henry was back in France, but before he left, he knew that Katherine was pregnant and she remained safely in England, being brought to bed of the future Henry VI on 6 December of that year. At this period Margaret seems to have been in possible disgrace with her mother the duchess. The Mowbray accounts for 1420–1 record payment to Lady Margaret, the lord’s sister, coming from France with the Queen and staying in her household, for consideration of the honour and status of the said Lady Margaret, because Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, her mother, refuses to make any reward to the said Margaret, saying she should be in the custody of the king and the said Earl Marshal.10 Unmarried girls were almost invariably the responsibility of their mother, even if she had remarried after the death of their father. The duchess’s refusal to support her daughter might have had nothing to do with Margaret and been part of a ﬁnancial disagreement with her son. Alternatively, she might have opposed Margaret’s appointment, or the girl might have shown

6

YO R K I S T LO R D

signs of wilfulness – perhaps a marriage arrangement resisted or an unsuitable attachment formed – always a risk as girls grew older and showed signs of knowing their own minds and thus a very good reason for marrying them off early. Margaret was certainly paid for her royal duties: she was in receipt of a Crown grant of £40 p.a. for her sustenance.11 Queen Katherine remained in England until May 1422 and then travelled home to France to be with her husband for what turned out to be the last few months of his life. In September she accompanied his body back to England, where she remained with her infant son, the new king. Margaret was with the queen in France because she was paid on her return, still unmarried.12 When she and Robert Howard decided to marry will probably never be known. That the couple did decide for themselves is fairly certain. By the early 1420s Robert Howard had received no public appointment, national or local. With such a small future inheritance, his father would have been likely to place him in the service of a great lord and who more likely than Mowbray? If Robert was indeed a member of her brother’s household, then the couple would presumably have got to know each other in France. It is difﬁcult to imagine the circumstances in which a proposed marriage between an esquire who was heir to only a small estate and a duke’s daughter would be looked upon with any favour by the lady’s family. All that could be said in mitigation of the mismatch was that as Margaret grew older the less attractive she became to someone of higher rank. Her sisters Elizabeth and Isabel carried manors as dowries to their husbands, but the Howards got no lands with Margaret and probably not much cash either. That Robert was in the duke’s household in 1428 argues that Duke John acquiesced in the marriage, even if he did not support it. Duchess Elizabeth died in July 1425 and may never have been reconciled to the marriage. When it took place is not known; Margaret was still single on her return from France in the autumn of 1422, but there is ﬁrm evidence of her as Robert’s wife in the autumn of 1426, so she may have married after her mother’s death. With Robert a member of Duke John’s household, the young couple may have spent much of the time at Framlingham, his chief seat, at least until the duke’s death in 1432. Sir John Howard had settled two manors on his youngest son, Henry, at the time of his marriage, and it seems unlikely that he would not have done something similar for Robert to augment his Tendring inheritance. That he intended to do so is suggested by an agreement he made in 1409 with his eldest son, John II. By it, John II agreed to the settlement of two Howard manors, Fersﬁeld in Norfolk and Brokehall in Suffolk, that should have been part of his inheritance, on his father and Alice and the heirs of their bodies, retaining only a remainder for himself and his heirs.13 This was almost certainly part of the preparations made before John II’s departure to the Holy Land, when he had only an infant daughter to succeed him. If Fersﬁeld and Brokehall were indeed intended

PROLO GUE

7

for Robert, he never got them. As part of the extremely tough negotiations that Sir John held with the Duke of Exeter over the marriage of his ward, the young Earl of Oxford, and Howard’s granddaughter, Elizabeth, Sir John agreed that not only should those two manors be added to her inheritance, but so should another, Wiggenhall, which had been intended for Henry. This certainly seems hard on his younger sons, but it was quite likely that Sir John intended to compensate them with cash. When Dame Alice, Robert’s mother, made her deathbed will in October 1426, she bequeathed her lands in Polstead to her son Henry and his heirs. Her manor of Stoke Nayland was to be held by her husband for his lifetime, and on his death was to pass to her son Robert and his heirs, with remainder to her son Henry. If both Robert and Henry lacked heirs, then the ﬁnal remainder was to her new daughter-in-law, Lady Margaret.14 This perhaps suggests that by 1426 Margaret had borne a child. With Sir John’s increasing age, it is possible that Robert resigned his post in 1432 when Margaret’s brother Duke John died, and settled permanently at Tendring with his family. Robert, having escaped drowning in 1428, still died prematurely, though from unknown causes, in 1436. Old Sir John, aged nearly eighty and having outlived two of his three sons, then left on the greatest journey a man could make, a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He reached Jerusalem and died there in 1437, like his eldest son, John II, nearly 25 years before. The bulk of his lands then passed to his granddaughter, Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford. By this date, Robert and Lady Margaret Howard had three children, John, Catherine and Margaret. John III, his grandfather’s heir male, and the subject of this work, inherited only his grandmother’s small estate that consisted of the manor of Tendring and several sub-manors in Stoke-by-Nayland, and four other small manors in nearby parishes. The situation of the estate, however, is of some importance. It lies in Suffolk just over the Essex border, the Essex town of Colchester lies only ten miles to the south, while Ipswich, a major town and port in Suffolk, is about 15 miles to the north-east and Harwich, another important port, about the same distance due east. Thus, when John Howard grew up, he was within easy reach of three commercial and two administrative centres. His estate was enough to support a family of gentle birth in comfort, but not too promising a base from which to launch a career in local politics, let alone on the national stage.

This page intentionally left blank

1

The Duke of Norfolk’s Chamberlain

The problems with writing about John Howard’s early years are the same as those for any other member of the East Anglian gentry in the ﬁfteenth century. Few details have survived, most of them in ofﬁcial records, though enlivened by the occasional glimpse through the eyes of the Pastons and their correspondents. It is not until the early 1460s that the survival of his own accounts make a detailed study possible, and until then the events of his life have, at least in part, to be traced through those of his lord, John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, whose chamberlain he became. It means that the words ‘possibly’, ‘probably’ and ‘unknown’ occur far more frequently than any biographer would wish, but it is the events of the 1440s and 1450s that formed the man who became one of the most signiﬁcant servants of the Yorkist dynasty. For the boy growing up at Tendring Hall, the 1430s were a time of considerable emotional upheaval. The death of his father in 1436 was swiftly followed by that of his grandfather. Then, within two years of her husband’s death, his mother remarried. Her new husband was Sir John Grey, son and heir of Reginald, Lord Grey of Ruthin. This may have been a personal choice by Lady Margaret, now in her forties, but it is more likely that this marriage was to oblige her family. Grey had for many years been married to her erstwhile sister-in-law, Constance Holland, widow of her eldest brother, Thomas, executed in 1405, and he thus enjoyed the income from her dower of two Mowbray manors, Kenton in Warwickshire and Hinton in Cambridgeshire. Constance died in November 1437 when the manors reverted to Mowbray possession. In July 1438 John, Duke of Norfolk, settled the two manors on Grey and his aunt Margaret as part of their marriage agreement.1 It is this document, which describes her as the widow of Robert Howard ‘armiger’ or esquire, which provides unassailable evidence that Robert was never knighted. Margaret never became Lady Grey of Ruthin because her new husband died in August 1439, a year after their marriage and predeceasing his father. Where the couple lived during their brief union is not known, but her son John would almost certainly by this date have been serving in the household of his cousin, Duke John. On her second widowhood Margaret moved back to Stoke-by-Nayland and she may perhaps never have left it. Her presence ensured that her son’s estate was administered under her watchful eye while he was away serving her nephew.

10

YO R K I S T LO R D

East Anglia in the 1440s and 1450s epitomizes the breakdown in law and order resulting from the factional politics of the personal rule of Henry VI. The capacity for all upper-class society of the period to indulge in anti-social, often violent, behaviour has to be taken into account, but the particular circumstances in the region encouraged the tendency. William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, one of its largest landholders, was for some considerable period the king’s chief minister. Although he himself was rarely in the region, basing himself nearer to London on his wife’s estates in Oxfordshire, he allowed his servants and followers to ride roughshod over the rights of others. He maintained his authority in Norfolk, and to a lesser extent in Suffolk, through a group of supporters who seemed to have ‘ignored both law and contemporary morality and could do so because Suffolk was so powerful at court’.2 Because Suffolk was not there in person, he had no feeling for the well-being of the region, something which was a strongly motivating factor for its two other great peers, the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Oxford. John, Duke of Norfolk, Howard’s cousin and about ten years his senior, had succeeded to the dukedom on the death of his father in 1432. In the following years he was appointed Keeper of the East March and of Berwick in 1437, and in March 1438 he was in joint command of a successful expedition to retake Calais. Thereafter he was largely out of favour at court, almost certainly because of his opposition to Suffolk’s men in his own region. The young Duke John was not the most forceful or competent of men and his attempts to assert his authority and patronage were largely ineffectual, and there was little he could do to counter Suffolk’s inﬂuence. Many local disputes, almost invariably over rival property claims, led to one or other party resorting to physical violence. If the system of local government was functioning properly, arbitration was used to calm and settle disputes which threatened to get out of hand. It worked in parallel with the law and those in dispute used both. Royal judges were rarely involved; the gentry who served on the bench and as county ofﬁcers handled most of the administration and enforcement of law in their own area under the watchful eye of their lords. Society in the ﬁfteenth century was still, to some extent, a militaristic one. Local gentry needed to be able to produce a force of armed men when necessary to defend their own property and that of their servants. In this way violence, or the threat of it, could be used to further the law and protect the established order, but only if it was used in the approved manner. If it went too far, it could begin to disrupt the workings of society. In East Anglia in the 1440s this was happening; Suffolk was not fulﬁlling his obligations to help maintain a stable society. If any man was involved in a dispute with a member of the duke’s coterie, his only hope of a successful outcome was to ﬁnd a more inﬂuential patron than his opponent. Because of Suffolk’s all-powerful position in the country, this was very difﬁcult.3 Such disputes are vividly described in the Paston letters, for the Pastons found

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S CHAMBERLAIN

11

themselves beset on more than one front. Experienced Judge William Paston, founder of the family fortunes, had recently died and his young heir, John, was no match for the ruthless opportunism of rivals. To take one example, two decades previously William had purchased the ﬁne manor of Gresham, which until the end of the fourteenth century had belonged to the baronial Moleyns family. In the 1440s the family’s heiress, Eleanor Moleyns, was married to Robert Hungerford, heir to a barony, who took the title Lord Moleyns in her right during the period while his own father was alive. In the interim, he was clearly anxious to increase his estate as much as possible. He simply walked into Gresham in 1448, evicted the Paston servants and took it over. Moleyns’ ally was the successful Norfolk lawyer, John Heydon, and both of them had connections with the Duke of Suffolk. John Paston looked for a patron who also had close connections at court and thought he had found one in a man called Thomas Daniel. Daniel, who came originally from Cheshire, was an esquire of the royal household and had established himself in Norfolk by swindling a man called Henry Woodhouse out of his inheritance in 1446. Based in his new manor house at Roydon, near King’s Lynn, he then set out to increase his wealth and inﬂuence in that part of Norfolk until he could rival Suffolk’s own. With his court connections he was able very swiftly to have himself made sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk and constable of Castle Rising. The Duke of Suffolk, who had more important things to worry about on the national scene, was unlikely to be too concerned with the goings on in an area on the periphery of his holdings. For a while, the Pastons had great hopes of Daniel, but he was far too busy feathering his own nest to have much concern for the Pastons, despite his ﬁne words. Having been so successful in gaining Roydon, he then marched in and seized, without even the shadow of a pretext, the manor of Bradeston, which belonged to the Berneys, the family of John Paston’s wife, Margaret.4 What relevance has this story to the life of John Howard? The answer is that two of the protagonists were to become related to him by marriage. At some point in the early 1440s, when John was in his early to mid-teens, his mother and presumably his cousin, Duke John, arranged his marriage to Katherine Moleyns, the aunt of Robert Hungerford’s wife, Eleanor. Katherine’s parents were Sir William Moleyns, styled Lord Moleyns, and his wife, Margery Whalesborough. The family was based at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire, and Sir William’s service was all in that county. According to his Inquisition post mortem, he held no land in East Anglia.5 He and his wife were married before 1405 when their son and heir, Katherine’s brother William, was born. Sir William died in June 1425, but his widow lived until 1439, so it was with her that the marriage negotiations were probably made, and it is highly likely that Katherine was some years her new husband’s senior. By the time they married, Katherine’s brother had been killed at the siege of Orleans in 1429 and his only child, Eleanor, married to Robert

12

YO R K I S T LO R D

Hungerford, so Katherine had lost the protection of her immediate family. It was a good match socially for John Howard, but Katherine was not an heiress and there is no evidence that she brought a dowry of lands, and no way of determining the size of a cash dowry. The new Mistress Howard then presumably settled down with her mother-in-law at Tendring Hall, where her young husband joined her when his tours of duty with the duke permitted. Their son and heir, Thomas, almost certainly their eldest child, was born in 1443, when his father was still very young (see Appendix). In the spring of 1446, after he had been declared of age, he granted his inheritance to a group of trustees as part of the marriage settlement. These were headed by Adam de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester and keeper of the privy seal. Although little is known of the bishop’s family, only the fact that he was related to Katherine Howard explains his presence as a trustee.6 John Howard’s sisters may also have entered service at Framlingham as part of the duchess’s household. Service in the household of a social superior was the norm for medieval girls as well as boys from the ranks of the gentry upwards. It did not mean performing menial tasks, but attending the lord or lady, learning how to comport themselves, mixing with other young people from whom their life partners might be chosen, gaining experience in the gentle arts of music, hunting, good conversation and in the case of boys, military skills and of girls, how to run a sizable household. Certainly it seems likely that the (probably) elder of the two Howard sisters, Catherine, served the duchess. She may have been in the household of her mother’s sister-in-law, Katherine Neville, rather than the wife of the younger Duke John, because she made an impressive marriage to the duchess’s brother, Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, the title held in right of his ﬁrst wife, Elizabeth Beauchamp. When Elizabeth died in June 1448, Edward immediately married Catherine Howard. The couple were excommunicated forthwith on the grounds that they had had illicit relations during his late wife’s lifetime, and that, being within the third degree of consanguinity, they had failed to obtain a dispensation. Pope Nicholas V, however, was persuaded to grant the dispensation and they remained married. The fact that the couple had already been lovers suggests that the duchess had not been as vigilant on behalf of her ladies as she might have been, but also that the Howard family had not previously been able to arrange any suitable match for Catherine, or if they had, her liaison with Edward Neville ended it. It also presages the lives of the better known Howard women of the sixteenth century. The second Howard sister, Margaret, married Thomas Daniel in 1451 at Framlingham.7 For Daniel, marriage to a cousin of Norfolk’s was doubtless the key factor in the match. When the Duke of Suffolk met his downfall and death in 1450, Daniel and some of the other most hated members of the royal household had brieﬂy been charged with treason. He not only managed to survive this – he was acquitted in the following year – but he had found himself a new

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S CHAMBERLAIN

13

patron, the Duke of Somerset, who replaced Suffolk as the king’s chief minister. The year 1450 had seen more changes in national politics than the fall of Suffolk. It had also seen the rise to prominence of Richard, Duke of York. York was descended from both the second and fourth sons of Edward III; Henry VI from the third son only. York could therefore claim with some justiﬁcation that he had a stronger claim to the throne than the king, but he was not making that challenge in 1450, seeking only what he regarded as his rightful place in the highest councils of the realm. He had been marginalized by the Suffolk regime, removed from his governorship of Normandy and sent to take charge of Ireland; now he positioned himself as the spearhead of popular discontent. This did not particularly endear him to his fellow peers and he could really only count on the support of his wife Cecily Neville’s relations, chieﬂy her brother, Richard, Earl of Salisbury and his son, Richard, Earl of Warwick. Norfolk was the son of Cecily’s sister, Katherine, and saw the rise of York and the Nevilles as an opportunity to take what he regarded as his rightful place at the heart of East Anglian politics. Thomas Daniel, who in his way had also been a rival of Suffolk’s, had seemed a likely local ally to Norfolk and the two had been on friendly terms for a couple of years. Although by the autumn of 1451 their relationship had become strained, it seems that Somerset was moved to intervene on Daniel’s behalf, asking the Dowager Duchess Katherine to persuade her son to take him back into his circle. Perhaps because the duchess was involved, this new amity was sealed by the marriage alliance with Norfolk’s cousin, Margaret Howard. This suggests that Margaret may also have been in Katherine’s household, and the couple were certainly married at Framlingham. Margaret Howard’s husband seems to have been an extraordinary man: outrageous, aggressive and probably possessed with charisma enough to get away with it most of the time. Although he was frequently at court, we do not know whether she was always with him in London or remained in the country. The latter seems likely, given the swift arrival of her sons, Thomas, Edmund and George. If Daniel was not in Norfolk, his servants certainly were and launched themselves on a campaign of violence and intimidation against anyone seeking to challenge their lord’s illegal possession of Bradeston. Norfolk, who should have been capable of reining Daniel in, was himself engaged in a campaign of harassment against the late Duke of Suffolk’s estates and servants and found Daniel’s men useful as reinforcements. Even Thomas, Lord Scales, who had taken over many of Suffolk’s servants, seems to have become a temporary ally of Daniel’s. The shifting alliances and armed struggles in East Anglia at this period are complex and difﬁcult to follow (see note 4). This state of anarchy needed the strong hand of royal government to control it and the Duke of Somerset did his best by commissioning a large-scale judicial enquiry in 1453 to deal with the disorder throughout southern England. His difﬁculty was that he could not afford to drive

14

YO R K I S T LO R D

nobles such as Norfolk any further into the arms of the Duke of York, so it is perhaps not surprising that Norfolk was himself appointed to the commission for East Anglia, together with the Earl of Oxford, Lord Scales and Lord Moleyns. Some degree of impartiality was achieved by the inclusion of royal justices who were responsible for actually hearing the indictments. A name that occurs in more than one of the charges is that of John Howard. It is clear that by the late 1440s Howard was one of his cousin Norfolk’s senior retainers, that he was, in fact, the duke’s ‘right well-beloved cousin and servant’. He was granted an annuity of £20 for life from the Mowbray estates in Denbighshire and later, on the death of his mother, Lady Margaret, he was granted one of her two Mowbray manors, that of Kenton in Warwickshire. He also beneﬁted from Norfolk’s patronage in a more important way, since by Michaelmas 1449 he had been made an esquire of the royal household.8 This was the ﬁrst rung on the ladder of advancement outside East Anglia. Although a minor post, the mere fact of being a member of the household was what mattered, since from its ranks almost all military, diplomatic and other appointments were made. It was also through Norfolk’s patronage that Howard was able to stand for parliament. Between 1439 and 1450 the knights of the shire for Norfolk were either clients of the Duke of Suffolk or not obviously connected with the Mowbrays. In the county of Suffolk, the situation was slightly different in that the Mowbrays usually had at least one follower returned, but even here Norfolk’s inﬂuence was much less than in the 1430s when almost all the shire representatives were his followers. The parliament of 1449 was a signiﬁcant one, since protests against the greed and corruption of those who governed in the king’s name and the lack of respect for the law shown by their followers led directly to the impeachment of the chief minister, William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, by the Commons in March 1450, and ultimately to his murder. It was this swing against the regime of the Duke of Suffolk and the corresponding rise of those, like Norfolk, who opposed him, that enabled the latter to obtain the household post for his cousin. In the parliamentary elections of 1449, the nomination of Howard and his fellow MP, Thomas Cornwallis (probably connected to the Duke of York rather than to the Duke of Suffolk), as knights of the shire for Suffolk was almost certainly opposed by members of de la Pole’s afﬁnity in the county, but as was common, the election itself was unopposed. The Duke of Norfolk may not have had the rule of East Anglia he thought was his due, but he could still get his man elected. In return for such patronage, Howard gave the duke his complete loyalty. If the duke required the harassment of an opponent, then as likely as not, Howard was the man he sent to do it. In the 1453 investigation into the series of violent incidents between Norfolk’s retainers and servants and those of the Duke of Suffolk’s de la Pole afﬁnity, at least one of the indictments describes Howard as

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S CHAMBERLAIN

15

‘of Framlingham’, the duke’s main seat in Suffolk. One of the incidents referred to at the commission hearings in 1453 was that on 4 October 1450, Howard and many others attacked the property of Alice, widowed Duchess of Suffolk, at Eye, Wingﬁeld and half a dozen other places, beating her servants and doing a thousand pounds worth of damage [this sum is frequently given as damage assessment and need not be taken as literally true]. Alice also charged him with attacking her property at Bulcamp and Henham a few months later.9 Howard had a particular axe to grind as far as Duchess Alice was concerned. It related to the estates of the defunct barony of Kerdiston. A commission which sat after the death of Sir Thomas Kerdiston in 1446 found that Howard and Duchess Alice were co-heirs to his lands in Norfolk and Suffolk, Howard through his Tendring grandmother and Alice through her own Chaucer family. Neither was willing to acknowledge the claim of the other and it seems, according to Alice, that Howard and other Mowbray men entered Claxton and other manors in Norfolk which were part of the Kerdiston inheritance by force, presumably, that is, before Alice could get her own men in there. Howard managed to hold on to Claxton for some time, long enough indeed to be appointed a justice of the peace for Norfolk, which would not have happened unless he was a Norfolk landowner at the time. It was also the only appointment to local ofﬁce he received during the early 1450s, probably because Norfolk’s support for Richard, Duke of York, meant that he was out of political favour at that particular juncture and thus unable to promote his retainers’ interests. When the Kerdiston dispute came to court, Alice had little difﬁculty in proving that hers was the stronger claim, but there was a series of adjournments and no formal decision was made, though the duchess and her son regained the manors and there is no record of when Howard was forced to leave Claxton. A substantial addition to his own landed estate through his grandmother, on which Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Oxford, had no claim, would have suited Howard very well. However, he was not the ﬁrst or the last to discover that in taking on Duchess Alice, he had bitten off more than he could chew. Possibly because Norfolk’s opposition to the court party under the Duke of Suffolk’s replacement, the Duke of Somerset, meant Howard was unable to advance his career at home, possibly discouraged by his loss of the Kerdiston estates, Howard chose this moment to undertake what was probably his ﬁrst serious military engagement. When the 1453 commission of enquiry held its hearings, he was in France, so he may also have been prompted by the need for a discreet withdrawal. If the latter was the case, he need not have worried, since the commissioners only required that he and his lord provide sums for sureties for future peaceable behaviour. Even out of favour, Norfolk was still able to protect himself and his retainers; the sureties, however, were very large and quite humiliating for him. For the information that Howard participated in the military expedition to

16

YO R K I S T LO R D

Guienne, we are reliant on Tudor historians. This is perfectly explicable since they were aware of Howard’s later importance and hence the signiﬁcance of his early career. Whether they had documentary evidence, or, as is more likely, based what they wrote on information from his family, is a matter for conjecture.10 Like all boys of his class, Howard would have been trained in the use of arms, but when he ﬁrst came to use them in earnest, we do not know. In the late 1430s it is possible he was in the north as a page to Norfolk after the duke was made Keeper of the East March and of Berwick in 1437, and he may have accompanied his lord on the expedition to relieve Calais in 1436. That expedition was successful, but by the early 1450s all Henry V’s conquests in northern France had been lost and the English managed to retain only Calais. In the south, Bordeaux surrendered to a French army in June 1451, but was retaken by the veteran soldier John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, in October 1452. The need to mount an expeditionary force to support him against the inevitable French counter-attack led to a hastily assembled force of 2,400 men, largely infantry, under Shrewsbury’s son and heir, Lord Lisle. The men were recruited in the early months of 1453 and mustered at Dartmouth and Plymouth on 5 March. The warrants and indentures for the expeditionary force do not include Howard’s name, since he was, at best, a very junior captain. It is probable that he went out to Guienne among the company of his connection by marriage, Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, which, according to his indenture, consisted of 60 men at arms and 600 archers; Moleyns was serving as Lisle’s deputy. Also in the company were two of Howard’s cousins, sons of his mother’s sister Isabel and her second husband, James and Thomas Berkeley. The campaign of 1453 was hardly an auspicious beginning to Howard’s military career. With no fewer than three French armies converging on Bordeaux, and many Gascon towns in its hinterland considering desertion to the French cause, Shrewsbury needed a quick victory and decided to strike at the force besieging Castillon. The battle of Castillon, fought on 17 July 1453, was the last in the century-long struggle between England and France. In it, Shrewsbury, the greatest English military commander of his day, was killed and so, too, were his son, Lord Lisle and James Berkeley. Later sources say Howard was wounded, taken prisoner and later ransomed. Certainly Lord Moleyns was ransomed for nearly £10,000, but Howard was home in England again too soon for him to have suffered the same fate and was almost certainly not important enough to attract a ransom demand. It seems likely that, wounded or not, he was part of the shattered English force which fell back on Bordeaux and from there made its way home before the city ﬁnally surrendered. Guienne, English for three hundred years, became part of the realm of France. Castillon was, therefore, a battle with a claim to European signiﬁcance, but for Howard it was an aberration, for he never fought outside the British Isles again. He did, however, retain links with the Talbot family, since Shrewsbury’s

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S CHAMBERLAIN

17

daughter Elizabeth was married to Norfolk’s heir and became Howard’s ‘lady’ when her husband succeeded to the dukedom in 1461.11 Home from France, Howard settled into familiar routines, while in the country at large political tensions were rising. In the summer of 1453 King Henry had become seriously mentally ill and in the face of such disaster a great council of almost all the senior peers and clerics gathered in London to take an oath to uphold the law and act collectively against anyone who ﬂouted the authority of the king and council. Henry as yet had no heir of his body and Richard, Duke of York, was recognized as having the closest claim to the throne. When Henry was in his right mind and the Duke of Somerset could run the government in his name, York was out in the cold, but with Henry ill, nobody could deny his right to be involved in the government. While he had seized the political initiative, it was only temporarily. After the meeting of the great council, a smaller group of councillors assumed the responsibility for exercising the king’s powers of government. The birth of a son to Queen Margaret of Anjou in October 1453 solved the immediate problem of the succession and the council wished to appoint a protectorate similar to that established in 1422 on the death of Henry V. Then, two royal uncles, Bedford and Clarence, ﬁlled the role. Whoever was chosen in 1453 would be in a very strong position to be regarded as the ultimate heir should the royal line fail. The political argument lasted throughout the winter and in March 1454 York was appointed Protector. The greater community of peers had allowed natural justice to take its course, recognizing his royal blood, his competence and the unjust manner in which ﬁrst Suffolk and then Somerset had excluded him from a role in government hitherto. York made a public declaration of loyalty to the Crown and tried to govern as even-handedly as he could through a broad-based administration and with a governing council similar to that which had been in place during the king’s minority. When Henry recovered his senses early in 1455, York’s protectorate automatically came to an end. The restoration of Somerset to a position of power spelt disaster for York and his close allies, the Nevilles. A summons to appear before a great council at Leicester led them to retire north to raise their forces. This led directly to the ﬁrst battle of St Albans. While this was little more than a skirmish between the armed retinues of a number of lords, by the time the dust had cleared, Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland (a rival of the Neville family in the north) and their supporter, Lord Clifford, were dead. York’s other ally, Norfolk, and his forces, probably with Howard among their number, did not reach St Albans until the day after the battle. Howard decided to seek election to the parliament summoned in the wake of the Yorkist victory, either on his own account or prompted by Norfolk. Parliamentary elections had long been a battleﬁeld, in some cases literally, in East Anglia. In February 1453, just before he left for Guienne, Howard had been involved in a disputed nomination in Suffolk. The story is known only because

18

YO R K I S T LO R D

the case came to court, but it did not do so until May 1454 when York was back in power and Howard home from France. It is important to understand that elections themselves were not generally contested. The struggle between opposing parties was to get their men nominated as candidates and it was only when some accommodation could not be reached that the election day itself saw disputes. This in itself was symptomatic of a breakdown in the normal running of local affairs. In early 1453, York’s unsuccessful attempt to end Somerset’s supremacy had put both him and the Duke of Norfolk in a very weak position and it was likely that the elections would see the return of those sympathetic to the court party. In 1453 the men returned for Norfolk were both court supporters of the Duke of Somerset, while in Suffolk, one was a courtier, the other was a colleague of Howard’s in Norfolk’s household, Gilbert Debenham. Among the proceedings of the Privy Council is a petition from the Duke of Norfolk that many of his servants had been present at the county court held at Ipswich for the elections, but that the sheriff, Thomas Sharneburne, ‘imagining and purposing to make knights after his own intent (i.e. court supporters)’ later returned a ‘rescous’ – a writ against those acting in resistance of lawful authority – against Norfolk’s men in the Court of Common Pleas in July 1453 alleging that, because of threats by them to his under-sheriff, the election could not be held on the appointed day. Norfolk asked in his petition that his men be permitted to appear by attorney. In his submission to the court, Sharneburne stated that Sir William Ashton, John Howard, his brother-in-law, Thomas Daniel and 54 other men, most of them styled as ‘of Framlingham’ and thus clearly identiﬁed as servants of Norfolk’s, appeared at the county court with about 600 armed men determined to elect knights of the shire of their own choice, made threats to the under-sheriff, the sheriff ’s clerk and others and forcibly took the clerk before Norfolk (implying that he was directing the whole affair, but even in 1453 he was too powerful to be attacked directly). Consequently the under-sheriff was too frightened to carry out his duties properly and he and the clerk left the courthouse before the ofﬁcial returning writ could be delivered to them by a servant of Sharneburne’s, who took it away again. Without the ofﬁcial writ, Daniel and the others insisted on holding the elections and chose Daniel himself and John Wingﬁeld, a servant of York’s. Although Daniel was named third in the writ, because both Ashton and Howard were of higher social standing, it seems clear that it was Daniel who was the leading force in the invalid election. Since Daniel, so alleged Sharneburne, had no land in the shire, and Wingﬁeld did hold lands but was not resident, both were therefore ineligible to be knights of the shire. When Ashton and 16 of the men accused – Howard was by this time in France – appeared in court, they were released on the grounds that, since the writ had not been received by the under-sheriff and no proclamation had been made, the return of Daniel and Wentworth was invalid. In fact, at a following county court on 12 March, when

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S CHAMBERLAIN

19

Howard was in Devon mustering for France, Sharneburne or his deputy returned a new indenture, attested by very few of Norfolk’s supporters, if any, naming Sir Philip Wentworth, a courtier, and Norfolk’s man, Gilbert Debenham, as those elected, thus maintaining a political balance.12 The whole affair illustrates that the ﬁnal choice of candidate was always that favoured by the sheriff. By 1455, the political pendulum had swung in Norfolk’s direction and the duke’s association with York meant that he was in a strong position to exert his own inﬂuence in East Anglia. This time, the sheriff was the same John Wingﬁeld who had been illegally elected with Daniel two years before. The reoccurence of the same names in these elections, Wingﬁeld, Howard, Sharneburne, indicates the relatively small number of politically committed senior gentry in the region who held ofﬁce and sat in parliament. Two of the duke’s retainers, Robert Wingﬁeld and William Jenney, were nominated to stand for Suffolk unopposed. The duke wanted Howard to stand in Norfolk. In her husband’s absence, the duchess wrote to John Paston, asking him that he and others should support ‘our right well-beloved cousin and servants’ Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlain. This was a letter which could not have been very welcome to Paston, since he was hoping to stand himself. A Mowbray servant, John Jenney, who was actively canvassing the electorate on their behalf, told Paston that while most men were willing to accept Chamberlain as a candidate, they objected to Howard’s name going forward, not on any personal grounds but because he had neither ‘livelihood nor conversement’ in the county of Norfolk. This makes it clear that he was no longer in possession of Claxton or any other former Kerdiston manor there. The duke, to his credit, accepted this argument and wrote to the under-sheriff, expressing his willingness for there to be a free election, provided of course that none of the late Duke of Suffolk’s supporters were chosen. Howard, added Jenney to Paston, was ‘as wode as a wilde bullok, God send him such worship as he deserves’.13 This is the earliest indication of Howard’s character that has survived. According to Jenney’s letter, he was apparently in London with Norfolk and either present at the interview when the duke agreed to a free election or was informed of its outcome immediately afterwards. It is not the only evidence of Howard’s quick temper, and the duke’s acceptance of the technical arguments against him seems to have been taken as a personal affront. In the end he need not have worried. Having demonstrated to the duke that he could not take them for granted, the electors returned both Mowbray candidates, Chamberlain and Howard, when the election was held on 23 June. The parliament sat for 114 days in three sessions. A surviving writ of expenses shows that Howard and Chamberlain were each paid the standard rate of four shillings a day, plus wages for a further seven days to cover their travelling expenses. Howard was appointed to the bench for Suffolk during the second session, in which the Duke of York became Protector of the realm for the second time.

20

YO R K I S T LO R D

On 27 December 1455, presumably while he was in London sitting as an MP, the house Howard maintained in Colchester was broken into and his servant Edmund Fuller beaten up by one Thomas Westwode, whom Howard subsequently sued for 40 marks in damages; although an insigniﬁcant event in itself, it was symptomatic of the semi-lawless state of local affairs in East Anglia. In the same month he was appointed to a commission, headed by the Earl of Oxford, to investigate complaints from Portuguese and Genoese merchants that the Portuguese ship in which their goods were being carried had been attacked by English ships on its way to the Thames and their goods disposed of. Since Portugal was a long-standing ally and there was a trading agreement between England and Genoa, the government wanted the perpetrators brought to justice.14 This is the ﬁrst documentary evidence of Howard’s connection with matters maritime. The second piece of evidence comes four years later, in February 1459, when he was appointed to another commission, again sitting with the Earl of Oxford. This one was headed by Norfolk himself, an indication of the importance the Crown attached to it. The commission was ordered to investigate and arrest certain pirates in three English balingers or barges who had taken goods and merchandise from Venetian merchants in the Thames near Queenborough. The goods had been transferred into boats at Sandwich to be conveyed to London and the pirates had taken them to Harwich instead. The Crown wanted no quarrel with Venice, but as is so often the case with such commissions, there is no record of the outcome.15 These appointments suggest that Howard was already beginning to make his mark in local life, not just because of his position as a Mowbray retainer, but as a result of his business interests in east coast shipping. It is hardly surprising that an ambitious and able man with only a small income should have set about enlarging it. He had not married money, so he had to make it. A great deal of Howard’s signiﬁcance in the mid-ﬁfteenth century lies in his business activities, and of these, by far the most important was his ship-owning. In the interests of narrative, these are dealt with separately (see Chapter 9). Not all the commissions to which Howard was appointed in the 1450s related to the sea. He sat on the Norfolk bench for the single year of 1452, while he temporarily held the Kerdiston manor of Claxton, and he was appointed a JP for Suffolk in 1455 and sat for three years before he was dropped in 1458. It was the commissions of the peace which performed the most important duties of local government. Howard sat on the Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex benches for the best part of three decades and this brought him into contact with most of the men who counted in the three shires for the whole of that period. In the cases of the disputed elections of 1453 and 1455, for example, the men involved were almost all on the bench. Although the justices were appointed by the Crown, they reﬂected local political interests, so it is hardly surprising that Howard was appointed during periods of the Duke of York’s ascendancy, when Norfolk’s

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S CHAMBERLAIN

21

inﬂuence could make itself felt. Having accepted the responsibilities of his position in local politics, there is plenty of evidence for later periods to show that, unlike many, he fulﬁlled his duties conscientiously.16 It meant, however, that his proﬁle was high enough for him to be caught in the Lancastrian government’s drive for cash. In November 1457 he paid 53s. 4d. as a ﬁne for not accepting the order of knighthood. ‘Distraint of knighthood’ (as it was known) was a well-known money-making expedient and was employed against those who were worth £40 p.a. or more.17 In what were to prove the last two years of Lancastrian government, Howard held no ofﬁcial appointment and it can only be presumed that he spent the time at Stoke-by-Nayland running his estate, tending to his business affairs and serving his lord as required. As the country descended into civil war, there were ﬁve battles fought between the autumn of 1459 and the spring of 1461 and Norfolk, with Howard probably in his train, was involved in three of them. Although Norfolk had given general support to the Duke of York, he had not declared himself to be a committed Yorkist in the manner of the Neville family. He was one of the peers who swore allegiance to Henry VI at the Coventry parliament in December 1459. Queen Margaret saw York as a serious dynastic threat to the house of Lancaster and regarded his destruction by force as essential. In October that year York and his two eldest sons, Edward, Earl of March, and Edmund, Earl of Rutland, his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury, and nephew, the Earl of Warwick, felt that the political situation had left them with no option but to leave the country and in the following month a parliament held at Coventry attainted them. York’s only way back from exile in Ireland was at the head of an army. Salisbury, Warwick and Edward, York’s eldest son, who had all been in Calais, landed at Sandwich and reached London with little opposition. It is at this stage that Norfolk seems to have ﬁnally thrown his support behind the Yorkists, one of the few non-Neville magnates who did so, and joined their force in London. Norfolk marched north from London with the Yorkists and was with them when they defeated the Lancastrians at Northampton in July 1460, killing their leaders and capturing the king. A few weeks later, Howard, whether or not he had been with Norfolk at Northampton, was in Suffolk, where on 27 August he and two of his household were among a small group of men who became feoffees for a house and land in Higham on behalf of a man called William Argent. There was nothing unusual in this, save for the fact that the man heading the list of feoffees was the 18-year old Edward, Earl of March, York’s heir. While his position was likely to be purely nominal, it suggests that Edward was in the neighbourhood when the deed was sealed, probably visiting his brother-in-law, Suffolk, or Norfolk himself, and that William Argent may well have been a member of York’s household who came from Higham or was an ofﬁcial of their honour of Clare. Howard was steward for the honour by 1464 and may well have held the

22

YO R K I S T LO R D

post earlier, which would account for his involvement on this occasion. It was perhaps the ﬁrst meeting between Howard and Edward.18 York, meanwhile, landed in the north and moved south to London. When he tried to claim the throne, however, he faced overwhelming opposition and in October 1460 had to settle for an act of Accord, which conﬁrmed the throne to King Henry for his lifetime, but disinherited his son Prince Edward in favour of York and his sons. The queen, who had no intention of recognizing her son’s disinheritance, was in the north gathering an army. The Yorkists divided their forces into three: York and Salisbury left London heading north on 9 December, Edward of March was sent to Ludlow to deal with the Welsh Lancastrians under Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, while Warwick and Norfolk remained in London to hold the capital. In the battles that followed, York and Salisbury suffered defeat and death at Wakeﬁeld on 30 December, and Warwick and Norfolk, moving north to confront Margaret’s forces descending on London, were defeated at St Albans on 17 February. Only Edward triumphed at the battle of Mortimer’s Cross. Whether Howard was with Norfolk at St Albans is unclear, but in January and February he had been appointed to two anti-Lancastrian commissions of arrest in Norfolk and Suffolk, so if he had originally been in Norfolk’s company, he may have been despatched home to hold the fort there. The ﬁrst commission was headed by Lord Fitzwalter, but Howard was the senior commissioner on the second. If he did leave Norfolk in the capital, he missed the crucial events that followed the battle of St Albans. After the queen’s victory, the city authorities sent a deputation of ladies, led by the dowager Duchesses of Buckingham and of Bedford, to her, saying that the city gates would be opened to her on the understanding that there would be no pillaging. As a token of her good faith, Margaret withdrew her army to Dunstable, but it was a fatal error not to proceed to London. Clearly the mayor and aldermen wanted to hedge their bets and remain on good terms with her, but the mood of the city in general was determinedly Yorkist. The victorious Edward of March arrived with the men who had won him Mortimer’s Cross, having met Warwick, Norfolk and the remnants of their army on the way. A hastily convened great council, with many absentees, endorsed his claim to the throne, and the following day, 4 March 1461, he went through a series of solemn ceremonies installing him as king. There was no time for a coronation. That would have to wait until he had beaten the queen’s army. The new king stayed in London for another week, while his supporters dispersed to raise troops in their own areas. During that week, on 6 March, John Howard was appointed sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, an indication of the new Yorkist regime’s attempt to make its mark outside London.19 A sheriff was the king’s chief ofﬁcer in the shires and his main channel of communication, not only in the ﬁelds of ﬁnance and legal process, but also in politics, and his appointment

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK’S CHAMBERLAIN

23

was made formally by the king’s council. He had also to be a resident member of his shire’s governing class, not the local steward of a magnate. There was undoubtedly a strong political element in Howard’s appointment. Backed by the Duke of Norfolk, he would be able to impose royal authority in the two counties, and in itself, his new ofﬁce helped to raise his status in Suffolk, if not Norfolk. Sheriffs were customarily appointed annually in early November, so Howard, in fact, only served in the ofﬁce for eight months. When Edward IV led his army out of London, Norfolk was with him. This means that it was the new sheriff who was chieﬂy responsible for gathering the East Anglian contingents. Margaret and her army retreated northwards, pursued by Edward, and by the time they reached Yorkshire, the new king was in command of a very large army. Somewhere en route, Howard had joined the army with Norfolk’s East Anglian levies and a welcome loan of £100 from the abbot of Bury St Edmunds.20 There are no eyewitness accounts of the battle at Towton that followed. There was a preliminary clash at Ferrybridge at daybreak but the main battle was fought later in the day, Palm Sunday, 29 March. The weather was bitterly cold and degenerated in the course of a long day’s ﬁghting into a snowstorm, which, luckily for the Yorkists, was blowing into the faces of the Lancastrians. Norfolk’s forces formed the rearguard, and when they arrived late in the day, the battle was virtually a stalemate, but the inﬂux of fresh men turned the tide and the ﬂeeing Lancastrians left Edward triumphant on the ﬁeld.21 George Neville, Bishop of Exeter, in a letter to the papal legate, Coppini, at that time in Bruges, reported that King Edward, ‘the brave duke of Norfolk’, his own brother, Warwick, and uncle, Lord Fauconbridge, took different routes north and eventually joined forces at York before marching on northwards. He added, ‘I prefer you should learn from others than myself how manfully our King, the Duke of Norfolk and my brother and uncle bore themselves in the battle; ﬁrst ﬁghting like common soldiers, then commanding, encouraging and rallying their squadrons like the greatest captains’.22 This is a reference to the fact that, in ﬁfteenth-century English battles, even the greatest usually fought, not on horseback, but on foot at the head of their forces. The risk of being killed, therefore, was high. There can be no doubt that Howard was also in the midst of the day long battle. It is generally accepted that perhaps as many as 50,000 men were present in the combined armies, making Towton one of the largest, and bloodiest, battles ever fought on English soil. The ofﬁcial ﬁgure given at the time was of 28,000 deaths; a more realistic ﬁgure is 9,000, but the higher ﬁgure might well relate to all casualties. To put the numbers into perspective, 9,000 was the equivalent of a quarter of the population of London at the time. Large numbers of northern peers and gentry either died for Lancaster on the ﬁeld or were captured and immediately executed. Although King Henry and Queen Margaret escaped to Scotland, Lancastrian power in the north had received a fatal blow. Edward was

24

YO R K I S T LO R D

now reasonably secure on the throne and he proved to be a grateful and generous king to his supporters. John Howard’s career as a servant of the house of York had begun.

2

The Yorkist Servant, 1461–1464

1461 was a momentous year for John Howard. He was in his early thirties, married, with a family, settled on the estate he had inherited and a senior and trusted retainer of his cousin, John, Duke of Norfolk. There is no way of knowing what his own political preferences were – he followed his lord’s loyalties. By Easter that year, having escaped death or serious injury at Towton, he found that Norfolk’s crucial support for the young Edward IV had opened up the possibility of a career for himself that, ﬁve or ten years before, he could only have dreamt of. He had already been appointed a sheriff, but that was only the beginning. King Edward remained in the north for some time after Towton, ﬁrst at York and then at Durham and Newcastle, meeting as many people as possible in the hope that he could win them to him, for it was in the north that the key to the safety of his throne lay. He did not return to his capital until mid-June. After the battle Howard, as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, ﬁrst led the East Anglian levies home and then set out again for the north with a further loan of 100 marks from the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds to the king.1 That he remained with the king this time for at least a month is veriﬁed by Thomas Denys, the Norfolk coroner. Denys had come to present his side of a dispute to the king and had hoped for support from his fellow East Anglian ofﬁcial, since this would give some colour of authority to any attack he might make on his enemies. In the event he received no sympathy from Howard and some rough treatment from his servants. The letter Denys wrote to his friend John Paston in May 1461 does not make things very clear and gives no indication of Howard’s motives. Denys wrote: ‘And heer in the Kyngs house’ ‘annenst Howard, wher I had hopid to a’ relevid myself, I am supplanted and cast oute from hym by a clamour of all his servaunts at onys and ne wer [it] only that his disposicion accordyth not to my pouer conceyte, which maketh me to gif lesse force, because I desire not to dele ther [where] bribery is like to be usid, ellis by my trouth this unhappy unkyndenes wold, I trow, a’ killed me’.2

Howard had no personal involvement in the dispute and Denys could not be described as a Lancastrian; he had originally served Oxford, but he had fought with Warwick at both Northampton and the second battle of St Albans. It is possible that Howard was acting in the interests of fellow retainers of Norfolk’s, for

26

YO R K I S T LO R D

1. John Howard: stained glass image, formerly either in his chapel at Tendring Hall or in the South Chapel, Stoke-by-Nayland Church.

when Denys was murdered a few weeks later, some reports implicated members of the duke’s council. Whether Denys suspected Howard himself of being bribed, or whether he was referring to someone involved in the case, only he and John Paston knew. The bad blood between Howard and Denys may have sprung from Howard’s relations with the Earl of Oxford. That same month Oxford wrote to Paston (like himself a Lancastrian) asking that if he or any of his men should hear that Howard ‘purposith hym to make any aray at ower manor of Wynche, that ye woll lete John Keche, owre kepere therof, have wetyng [knowledge] bytymes, for and he have warnyng he will kepe it to the tyme we come thedir’.3 There is no other

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

27

evidence which casts light on Oxford’s apprehensions, and a man of his rank should not have been in fear of attack from the likes of Howard, even if he was sheriff. Although Oxford had originally been somewhat sympathetic towards York, he refused to support his claim to the throne; he had not been at Towton and had been excused from attendance at Henry’s last parliament on account of his age and inﬁrmities. In effect, he had sat out the political and military upheavals of the previous few years. That the manor concerned is East Winch may be of some signiﬁcance, since it was the old family home of the Howards and it may be that Howard resented the fact that it had passed with his cousin out of the family, even though it had happened decades previously. Perhaps Oxford’s fears were the natural ones of an elderly man who saw the power structure in his region suddenly turned upside down, with no guarantee that the sheriff would uphold the law rather than use it to his own beneﬁt. Certainly there is no evidence that Howard made any attack on East Winch and if it had happened, the likelihood is that the Pastons would have reported it. John Howard attended Edward IV’s coronation on 28 June, where he is generally supposed to have been knighted; some reports suggest that he was knighted on the ﬁeld at Towton. John Paston, too, it was rumoured, was about to be thus honoured, but here rumour was wrong. Paston himself never received the accolade, although two years later his eldest son did.4 Paston and Howard had had their differences in the past, and in the trouble that was about to ﬂare up between them, this may have been an added grievance. King Edward had, of necessity, to call his ﬁrst parliament. In his ofﬁcial capacity as sheriff, Howard received his writ to hold elections in Norfolk and Suffolk on 24 May for a parliament to begin on 6 July. The writ was followed by a second dated 13 June, postponing parliament until 4 November. The outcome of these writs was another disputed election in Norfolk. It is well-recorded by both sides; in the Paston correspondence and in Howard’s own ofﬁcial account, which formed part of the legal action taken against those involved.5 On receipt of the writs, Howard would have informed the municipal ofﬁcers of the parliamentary boroughs in his shrievalty, and since his home was in Suffolk, he attended the election there himself, leaving his under-sheriff, William Price, to attend the Norfolk one. It is unclear exactly what happened at the Norwich shire house on this occasion. There are a number of references in the Paston Letters, but none give an actual account, while Howard’s own report, drawn up later, would have reﬂected his under-sheriff ’s view of the initial stages of the affair. According to William Price, he published his writ to hold elections at the next county court to be held on 15 June. There were two sets of candidates, as might have been predicted after the recent reversal of political power. The ﬁrst, Sir William Chamberlain and Henry Grey, were almost certainly the Duke of Norfolk’s nominees, and the second, John Paston and a distant relative of his

28

YO R K I S T LO R D

wife, John Berney, had Lancastrian connections. According to Price, Berney caused an uproar at the county court by questioning the right to restrict the franchise to those possessing freehold land worth 40s. p.a., declaring it was the right of all at the court to vote, no matter what their standing. Technically he was correct, but an act of 1429 had limited the franchise because of the habit of importing large bodies of men who had no land or interest in the shire to inﬂuence the outcome of an election. This is what Berney had apparently done, for Price said later that he was faced with a body of 500 armed men whom Berney and others had been collecting for two weeks previously for the purpose. Thus threatened, Price abandoned the election and escaped from the shire house with the aid of Thomas Wingﬁeld, Richard Southwell and Gilbert Debenham, all Duke of Norfolk’s men. Deprived of their victim, the troublemakers then threatened to kill Price when they got hold of him and he was, therefore, too frightened to do anything about holding the election again on the next shire day, 6 July. This ofﬁcial version, however, is somewhat at odds with what Price himself wrote to Paston immediately afterwards, on 19 June: ‘My master Berney, my master Grey and ye had the greatest voice, and I purpose me, as I will answer God, to return the due election, that is, after the sufﬁciency, you and master Grey. Nevertheless I have a master’.6 This suggests that Price regarded Paston and Grey, one from each side, as the popular choice, but may have been persuaded by the duke’s men, fearing that the Yorkist choice would not triumph, to abandon the election, using Berney’s behaviour as an excuse. The master he refers to may have been Howard, or more likely, the duke himself. When John Howard heard of the Norfolk debacle is unclear. Price would presumably have informed him of what had occurred, but in the preparations for the forthcoming coronation nothing was done. Howard left for London soon after the Suffolk election and may already have been in London when the news reached him, for James Gresham wrote to Paston from the capital on 21 June saying that he had not yet managed to speak to Howard.7 John Paston certainly regarded himself as having been elected a knight of the shire for Norfolk. On 2 July the coroner, Thomas Denys, was dragged from his house and taken to Walsingham, where he was murdered a couple of days afterwards. A week later, John Berney wrote to Paston saying that Sir Miles Stapleton was falsely accusing him of the murder. Paston, who was now in London himself, wrote home to his wife saying, quite correctly, that the undersheriff ‘doubteth him of John Berney’, and asking her to bring them together and make peace so that Price might be assured that Berney meant him no harm. This substantiates Price’s account, given in Howard’s later report, that he was afraid of violence by Berney. However, Price’s report also suggests that he left the shire house before the election proceedings were complete, thus rendering them invalid. The letters between Paston and Berney that followed show that each considered himself to have been elected. If Price’s

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

29

account is accurate, they had presumably continued the election illegally, to their own advantage, exactly as Thomas Daniel and Norfolk’s men, Howard among them, had done in 1453. Paston’s suggestion (made safely in the knowledge that he had himself received the highest number of votes) that Berney and Grey should work out which of them had received the least votes and stand down, fell upon deaf ears. Both Margaret Paston and Berney himself assured Paston that Berney had no intention of doing Price any harm, but Berney also reported that the shire was displeased with the way Price had conducted the election and his only way back into local favour was either to give notice that the result was to stand or hold a new election. The apparent willingness of Berney and Paston to accept a new election argues that they did not consider they had done anything wrong at the ﬁrst one and that it was the under-sheriff who had acted discreditably by running away. It was unlikely that Howard and Paston would see eye to eye on the matter. Howard was more or less bound to support his own ofﬁcial, Price, and it was probably he who brought the matter to the king’s attention. Both Price and Paston were summoned to London to give an account of themselves. The upshot was that, with parliament postponed until the autumn, a writ was issued for a new election to be held on 10 August, indicating that royal opinion was prepared to back the county ofﬁcials. That Howard himself was high in royal favour at this moment is clear from three appointments made in July 1461. First, on 6 July, he was given custody of the royal castle of Colchester and its attendant lordship, consisting of about 200 acres. This was a grant for life, and so too was the grant made a fortnight later, on 21 July, of the constableship of Norwich Castle with the customary fee of £20 p.a.; the income from the Colchester lands was probably a similar sum.8 The grant of the Norwich constableship described him as the king’s knight, that is, a knight of the body in the royal household, an appointment he may well have received at the same time as his knighthood. It was as constable of Norwich that he was ordered to take custody of Philippa Tiptoft, Lady Roos, whose husband and son were with Henry VI and had been attainted. Lady Roos’s husband had been one of Duchess Alice’s supporters in her dispute with Howard over Kerdiston, so Howard may have felt a degree of satisfaction at his fall. Her custody was probably not very harsh, but served as a means of ensuring that no money found its way from her to her menfolk. Whether she was actually in Norwich castle or a nearby nunnery we do not know, probably the latter, but in March 1462 she was transferred to the charge of Sir Robert Constable.9 Another important appointment of July 1461 for Howard was as one of the king’s carvers, with the generous salary of £40 p.a. Under Mowbray’s inﬂuence, Howard had been made an esquire of the royal household as early as 1449, but it was unlikely that he held the ofﬁce for long once political power had swung

30

YO R K I S T LO R D

back to the court party, since this type of appointment was ‘during good behaviour’. The appointment in 1461 was to prove what that of 1449 had not – a major step on the ladder of promotion in royal service. At this period the household consisted of about 500 ofﬁcers, of whom about half, the state ofﬁcers, the knights and esquires of the body, the ushers, the carvers and others, were men of political standing. In 1461 Edward IV ﬁlled almost all these posts with men who deserved their reward for ﬁghting on the Yorkist side. To become one of them was to join a close-knit central group who combined the general business of the household with special service in war or diplomacy.10 Having entered the magic circle of the royal household, a man could rise as high as his ability permitted, provided his king retained the throne and he retained the king’s favour. Thus, to become a king’s carver and knight of the body was politically more signiﬁcant for Howard than his actual knighthood, his shrievalty or his constableships. The Black Book of the Household, designed to regulate the various departments, was drawn up later in Edward’s reign, but probably codiﬁed existing practices. According to the text, there were four carvers, although in practice there were often more. Their minimum fees from the counting house were 8 marks at Christmas and Whitsun for robes and 10 marks at Easter and Michaelmas. Howard’s fee of £40 was therefore considerably more. As a knight of the chamber, he had, with another of similar rank, to be on duty in the king’s hall at mealtimes, and he was permitted a gentleman and a yeoman in attendance. If he was absent, two yeoman had to take his place. The Black Book implies that duties were undertaken on a shift system, but there is little indication that Howard regarded the post as entailing long, or regular, periods of attendance at court. Probably when he was there for other purposes he fulﬁlled his duties, but for the rest, his place was regularly taken by his deputy yeomen, whose fees he would have paid. They would also have received his daily allowance of two loaves, a mess of ‘gros mete’, half a pitcher of wine and two gallons of ale, as well as candles and ﬁre wood. Howard’s appointment to royal service did not lessen his loyalty to the Duke of Norfolk. In the society of his time it was perfectly acceptable for him to serve both as a king’s carver and the duke’s chamberlain, as well as acting as steward for various local landowners. The concept of service did not demand that a man devote himself exclusively to the interests of one lord, even though Norfolk would always have ﬁrst call, after the king, on his services. Indeed, the more connections a man had, the greater his value to his lord, and Howard certainly accepted livery gowns from the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence. These appointments and ofﬁces meant that Howard’s acquaintance with most of the great and the good of Yorkist society was assured from the beginning of Edward’s reign.11 The household appointment was important, but other equally important matters called Howard back to Norfolk. Among his other duties as sheriff, he spent time in the summer holding an inquisition relating to forcible entry by

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

31

John Felbridge into properties held by John Wyndham and John Timperley. The inquisition found that Wyndham and Timperley were in rightful possession and that Howard was to arrest the wrongdoers.12 Felbridge was a friend and client of John Paston, and Wyndham and Timperley were Mowbray men, so this cannot have helped the relationship between Paston and the sheriff. Howard’s appointment to that ofﬁce as the ﬁrst under the Yorkist crown indicates a strong royal belief in his ability to act according to Yorkist interests in an area still torn by faction ﬁghting and with a number of inﬂuential Lancastrian supporters still at large. If his actions were less than impartial, this was hardly surprising. The postponed parliamentary election was due to be held on 10 August at the Norwich shire house and John Paston, meanwhile, had taken matters into his own hands. Perhaps suspicious that Price, the under-sheriff, might alter the day of the election to exclude Berney and himself, Paston persuaded Price to hand over the election writ for safekeeping, to have it again only on the day itself. What means he used to achieve this is unclear, but Paston was acting illegally and, in fact, he had badly miscalculated. There was no longer any question of Price overseeing the election. Sir John Howard, sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, was coming to attend to the matter in person. Presumably there was a row with Paston when he retrieved the writ and this would help to explain what followed. The events of 10 August are given in great detail in Howard’s report.13 The customary time for holding elections was between the hours of eight and ten in the morning, and at that former hour in the Norwich shire house, Howard read out the writ and proclaimed by its authority that all men there holding a forty-shilling freehold should present themselves for the purpose of making a free election of two knights of the shire. This they did and were in the process of nominating Sir William Chamberlain and Henry Grey (the two Mowbray candidates a month earlier) when, according to Howard, John Paston rode up to the large crowd gathered outside the shire house and, still seated on his horse, declared that any man present at the court, irrespective of his ‘sufﬁciency’ was entitled to vote. Paston the lawyer was thus urging them to set aside the act of 1429. It was as good as an incitement to riot. Howard and his supporters noted that there were large numbers of men in the crowd wearing ‘jacks and salats’ (light helmets and defensive jackets) and carrying weapons, who did not give the appearance of men of substance with the right to vote. The crowd shouted their support of Paston’s proclamation and that he and John Berney should be elected. Dismounting, Paston and twenty or so of his supporters entered the shire house. Howard immediately demanded to know why he had made such a statement, contrary to the laws and statutes of the land. Paston shouted that he was going to set aside the proceedings up to that point and the crowd outside, led by a clerk named John Marchaunt, who was not a qualiﬁed elector, broke into the shire house, brandishing clubs and staves and crying ‘Ye shall have none other

32

YO R K I S T LO R D

knights chose here this day but our masters John Paston and John Berney’. They then made a great many threats against Howard’s life and threw dust in the faces of the qualiﬁed electors to prevent them speaking. It was clear that the election could not continue in the midst of this uproar and Howard ordered all the electors to follow him to Castle Yard, where he could question each of them on their qualiﬁcations, and where, as constable of the castle, he hoped to control events. He had miscalculated, however, for Paston, Berney and the crowd of about a thousand (a good round number, almost certainly an exaggeration) followed them. The report gives the names of about two dozen of those with their occupation and residence; they were mostly yeomen, husbandmen and labourers, with the odd small tradesman, the implication being that they were not forty- shilling freeholders. They shouted: Nay, plainly, sheriff, ye shall try no sufﬁciency here for every man shall have his election and give his voice as our Master Paston has made his cry and shall ye, sheriff make your return or else ye shall die for it.14

At this point the named ringleaders of the crowd, John Worm, Thomas Gould and John Howes, seized a man named Nicholas Broome and forced him to write an indenture specifying the election of Paston and Berney, while they kept Howard under guard, threatening again to kill him if he did not seal the indenture. Wisely yielding to superior force, Howard did as he was bid and a large part of the crowd began to disperse. He was then ordered to make a proclamation that Paston and Berney were duly elected. This was when Howard ﬁnally lost his temper and, regardless of their weapons, shouted that he would report the whole disgraceful affair to the king and his council. Paston, ‘foaming with anger’ (cum spuma furiose), shouted, ‘Sirs, come again, for all is for nought that we have done here this day for the sheriff sayeth he will return a ‘rescous’ against us all’. This was the same action Sharneburne had taken during the disputed election in 1453 under almost the same circumstances. Worm, Gould, Howes and other trouble-makers turned back to physically attack Howard and his party, who beat a strategic retreat into the castle. And this, wrote Howard, was the reason he was unable to return knights of the shire for Norfolk as he should have done. He went on to record that from then until the next shire day on 10 September, Paston and Berney held unlawful assemblies throughout Norfolk and put it about that the sheriff and other gentlemen had ended the previous court day in agreement with what had been done. On 10 September another attempt to hold the election before an assembled crowd was foiled when Worm and Gould arrived with their force and declared that the sheriff and anyone else who disagreed with what they had done last time were traitors. Threats were made to the lives of Howard and anyone else who opposed them and they also promised

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

33

to attend every shire day until parliament assembled in order to settle matters as they wished. Howard ﬁnished his report with the statement that he was unable to arrest the rebels without risking the lives of a number of the king’s ofﬁcials and asked for a special commission of ‘oyer and terminer’ to deal with it. There is no reason to suppose that Howard’s account conveys the whole truth any more than the Paston correspondence does. The only remark about what happened on the ﬁrst court day states simply that Howard and Paston fell out and one of Howard’s men struck Paston with a dagger, but luckily his good, thick doublet (worn deliberately perhaps) deﬂected the blow.15 This is certainly not inconsistent with Howard’s account, but suggests that he himself was not perhaps quite as passive as he made out; given the violent provocation and other examples of his short temper, this seems plausible. The king ordered both Howard and Paston to London (nothing indicates that Berney was also summoned, as perhaps he should have been) and set up the necessary commission of ‘oyer and terminer’. Howard seems to have responded promptly to the summons, joining the king and Norfolk at Greenwich, but Paston was held up by a dispute over the ownership of Caister Castle. Norfolk had seized it in the spring and Paston was making moves to reclaim it. With both Norfolk and Howard already with the king, Paston’s delay was very unwise. His brother Clement wrote frantically from London on 11 October that the king was about to issue a third writ of summons and was so angry at Paston’s continued disobedience that if he did not come immediately he would die for it as a warning to others not to disobey a royal order. So early in his reign it was vital for Edward to impose effective authority on his subjects; if a Norfolk lawyer could defy him unpunished, there was little hope of ruling more powerful men. Clement Paston reported the king as saying that A servant of our (Howard) hath made a complainte of him (Paston). I cannot thinke that he hath informed us all truely, yet not for that, we will not suffer him to disobey our writinge; but sithen he disobeyeth our writinge, we may beleve the better his gydinge is as we be informed.

Clement then goes on to urge his brother to come to the king immediately and when he comes to be sure to have a good excuse. He was also to come right strong, for Howards wife made her bost that if any of her husbands men might come to yow ther yulde goe noe penny for your life; and Howard hath with the Kinge a great fellowship.16

When John Paston ﬁnally arrived in London he immediately found himself in the Fleet Prison, though he only seems to have been there a few days. Having made an example of him, the king was prepared to be merciful. While we have no report

34

YO R K I S T LO R D

of the election save Howard’s, we have no account of its repercussions save those written by Paston’s allies. On 2 November Margaret Paston wrote to her husband, delighted because the mayor of Norwich, William Norwich, had told her that John had been released from the Fleet and Howard committed in his place as a result of ‘divers great complaints that were made to the King of him’. She told her husband that his own imprisonment had been the talk of Norwich and the surrounding country and ‘people were right sorry thereof ’.17 Clearly the divide in East Anglian society was bitter. Howard, as a Suffolk resident and the public face of the new regime, was never going to have it easy in Norfolk and he and Paston had been at odds before, a situation exacerbated by the Duke of Norfolk’s recent seizure of Caister Castle. If King Edward did indeed imprison his sheriff, it was presumably to emphasize that he intended his justice to be even-handed, just as he had said that he would hear Paston’s side of the dispute, and that quarrels leading to open ﬁghting would not be tolerated. In the end it was recognized that Paston and Berney enjoyed the greatest support amongst the electorate and it was they who entered parliament when it opened on 4 November. Perhaps surprisingly, both parties in the dispute seem to have learnt their lesson. There is no further evidence of feuding between Howard and the Pastons, and he was later on good terms with Paston’s younger son, John. Howard’s shrievalty ofﬁcially ended at about this date and Edward appointed Sir Thomas Montgomery, one of his own household knights and an impartial observer in the county feuds, as his replacement. In any event, if the mayor of Norwich was right and Howard was also imprisoned, he was held in the Fleet as brieﬂy as Paston. Nor does his imprisonment seem to have harmed his standing with the king. Once parliament sat, Howard acquired two exemptions from the Act of Resumption that it passed, which covered all the grants he had had from the Crown.18 Certainly by the end of the ﬁrst week in November, news from East Anglia meant that both he and the king recognized the urgency of his return there as soon as possible. On 6 November, Howard’s cousin and lord, John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk had died. He was only 46 and his son and heir, another John, was 17. It was important to the new regime that, while the heir was a minor, Mowbray inﬂuence continued to be used actively on behalf of the Crown, and as a blood relation and senior member of the duke’s council, Howard was the obvious person to represent and exercise that inﬂuence. Although he was no longer sheriff, the Crown made a clear declaration of its intention to allow his inﬂuence in Norfolk to continue by conﬁrming the grant it had made him of the constableship of Norwich castle on 23 February 1462. At some point, also in 1462, he was appointed to act as vice-admiral for Norfolk and Suffolk under the young Duke Richard of Gloucester, the Admiral of England. This meant that he was the Crown’s effective representative for all things maritime for much of the North Sea.19

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

35

Royal ofﬁces were not the only way in which Edward IV rewarded Howard. The spring of 1462 saw a ﬂurry of other grants. On 24 February he and his heirs male were granted the manors of Leyham and Wherstede in Suffolk, Smethton Hall in Essex, which had belonged to James, Earl of Wiltshire, the manors of Dontish and Devenish in Dorset, late of Sir Nicholas Latimer, the manor of Hereford in Norfolk, late of Thomas Daniel, and another, Meyton Hall, in the same county, late of Giles Saintlowe or Seynclow.20 All those named, including Daniel, his brother-in-law, were Lancastrians who had been attainted in the November 1461 parliament and their estates forfeited to the Crown. The grant was only one of countless others whereby Edward rewarded his supporters at the expense of those who had remained loyal to King Henry and was intended as both reward and inducement for future service. Its signiﬁcance to Howard was not just ﬁnancial; the grant had been made on the basis that any annual proﬁt of more than £100 was to be returned to the Exchequer. By it, he now became the owner of land in each of the three East Anglian counties and was no longer just a Suffolk gentleman. In a gesture which was almost certainly duplicated by other winners up and down the country, and presumably with royal approval, he leased the two Dorset manors – too far from home to want to keep permanently – back to their former owner, Sir Nicholas Latimer and allowed him to purchase them in 1464. It cost Latimer 1,000 marks in four annual instalments and the deal was settled over wine in the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, Howard paying 10½d. for the wine and 8d. for the writing of the indentures. The money was due to be paid to the king, but Edward granted it to Howard, who, in an illuminating gesture, returned it to him.21 Motives in the ﬁfteenth century are rarely clear. This could have been a mixture of gratitude, loyalty and ingratiation, but it certainly indicates that he could afford a gesture worth many times more than the annual income of the original royal grant. These were not the only manors Howard acquired in the spring of 1462. In February of that year, the Earl of Oxford, his eldest son, Aubrey, and others were arrested and executed as a result of a conspiracy to overthrow the new king. Oxford’s part is hard to credit, given his previous lack of political action and it may well be that his son was the prime mover. Even the countess fell under suspicion and was kept under close watch, if not actual custody, until the end of May, when in consideration of her ‘humble, good and faithful disposition’ and her age and inﬁrmity of body (she was 52), she was set at liberty. In a letter to John Paston, written on 4 May, his correspondent had heard that the king had appointed a receiver named Keche (surely the man Oxford had referred to as his keeper of Winch) for all the lands of both of Oxford and his widow ‘except those that Howard had entered and Lanham [Lavenham] and another granted to Wykes’, from which the king was to receive all save 500 marks p.a., which was to go to the countess. It seems that Howard had taken advantage of the disaster

36

YO R K I S T LO R D

that had befallen the de Veres to stake his claim to the old Howard home at East Winch, and to the manors of Fersﬁeld and Brokehall (which should have come to his father by the family settlement of 1409) while his cousin the countess was in custody. He seems not to have restored them when she regained her lands, but to have persuaded Countess Elizabeth to lease them to him, possibly for a ﬁxed term. At that point she was hardly in a position to disagree. In 1466 he restored them to her and an entry in the court of common pleas conﬁrms that she sued him and his trustees for the manors. They formally accepted her claim and she recovered seisin. The presence of her son-in-law, William Norris, among Howard’s trustees suggests that it was a collusive action aimed at re-establishing her possession.22 The royal grant of manors in February 1462 was followed on 11 May with a grant, this time for life, of two London houses in Crooked Lane, an extremely useful addition to Howard’s growing business empire. In return for the royal grants, he was called upon to make himself useful. On 23 May 1462 he received an assignment from the king and his council to victual a ship at Harwich, for which he was later repaid £13 6s. 8d. for the victualling, plus £6 3s. 4d. for the wages of 30 mariners.23 The ship was intended to join a ﬂeet under William Neville, Earl of Kent, the king’s maternal uncle, which Edward was putting together to prevent the former Queen Margaret crossing to Scotland with French forces and to discourage Louis XI from helping her, by raiding the French coast. A few days later Howard was appointed to a commission in which, with Sir Thomas Walgrave, he was charged with taking two ships from the port of King’s Lynn, the Marie Talbot and Marie Thomson and any other ships from the ports of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex with their masters and mariners to join the same ﬂeet. Six days before an order had been issued for the arrest of the Mary of Lynn, possibly one of these ships, for shipping wool illegally. If she was indeed one of the commandeered ships, it meant that two birds could conveniently be killed with one stone; the ship might be detained pending enquiries into her illegal activities while at the same time being ﬁtted out for royal service.24 In July 1462 he was ordered north, together with Lord Hastings and Sir Ralph Grey, to lay siege to Alnwick Castle. Presumably he was leading a contingent of fellow retainers of the young Duke of Norfolk. Lancastrian activity in the far north of England caused Edward IV almost constant anxiety in the ﬁrst few years of his reign, though by and large he was content to leave the paciﬁcation of the region in the capable hands of his cousins, the Earl of Warwick and his brother, John Neville, Lord Montagu. In the year following Towton, Queen Margaret had not been idle. On behalf of her husband she had agreed to the handing over of Berwick to the Scots in return for a Scottish army. The struggle between the two sides revolved round the three great Northumbrian castles of Alnwick, Bamborough and Dunstanburgh, which the Lancastrians still held. In the siege

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

37

of Alnwick that Howard joined, the castle’s defender was Sir William Tailboys. Little is known of the campaign, which ended a few weeks later when Tailboys surrendered the castle on promise of his life. Alnwick was then handed over to the safekeeping of Sir Ralph Grey, while Hastings and Howard returned south. Howard had probably been summoned to join the ﬂeet. While he had been in Northumberland, ships, including the ones he had commandeered, had been slowly assembling at Sandwich under Kent’s command. Ten more ships were requisitioned in June, four of which belonged to Warwick, a notable shipowner, but two, the George and the Christopher, under their masters Thomas William and Richard Barre, may have been Howard’s. The frequent use of the same names for ships means identiﬁcation can rarely be deﬁnite.25 He certainly owned ships of these names a few years later and his connection with the ﬂeet makes it certain that any suitable ships he did own then would have been used, but there is no surviving evidence to show that either of them was in his possession this early. Because of fears for the safety of Calais, under threat of attack from Louis, the ﬂeet lingered for some weeks in its vicinity before raiding the French coast. The town of Le Coquet on the Breton coast was pillaged and burned as a warning to Duke Francis of Brittany, who had previously given Margaret some assistance, and then the ships moved on to Louis’s own territories. They attacked the Île Dieu, where little damage was done, and then pillaged the Île de Rhé. The ﬂeet took no prizes, but it had served its purpose and returned home. Francis gave the Lancastrians no more aid and Louis began to see that, by succouring them, he might not so much stir up renewed civil war in England as reopen the Anglo-French wars, which was the last thing he wanted. There is no direct evidence that John Howard actually sailed with the ﬂeet, but it seemed reasonable to suppose that he did, serving under Kent, who was Admiral.26 Although he had been closely involved with ships for many years, this may have been the ﬁrst time he was part of a military ﬂeet. When Queen Margaret finally sailed from France to Scotland in early November 1462, she had only a small force of Frenchmen with her, under her old friend Piers de Brézé, seneschal of Normandy. Landing in Northumberland, they captured Alnwick, so that once again all three great castles were in their hands. By early December all of them were besieged by a royal army under Warwick, which daily expected a Scottish army to fall on it from the rear. Warwick set up his headquarters at nearby Warkworth Castle, from where he could ride out each day and oversee the Earl of Kent and Lord Scales conducting the siege of Alnwick, Lord Montagu and Lord Ogle that of Bamborough and the Earl of Worcester and Sir Ralph Grey that of Dunstanburgh. The king himself remained in Durham. The Duke of Norfolk was at Newcastle with orders to supply all the ordnance and victuals Warwick might require. Since the duke was just 18 years old and without experience of warfare, it is reasonable to suppose he was under

38

YO R K I S T LO R D

the tutelage of Howard and other experienced men who had served his father. That Howard spent much of the winter with the young duke is clear from the long lists of payments he made on his lord’s behalf, which form the opening pages of his own surviving accounts. This included a number of new clothes for him together with a trunk in which to carry them. By 16 November the duke and his train had reached Grantham where a messenger from the king met them. John Paston, younger son of Howard’s former opponent, was also with them in the service of the young duke and it is from his long letter home on 11 December that we owe the information about the siege.27 The odds are that it was Howard himself who was conducting the supply train under Norfolk’s nominal command. Bamborough and Dunstanburgh surrendered just before Christmas 1462 and the full force of the Yorkist army was turned on Alnwick. With no Scottish army aid materializing, it, too, fell. Its commander had been Robert, Lord Moleyns (by then Lord Hungerford), under whom Howard had served on the ill-fated Gascon campaign in 1453. By the winter of 1463, all Edward’s realm was in his hands except the castle of Harlech in Wales. A parliament summoned for York on 5 February was postponed until 7 March at Leicester. This time the king took the precaution, as Sir Robert Conyers informed Margaret Paston, to have letters sent to every gentleman in Norfolk asking them to attend his brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, at Norwich on shire day. This expedient worked, for there is no indication that there was any trouble in Norfolk at this election, though in general the elections elsewhere were so unruly that it was decided to declare them all invalid and hold them again. It seems likely that this time, in a reversal of roles, it was Howard who was elected a knight of the shire for Norfolk.28 The royal grant of manors the previous year had included two in the county, so the previous objection to him representing Norfolk no longer held good. The sheriff ’s election returns have not survived, but Howard spent three months that spring in London, whither parliament was ﬁnally summoned. This was a long stay for him, which may be explained by parliamentary attendance. The castles of Bamborough and Dunstanburgh fell again to the Lancastrians in March 1463 as a result of treachery. This immediately set off fears of an invasion from the direction of France and by the summer Alnwick too, had fallen, so that all three of the Northumbrian castles were back in Lancastrian hands. The work of reducing them had to be done again, but this time Howard was not involved militarily. On 22 March he was appointed to a commission of array for Essex to guard Harwich and Dovercourt against invasion.29 Yet ships and seamen were not raised until July for a ﬂeet to protect the coasts and prevent any aid, ofﬁcial or unofﬁcial, from the continent reaching the Lancastrians. August 1463 saw Howard ﬁtting out ships. There appears to be no surviving record of his commission unless it was deemed to be inherent in the commission of array,

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

39

but his accounts note the payment of ‘prest’ money to Richard Outlaw, master of the Mary Talbot of Lynn, as compensation for 100 men pressed into royal service, and Howard also gave them money for drink. His Ipswich agent, Richard Felaw, received more than £50 in various payments during August to purchase corn, saltﬁsh, beer and other essential supplies for the Mary and other ships in the ﬂeet. On 10 August, it was noted that Howard had bought victuals prior to his own ‘goyng to the see’ and he spent time in Ipswich and Harwich that month, travelling from one to the other by boat, paying for a week’s work by the Ipswich armourer and his men and laying in large stocks of arrows.30 The ships did not ﬁnally sail until late in August, but Howard probably did not go with them in the end for he was making preparations for a new land campaign. On 18 August he travelled to London and received bows, arrows and gunpowder from the armoury of the Tower, delivered to him by its constable, the Earl of Worcester. Once he was back at Stoke he engaged a gunner who was to be paid 1s. a week as well as his board and lodging.31 The new campaign seems to have been another of which Norfolk was the titular head, but of which most of the organization and probably the military direction, fell upon Howard. This time the location was not Northumberland, but centred on Norfolk’s Welsh castle of Holt in Denbighshire. There had been several sporadic disturbances in Wales, but none serious enough to warrant a royal army. On the other hand, King Edward wanted to show the Yorkist ﬂag with some degree of force behind it. The young duke’s father had made Howard constable of the castle, so his direction of the expedition was natural enough; when that appointment had been made is not known, but Howard himself notes in 1463 that it was made by ‘my lorde that dede is’ and the fee was £20 p.a. paid from Denbighshire lands; in October 1463 the appointment was renewed. At about this date he also noted that he held the formal position of chamberlain in the young duke’s household and he certainly spent much of 1462–3 with him. A note in his accounts records that, early in October, Howard paid for the making of a ﬁne gold chain, weighing 19½ oz., and worth 30s. an ounce, which was delivered to the duke at Holt on 30 October. Although Howard was notionally purchasing it on Norfolk’s behalf since it cost £32 11s.8d. and the duke was already heavily in debt to his cousin, it is unlikely that he seriously expected to be paid for it. Indeed, the very next entry in the accounts records the loan of 5 marks to the duke, one of many such, and Howard often stood surety for other debts on his behalf.32 While Norfolk led the main body of men to Denbighshire, Howard, with a small body of only 16 well-mounted men, travelled fast to the king at York by way of Lynn, Lincoln, Doncaster and Pontefract. They reached York on 17 October 1463 and stayed for four days while Howard received his orders. They then turned for Denbighshire and reached it four days later.33 During the winter months the Yorkist force made numerous sallies into the surrounding disaffected countryside

40

YO R K I S T LO R D

from their secure position at Holt. A major attempt to capture the local rebel leader, John Hamner, began on 5 January 1464 when Howard left the castle at midnight taking Sir John Bromley with him as his lieutenant and 1,200 men. If the delivery of twelve pounds of gunpowder from Chester two days earlier is of any signiﬁcance, they had some light guns with them. They also had a dozen mounted men on ‘scout-watch’. The force was away for several days and ranged as far as Whitchurch in Shropshire. Whether it was on this foray or a subsequent one that Hamner was taken is unclear.34 As in Northumberland the previous year, we owe our knowledge of what went on to the pen of John Paston from his position in Norfolk’s household. It would clearly have taken some time after the capture of the rebels for the king to be informed and for him to delegate the decision on their fate to Norfolk. Whatever the timescale, Howard was ultimately successful in the campaign and it is not unlikely that the decision to give the rebels grace rather than execute them was to some extent at least his doing. During his stay at Holt he had been reminded of how a man’s fortune might suddenly be reversed. Paston reports in his letter that Howard had received three or four letters from Thomas Daniel. His brother-in-law had been attainted after Towton and had since been in hiding in his original home county of Cheshire; it does not require much stretch of the imagination to link his presence there to Paston’s report that the commons had risen in that county. Paston does not indicate that he had any knowledge of the contents of the letters, or even whether Howard answered them. He certainly did not persuade Daniel to surrender, for later that year the determined rebel was with the Lancastrians in their last stand at Harlech Castle. It may be that he had no intention of surrendering and only wanted news of his wife and sons, but that does not explain the number of letters he wrote, and it is more likely that he was trying to negotiate some deal with Howard and failed. Life campaigning in Wales was not all hardship. The duke had brought his duchess with him; he and Elizabeth Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, had been married as children. Lady Howard was also a member of the party, since her husband gave her money on 25 January. There would have been Christmas festivities and it is worth noting that Howard did not set off on his January expedition until just before Twelfth Night. As the duke’s chamberlain, he was responsible for these arrangements as well as military ones, and at the duke’s bidding he took a reward on New Year’s Eve to the duchess’s grandmother’s harper, who lived in Chester. At the end of their stay, the duke and his treasurer assigned William Rodon, receiver of Holt Castle, to repay large sums that Howard had paid out. There is also a rueful entry in his own accounts that he had had to borrow four marks off the steward at cards. This age-old occupation of soldiers may perhaps also account for an otherwise inexplicable action. That same month he purchased from Robert Bernard the reversion of the constableship of Bramber, a Mowbray castle in West Sussex, after the death of Robert Langton, paying for

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 1 – 1 4 6 4

41

it £20 and his bay courser, which he valued at £8.35 Langton was still holding the appointment in 1474–5, so it was not a good buy. Howard showed no interest in extending his sphere of inﬂuence outside East Anglia at this period of his career, and the action may possibly be explained by Bernard’s need to sell off assets to settle gambling debts. John Paston had predicted to his father that the expeditionary force would be back in London for Easter. This was in time for the preparations for what turned out to be the last of the series of campaigns against the Lancastrians in the north. It was preceded by diplomatic activity and by mid-April Scottish ambassadors had arrived at York to negotiate a peace. The king left London for the north on 28 April, waiting at Leicester for ten days so that levies from different parts of the country could join him. Howard, leaving home on 9 May and travelling by way of Bury St. Edmunds and Newmarket, reached Leicester on 13 May and would have been one of the last to arrive. He took with him 21 men from his household, the same number who had accompanied him to Wales, though the personnel was not identical. He noted that he was riding his horse called Lyard Hewes and that he had lent his companions various pieces of personal equipment.36 When the royal forces reached York on 22 May it was to ﬁnd that Lord Montagu had done their work for them, smashing a Lancastrian army at Hexham while they were still as far south as Nottingham. This, together with his victory a month earlier at Hedgeley Moor, effectively put an end to Lancastrian activity. The Duke of Somerset and Lords Hungerford and Roos paid for their actions with their heads and the now leaderless Lancastrians surrendered all three of the Northumbrian castles within a month. Howard and his troop stayed in York for one week only before starting for home. He did, however, send the sum of £10 to the Lord Chamberlain, Hastings, towards the cost of the sieges.37 By the summer of 1464 the realm was at peace for the ﬁrst time in almost ten years and Howard was able to hang up his sword for a while. He spent most of the summer at home at Stoke, but in late July travelled to Norfolk to East Winch. From there he visited Lynn in the company of Lord Scales and went on to the king who was at Fotheringay. Two days were spent hunting at Castle Rising and on his return to Suffolk, another four days were spent hunting, clearly a favourite pastime. Early in October he held the Admiralty court, probably at Harwich.38 By November he was at Reading in attendance on the king. He spent several weeks there, lodging at the Abbey and giving the monks 4s. Spending time at court was not cheap; Howard spent £22 6s. simply on food for his men and his horses, and there were a number of payments for new clothes and shoes for himself as well as for his sons, Thomas and Nicholas, and a new crimson velvet gown for his wife. Regular messengers travelled between Reading and Stoke and one was sent to obtain greyhounds. At one point he lent Lady Scales 7s. 4d. to play at cards.

42

YO R K I S T LO R D

Elizabeth, the Scales heiress, had been married for several years to the queen’s brother, Anthony Woodville, who held the barony in her right. After the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and Earl of Oxford, Scales was the next most signiﬁcant peer in East Anglia, and it behoved Howard to keep on good terms with him. It may, perhaps, be signiﬁcant that most of his dealings were with Lady Scales. She had sent him a letter in the previous September, they were clearly in the same company at Reading and travelled on to Eltham where the court held Christmas; on 1 January 1465 he paid Lord Scales’s child (probably a page) a shilling, probably for bringing a new year’s gift or greeting from his lord or lady. He received similar ones from the Duke of Clarence and the Duchess of Norfolk, whose messengers received 8s. 4d. and 4s. 2d. respectively, all clearly differentiating ﬁnancially the rank of their master or mistress.39 New Year, rather than Christmas, was the time for exchanging gifts and while we do not know what the king’s New Year gift to Howard was, we do know that he received one, for he paid the royal messenger 8s. 4d. Howard’s own gift to the king was a horse, a courser named Lyard Duras, which cost him the enormous sum of £40, clearly the best piece of horseﬂesh money could buy, since his gift to the queen, a courser called Lyard Lewes, cost a more reasonable £8. In the early summer of 1465 he felt emboldened to ask the king for the right to take a certain number of royal swans that had formerly been granted to Giles Seynclow; the king was graciously pleased to issue a warrant accordingly.40 Thus, by the beginning of 1465 John Howard was well-established at court as a knight of the body and royal carver. He had proved his loyalty, reliability and military competence in the previous ﬁve years, attributes which Edward IV valued more than high birth or rank.

3

The Yorkist Servant, 1465–1471

Despite all his military service on behalf of Edward IV during the early 1460s, John Howard still spent the majority of his time in Suffolk at home in Stokeby-Nayland with his family. It was where all his interests and his connections lay and was a pattern that had not substantially changed for two decades. He spent periods away when service to his lord demanded it, or later when parliament or royal service required him, or when business interests meant visits to the ports his ships frequented, and on occasion the whole household removed to their Stepney house, but these were only breaks, albeit sometimes long ones, in the pattern of life at Tendring Hall. While he was enjoying a well-earned respite at home after the military activities of the previous few years, he and the rest of England learned of a major political development. In May 1464 Edward IV had secretly wed a Lancastrian widow, Elizabeth Woodville, Lady Grey. It was a major political blunder, which he had kept secret for months until negotiations for a foreign match had reached a stage where he was forced to confess that they could not continue. Elizabeth was several years older than the king, undoubtedly beautiful and the eldest child of John, Duke of Bedford’s widow, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and her second husband, Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers. She had served as one of Queen Margaret of Anjou’s ladies and her parents had been close to the former queen. The Woodvilles were a gentry family of some standing and under Henry VI her father became a useful royal administrator, who was pardoned by Edward soon after he came to the throne. It was hardly surprising that court circles were dismayed by the king’s lack of judgement, but outside London the view may have been somewhat different. In his household book for the period is a draft letter in Howard’s own handwriting, perhaps addressed to Lord Rivers, but more probably his son, Anthony, Lord Scales, whom Howard knew well, in which he reports soundings apparently undertaken at the request of the addressee. Of the many people in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex that he had spoken to, all but one were well-disposed towards the marriage. While this was obviously the desired answer, it may not have strayed too far from the truth; Englishmen were often hostile to foreign royal brides and while the court may have resented a parvenu queen, this may not have been the reaction outside London. In an uncompleted sentence that he later deleted, Howard says that he understood from his lordship that the ‘queen

44

YO R K I S T LO R D

would have Lady Howard . . .’ presumably as a member of her household, and indeed, his wife entered the queen’s household in November that year.1 At Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation in May 1465, Howard was one of the household members who served at the sumptuous banquet held in her honour. He supplied ‘the plate that the Qwene was serv wethe the day of here kornasyon’ as he put it in his own inimitable spelling, and for which ‘the Kenge howethe me xxli’, and prior to the ceremony itself he delivered cloth to Thomas Vaughan and fellow members of the household for the gowns they were to wear; presumably he had received a royal commission to do so. He also noted that he had lent the King 8s. 4d. for his offering the day before the coronation, though he does not say where the offering was made. A tournament at Smithﬁeld completed the celebrations. Some of the Burgundians who had accompanied the new queen’s uncle, Jacques de Luxembourg, Count of St Pol, to attend, took part, but the winner was Thomas, Lord Stanley, who received a ruby ring from the queen. Howard was also one of the participants and presumably had some hand in the organization for he noted that the king owed him £40 for it. He paid for crimson and white sarsenet for his saddle and 6½ yards of crimson velvet, probably for his horse’s trappings, as well as for a ‘shamfron of stele’ and having his saddle powdered and painted. The embroiderer’s wife was paid for silk for his helm, and his great standard was brought down from Suffolk. Large amounts of crimson cloth were also bought for the gowns of the men in his train and ﬁnally he spent the very large sum of £5 on drink in London taverns.2 Most of the summer was spent in Suffolk, overseeing the building of a new ship (see Chapter 10) and dealing with other business, including some for the Duchess of York’s honour of Clare, though he managed to ﬁt in a ﬁve-day hunting trip in August, followed by another with the Earl of Oxford, before he spent a week in attendance on the king. Then, in September 1465, Katherine Howard fell seriously ill. She had bought medicine for herself when she was in London for a fortnight the previous March, but now her husband’s accounts illustrate the efforts he made to have her cured. The ﬁrst indication that anything was amiss is the note of a payment of 16d. to Robert Clarke for his costs in riding to Lord ‘Bonseres’ (Bourchier? Berners?) place to fetch a physician called Friar Robert Wotton. On the same day Frederick Donker was paid 2s. 8d. for medicines for my lady and two days later 4s. 2d. more. A week later, Thursten was despatched to London to fetch other physicians, and pending his return, Master Roger and John Clerke were paid for attending her. Then Frederick Donker was also sent to London for more medicines, but as her illness grew worse, the emphasis changed to purchasing things that would comfort her and make her sickness more bearable: sugar candy, water of honeysuckle and special wine. On 30 September she ordered 5s. to be given to the friars of Colchester, probably knowing that her end was approaching, but she lingered for a month, dying on the ‘morrow after

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

45

Soulmass day’ (3 November).3 They had been married for more than twenty years. No record of Howard’s relationship with his wife survives, but the marriage may be judged successful by the standards of their time. She presented him with a nursery of children, including sons, and they seem to have been fond enough of each other for her to travel up and down the country to be with him when duty called him away from home for any length of time. During shorter absences she managed the household and estates with efﬁciency, submitting the accounts for her husband to check on his return.4 The details of Katherine Howard’s funeral are preserved among the Paston collection. She was buried in the church of Stoke-by-Nayland two days after her death, when Howard gave 68 children in the choir 2d. each and to 129 priests and clerks 6d. each. The feast he gave at her burial would have fed most of the county, although the items are not priced: 40 sheep, 70 pigs, 30 does, 12 great oxen, 140 chickens, 800 eggs, as well as rabbits, geese, swans, partridges, pheasants, peacocks and mallards, and three pipes of wine and 32 barrels of beer were consumed. At her ‘trental’ or month’s mind, 5,300 poor folk received a penny each in alms. Although it is not possible to work out the exact cost, Howard spent nearly a hundred pounds in total. He was displaying his family’s status quite as much as his regard for his dead wife. Later he gave Sir Benet, a priest, 40s. to sing a mass for her every year for four years at Cambridge.5 Many years afterwards, her descendants erected a brass plaque on her tomb in the south aisle of the church. A month after the funeral, Howard retreated to London where the household spent Christmas; he received New Year’s gifts from both the king and queen, bestowing 6s. 8d. on the messengers who brought them. January 1466 saw a quick trip back to Stoke before a return to London at the end of the month. He stayed a few weeks and then travelled back to Stoke. At this period he seems to have been almost constantly on the move, to Bury St Edmunds, Thetford, Cochester, Wivenhoe, Manningtree, Dovercourt, Harwich and Ipswich; he also spent time at Oxford and at Framlingham with the duke. If, with the loss of his wife, he found it difﬁcult to stay at home, he may have been relieved to spend the next summer in Calais: ‘Md., my mastyr was at Caleys fro the xv. day of May into the xvii. day of Septembre’. Howard had, in fact, been charged with conveying to Calais Edward IV’s commissioners, named as Warwick, Hastings, Lord Wenlock and four or ﬁve others, who were travelling to France and Burgundy, among other reasons, for the marriage of the king’s sister, Margaret, to Charles, Count of Charolais, son of the Duke of Burgundy. While Howard was in Calais, the king also charged him with settling the wages of the garrisons there and at Guines. Thomas Howard accompanied his father and was bought a ‘gestraunt’ of mail and two swords before the trip, while both men indulged in some new clothes and shoes. When the commissioners journeyed on from Calais, father and

46

YO R K I S T LO R D

son remained there. They spent time buying, among other things, featherbeds and saddles; one of the entries in the accounts is in Thomas’s hand, prefaced by the words ‘my fader bowt’. The major purchases, however, were of Flemish and other cloth. Nearly 200 ells of the former were purchased in Bruges at considerable expense for their transport to Calais. They lodged with Mistress Katerine Braytofft, with Howard hiring three chambers with six beds for 12 weeks at a cost of £7 and bestowing on his hostess a gift of white damask as well as considerable sums in loans. He received a safe-conduct from the French king in August, but there is no evidence that he actually left Calais and he seems to have acted as a communication point between the commissioners in Burgundy and London, sending one of his hostess’s cousins there with a letter to ‘my lorde chamberlain’. If Hastings was in London in mid-July, he either did not travel out with the other commissioners in May, or had already returned home.6 Howard himself was back in London by mid-September 1466 and returned to Suffolk by Michaelmas, but a month later he was again in London. At least part of the reason for his visit was ofﬁcial, because he paid for boat hire up the Thames to Westminster and gave the king’s secretary 3s. 4d. after he had been appointed on 29 October to head a commission to seize the Valentyne of Newcastle and its gear and bring its crew before the king in Chancery. Howard, however, was in no hurry to deal with maritime affairs on the east coast. He stayed in London with his lord, the Duke of Norfolk, and he probably spent Christmas at court and he certainly spent a good deal of time in various taverns. The household accounts do not specify the New Year’s gifts he made, although he spent £6 13s. 4d. on them, but the king’s gift to him was a quiver. On 2 January he took the king’s barge to Gravesend, where he met envoys from Burgundy, led by the Seigneur de Gruythuse, and escorted them to Westminster, hiring an additional barge for their luggage and boats to bring them to land from their ships. While the task was an honour, Howard almost certainly had more personal things on his mind, for on or about 19 January he remarried, 15 months after his wife’s death.7 Howard’s second wife was not the equal of his ﬁrst in rank, but as a widow, she was a good deal wealthier. Margaret, daughter of Sir John Chedworth, had ﬁrst been married to Nicholas Wyfold, a wealthy grocer (he had lent the king £100 towards the cost of the relief force for Bordeaux of which Howard had formed part), who was Lord Mayor of London in 1450/1 and who had died in 1459, leaving his young widow with an only daughter, Isabel. There is no record of how long they had been married, but Isabel was certainly underage and unmarried at her father’s death. Wyfold left Margaret a wealthy woman, for he bequeathed her all the furniture in his hall, parlour, chambers, buttery and kitchen, together with plate to the value of £100 and £1,000 in cash. It was hardly surprising that she soon found herself another husband, this time one from her own station in life. He was John Norris, esquire, of Bray in Berkshire, who took her as his third

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

47

wife. She had stepsons as old as herself, but there appear to have been younger Norris children, too, possibly from his second marriage. Margaret bore him another daughter, Lettice, and possibly a son, William. The marriage was not a very long one; John Norris died in September 1466, almost a year after Katherine Howard. He bequeathed the manor of Yattenden to his heir, William, and sums of money to all his other offspring, but the residue of all his lands and goods went to Margaret, provided she remain a widow; if she took another husband, only her lawful due as his widow was to be hers. He also made her his executrix, but by the time she proved his will, she was already married to John Howard.8 Margaret was a perfectly respectable match for Howard, but her money must have made little impression beside his own wealth. One of her uncles, apparently, was John Chedworth, Bishop of Lincoln, and another, William Chedworth, was Clerk to the Common Council of London. The latter was useful to Howard, but he could have married widows far better connected if he had had a mind to it.9 That they had known each other for some time is highly likely, since Margaret’s eldest stepson, Sir William Norris, was married to Jane, daughter of Howard’s cousin Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford, and his own daughter Margaret was a member of young Lady Norris’s household; Howard had visited her there the preceding November. In addition, Sir William seems to have been a friend of Howard’s, and his younger brother, John, often acted as Howard’s London agent in shipping business. One of Howard’s surviving draft letters is addressed to him and is full of details about cargoes and the sale of two of his ships.10 In view of the fact that only four months had elapsed between the death of John Norris and his widow’s remarriage, it suggests that for Howard and Margaret there may have been personal preferences involved beyond the more usual business arrangements of a marriage. This supposition is supported by the valuable gifts Howard showered upon his new bride. The list of these, dated 22 January 1467, is a long one and includes many items of jewellery, gowns and furs, among which the following highlights may be noted: ‘2 rings of gold set with good diamonds the which the Queen gave my master’, and ‘a collar set with thirty four roses and suns set on a course of black silk with hanger of gold garnished with a sapphire’ (this type of collar or chain, bearing the king’s device, was worn by many at court), countless rings and chains, many of them set with precious stones, ‘rubys, saphyres, amytes, emerawdes and perles’. The ﬁrst reference in his own accounts to his remarriage is an entry for 20 January, when he paid for two pleats of white lawn and the keeper of the accounts added, ‘And he gaffe the said lawne to my lady his wyffe’. However, on 17 January, his brother-in-law, Lord Abergavenny, had sent him a doe, probably intended for the wedding feast and a day later he paid for four pikes, identiﬁed as being for his wedding, which probably took place on 19 January and certainly in London. Margaret retained her former husband’s manor of Bray and several

48

YO R K I S T LO R D

other manors as part of her dower, however much else she had to give up as the price for her remarriage. Almost immediately after their wedding, Howard despatched various lengths of arras, some of which had newly come from Calais, sumptuous cushions and a bed hung with crimson damask to Bray. Important enough to add to the account in his own hand was ‘a pote of selver in grene genger that the kenge gaffe’, presumably as a wedding gift to the couple. For the ﬁrst time Howard’s interests moved beyond East Anglia, and Bray, which was more convenient for London, Windsor and the court became one of their main residences. This was immediately recognized by the Crown; he was appointed a justice of the peace for Berkshire and in November 1467 he was appointed as sheriff for the joint shrievalty of Berkshire and Oxfordshire.11 A list of the people Margaret brought to join her new household is given in the accounts. After ‘My Lady’ come Mistress Jane, Mistress Isabel, Mistress Lettice, all described as her daughters, and Master William, her son. This raises several problems of identity. Isabel was undoubtedly Isabel Wyfold, Margaret’s child by her ﬁrst marriage and Lettice her daughter by John Norris, both of whom are named in her will. The will, however, makes no mention of children called either Jane or William. John Norris’ will, however, does mention a second younger son called William, like his heir (it was not unusual for two brothers to be given the same name at this date, the best known example being the brothers John Paston), and daughters called Anne and Lettice. The names Anne and Jane are easily confused, particularly in Latin, the language of his will, and it may well be that Jane was a stepdaughter of Margaret and not her own child. In Howard’s accounts for 1481 there are several references to ‘mistress Norris’, and this was probably Jane Norris, old enough now to be given a courtesy title. But if Margaret was not Jane’s mother, there was less incentive to ﬁnd a husband for her, particularly if she had made herself useful. Her younger half-sister, Lettice, was already married by this date to William Radmyld, who was listed as being in Margaret’s household before she married Howard, but who did not move with her to Stoke. William Norris, however, was almost certainly Margaret’s son, since if he were not he would probably have been taken into the household of a male Norris, rather than residing with his stepmother. He presumably died as a child, since there is no further mention of him in the accounts or in Margaret’s will.12 Despite a move to Bray immediately after his marriage, Howard was back home in Suffolk before Easter. While there is some doubt about his election to parliament in 1463, there is none at all about his election in 1467. The Pastons have no comment to make on this occasion, so it may be assumed that all passed off peacefully. He was one of only 14 household men returned to the Commons, which suggests that the king made no attempt to inﬂuence its composition. On 20 April Howard and Thomas Brews were chosen as knights of the shire for Suffolk at Ipswich. In his accounts Howard made a note of what the two of them

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

49

spent feasting the electors afterwards. The total came to £40 17s.8d., a very large sum even when shared between them. The food provided was naturally very similar to that received by the mourners at his wife’s funeral two years before, though the amounts were about half on this occasion. In addition to the food, the cost of buying, hiring and washing linen, the purchase of 12 dozen white cups and 64 great earthen pots, the hire of pewter vessels, the making of wooden racks on which to roast the meat, together with the payment of four chief cooks, 12 labourers hired to help them and four ‘washers of vessels’ was all carefully noted.13 Evidence of this kind is extremely rare for the ﬁfteenth century. Much is heard of intimidation and physical violence at elections but much less of the gentler means of persuasion more familiar in an eighteenth-century context. In the absence of other contemporary evidence, there is no means of knowing whether newly elected MPs were in the habit of rewarding their electors in this way, but it seems very likely. As generous as Howard was when elected himself, he was also prepared to help when he was not personally involved. In January 1483, when electors from the Duchess of York’s honour of Clare, for which he was steward, were on their way to vote in Ipswich, he paid for their lodgings and costs at Stoke-by-Nayland.14 Howard’s increasing inﬂuence ensured that he was sought after as a mediator in local affairs. Although his time was an immensely litigious one, not everyone wanted the expense of going to law, and not every dispute was susceptible to a legal judgement. At a county level, he would have been familiar with arbitration of this sort from his service on the duke’s council, but at a lower social level, men like him were valued for similar purposes. In about 1467 Howard drafted a letter to an unidentiﬁed but ‘ryte welbeloved kosen’, almost certainly a social equal if not an actual relative, informing him that he had learned that one of his ‘kosen’s’ servants, a man called Bensted, was pestering a widow of Sudbury to marry him, threatening her when persuasion failed by claiming that she owed him goods. Howard had a two-fold interest in the matter, for the lady was a tenant of the ‘hy an myty prynses my lady the Kinges mother’s’ honour of Clare, for which he was steward, and she was already promised to a servant of his own. Ofﬁces were not the only things in his gift; the ability to advance one of his followers in an advantageous marriage was equally valuable. Although the lady denied the claim of debt, she agreed to abide by a decision made by Howard and his ‘cousin’. If her unwelcome suitor would abide by it also, then the matter could be settled amicably, and so he suggested that his ‘cousin’ and Bensted should come over and visit him and sort the matter out. Alas, we have no information about the outcome, but smart money would be on Howard’s servant as the lucky bridegroom.15 At about the same date, Howard addressed another draft to a ‘welbeloved frend’, offering himself as arbiter of the dispute, undertaking to listen carefully so as to ‘honderstonde the greffe on bothe sydes’.16 It was exactly this kind of

50

YO R K I S T LO R D

business that the king and council depended on their agents in the localities to deal with. For Howard to settle the matter satisfactorily for both parties increased his value to the Crown and enhanced his standing locally. Where his own interests were concerned, he could be somewhat less conciliating. In another personally drafted letter, again to an unidentiﬁed recipient in the mid-1460s, he expressed himself forcefully; his spelling, idiosyncratic even by ﬁfteenth-century standards, has been modernized: you shall understand I have very knowledge that ye have [? used] much unsuiting language against me, whereof I marvel greatly for I have given you no such cause; also ye say I am no better than a man of ‘klowetes’ [?clouts – exact meaning uncertain], it shall not be long ere [ye ﬁnd me better]* I make you to understand me otherwise [save the law]* as the law will, though I shall spend as much thereupon in a day as ye be worth; also ye shall understand I am informed where Michael Reyndeford and Karowe and I with others were enfeoffed [with others]* in a house and land within Dovercourt to the behoof of John Hobbes and his father-in-law, and now by your sinister labour against all right and conscience ye cause daily great trouble in the same, saying that it shall not be spared for no silver, I would advise you to cease both of your labour and of your spending and also of your unthrifty language and if ye do so ye shall ﬁnd ease therein by the grace of God, who amend your disposition. Written at Stoke.17 (*phrase deleted in the draft).

Howard’s remarriage in 1467 saw a major change in his personal life, but later that year came an event which was to prove a signiﬁcant milestone in his career. The jousting at the queen’s coronation, in which he had taken part, had been so successful that arrangements were made for another tournament. Queen Elizabeth’s brother, Anthony, Lord Scales, an acknowledged champion in England, was to meet Anthony, Count de la Roche, more commonly known as the Bastard of Burgundy (he was Duke Philip’s son), who was recognized throughout Europe as one of the ﬁnest jousters of his day. Internal politics in Burgundy delayed the contest until 1467. The Duke of Norfolk, as Earl Marshal, was due to preside over the event, but on 18 May he wrote to his ‘rygth trusty and enteerly beloved cousyn’ Howard that because God had visited him with ‘grete inﬁrmite and disease’ he was unable to execute his duty in person: Wherfor of verray necessite I must depute suche a persone in all goodly hast to ocupye as my deputee and to have my full power undere me at that season as is bothe of byrthe honorable and one all other wyse lykly. How be it that of long tyme contynuynge I have ben enured of your stedfaste and preved feythful cosyngnage and tendyrnesse to me shewed unfeyned to my gret refute [sic] and hertes ease at all seasons. Wiche emboldeth me to call uppon you now; and also remembrynge the honour of the offyce doynge and the neighness of blode that ye be of to me, I thenke no person so convenable to ocupy

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

51

in myn absence as you . . . I specyally pray you, as my feythfull truste is holy in you, to take the labour upon you and to do theryn be your discrecion to the most honour of the kynge, the realme . . .18

and after promising to pay the costs, the duke signed the letter with his own hand. John Mowbray was 23, and since he died only nine years later, he may always have suffered from poor health. The tournament took place at Smithﬁeld on 11 and 12 June 1467, soon after the opening of parliament. In a country recently wracked by civil war, it was an opportunity for ﬁghting to be displayed in a purely chivalric mode and to impress the Burgundian visitors with the splendour of Edward’s court. There is little doubt that the tournament was a magniﬁcent spectacle, for it impressed even Olivier de la Marche, the Burgundian chronicler, who was master of ceremonies at the Burgundian court, and who noted that the English Marshal knew how to perform his ofﬁce well.19 While nobody doubted the skill behind the organization of the event, it certainly cost John Howard a great deal of money. His own train consisted of 70 men from his own household and tenants, who were all ﬁtted out with jackets in his livery. He made various calculations as to what he had spent on the whole affair. In the following January he reckoned it to be 300 marks ‘which my lord [Norfolk] must allow me’, presumably from monies advanced from the royal coffers. Since Norfolk was already in a state of chronic indebtedness to him, his cousin may not really have expected full repayment.20 The outcome for Howard more than made up for any ﬁnancial loss: he had proved to the king that he could perform creditably on a national and not just a regional stage. The festivities came to an abrupt end when news reached England of the death of the Bastard’s father, Duke Philip. The grief-stricken guest rushed home, carried across the Channel in Howard’s new ship, the Edward. Extra men were taken from his Christopher to augment the crew of the Edward, and Howard paid sums varying from 10s. to 2s. 6d. to the sailors for their wages. Because it was the quickest crossing, the Edward went to Calais, from whence the Bastard could travel swiftly to Burgundy by horse. It took a few days for the ship to be supplied, but Howard and his passengers were in Calais on 27 June, where he paid ﬁshermen for the use of their boats to set them on land, and having taken ceremonial leave of the Burgundians, he paid for his men’s dinner and drink in a Calais tavern. On this somewhat prosaic note, the great extravaganza ended.21 As in the previous year, much of the summer of 1467 was spent at home, though there was a 15-day hunting trip in August, on which he noted that he had spent £7 2s. In September a great many new clothes were purchased for Thomas Howard and then costs were paid for his journey to Windsor, which indicates that this was when Thomas formally left home to enter royal service. He had been made a henchman of the royal household, of whom there were seven. Their

52

YO R K I S T LO R D

duties were largely ceremonial, and they were under the command of the master of horse. His name still occurs in the accounts as receiving gifts of money or a new gown, but these were on occasions when his father was himself at court or in London. For Howard himself that autumn, while parliament was in recess, came his ﬁrst major diplomatic appointment and it is hard not to see it as a result of the tournament’s success. In October 1467 he crossed the Channel as a member of an embassy to Louis XI of France. This is the point when he effectively moved beyond being one of the Duke of Norfolk’s senior men, albeit also in royal service, and became a national ﬁgure in his own right. At about the same time as his ﬁrst ambassadorial appointment, he was made a member of the king’s council; he was certainly a member by February 1468. Not only did the position add dignity to an envoy, but it also meant he was covered by the councillor’s oath of secrecy. By the time he joined the council, division of opinion over whether England should ally itself with France or Burgundy was already apparent. In the face of opposition from his cousin, the Earl of Warwick, Edward IV was in favour of Burgundy.22 In trying to entice Edward away from Burgundy, Louis XI made some very tempting offers in 1467, but the king had made up his mind. A high-powered embassy from Louis in July of that year was treated with distinct coolness and went home merely with the king’s promise to send an embassy in return and meagre gifts of hunting horns, leather bottles and some large mastiffs. Edward had already entered into an agreement with the new Duke Charles of Burgundy and in September 1467 despatched to him a ﬁne embassy headed by Lord Hastings and Lord Scales. The ambassadors appointed to visit France were much less impressive, Sir Richard Tunstall and Thomas Langton, both former Lancastrians, and Sir John Howard. As a team they were clearly intended to imply to Louis that Edward did not consider their relations important enough to send anyone of higher rank. On 18 October Howard paid a number of bills for new clothes and there are no further account entries between then and 16 November, when he paid for repairs to the Edward at Southampton. It seems reasonable to suppose, therefore, that they crossed to France in mid-October, and since it was clear that Edward had allied himself with Burgundy, there was little reason for his ambassadors to prolong their stay. Despite the somewhat inauspicious occasion of this ﬁrst embassy, the low-key trio seems to have impressed both Edward and Louis, for they were destined to make many more journeys to France together.23 The Duchy of Burgundy was one of England’s key trading partners, so in favouring an alliance with it, the king was in tune with the views of the majority of his countrymen, including Howard. This is clear from two letters the latter wrote in January 1468. The king had summoned a council at Coventry and Howard wrote apologizing that he was unable to attend because of an accident to his leg, but at the same time, to an unnamed colleague he offered to lead a contingent of 100 men at his own expense if the king decided to go to war with France.

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

53

The council warrants under the great seal, which usually give the names of those councillors present at meetings, survive too patchily to build up a valid picture of who were the most active members, and Howard’s frequent trips abroad on military and diplomatic business would have ensured that he did not become the most regular of attendees. However, in February 1468, his leg healed and he was one of the few present when Edward summoned a meeting to allow Warwick to put forward his views on a French alliance, a week after he had himself signed a treaty with Burgundy.24 The Anglo-Burgundian alliance was crowned by the marriage between Edward’s sister, Margaret, and the new Duke Charles in July 1468. The Lady Margaret left accompanied by a suite which included Lords Wenlock, Scales and Dacre and Sir John Howard; he attended her aboard the new Helen of London. Two of the seven ships that conveyed the party across the Channel were his and he received £50 towards the costs of the ships and their mariners. Edward went to considerable lengths to raise the money to ensure that his sister went to Burgundy in sufﬁcient splendour to uphold the prestige of the English Crown, but the competition was stiff. The Duchess of Norfolk was the bride’s senior lady-in-attendance and in her train went John Paston the younger, who was so dazzled by the Burgundian court that he wrote home to his mother on 8 July, ‘I hert never of non lyek to it, save Kyng Artourys cort. And by my trowthe, I have no wyt nor remembrans to wryte to yow half the worchep that is her’. Margaret was married at Damme, just outside Bruges, and her formal entry into the city was accompanied by the best pageants Paston had ever seen.25 Members of the wedding party were back in England by mid-July, and it is likely that on his way back home from London, Howard met Richard, Duke of Gloucester, at Colchester while the latter was on a visit to East Anglia; as constable of its castle, he was the senior royal ofﬁcial in the area. He was also steward of Cecily, Duchess of York’s honour of Clare, and Richard may have been travelling to visit his mother there. In a draft of a letter, almost certainly to his lord, the Duke of Norfolk, dated 22 July, but without a year, Howard says My ryte esspeysal good lord, afeter al dew rekomenasyon plese yowe to wete yester day my lord a Glowseter kame to Kolchester, and as I was in komenykasyon wethe is lordesche of dyvers materes, a monge hoder I dede remember yower lordeschepe to my lord, prometinge yowe I fowend my lord as wel desposed to ward yowe as any lord may be to a noder; safe my lord spekethe it largely wereof I was ryte glad to here it. Ferthermor my lord hathe dessyred me to be wethe heme ate Sodebery, Lanon and Seynte Hedmondesbery [Sudbury, Lavenham and Bury St Edmunds] and ferther yeffe I myte. Bote I dorste promese heme no ferther, fore I was nor hame nat serten howe hastely ye wold have me. Were fore my lord I pray yowe sende me worde be wate day ye wol have me ther, and I schal nat breke ite, be the grase of God, ho have my ryte good lord in is blessed safegard.26

54

YO R K I S T LO R D

Duke Richard’s visit was unlikely to have taken place in the early 1460s, when he was a member of the Earl of Warwick’s household; in July of 1466 Howard was in Calais, and on the relevant date in 1467 he was in London, so 1468 seems the most likely year. If this is so, Richard was 15 and Howard in his forties, with sons only a little older than the duke. It seems from the letter that they got on well, and certainly Howard would not have missed the opportunity to improve his knowledge of a young man likely to become a very important ﬁgure in the country, and for whom he served as deputy admiral on the east coast. As yet, however, the young duke was not signiﬁcant enough for Howard to put him before his own lord, Norfolk. After the trip to Burgundy, Howard was immediately given further royal duties to perform. To complete the circle of alliances around France, Edward had renewed his treaty of amity with Duke Francis of Brittany, which entailed a promise to help protect his domains if they should be attacked. Louis XI promptly made them put this clause into operation by mounting a campaign against Brittany, the weakest of the three allies. True to his promise, Edward agreed to send 3,000 archers to Brittany, provided Francis did not make a peace with France detrimental to England. A month later, on 10 September 1468, Lord Scales and Lord Mountjoy were indented to command the expedition to Brittany, the former to launch an attack by sea on some undefended part of Louis’s coast and the latter to take the force of archers to Duke Francis. The musters were arranged for 28 September, at Portsmouth for Mountjoy’s men and at Gravesend and Sandwich for Scales’s ﬂeet. Throughout August and September Howard was responsible for preparing and victualling the east coast contingent of the ﬂeet. The only ship of his own among the seven which were pressed into service was the Christopher. Howard was responsible for victualling 1,000 soldiers and 500 mariners for a period of six weeks, each man being allowed 12d. per week. For this he was paid £522 18s. 4d. on 28 November. In addition to victualling the east coast ﬂeet, a further royal warrant authorized payment for £232 7s. 6d. as reimbursement for what he had spent victualling the skeleton crews for all Scales’s ships between 6 September and 19 September, before their full complements arrived and for what had been spent on one of the ships, the John of Newcastle, which had needed a new mast and a general reﬁt.27 The victualling, contrary to what might have been expected, was done not at Ipswich or Harwich, but in London. Howard’s accounts, covering about 14 pages, are arranged by commodity and cover the period from the beginning of September 1468 to Christmas, when every account had been ﬁnally settled. Fish, both fresh and salt, was bought largely from alien merchants, many of whom operated a policy of no credit and had to be paid in cash on the spot. The beer brewers, on the other hand, were English, although brewing was generally an alien occupation, and the huge quantities involved caused a chronic shortage of pipes

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

55

and barrels. Howard’s men were reduced to buying them wherever they could lay hands on them, some from chandlers, of course, many from the taverns of London (mostly named), and even Howard’s own friends and acquaintances were not spared: Lady Buckingham gave him ﬁve pipes, Lord Mountjoy’s cook was persuaded to part with three and Mr Hampton’s butler the same number. Men were sent out of London scouring the countryside for beef, which for the most part was bought on the hoof and slaughtered and salted immediately; the average cost of a bullock was about 12s. Wheat cost him 7s. per quarter and was likewise purchased for the most part outside London and, like the beer, was generally paid for by instalments. In mid- September the Earl of Warwick’s herald brought 112 quarters from his lord, but the latter was hardly motivated by patriotism, because Howard had to pay a shilling more per quarter for it. Other supplies, like salt, cheese, wood, pitch and tar are dealt with more summarily in the accounts and the name of the supplier is not usually given. Besides the victuals, Howard’s responsibilities also included the extra ships’ gear required, the masts, lines, oars and, ﬁnally, all the extra equipment needed for the men; he bought 300 platters at 4s. per hundred and 400 drinking bowls for the same price.28 While Howard was organizing the supplies and their transport downriver in a constant stream of lighters and barges to his base in Stepney, the ships’ masters were riding through the countryside raising the extra seamen needed to man the ships on a war footing, and Howard was later reimbursed for £21 he had advanced for their costs. Although he was not himself sailing with the ﬂeet, he had a personal interest in it, for his younger son, Nicholas, was sailing with Lord Scales on his ﬁrst military expedition. At the end of September, his father paid for a complete harness for him, costing the substantial sum of £6 16s. 8d. and, to complete the effect, bought him an ostrich feather. Finally, as the ﬂeet prepared to sail, he bestowed on him £20 ‘fore to pay fore alle maner of expenses behoveabille to hym’. With Nicholas went a force of men that numbered about 200, not men-at-arms, who could be recruited locally fairly easily, but skilled archers, some of whom came from as far as St Albans. Most had to be equipped with brigandines, the customary form of protective clothing, being small plates of metal sewn onto quilted linen or leather jackets and costing about 16s. each. A number of references to young Lord Cobham, the ward of Howard’s brotherin-law, Abergavenny, indicated that he went with Nicholas; they were much of an age.29 Thomas Howard, meanwhile, was one of a number of gentlemen Edward sent to liaise with Duke Charles and, according to his biographical epitaph, ‘there continued unto the end of the said war, to his great praise and thanks’, and on his return Edward immediately made him an esquire of the body. Earlier that year, in May 1468, Howard had been appointed to a parliamentary committee investigating corruption at the Mint, but in a much more signiﬁcant recognition of both his ﬁnancial abilities and of his increasing status, he was

56

YO R K I S T LO R D

appointed to the important ofﬁce of treasurer of the household and keeper of the wardrobe in September 1468.30 The treasurer, together with the steward and chamberlain, headed one of the three great departments of the royal household. The other two ofﬁces were held by peers throughout the reign of Edward IV, but the treasurers on the whole seem to have given more personal attention to their duties and required certain abilities. That Howard possessed them in abundance had been amply demonstrated that summer. Edward had succeeded to an insolvent and badly administered household, but the general insecurity of his early years on the throne meant that household reforms were not a major item on his agenda. His ﬁrst treasurer had been Sir John Fogge, who left ofﬁce in the summer of 1468. When Howard replaced him, it seems reasonable to suppose that, as a noted businessman, he was given the ofﬁce with a view to improving the ﬁnancial status of the household. His deputy, the cofferer, Sir John Elrington, was the holder of the highest position that was generally possible through internal promotion; that he was extremely able is clear from his later promotion to the post of treasurer itself, a very rare distinction. The Black Book of the Household, which was designed to regulate the various household departments and detailed the fees appropriate for the various ofﬁces, was almost certainly drawn up about 1471–2 and it is reasonable to suppose that Howard and Elrington laid the groundwork in the late 1460s. The combination of Elrington as cofferer and Howard as policy-maker suggest the years they were in post together as the most likely time for it to have been created. On 25 October 1468, as treasurer, Howard was granted the king’s proﬁts from the mint, coinage and exchange in the city and Tower of London for the payment of his expenses. Unfortunately his accounts are not preserved with those of other treasurers in abstract form on one particular exchequer roll; ironic in view of the efﬁciency of his personal accounting system. In fact, his treasurer’s accounts were never rendered and he was allowed exemptions from them in pardons dated 1473 and 1475. Some payments for the expenses of the royal household were made to him as keeper of the wardrobe: for example, £380 15s. 4d. in December 1468, a further £25 10s. 8d a month later, £100 in March 1469 and £233 6s.8d. in the following October.31 If Howard had much to contribute to the ofﬁce, the latter was an important step in his own career. The timing of Howard’s appointment was not the best since Edward was also beginning to make more use of him in the diplomatic ﬁeld, which inevitably took him away for long periods. The appointment, however, of one who was not a peer to a great household ofﬁce was a mark of considerable royal conﬁdence and advanced his standing not only in England but on embassies abroad. In the summer of 1468, while Howard had been victualling part of the ﬂeet, commercial relations between England and the group of north European merchant towns known as the Hanseatic League, which had been under strain for

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

57

some years, broke down completely. As Captain of Calais, Warwick had been guilty of serious acts of piracy against their ships, which endeared him to the merchant classes at home, but hardly helped Anglo-Hanseatic relations. Despite a favourable treaty that gave them trading rights in England, the Hanse had not reciprocated with trading privileges for the English in the Baltic, and there was a strong anti-Hansard movement in England. King Edward had repeatedly threatened to suspend their privileges unless they agreed to reciprocity and by 1467 most of the Hanse towns were prepared to give way. Against this background came a disastrous decision by the royal council in July 1468. The king of Denmark had seized four English ships on their way to Prussia. Despite protests from Denmark that the Hanse were in no way involved, the council decided that all Hanseatic merchants in England should be arrested, imprisoned and their goods seized until the English ships were released and their merchants compensated. The action was universally condemned, not only abroad but in England as well. The Hanse alleged that certain members of the council were responsible for thus inﬂuencing the king, an apparently well-founded claim. It could only have been through personal inﬂuence that 15 Englishmen who had suffered at Danish hands were given preference over the views and desires of the bulk of the English merchant classes. The Hanse records name Warwick, his brothers, Northumberland and the Archbishop of York, and Sir John Fogge as the guilty parties. Howard, with his shipping interests, could hardly have been disinterested, but his views were more likely to accord with the majority than with those of the Nevilles. It has been suggested that he was heavily involved because two of the four seized ships, the James and the Mary of Lynn, were owned by his close connection, Richard Outlaw. In fact, this is a case of mistaken identity. Howard’s Ipswich agent was Richard Felaw, not Outlaw. The names are sometimes taken to be interchangeable, but never by Howard; on the same page of his accounts in August 1463, Outlaw is described as the master of the Mary Talbot of Lynn, not one of Howard’s own ships, and Richard Felaw of Ispwich as the man responsible for victualling the ﬂeet of that year. By that date the latter had been both an MP and bailiff for his town and, although closely connected with shipping interests, was certainly not a mariner. If Howard had indeed been identiﬁed as working against the interests of the Hanse in 1468, it is highly unlikely that they would not have named him.32 The affair of the Hanse was an indication that, despite falling out with King Edward over the Burgundian alliance, the Earl of Warwick still wielded considerable inﬂuence in the council. It is clear that Howard’s loyalty was directly to the king and he was never one of those attached to the Nevilles. He was, however, associated with them in December 1468 when he, Warwick, Northumberland and George Willerby obtained a grant for 40 years of mining rights over all the gold and silver mines discovered north of the Trent, but this was in his capacity as

58

YO R K I S T LO R D

treasurer, to ensure that the king’s right to a twelfth share was protected.33 By the time of this grant, Warwick was undoubtedly planning a coup d’état. Despite his wealth, popularity and status, or perhaps because of them, the earl was not prepared to accept the fact that Edward was his own man and that when their views differed, it was the king’s that would prevail. He was also furious that Edward would not countenance the marriage of his own elder daughter and co-heiress, Isabel, to the king’s brother George, Duke of Clarence, who was still, at this date, the heir presumptive to the throne. It was not difﬁcult for the earl to suborn the aggrieved Clarence, who much preferred the prospect of an English heiress as a wife to a diplomatic match abroad. Both Warwick and Clarence had given Howard gowns of their livery a few years earlier, and on a visit to the house of the mayor of London, Howard had lent Clarence 20s. to give the king’s minstrels, but these were no more than general court dealings and he seems to have had no close connection with either of them.34 In the summer of 1469 Warwick’s treason came into the open when he, his brother-in-law, the Earl of Oxford, and Clarence crossed to Calais, where Clarence’s marriage to Isabel was celebrated by George Neville, Archbishop of York. The defection of Oxford presumably came as a shock to Howard, but it seems clear that the earl could never be properly reconciled to Edward IV after the executions of his father and brother. While Oxford was heading for Calais with Warwick and Clarence, King Edward and his household, Howard among them, set off on a tour of East Anglia. They arrived at Norwich on 18 June and John Paston entertained the queen’s brothers, Lord Scales and Sir John Woodville, to dinner at his mother’s house, ‘she beyng owt’, with, among the other guests, Howard and his son, Nicholas. Howard had quarrelled with Paston’s father, but he and the younger man had served together in Norfolk’s household and, given his growing inﬂuence, the Pastons were anxious to retain his goodwill.35 While the royal party was at Norwich, word reached the king of a series of risings in northern England. Most of them were Neville-inspired, including the most serious, known as the rebellion of ‘Robin of Redesdale’, but there was enough general discontent with the Yorkist regime for them to attract a considerable measure of popular support. Edward cancelled the rest of his East Anglian visit and began to move north with the male members of his entourage, including Howard, but leaving the queen and her ladies in Norfolk. The king was understandably slow to accept the threat from his cousin and brother, but it meant that when he reached Newark and was forced to realize the seriousness of his position, he did not have sufﬁcient forces to deal with it. He was reliant on the Earl of Pembroke bringing Welsh forces and the Earl of Devon forces from the west country to his aid. While they converged on the midlands, Robin of Redesdale’s army advanced south and Warwick and Clarence, who had returned to England immediately after the latter’s marriage, were bringing an army up from the south. The latter caught Pembroke and Devon

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

59

before they could reach the king and they were defeated at the resulting battle of Edgecote; Warwick promptly had them both executed, together with the queen’s father, Earl Rivers, and her brother, John. Edward, left without an army, fell into Warwick’s hands. Where was Howard in all this? There is no evidence. He may have remained with the king or initially returned to East Anglia to raise troops before heading for London. While Warwick might have been able to rule through the captive Henry VI in 1460, he had little chance of doing so with Edward in 1469. The king was sent off in custody to Middleham, and presumably his remaining household was permitted to disperse, but Warwick’s brazen treachery made his attempts to rule almost impossible. He could not command the real loyalty of any other than his own men, and even the common people, so long his supporters, failed to understand why, once the king’s unpopular favourites, such as Pembroke and Devon were removed, Edward was not permitted to continue his reign. In London, the king’s council under the Chancellor, Bishop Stillington of Bath and Wells, and including Howard, did their best to keep the wheels of government turning. They were aided, strangely enough, by the Duke of Burgundy’s ambassadors who were in the city. They made it quite clear that the duke would give his brother-in-law any assistance required and threatened serious repercussions on the city if it deserted Edward. This was enough to underpin the council’s attempts to keep popular riots in London under control.36 Warwick, following both his own inclinations and under pressure from his ally, Louis XI, began operations against Burgundy from his base of Calais, not something that was likely to commend him to the mercantile elements in London. The tide ﬁnally turned completely against Warwick when news of a Lancastrian rising on the northern border reached the city. It became clear that only the king’s personal authority would enable a force to be raised that could deal with the threat. By mid-September, Edward was back in control. There followed an uneasy truce between the king and Warwick. On the surface, all appeared amicable, but it was hardly to be expected that Edward would ever trust his cousin again, though he might just forgive Clarence as being young and easily led. Among those of the court who had remained loyal, there was surely a sense of burning resentment against the Nevilles, and the feelings of the queen, who had seen her father and brother executed without trial, are not difﬁcult to imagine. One issue which Edward had to tackle immediately was that of Calais. Warwick’s control of the town had worked magniﬁcently for the Yorkists when the Lancastrians were still in power; now Warwick had attempted to use it against his own king and the overwhelming interests of English trade. At some point in 1469 Howard was appointed one of the commissioners for the ‘town and castle of Calais and the tower of Risebanke and the castles of Guysnes and Hammes and the marches there in the parts of Picardy’. The appointment

60

YO R K I S T LO R D

is known only through a general pardon issued to Howard in March 1470 for all offences committed by him and all ﬁnes, issues, debts and arrears due by him to the king. For Edward to appoint him made perfect sense in view of his shipping interests and mercantile connections, but equally Warwick might have used such an appointment in an attempt to win Howard’s support. Exactly what Howard’s duties as a commissioner were is unclear, but he certainly did not undertake them for long.37 Newly restored to his liberty, the king entrusted much of the power and responsibility for Wales to his younger brother, Gloucester, and sought to counter Neville power in the north by restoring the Percy family to the earldom of Northumberland, which had been granted to Warwick’s brother, John, in 1464. He made a strong attempt to retain the loyalty of John Neville, who while he lost the earldom, was raised to a marquessate in lieu and saw his son George raised to the dukedom of Bedford and betrothed to the king’s eldest daughter and heir, Elizabeth. Edward also tried to build his support among other powerful families such as the Bourchiers and the Staffords and it is perhaps in this general context that he raised John Howard to the peerage in late February or early March 1470. Howard was the last commoner to be so honoured in Edward’s reign; most of the others had received their peerages soon after 1461. There is no doubt that he had earned the title by his loyalty and his ability, and his birth made the appointment more suitable than some. Nor was there any doubt that he had the wherewithal to sustain the rank, since his income was closer to that of the higher nobility than the baronage. Evidence of the peerage comes in a warrant dated 3 March 1470 in which he indented to serve at sea for the defence of the realm with 1,500 men, armed and arrayed, for ten weeks, for which service he was to receive 1,875 marks, 600 marks to be paid in hand and the residue a year later. The money was raised by the city of London and the bishops and abbots of the realm.38 On the day after the warrant, 4 March, came his formal Calais pardon, coupled with his appointment to be captain and governor of the armed power being prepared by the king for the custody of the sea, both also naming him as Lord Howard. Within the new ﬂeet the political factions at home were represented by its commander, Howard, and his second-in-command, Thomas Neville, a natural son of Warwick’s uncle, the Earl of Kent (now deceased) and known as the Bastard of Fauconberg, after an earlier title of his father’s. At least three of Howard’s own ships, the Edward, the Margaret and the Christopher, were included in the ﬂeet and so was Warwick’s great ship, the Trinity. Since he was commanding the ﬂeet this time, Howard was spared the labour of victualling it. The ﬂeet was ostensibly designed to guard the sea against ‘the malice and power of the Hanses, called Easterlings’ but it also served as a warning to Louis XI of France not to get involved in English affairs in support of his friend, Warwick. Louis undoubtedly saw it as a potential threat to France. The ships had been

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

61

impressed in late February and were scheduled to sail on 18 March, and some of them did so, but the Trinity was still in Southampton in mid-April. The ﬂeet was at sea when another rebellion broke out in Lincolnshire. Warwick and Clarence were again deeply implicated, but this time Edward was certainly not taken by surprise and following the suppression of the rebellion, when its instigator named them before his execution, the king ordered the pair to appear before him to answer the charges. Their refusal to do so made plain their guilt and the king denounced them as traitors. Now completely isolated, Warwick and his son-in-law saw no option but to ﬂee abroad with their wives. They took ship for Warwick’s old ﬁefdom of Calais, of which he was still captain, and attempted to capture the Trinity in Southampton, but were beaten off by a force under Lord Scales, recently become Earl Rivers on the death of his father. Continuing to Calais, they were dismayed to ﬁnd on their arrival that the town had remained loyal to Edward. Its commander, Lord Wenlock, warned them that it would be unsafe for them to disembark, and the unfortunate Isabel, Duchess of Clarence, was forced to give birth as the ships lay in the harbour. There they were joined by the Bastard of Fauconberg and some of the ships of the ﬂeet, which had managed to give Howard the slip. It took him several days to track them down and he therefore failed to prevent them successfully attacking a Burgundian ﬂeet in the Calais Roads as they moved south, or of landing at Harﬂeur, safely in the French king’s territories. Howard did, however, manage to rescue several of the captured Burgundian ships and on his way back to Southampton he captured two of Warwick’s men, Sir Geoffrey Gate and a man called Clapham, who were trying to join their lord. They were sent to London, where Clapham, who had been involved in the Lincolnshire rebellion, was executed; Gate, in view of his past good services, was pardoned.39 On his return home with the ﬂeet, Howard was appointed lieutenant of Calais Castle on 2 July 1470, in place of Wenlock, whose loyalty Edward doubted. He had just replaced Warwick as captain by his brother-in-law, Earl Rivers. In the political upheavals which followed, there is no evidence that Howard actually managed to take up the appointment. In August he took the Edward and a ship called the Marie Sanz Piere out after sea rovers and was granted 20 marks towards victualling them.40 He may still have been at sea off the east coast in mid-September when Warwick’s ﬂeet, ﬁnanced by Louis, crossed the Channel and landed the rebels in the southwest. In a diplomatic triumph, Louis had persuaded the exiled Margaret of Anjou to make peace with her old enemy, Warwick, so that he might restore her husband to his throne again. To seal the unlikely alliance, Warwick insisted on a marriage between his younger daughter, Anne, and Margaret’s son, Prince Edward. The queen, however, was not about to risk the life of her son and insisted that they would only cross into England when Warwick had proved successful. Although King Edward had kept a royal ﬂeet out patrolling the Channel, gales scattered it and

62

YO R K I S T LO R D

he had allowed himself to be drawn north by yet another rebellion. Lingering too long in the north, he found himself outﬂanked and, with his troops slipping away, he felt he had no option but to ﬂee in his turn. Accompanied by a group of loyal noblemen, including his brother, Richard of Gloucester, his brother-in-law, Earl Rivers, and Lord Hastings he took ship at King’s Lynn and landed in Burgundy to seek the protection and aid of Duke Charles. The queen, heavily pregnant, ﬂed to Westminster Abbey with her small daughters. Howard, who had presumably only recently returned home from chasing pirates, thought it prudent to sit tight at Stoke and await events. There is no record of his whereabouts during the short readeption of Henry VI, but he was removed from every commission of the peace on which he was then serving and both he and his son Thomas took the precaution of obtaining general pardons from the Crown; he was probably also removed from his ofﬁces as constable of Norwich and Colchester castles.41 He was, however, summoned as a peer to the parliament called in the autumn, though it is unlikely that he attended. When news of Edward IV’s impending return from exile reached London in March 1471, Warwick responded by arresting lords and gentlemen whose loyalty he suspected, among whom were the Duke of Norfolk and the king’s Bourchier relatives; they were then either imprisoned or required to raise large sums as surety for their good behaviour. Those who avoided arrest by taking sanctuary included Howard. Since he entered St John’s Abbey, Colchester, he had clearly been at home in East Anglia. With him there was his son Thomas and one of Lord Hastings’s brothers.42 With Burgundian aid and in ships supplied by the Hanse, to whom he had offered to restore their privileges on his return, Edward landed in Yorkshire on 17 March 1471. He had planned to make landfall in East Anglia, where he could expect support from the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, not to mention Howard, but was thwarted because they were not in control and the Earl of Oxford had all the ports guarded. As Edward marched south, gathering men as he went, Howard was noted as being the ﬁrst to proclaim him king again in East Anglia. Edward headed for London, where the city had little hesitation in coming out in support of him; Lancastrian attempts to rally the citizens behind Henry VI proved futile. Howard joined the king there on Good Friday. There is no direct evidence that he took part in the subsequent Yorkist victories of Barnet and Tewkesbury, but his presence with the king in London, his military experience and his zealous support of Edward make it virtually impossible to believe that he was not at Barnet, at least. This contention is supported by a list of 122 names in his accounts for September. Many belonged to the household, but it is unclear whether they formed only his personal retinue, or whether they were his whole ﬁghting force. Since Oxford had just raised a Lancastrian force in the area and Howard had little time for recruiting before he left for London, it was probably the latter. Most of the men were paid 20d., though some, presumably ofﬁcers, received 3s. 4d.

T H E Y O R K I S T S E R VA N T, 1 4 6 5 – 1 4 7 1

63

A week or so later about half of them received a second payment. If for some reason Howard did not lead his men to battle, then Thomas Howard certainly did, because he was ‘sore hurt’ at Barnet.43 With Warwick and Montagu dead on the ﬁeld at Barnet and Oxford in ﬂight, ﬁrst to Scotland and then overseas, and the leading Lancastrians defeated at Tewkesbury, where Edward, Prince of Wales, was killed, Edward’s victory was almost complete. A rising in Kent by the Bastard of Fauconberg, leading soldiers from the Calais garrison and mariners from his own ﬂeet, threatened London but was beaten off, and the death of Henry VI in the Tower removed the last threat to Edward. It was to be 14 years before John Howard led his men again onto a battleﬁeld to support the House of York.

This page intentionally left blank

4

The King’s Councillor, 1471–1475

By the beginning of Edward IV’s second reign in 1471, John Howard was a force to be reckoned with, not just in his own region but in national politics. He was a wealthy baron, with estates throughout East Anglia, and the trust and reliance which the king placed in him made him seriously inﬂuential. It is unfortunate that for the decade of the 1470s, his household accounts do not survive. His increasing prominence nationally means that it is possible to follow his career, but without the personal glimpses that so illuminated his activities in the 1460s. When Edward IV recovered his throne, Howard recovered his post as treasurer of the household, which had been held during the readeption by Sir John Delves. By virtue of his ofﬁce, he witnessed the creation of Edward’s new son and heir, born in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey while his father was in exile, as Prince of Wales on 26 June 1471. He was also one of the lords spiritual and temporal who gathered in the Parliament Chamber at Westminster on 3 July to swear an oath of allegiance to the baby prince. At some point very soon afterwards Howard surrendered his post as treasurer; in a warrant dated 18 July he is referred to as former treasurer.1 Given the relatively short period in which he held the ofﬁce, it is clear that he did so because the king had other plans for him. While Edward’s kingdom was secure following his ﬁnal defeat of the Lancastrian forces at Barnet and Tewkesbury, he nonetheless still had a few urgent military problems, one of which was to secure the loyalty of Calais. The last toe-hold of the English in France, the town and marches of Calais consisted of a strip of land 18 miles long and stretching 8–10 miles inland. Apart from the town itself, it comprised the county of Guines and four lordships containing about 25 rural parishes. The town contained large numbers of English civilians and its commercial importance meant that military protection was essential. The merchants of the Calais Staple, through which all exported wool had to pass for taxation purposes, were an inﬂuential group able to advance the Crown large loans, and after 1466 had taken over responsibility for the payment of the garrison’s wages. The garrison usually consisted of about 6–700 men, who were very well paid, although about one third of their number were part of the personal retinues of the senior ofﬁcers and, as such, not paid directly by the treasurer of Calais. In times of crisis, bands of reinforcements, or ‘crews’ as they were known, could double the number of the garrison, which thus became ‘the largest concentration

66

YO R K I S T LO R D

of military manpower in the dominions of the English king’ and had enabled Warwick as captain of Calais to defy the Crown.2 The men of the Calais garrison were divided between the town and castle of Calais itself and the outlying fortresses of Guines, Hammes and Rysbank, whose commanders, together with the marshal of Calais, were the senior ofﬁcers under the captain. To this vital post, on 18 July 1471, King Edward appointed his close friend and most loyal servant, William, Lord Hastings, for a term of ten years and he upgraded the title to that of ‘King’s Lieutenant’. Crucial as the lieutenancy or captaincy was, no man holding it was likely to spend much time there except in times of crisis; it was his deputy who was responsible for the day-to-day running of the town and its garrisons, an ofﬁce held under Warwick by his ally, Lord Wenlock, whom Howard had temporarily replaced in 1470. Almost immediately after his appointment, Hastings concluded a private indenture with John Howard to serve as his deputy, ratiﬁed on 25 July by the king, and Edward also granted that he should take over as lieutenant if Hastings surrendered his appointment or died in ofﬁce.3 The men who had served in Calais under Warwick were loyal to him personally, even, as Commynes noted in 1470, wearing his badge of the Ragged Staff, but from 1471 all senior Calais appointments went to men who were royal household servants and had proved their loyalty to the Crown. Hastings had the same privileges, fees and powers of appointment as Warwick, but the change in his title indicated that all his authority derived from the king. Howard and Hastings left London in August with sufﬁcient forces to subdue Calais if it proved necessary, but since Edward, almost always magnanimous in victory, also provided them with letters of pardon for Warwick’s lieutenants there and sufﬁcient cash to pay the arrears of their wages owed to the garrisons, it was not difﬁcult to win over Calais itself, and the fortresses of Hammes and Guines followed suit. As Sir John Paston put in a letter dated 15 September, ‘The Lordes Hastyngs and Howerd be in Caleys and have it pesebely’. Almost immediately the pair was appointed to a commission to treat with Burgundian ambassadors concerning the border of the Calais Pale with Picardy, though this was a matter of minor adjustment only.4 For the next few years most of Howard’s time was spent in Calais, and in Hastings’s absence he was responsible for the governance of the Pale. It was a good deal more than a simple military command, although he had to be experienced in military affairs in order to command the respect of the regular soldiers of the garrison. The governor or his deputy were important diplomatic representatives of the English Crown, and Calais was likely to be the ﬁrst stop for embassies coming to England, so that there was a stream of important visitors to be entertained. His household and its style had to be appropriately lavish, just as the buildings in which he entertained had to reﬂect the wealth and pomp of his king. It was not a post for a poor man. In addition, the men based at Calais were

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

67

the ﬁrst to be used for diplomatic exchanges, particularly informal ones, with England’s continental neighbours, and it is highly likely that the governor was also expected to maintain an efﬁcient spy network. Most of the senior ofﬁcers of the garrison, as well as many of their men, brought their families over with them. The addition of a group of well-born ladies made the task of diplomatic hospitality easier and more cultured.5 Howard’s years in Calais were broken by visits home and by the several embassies to which he was appointed. He was certainly in England in the spring of 1472, because he was installed as a Knight of the Garter on St George’s Day; he shared this honour with Norfolk and Lords Ferrers and Mountjoy. A few days later, on 30 April, the Howard family had its own more personal reason for celebration when Thomas, by this point Howard’s only surviving son, married Elizabeth Tylney, a Norfolk heiress and widow of Sir Humphrey Bourchier, son and heir of Lord Berners, who had been killed at Barnet. Thomas himself had been wounded in that battle, thus nearly extinguishing the Howard line. The widowed Elizabeth was ﬁnancially an attractive match, since she would hold her Bourchier dower as well as her own Tylney inheritance, though the latter would go on her death to her son, John Bourchier, rather than any children by Thomas. By coincidence the younger John Paston was also eager to marry her, but he was over-keen and his more sophisticated elder brother informed him that his behaviour had ‘a lytell chaffyd it, but I can not tell howe; sende me worde whether ye be in better hope or werse’. It was ‘werse’. On 30 April 1472, young John wrote sadly to his brother, ‘my ladye and yowrs, Dame Elizabeth Bowghcher, is weddyd to the Lorde Howards soon and heyr’.6 For the younger Paston, Elizabeth would have been a catch indeed, but for Thomas she was a good match although hardly a matrimonial triumph. While it may be that, given his age, Thomas had a hand in choosing his own wife, it is equally likely that his father made the suggestion in the ﬁrst place. As the daughter and heiress of Sir Frederick Tylney of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, Elizabeth had inherited manors in Norfolk and Suffolk as well as lands in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire and Cambridgeshire, and her new husband would hold her lands for life. Although Howard had already settled three of his manors, Stanstrete, Leffey and Meyton Hall, on his heir, the couple took up residence on Elizabeth’s more substantial manor at Ashwellthorpe.7 The Howards moved quickly to make sure of Elizabeth’s inheritance by marrying her young son, John, to Catherine, Howard’s only child by Margaret. John Bourchier, who inherited the title Lord Berners on the death of his grandfather in 1475 when he was only 7, probably lived with his mother and half-brothers as a child, but Catherine is always referred to as Lady Berners in the second set of household accounts which begin in 1481 when she could not have been more than 13, so it is probable that the Howards were taking no chances with the Bourchier inheritance and the children were actually married rather than betrothed. If the marriage

68

YO R K I S T LO R D

took place when the couple were children, its validity depended on neither party repudiating the marriage when they reached the age of consent; 14 for a boy, 12 for a girl. When the marriage took practical effect is unclear, but since there were also frequent payments to young Lord Berners for clothes, pocket money and medicines, he clearly entered the household as a youth and the couple grew up together. In the case of child marriages, the parents delayed consummation until the children were well into their teens in the interests of their health. By 1479 Elizabeth had produced three healthy sons for Thomas: young Thomas was born in 1473, Edward in 1477 and Edmund in 1479, and Howard was so pleased by his grandsons that, on a visit in 1481, he was moved to give the nursery the substantial sum of 10s.8 Soon after Thomas’s wedding in June 1472, Howard was commissioned to view the armoury at Guines Castle and determine the arrears of wages owed to the garrison there, which suggests that he was back in Calais by the early summer. He was certainly there in the September of that year. When Edward IV and Charles of Burgundy started to plan an aggressive alliance against France, Charles despatched an embassy to England led by the Seigneur de Gruythuse. Gruythuse was not only Governor of Holland, he had personally entertained Edward during his exile in Burgundy. In gratitude, from the moment the Burgundians set foot on English territory, he was heaped with all the honours Edward could devise, including the earldom of Winchester. Before he left Burgundy he was met by two English squires, Robert Ratcliff, the porter of Calais, and Thomas Thwaites, the bailiff of Guines, who conducted him formally to Calais. There he was greeted by Howard, Sir John Scott, marshal of Calais, Sir William Peche, Sir Geoffrey Gate and other leading members of the town’s establishment. According to an eyewitness, the herald Bluemantle Pursuivant, he was feasted night and day throughout his stay in the town, which lasted three or four days, a stay long enough for Howard and his guests to become acquainted. When they embarked for England, escorted by Gate and Ratcliff, they were attended by three or four well-furnished ships of war to ensure a safe passage.9 Life in Calais was not all feasting. A particularly difﬁcult situation was caused by the presence of the Earl of Oxford. John de Vere had ﬂed to Scotland after Barnet and then in April 1472, when Howard was in England being installed as a Knight of the Garter, he was involved in various raids on the Calais borders. French backing made these quite serious, but ultimately Howard had no difﬁculty in ensuring they were beaten off. One result was that in England, Archbishop George Neville of York was ‘arested and apeched of hye tresone, that he schuld helpe the Erle of Oxenforde’ and sent as a prisoner into Howard’s general custody in the castle of Hammes.10 Oxford next attempted an abortive landing in Essex and then seized the island fortress of St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. He ﬁnally surrendered in January 1474 and was himself sent as a prisoner to Hammes,

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

69

where he remained for ten years. This cannot have been easy for Howard since, from the amount of time he had spent in his company in the previous decade, he clearly liked the young earl. Howard was in England, not Calais, in late 1472 or early 1473 and had probably returned for Christmas. It was at this point that he was involved in events which do not reﬂect creditably on him, and even less so on Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The Earl of Oxford had not been formally attainted after Barnet, but all his lands had been forfeited and granted to Gloucester; Oxford and his wife, Margaret Neville, had no children to be disinherited. Much of the de Vere estate, however, was either held by the earl’s mother in jointure or formed her own Howard inheritance, which would all in theory now be forfeited when she died. The continued treasonable activities of her son placed the dowager countess in a very difﬁcult position, and it would not have been unreasonable for the king to place both the countess and her lands in custody to prevent any income from them reaching Oxford. Countess Elizabeth did what she could to protect her lands, granting them to 13 trustees, headed by the Bishop of Ely and Sir Thomas Montgomery, both royal councillors, so that the income could be monitored and on her death, if the lands could not go to her son, she could at least arrange for the trustees to devote them to charitable purposes. This may have satisﬁed the king, but his brother Gloucester had different ideas. He and the Duke of Clarence were already in the process of depriving their mother-in-law, the widowed Countess of Warwick, of her own considerable Beauchamp and Despenser inheritance so that it came to the dukes and their wives in the countess’s lifetime rather than after she died. If the Countess of Warwick could be treated as if she were legally dead, Gloucester was unlikely to allow the Countess of Oxford to escape. His version of events was that the countess and her trustees freely made over the lands to him in return for an annuity of 500 marks.11 The de Vere version of events came out much later, in the reign of Henry VII, when the family was back in a position of inﬂuence. The events of Christmas 1472 are chronicled in a series of depositions made by a variety of witnesses in 1495, more than twenty years afterwards, in an attempt by the earl to regain his mother’s lands, for whose loss he had been responsible.12 His activities in the autumn of 1472 in the marches of Calais, led Edward IV to do what he had refrained from doing after Barnet. He placed the countess and her lands in custody, and the custodian he chose was Gloucester. The countess at the time was staying, as she often did, in her favourite nunnery of Stratford in east London. From there she was taken to Sir Thomas Vaughan’s house in Stepney, where Gloucester was lodging, and where she was informed that she and her trustees were to hand over all her lands to Gloucester. If not, she was told, she would be sent north to the duke’s castle of Middleham under guard. The frail and elderly countess quailed under the threat of such a journey in mid-winter and

70

YO R K I S T LO R D

agreed to do as she was told and to ask her trustees to do likewise. The conveyance of her lands is dated 9 January 1473, but only six of her trustees sealed it.13 The others refused, and they were the ones whose position made them less likely to submit to intimidation. The Bishop of Ely could not be as easily bullied as the countess’s confessor, Piers Baxter. A confrontation took place in the Archbishop of York’s house in Westminster where John Howard was present. It is impossible to know exactly what his attitude towards the de Veres was at this stage. Of course he had a degree of interest in the countess’s Howard lands, although neither at this point nor later did he make an attempt to acquire any of them for himself, as he had done a decade earlier. The countess had not made him a trustee, and in Westminster that day in January 1473 he sided with Gloucester. One witness, obviously with an extremely retentive memory, described Howard in 1495 as bullying the confessor, Baxter, calling him ‘false priest and hypocrite’ and using ‘great wordes of manasse’ when he at ﬁrst hesitated to seal the conveyance.14 Once Countess Elizabeth had herself sealed the conveyance and persuaded six of her trustees to do likewise, she was permitted to return to the Stratford nunnery, while Gloucester began a suit in Chancery against the recalcitrant trustees. On 21 March the countess was required to enter into a bond for £3,000 and that she would report daily to the king in council, wherever he might be at the coming Easter, to answer certain matters pending against her. Four sureties were required at £2,000 apiece. They were provided by James Arblaster, the countess’s faithful councillor and trustee, the Earl of Essex, whose heir had married the countess’s daughter, his younger son, Thomas Bourchier, and John Howard. The fact that Howard was willing to stand surety is perhaps stronger evidence of his sympathy for Elizabeth than the much later report of his bullying of her confessor is evidence against it. The countess duly appeared and the bonds were voided. Likewise, Essex’s sympathy with the countess’s plight did not prevent him from seeing off her son when he attempted a landing at St Osyth late in May 1473, at a time when Howard was probably back in Calais. While she was at court, Countess Elizabeth was summoned to give evidence in Gloucester’s Chancery case. There she found the courage to declare that she had been compelled by great fear and dread to seal the conveyance. There was no immediate outcome of the case and the matter rested in Chancery, despite continued harassment of the trustees by Gloucester, until the Countess Elizabeth’s death in September 1474, when the Chancellor then diplomatically found in favour of Gloucester, who took possession of all her lands.15 Another issue which took up considerable amounts of Howard’s time in this period was English relations with the Hanseatic League. By 1468 only the merchants from Cologne retained their trading privileges and England remained in a state of warring piracy with the other member ports, particularly Lubeck and Danzig; those from the Baltic towns were collectively known as the Esterlings.

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

71

English shipping suffered considerably in 1470 and 1471 and Edward IV, in his ﬂight from Lynn in 1470, was chased by Hanse privateers on his passage to Burgundy. However, a peace brokered by Duke Charles, whose own traders had a strong interest in maintaining a pirate-free North Sea, meant that the Esterlings actually provided an escort for the king as he sailed back to confront Warwick. Restored to his throne, Edward reneged on his promise to the Esterlings and ungratefully renewed only the privileges of Cologne, which made the continuation of the maritime war inevitable. A squadron of ships sailed from Lubeck in the early summer of 1472, with the sole aim of attacking English shipping. With stability restored at home and the threat of Warwick’s ﬂeet removed, Edward was able to put together a ﬂeet of some 18 ships in defence under the command of Howard. In early July he surprised the Hanse ﬂeet and captured and burnt most of its ships.16 Howard had succeeded in temporarily driving the Hanse privateers from the Flemish coast and thus easing the pressure on English merchant shipping. His victory was not decisive, however, and there were some further Hanse successes, but both sides were weary and ﬁnally accepted that a negotiated peace was the only solution. For Edward IV a necessary preliminary for war against France was a settlement of the mercantile war. The two sides agreed to meet at a diet in the neutral town of Utrecht in Burgundy in July 1473 and the English negotiators included Sir John Scott from Calais, Dr John Russell, and to represent London business interests, Sir John Crosby. Not content for the negotiations to come to terms only with the Hanse, Edward empowered the envoys to travel to Bruges as well to settle commercial differences with Burgundy. At Bruges they were to be joined by Lords Hastings and Howard, who were to treat with the duke for a perpetual peace and an offensive and defensive alliance against France, and also to render their colleagues any assistance required over the commercial treaty. Howard’s commission was issued on 20 May 1473, and he had been in England to receive the king’s detailed instructions. A few days later he set out to return to Calais, preceding his colleagues Dr Russell and William Hatclyf, the king’s secretary. During the crossing, his ship was attacked by three Esterling, or Hanse, ships. It was an appropriate revenge for their defeat the previous summer. This time, heavily outnumbered, 16 of Howard’s men were killed as the ships ‘bikered to guyder’, and he escaped only by taking to a boat before his ship was driven onto the sands.17 The incident was unpleasant enough in itself and served only to emphasize the need for a settlement at the forthcoming diet, but it was probably as well that Howard was not himself a member of that commission, since his mood might not have been very conciliatory. The king, on the other hand, had given instructions that his envoys were to be accommodating because he wanted the sea safe to transport an army to France. Russell and Hatclyf followed Howard to Calais in safety and were met

72

YO R K I S T LO R D

by another commissioner, William Rosse; they were travelling to Bruges for negotiations with the Burgundians before going to Utrecht to meet the Hanse representatives. Russell and Hatclyf left Calais, planning that Howard and Rosse should follow them to Bruges. Edward’s commission had speciﬁed that at least four English representatives should be present, so nothing could be done at Bruges until Howard and Rosse joined them. Only these four, of the various commissioners Edward had appointed, seem actually to have crossed the Channel. A few days later, Rosse joined them on his own, so the situation remained unchanged. No explanation for Howard’s absence has survived, yet the circumstances are curious, for it is the only occasion when he ever failed in his duty to his king. One possible explanation lies in the Esterling attack. Did he perhaps receive injuries which turned out to be more serious than initially supposed and which incapacitated him? Although Howard was not involved in the diet of Utrecht which settled English difﬁculties with the Hanse, he was one of those who would beneﬁt. The narrow escape that the king himself had had in 1470 as he ﬂed from Lynn to Burgundy and the attack on Howard’s own ship show just how ﬁercely the Hanse were prosecuting the mercantile war. Before 1468 Howard’s ships had traded as far east as Prussia, and the subsequent closing of the northern markets may have made a considerable difference to his proﬁts. As both a merchant and a diplomat he would have appreciated that England’s best interests lay in securing peace with the Hanse, regardless of the question of transporting an army to France.18 Without his personal accounts for this period, it is almost impossible to build up any clear picture of Howard’s life in Calais. In September 1472 he was commissioned to hear the appeal of a case held in the mayor’s court of Calais, in June 1473 to determine the boundaries of Calais Pale and survey the king’s lands within it, and in the following month he was on a Calais commission of sewers. While appointments to commissions did not necessarily mean actually serving on them, these appointments suggest that this type of activity took up much of his time while he was there.19 A brief personal glimpse of Howard’s life in Calais comes indirectly from two letters. In one, written to his brother in 1473, Sir John Paston was anticipating being ‘verry mery at Caleys thys Whytsontyde’, as a member of Hasting’s retinue on one of his periodic visits to Calais; on this occasion it was for a meeting of the king’s council there. In the following September 1473 Hastings wrote to thank him and Sir John Middleton for their attendance on him, and, he added, ‘I preye you to recommaunde me to my Lady Howard, my Lady Bourgchier and all othre ladies and gentilwomen of the saide towne’.20 Lady Bourchier is almost certainly Thomas Howard’s wife Elizabeth, recently the widow of Sir Humphrey Bourchier; Thomas had been made an esquire of the body in 1471 but had not yet been knighted, and widows generally retained their senior title if they remarried. It is unlikely that Lady Howard was permanently in

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

73

Calais with her husband because her responsibility would have been the maintenance of his estates and affairs in England, nor is there any indication of whether Thomas was ofﬁcially part of his father’s permanent establishment in Calais, or whether he, too, was only visiting. On one of his spells home from Calais, probably in 1474, Howard’s stewardship for the Duchess Cecily brought him indirectly into a dispute with servants of her youngest son, Richard of Gloucester, soon after their apparent collaboration over the Countess of Oxford’s lands. The dispute, which turned unpleasantly violent, involved the manor of Theydon Garnon and its sub-manor Theydon Gregories in Essex. The heir to the manor, John Prince, was a servant of the duchess’s, but the legality of his ownership was challenged by Thomas Withiale and Thomas Avery, who were both in Gloucester’s employ. When their case did not succeed in the courts, they resorted to physical violence both on Prince and on the manor. Prince naturally looked for powerful friends, an obvious one of whom was Howard, the duchess’s steward. It may have been Howard who approached Duke Richard directly, but there was certainly a meeting between Prince, his London business advisor, Thomas Clifford, and members of the ducal council. Both the duke and Howard attended and on learning the facts of the case, Gloucester sent a severe rebuke to his servants and demanded that they act in accordance with the law: ‘Whan my lord howard had herd this answer he held hym wele agreed seying that the answer was good and worshipfull and according unto reason’.21 Withiale was well aware of Howard’s inﬂuence in the case, because late that night, ‘at eleven or midnyght’, he came to Clifford’s house in Cheapside, ‘seying thise words unto hym’: I understande that the lorde howard and ye were at my lord’s [Gloucester] place and that he is agreed with my lord that my lords lerned counseill shall ende the mater wherfor my lord sent me to yow for to wete whether ye agreed to the same or not. Whereunto Clyfford answered in this wise. Astouchyng the beying with my lords grace of [a mistake for ‘and’?] my lord howard and his trouth it was. But astouchyng unto any such agreement reherced he knew [‘not’ omitted?]. notwithstanding he promised to speke with my lord howard that nyght and therof to geve hym an answere at vii of the clok in the mornyng.

Come the morning Clifford reported ‘how he had spoken with my lord howard and by letter was comaunded to goo unto my lord of Gloucester’s counseill to certiﬁe this saying. And clyfford did and by that tyme my lord howard was departed unto Caleys’.22 Clifford was kept waiting several days before he could get a hearing before the ducal council, but he had taken the precaution of forwarding Howard’s letter to the duchess. Cecily wrote to her son, and rather than fall out with his mother, Gloucester ordered his council to settle the matter in Prince’s favour. This is a high proﬁle case, for which fortunately evidence survives, but

74

YO R K I S T LO R D

there is no reason to suppose that, over the years, Howard was not involved in countless similar disputes either as patron or arbitrator. It also throws some light on his personal habits. On the night before he was known to be departing for Calais, Clifford seems to have had no qualms about disturbing him at midnight, or of promising to obtain an answer by seven the next morning. Howard, presumably in the midst of other business, found time in the small hours to dictate a letter in response. Hastings’s visit to Calais in 1473 with other royal councillors was a result of the commission he and Howard had been given earlier in the summer to meet Duke Charles in Bruges and discuss King Edward’s plan to invade France, their common enemy. Edward had already come to an agreement with Duke Francis of Brittany in 1472 whereby he obtained the use of Breton ports and passage through the duchy while promising to support Francis in its defence if need be. Edward wanted a triple alliance in place; Brittany was one part, but not the most important. The king did not wish to proceed without the assurance that he would get active assistance from Burgundy and that Charles would have an army there to support him when he landed; neither could he get his army across the Channel without substantial help from Burgundian shipping. While Charles was considering his options and distracted by what was happening on his eastern borders, the opportunity for action in 1473 slipped away. Even when agreement was reached with Burgundy, Charles would not commit himself to a speciﬁc timetable immediately and all Edward’s plans hung ﬁre, though he reached a settlement with Scotland to protect England’s back door, and a marriage alliance was agreed between James III’s baby son and heir, the future James IV, and Edward’s third daughter, Cecily. It was only late in 1474 that ﬁrm plans were laid for an invasion of France in the following summer, though ﬁnancial and military preparations had been continuing since 1472. It can be assumed that Howard was in England in the spring of 1475, raising the contingent of men he had contracted to contribute to the invading army and to supervise the ﬁtting out of at least three of his ships for the ﬂeet which was to carry the army to France. Commissions were issued on 7 May to William Parker, Howard’s most senior captain, to take mariners for the Margaret Howard, with, among others, masters John Bawdewyn of the George Howard and Robert Sergeaunt of the Thomas Howard, ‘for the conduct of an armed force which the king has ordered to go with him to France for the recovery of that realm’.23 Among the preparations in the early summer of 1475, Edward IV found time in June to grant Howard four of the forfeited de Vere manors in Suffolk and two in Cambridgeshire.24 All these had been previously granted to Gloucester, who was presumably willing to let them go because he was consolidating his holdings in the north, though there is no surviving evidence of what ﬁnancial bargaining went on behind the scenes.

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

75

According to a manuscript in the College of Arms, the force that Howard took to France in 1475 consisted of 20 men-at-arms and 200 archers. This was one of the highest contributions among the barons, out-numbered only by Hastings and Stanley and equalled only by Ferrers and Scrope. The Duke of Norfolk provided two knights, 40 lancers and 300 archers. All Howard’s men wore his badge of ‘a Whytt Lyon on his sheulde (shoulder) Cressant azur’; the white lion was the Mowbray badge and the crescent azure on its shoulder differentiated Howard’s men from those of his lord. However prominent on his own account, his choice of badge indicates how closely he still identiﬁed his interests with those of Norfolk. Lord Howard received 4s. for his own daily wage, together with 1s. for each of his men-at-arms and 6d. for his archers. Thomas Howard, on the other hand, was quite independent and chose as a badge for his six men-at-arms and 60 archers, a silver salet (a form of defensive headgear then currently fashionable). According to his epitaph, he was one of a number of trusted men sent over to Burgundy in advance, partly at least because of his previous experience with Duke Charles in the late 1460s.25 The army mustered at Barham Down near Canterbury on 26 May. Charles of Burgundy kept his word and provided 500 Dutch bottoms, low, ﬂat ships suitable for transporting horses, but even with these to augment an English ﬂeet, it took Edward three weeks to make the crossing with his army. Howard may have crossed with the main army, but he and his troop were much more likely to have been in Calais already, preparing for the reception of one of the largest and ﬁnest English armies ever to disembark in France. In Howard’s capable hands, the reception was probably all Edward would have wished, but the same could not be said for the diplomatic situation. Of his two allies, Duke Francis of Brittany was too wary of Louis XI to act, while Charles of Burgundy’s army was tied down besieging the town of Neuss in the Rhineland. Throughout the spring Edward had used every means he could to persuade Charles to abandon the siege, but Charles had hung on obstinately, and when he was ﬁnally forced to raise it, his army was too battered to be of immediate use, and anyway he wished to retain it for the defensive of Burgundy against Louis rather than commit it to the English enterprise. He therefore arrived in Calais with only a small personal retinue instead of a large fresh army. This defection by Burgundy completely altered the military situation. By the time Duke Charles left the English camp, King Edward had decided to abandon their grand design and salvage what he could for England. Edward may have suspected for some time that this would be the outcome. Even before he embarked his army, he had sent Garter King of Arms, to Louis with a Letter of Deﬁance, so elegantly styled and politely written that Philippe de Commynes could hardly believe that any Englishman had a hand in composing it: ‘en beau langaige et en beau stille, et croy que jamais Angloys n‘y avoit mist la main’.26

76

YO R K I S T LO R D

The letter called upon Louis to surrender the kingdom of France to Edward as by right and inheritance so that he might restore the French to their ancient freedom. Quite rightly ignoring this rhetoric, Louis took Garter to one side and declared that he knew Edward was only coming to satisfy the English commons and the Duke of Burgundy; apparently James III of Scotland had told him that, having raised so much money in taxes for the army, Edward would have faced rebellion if he had not brought the army to France. Louis pointed out that Charles of Burgundy was not in a position to discharge his share of the alliance, and advanced several other arguments to get the herald to persuade his master to make peace. In what was to become a symbolic gesture, he slipped 300 crowns into Garter’s hand and promised him more on the conclusion of peace. Garter hastened to assure him that Edward was not averse to the idea of peace, but that nothing could be done until the army was in France and then Louis might send an envoy. For good measure he suggested that Louis send letters to Lord Howard or Lord Stanley as well as one to himself, so that they might assist and introduce the French envoy.27 After this interview, Commynes says that Louis appeared ‘very cheerful and valiant’, as well he might. He had recognized that Edward was as reluctant to ﬁght as he was himself, and that with a modicum of shrewdness and luck, the whole affair could remain on the level of a diplomatic game. The choice of Howard and Stanley as names for Garter to drop is an interesting one, since the herald would not have named them at random, and was presumably briefed to do so by Edward. Stanley was the steward of Edward’s household and had supported Warwick in 1470, for which he had been pardoned; this may have made him more acceptable to Louis. Howard, of course, had never shown the slightest inclination to be pro-French, but he had been an envoy at Louis’s court and was therefore known personally to the king and had been increasingly used by Edward for diplomatic purposes. Like Stanley, he had held a senior post in the royal household, which would indicate to Louis that they were both men of inﬂuence. It may be assumed that neither man was likely to be favourable to Louis behind Edward’s back, but that in giving their names, Garter was making Edward’s ﬁrst move towards a settlement and that whatever Stanley or Howard did subsequently, it was at Edward’s direction. In the diplomatic manoeuvres which followed, Howard played a leading role. Because the events were chronicled by Commynes, there is, for this one occasion of national importance, a detailed narrative account in which Howard features prominently, and for this reason is worth studying closely. It is highly likely that Commynes’s source for what happened in the English camp was Howard himself, since he was the Englishman with whom Commynes had most contact. Edward may have been disillusioned with his ally, Duke Charles, but nevertheless he led his army south from Calais, through Artois and into Picardy in company with the duke. To advance further without major Burgundian aid,

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

77

however, against a strongly fortiﬁed series of French towns, with autumn in sight, no winter quarters and the logistical problem of providing adequate supplies for an army very different to the war-hardened one of the previous generation, was not something Edward relished. He therefore determined on the next move in the game with Louis. A servant of Jacques de Grassay, Sieur de Yors, had been captured by the English and it was decided to release him and use him as a messenger to Louis. This was undoubtedly a decision taken by the king, but he made no appearance as yet; the servant was ostensibly sent off because he was of insufﬁcient importance to be kept. As he was escorted out of the camp, he was stopped by Howard and Stanley, who pressed a noble on him and requested him to present their humble service to his king when he should have the opportunity of speaking to him. The plan depended upon the intelligence of the servant, but it worked, for he went straight to Louis at Compiègne. The idea that he had in fact been planted by the wily Louis, though plausible, is tendered less tenable by the fact that Louis’s ﬁrst reaction was to clap him in prison because his master had a brother in the service of the Duke of Burgundy. A night’s reﬂection upon the fact that the very two lords named by Garter as potential go-betweens were those who had just recommended themselves to him, made Louis decide to take the risk. He dressed a servant in herald’s dress and sent him off to the English camp. When stopped by sentries he declared he had messages for Lords Howard and Stanley and was conducted to them. Delighted by the success of the plan so far, the lords took him to the king.28 For an improvised herald, the servant seems to have played his role like a master. The message he delivered showed Louis’s grasp of the relationship between King Edward and his subjects. Louis’s message made great play on the selﬁsh ends of the Duke of Burgundy and the great expense to which the English had been put, while showing that he was aware of the eagerness of the English nobility for war. If Edward was willing to consider peace, therefore, Louis would come to terms agreeable both to him and to his subjects and would send ambassadors to discuss the terms. It took Edward and his councillors very little time to agree to discuss peace and the very next morning English and French commissioners met at a village near Amiens. Edward clearly felt no scruples in making a separate peace with France, but he met with opposition from within his own army. At a meeting of his senior captains, his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, opposed the suggested peace as dishonourable and had the support of some others. By contemporary standards, Gloucester, young, martial and probably idealistic, was right, for Edward was proposing to allow himself to be bought off. In the circumstances, however, Edward was making the best of a bad job, and most of his lords agreed with him. Howard would surely have been one of them; he was always a practical man and the campaign had ceased to be a practical proposition when Burgundy defaulted on his agreement to provide an army. If he had not been in favour of peace, it is

78

YO R K I S T LO R D

unlikely that he would have been chosen by Edward for the role of go-between, or to lead the commission which settled the terms of the English army’s withdrawal. In the latter task he was supported by Dr Morton, Master of the Rolls, Sir Thomas St. Leger, the king’s brother-in-law, and William Dudley, Dean of the Chapel Royal, an able but, apart from Howard himself, an undistinguished team. The French commission was far more impressive, consisting of the Sieur de St. Pierre, seneschal of Normandy, Jean, Bastard of Bourbon, Admiral of France, the Bishop of Evreux and the Sieur de Lude. On the morning of 15 August, the commissioners met and the English opened the bargaining with Howard demanding for his master the Crown of France and then reducing the demand to the duchies of Guienne and Normandy, for so long possessions of the English Crown. The French parried in a similar spirit and the negotiations settled down amicably, as they do when both sides desire to reach agreement. Howard gradually reduced the English demands to those terms already decided by Edward and his council. In May the following year Howard requested an exempliﬁcation of the terms he had been authorized to offer, probably as a safeguard against later accusations of not following his brief; the exempliﬁcation was signed with the king’s own hand and subscribed with the names of all the nobles present on the day the terms were decided, 13 August 1475.29 The English demands were the payment of 75,000 crowns (approximately £15,000) to Edward on the removal of his army from France and an annual payment of 50,000 crowns in two instalments during the lifetime of both kings, a truce for seven years and a treaty of amity and mutual assistance against enemies and rebellious subjects, the treaty to be sealed by the marriage of Edward’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, and the Dauphin Charles. Some of the French were outraged at the level of these demands, but Louis was so eager to get the English army out of France without having to hand over any French towns that he was prepared to accept all of them before the English changed their minds.30 It is clear that Edward’s choice of Howard as chief commissioner to put these demands was a sound one in the circumstances. As a businessman, he probably found the idea of a ﬁnancial settlement rather than a military one less distasteful than would many of his peers. Edward had insisted that the terms of the truce comprehend both Brittany and Burgundy as well if they so chose, showing more consideration for his allies than Duke Charles had done, but his brother-in-law was so angry, that he swore not to take advantage of the truce until the English had been home for three months because he could manage perfectly well without them. About 19 August, Howard and his fellow-commissioners travelled to Senlis, whither Louis had withdrawn, and it was agreed that the two kings should seal their new-found amity by a personal meeting. Since Louis found it impossible to cast aside his customary suspicion, it was also agreed that Edward should leave behind two hostages

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

79

until the army had left France. The men selected for this thankless position were Howard and Sir John Cheyne, Edward’s Master of Horse. The next problem to be overcome was that of choosing a suitable site for the royal meeting. This was so fraught with difﬁculties that a special commission was set up to resolve it, consisting of Howard and Thomas St Leger on the one side and Commynes and the Sieur de Bouchage on the other. As the four of them rode on scouting expeditions in the neighbourhood of Amiens, it may be then that Commynes learned of many of the events in the English camp. Luckily they managed to ﬁnd a place that fulﬁlled all their requirements. At Picquigny, the site of a former castle on the Somme about nine miles from Amiens, the river was narrow enough to be bridged but too deep to be fordable; thus the French and English parties could be isolated on either bank. The commissioners then arranged for a bridge to be built upon which the two kings could greet each other. Since Louis could not forget that an earlier Duke of Burgundy had been murdered on just such a bridge in his grandfather’s time, they also ordered the erection of a barricade across the centre of the bridge, a barricade made of latticed woodwork such, according to Commynes, as ‘the lions’ cages are made from, the holes between the bars being just big enough for a man to thrust his arm through easily’. The side from which Edward was to approach obliged him to cross a causeway about two bowshots in length with marsh on either side, a highly dangerous position if the French had been contemplating treachery. As it happened, their intentions were not dishonourable, but although Commynes thought the English had not noticed the danger, it is inconceivable that an experienced soldier like Howard had remained unaware of it, and had not laid plans accordingly, even if he appeared to turn a blind eye. This may have been the reason that, while Louis brought a train of about eight hundred to Picquigny, the whole English army escorted its king. It had been agreed that only a dozen men from each side should be allowed onto the bridge itself, and to guard against any trickery, four French observers were stationed on the English side of the bridge and four English on the French side. If the precautions tend rather toward the ludicrous, it is clear who was responsible. Edward was not by nature a suspicious man and Commynes testiﬁes to the French view of English guilelessness, while Louis, not for the ﬁrst time, ordered one of his party (Commynes himself) to appear in garments exactly like his own. Howard himself did not escort Edward onto the bridge, only three men did that: the Chancellor, Thomas Rotherham, Bishop of Lincoln, and two of Edward’s personal esquires, John Cheney and Thomas Howard.31 The meeting was a successful one, all the precautions proving effective or serving to discourage anyone contemplating treachery. The kings took courteous leave of each other, Louis returning to Amiens and Edward to his army encampment. Two or three of Edward’s lords were invited to dine with Louis that evening and it is hardly surprising, in view of all his hard work in the previous few weeks,

80

YO R K I S T LO R D

that Howard was one of them. It might in other circumstances have been thought natural for the kings themselves to seal their amity by feasting together, but the precautions and effort that would have required put it out of the question. While on the bridge, Louis had suggested that Edward come and divert himself in Paris with the ladies, offering the Cardinal of Bourbon, a well-known wencher, as a confessor. Although he could not resist the sly dig at Edward’s notorious habits, the very last thing Louis wanted was any delay in the departure of the English king and his army. The easy-going Edward had accepted the laugh against him and with suitable repartee indicated that he would be delighted to come. The story probably spread rapidly through the English army and that evening Howard was able to pay Louis back in his own coin. Seated next to the king in the place of honour, he was able to lean close to Louis and whisper in his ear that if the king so desired it, he would ﬁnd a way of bringing Edward quietly to Amiens or Paris so that the two kings could enjoy each other’s company. Taking the Englishman’s suggestion at face value, the horriﬁed Louis managed to smile and dissemble and told Commynes afterwards that the thing he feared most had come to pass. When Howard followed up his advantage and pressed him, Louis declared he now had to turn his whole energy on dealing with Burgundy and arrange for the instant departure of an expedition against Charles. Howard, who had just disproved Commynes’ view of English lack of guile, could he have but known it, probably spent the rest of the evening laughing up his sleeve at Louis’s discomﬁture. In this incident may well lie the key to Howard’s success as a diplomatic envoy, particularly in relation to the French. Apparently a naturally bluff and straightforward man, he had greater reserves of subtlety than the French ever gave him credit for, and was able to turn this to good use. They would probably have been less at ease with an Englishman of apparently greater depth and less openness. Following his account of the Treaty of Picquigny, Commynes commented that the English did not conduct their negotiations with the cunning of the French, but proceeded with more ingenuousness and straightforwardness, and yet, he adds, a man must be cautious and not affront them, for it was dangerous to meddle with them. This may well have been a reasonably accurate description of ﬁfteenth-century Englishmen, but it is certainly a description that tallies with all that is known of Howard’s character. Since Howard and Commynes had spent much time in each other’s company, it is difﬁcult not to believe that the latter was generalizing from the particular.32 On 26 August, three days before the signing of the Treaty of Picquigny, Edward signiﬁed his gratitude to Howard for all his endeavours by granting him the ofﬁce of steward of the castle of Hedingham (the main de Vere seat), the town and lordship of Lavenham and all the other de Vere lordships and manors in Suffolk and Essex still in royal hands. Since the place of the grant was Westminster, it had clearly been in the pipeline for some while.33 Louis found it impossible to raise the full sum of 75,000 crowns immediately

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1471–1475

81

and Edward had to be content with 55,000 on the spot and Louis’s assurance under the great seal and sign manual for the rest as soon as it could be collected. Edward then turned his army towards Calais and home, leaving Howard and Cheyne as sureties for his swift departure. Since the hostages were sent to Paris and entertained in the royal household, they could have had small cause for complaint, save for French sneers that the unchivalric English had been willing to accept money rather than ﬁght.34 Whether they diverted themselves with the ladies, history does not relate, but they certainly accompanied the king to Vervins where Louis signed a Franco-Burgundian truce with Duke Charles. Louis may well have been pleased with the ease with which he had rid France of an invading English army, but in truth it had been an expensive business for him. For Howard the French expedition turned out to be personally very rewarding. Louis, always thorough, had promised, and indeed paid, besides Edward’s annual pension, pensions to men he considered the king’s leading councillors. Lord Hastings’s was the highest at 2,000 crowns a year, as beﬁtted both his inﬂuence with the king (of which Louis stood in no doubt) and his position as Lieutenant of Calais; Bishop Rotherham, the Chancellor, received 1,000, and Lord Howard and Sir Thomas Montgomery 1,200 crowns (over £2,000), paid annually in 1476, 1477 and 1478. Nor did he give pensions alone. Commynes says that to his certain knowledge (and no doubt envy), in less than two years Howard received more than 24,000 crowns (nearly £5,000) in money and plate in gifts from Louis in addition to his pension.35 The morality of the acceptance of French pensions by the English in 1475 has long been a subject of debate. Certainly, contemporary Frenchmen and a good many English felt that England had sold her honour for an easy peace. Edward was highly unpopular when he returned home and, if the full terms of the treaty of amity had been generally known, a prediction that he would have been torn to pieces when he reached England might have been fulﬁlled. The modern view, less chivalric in its judgement, is that Edward got a good deal out of a difﬁcult situation and even the people of England beneﬁted ﬁnancially, because his French pension enabled him to refrain from taxation for several years. The pensions that Louis freely bestowed on certain Englishmen, it should be noted, were all to men who had served as envoys, and although generous, were not unprecedented. It was customary to honour envoys with gifts in exact proportion to the esteem in which their rulers were held at that moment, so Louis was simply following common practice in 1475, though his lavishness raised the suspicion that he was trying to build up a pro-French party at the English court to replace the one formerly led by Warwick, a suspicion that was probably correct. Since the pensions were freely paid and without strings attached, there was little guarantee that such a plan would be successful. Hastings, who already enjoyed a substantial pension from the Duke of Burgundy, in addition to the new one from Louis, underlined

82

YO R K I S T LO R D

the point when he refused to sign a receipt for his pension. When Louis insisted that Restout, the Rouen merchant who delivered the instalments, should ask for receipts from the recipients, Hastings declared that he had not asked for the money and nobody was going to produce a receipt from him which called the lord chamberlain of England a pensioner of the king of France. Like his king, Howard did not have the same scruples, but then he was not in Hastings’s delicate position of having pensions from two rulers at war with each other. Like a good businessman, he gave Restout the required receipt each time his twice-yearly instalment of 600 crowns arrived.36

5

The King’s Councillor, 1476–1483

If the 1460s had seen John Howard rise from his position as an insigniﬁcant Suffolk gentleman to a peerage and a senior appointment in the royal household, the 1470s marked his rise still higher, to become a conﬁdential envoy between kings. Counting his service in Calais, he probably spent more of the 1470s in France than he did in England, and despite that, indeed because of it, by 1480 he was one of the most important and inﬂuential of Edward’s councillors. Both King Edward and King Louis rewarded him substantially; from Edward came grants of lands and ofﬁces, from Louis hard cash in the form of a pension and gifts of plate. There can be little doubt that Edward valued his services and yet in one particular instance he was to treat him far less honourably than did King Louis. When Howard returned from his period as a hostage in France, he had the respite of a period at home in Suffolk. The sudden death of John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, on the night of 16–17 January 1476 at the age of 32, would have been a severe personal blow. Howard had known the duke all the latter’s life and for the previous 15 years had been closely associated with him. There is no doubt that he would have been one of the chief mourners at the ducal burial at Thetford Priory. Mowbray and his wife, Elizabeth Talbot, though long married, had only a single child, Anne, who was three when her father died. Whatever grief Howard may have felt for the death of his cousin, he would have been immediately aware that only the life of a toddler now stood between him and a half-share of the Mowbray inheritance. Neither the late duke nor his father had had siblings, and their nearest relatives were the descendants of the ﬁrst duke’s daughters, Margaret and Isabel, namely Howard and his cousin, William, Lord Berkeley. If Anne died without children, then Howard and Berkeley would become the legal co-heirs. This, however, was an issue for the future, for if Anne grew up and had children it would be irrelevant. So substantial was Anne’s inheritance, both immediate and future (her mother and grandmother held considerable amounts of Mowbray land in dower and jointure), that Edward IV lost no time in earmarking the little girl as a bride for his second son, Richard, Duke of York, who was eight months younger than she was. Even before the two small children were married in 1478, Richard had been granted the junior Mowbray title of Earl of Nottingham in June 1476 and in February 1477 he was created Duke of Norfolk and Earl Warenne. For the time being at least the question of the Mowbray inheritance was shelved.

84

YO R K I S T LO R D

In March 1476 Howard was appointed to head a commission that included his son, Thomas, his lawyer, James Hobart, and the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, to enquire into a complaint by Henry Hoveman and Barnard Grefyngk, two Hanse merchants from Lubeck. It was another case of piracy; this time their chartered ship, the Marie of Leith in Scotland, laden with wheat, other merchandise and jewels to the value of £267 and making for Flanders, was attacked off the coast of Suffolk by English pirates in two ships called the Jenet, master, Nicholas Schellen, and the Marie of Sandwich, master, Richard Lockwood. The Hanse goods were stolen and carried off to Harwich and Lowestoft and there disposed of. The commissioners were to seek out the goods and take them into safe custody, though this is another case whose outcome is unknown. Edward’s general policy of asserting royal authority to stamp out piracy – and Howard’s commission was only one of many – was reasonably effective and there was a dramatic fall in the amount of piracy in the North Sea. However, while Edward and Howard would not have regarded it as such, the pressing of a Danzig ship into royal service in 1478 by Lord Howard was condemned as piracy in Danzig.1 From the commission in March 1476 until the winter of 1477 there is a period of nearly two years when Howard hardly features in national politics and to all intents and purposes he is lost from view. It is probable that he was back in Calais, but there is nothing to prove it; certainly nobody was appointed to replace him during the rest of Edward’s reign. He was appointed to two commissions of oyer and terminer, one for offences committed in Essex in November 1476 and a similar one for Middlesex in May 1477, but these could have been issued while he was temporarily back in England, or he may never have sat on them, since he was only one of a large number of peers named.2 We simply do not know whether he was in England or France when the young Duke of York received the dukedom of Norfolk. The years following the Treaty of Picquigny, in which he had played so important a role, did not see relations between England and France continue for long in brotherly amity. Whether or not the matter was discussed at the time of the treaty, in September 1475 Sir Thomas Montgomery was sent to Louis with a view to arranging the ransom of Queen Margaret of Anjou. Since the defeat and death of her husband in 1471 she had been in the custody of her old friend, Alice, Duchess of Suffolk. Now in return for a ransom of 50,000 crowns (£10,000) paid by Louis, Edward agreed to surrender her person and all rights over her. The former queen, in turn, was to surrender all title to the Crown, to her dower lands and any other claim she might have against Edward. Once in Louis’s hands, the unfortunate lady was then required to sign over to him all claims to the inheritance of her parents in return for a modest pension; she died in 1482. This cynical complicity between the two kings ended in January 1477 following an event that was bound to impose the severest strain: Charles of Burgundy was killed at the siege of Nancy, leaving as heiress to all his dominions, his only child, Mary.

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

2. Household Accounts for 3–4 December 1481: the lower half of the page is in John Howard’s handwriting.

85

86

YO R K I S T LO R D

In the ﬂurry of diplomatic activity that followed, the English were at a distinct disadvantage, because Edward very strongly desired to retain his French pension and the match with the Dauphin for his daughter, Elizabeth. On the other hand, he wanted a friendly, independent Burgundy, and victories in the ﬁeld against it by Louis would threaten Calais, English mercantile interests and the jointure of his sister, Duchess Margaret. The Duchess would have liked an English husband for her step-daughter, and suggested her favourite brother, Clarence, then an eligible widower. Edward, however, had no intention of allowing his untrustworthy brother an independent ﬁefdom in Europe from which perhaps to launch another attempt to make himself king of England, and proposed his brother-in-law, Anthony, Earl Rivers, who was politely declined on the grounds of his lack of royal blood. Mary went on to marry Maximilian of Austria, who had been her father’s preferred choice. On the horns of his diplomatic dilemma, Edward chose Howard most frequently as an envoy to France, initially in company with Sir Thomas Montgomery and Dr Morton, likewise experienced envoys, and then on his second trip, with his former colleagues Richard Tunstall and Thomas Langton. The negotiations were extremely delicate, since Louis, by claiming that Mary of Burgundy was a rebellious subject of his own, was able to request Edward’s armed support against her and her new husband, Maximilian, under the terms of the Treaty of Picquigny. What Edward needed was an excuse to withhold that support, but one which would not affront Louis. Howard, Tunstall and Langton spent three months with the French court at Plessis-du-Parc-les-Tours during the winter of 1477–8. The course of their negotiations can be traced from several documents which, although undated, are almost certainly memoranda of replies by Louis’s commissioners to the English ambassadors. In the middle of March 1478 Howard and Langton received a new commission from London. The envoys who had been appointed under the Treaty of Picquigny to arbitrate the differences between the two kings had never met, and the three envoys now at the French court were empowered to arrange with Louis for such a meeting. It was settled that the arbitrators were to hold their ﬁrst meeting in England before Easter 1479 and their second in France before the following Michaelmas, and that they should complete their task before 29 August 1481, the sixth anniversary of the treaty.3 Having ﬁnally completed their tasks in France, Howard and his colleagues departed for England, carrying with them Margaret of Anjou’s ransom to lay before Edward, together with the proposals for the fate of Burgundy. The long visit to France in 1477–8 is the only one of his embassies for which details of the development of negotiations survive, but the course of them was determined by the kings and their councillors rather than the envoys. Howard might be free to indicate what might or might not be acceptable to Edward, his council or merchants, but he was bound by the general framework of his commission. Yet an envoy who knew his own king’s mind

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

87

and who was esteemed by the king with whom he was negotiating was clearly a valuable man. While Howard had been in France on his long diplomatic mission in the winter of 1477–8, parliament arraigned George, Duke of Clarence, for treason, a decision that led to the duke’s death in the Tower. Very soon afterwards, an important event took place at home which concerned him closely. On 15 January 1478 Richard, Duke of York and Norfolk, and Anne Mowbray were married in St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster. The actual marriage of children so young, rather than a simple betrothal, was unusual but by no means unprecedented. The reason for the marriage became clear when parliament gathered a week or so later. It passed an act at the king’s behest setting aside the customary laws of inheritance and ensuring that if Anne were to die without issue, the Mowbray estates would remain vested in her husband for life rather than reverting immediately to her co-heirs.4 The law of inheritance thus so cavalierly set aside was deeply engrained in the fabric of English social life and had been in force for generations. It did not just affect the great estates of the nobility, but mattered to every landowner in the country, regardless of the size of his holding. Edward had to cloak his action in some form of legality by passing an act of parliament, but that did not necessarily make it either just or acceptable to his subjects. There is no evidence of how Howard felt about this, but in 1478, and as long as Anne lived, the issue remained dormant. His potential co-heir, William, Lord Berkeley, viewed the matter somewhat differently. A few months after the death of John Mowbray, he had agreed in May 1476 to make over to Richard, Duke of York, and his heirs male, with remainder to the king and his heirs male, all his reversionary rights in the Mowbray estates. While such a grant of reversionary rights was not unprecedented, what was staggering was that in return Edward IV agreed to pay off a very large debt that Berkeley owed to the Talbot family as a result of a feud over another inheritance.5 Edward IV may never have seriously intended to pay the Talbots, and given his increasing avarice it seems highly unlikely, but this would not have worried Berkeley, who could now disclaim the debts. In addition to thus purchasing the reversionary rights to half the Mowbray inheritance, Edward persuaded Anne’s mother, the widowed Duchess Elizabeth (ironically herself a Talbot), to forego much of her own dower and jointure in order to augment her daughter’s dowry. In return she received a much smaller grant of manors, all of which were to revert on her death to Richard of York and his heirs. The king felt this was necessary because many of the other Mowbray estates were still in the hands of Anne’s great-grandmother, Catherine Neville, widow both of the second duke and also of the king’s brother-in-law, Sir John Woodville; this was particularly true of the East Anglian manors, and it was chieﬂy the Sussex holdings that Anne carried with her on her marriage. Berkeley had no reason to feel dissatisﬁed with these

88

YO R K I S T LO R D

arrangements, but Howard’s position was very much harder to gauge. The whole matter was theoretical while Anne was alive, but Berkeley, whose private feuds and law-suits had kept him far too busy to become much involved in political affairs, had done very well indeed. Howard, after more than 15 years of devoted service to the Yorkist cause, had his rights to a single Mowbray manor, Prittlewell in Essex, preserved. Thus the loyal servant was legally defrauded of his potential reversionary rights. However, if Howard felt resentful, it certainly did not affect his outward behaviour or the trust Edward continued to place in him, and it may perhaps be that the king had privately promised to reward him in other ways. Certainly in August 1478 Edward granted him two of Clarence’s manors, not just for life but in tail mail. Howard may have been in England that summer of 1478 because he was also appointed to two ad hoc commissions, where he was named second to the Earl of Essex and Earl Rivers respectively. Early in 1479 the king made Howard rather an odd grant: he was given the reversion of the constableship of the Tower of London, following the death or cessation of the holder, John, Lord Dudley, and the holder of an earlier reversion, Richard, Lord Dacre.6 That Edward placed a high value on Howard’s diplomatic skills is clear by the number of times he was appointed to meet the French, the subject of England’s most important diplomatic dealings, and after 1475 there were few meetings between English and French envoys at which he was not present. By contrast, apart from the Bishop of Elne, Louis’s semi-permanent representative in London, all the French embassies were manned by envoys who came to England only once, presumably so that they could plead ignorance of all that had been previously arranged; nor did Louis scruple to repudiate what the unfortunate Bishop of Elne had agreed if it suited his purpose. In England, Howard also had ofﬁcial dealings with French envoys. He was on a commission which negotiated with the bishop the alterations Edward wished made to the offers from Louis that Howard had brought home in the spring of 1478, and when French envoys came to settle the question of Princess Elizabeth’s dowry, Howard presented them with a ﬁne ‘ambling horse’ in the king’s name.7 Despite the obvious advantages of having diplomatic experts to negotiate, it did lay the participants open to a number of pressures. There is a Flemish story that in the early summer of 1479 Flemings captured a French ship on which they found a letter and presents from Louis to Howard, asking him to arrange for the sending of 10,000 English soldiers to help him in Flanders.8 No indication of the source of the information is given and there is no English evidence for its authenticity, or of its sequel, which was that when Edward was informed, he arrested Howard and 11 of his close associates, unfortunately unnamed. If the story is true, and it has an air of likelihood about it, then it reﬂects Louis’s belief that Howard was not only very inﬂuential, but very well-disposed toward himself. Louis was suffering reverses in the ﬁeld, although Maximilian did not inﬂict the

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

89

defeat of Guinegatte upon him until August of that year, and he was also worried that Edward was drawing closer to an alliance with Mary and Maximilian. An English contingent among his troops would not only have been welcome militarily, but would have illustrated the solidarity of the Anglo-French alliance and hence the unlikelihood of an English aid going to Burgundy. Since Edward was in fact in the process of negotiating a marriage between his daughter, Anne, and Philip, the baby son of Mary and Maximilian, such an approach by Louis to one of his own nobles would probably have awakened old memories of Warwick and his independent pro-French policies. Howard and Warwick, however, were two very different men. There is not the slightest indication that Howard had any wish to inﬂuence his country’s foreign policy, or do other than serve Edward and his council in whatever way he could. Louis had certainly misjudged his man and it is very unlikely that Edward made the same mistake. If the story of Louis’s letter is true, and it may well be, then its sequel, that Howard had been arrested, is unlikely: it would almost certainly have been noted by English sources and there is no indication that he was out of favour at this period. The acceptance of French pensions did lay certain members of the council open to accusations that they were pro-French, but Edward would hardly have used them so extensively as envoys if he had cause to doubt their loyalty to himself. In January 1479, when Louis’s ambassadors were received by Edward, his Chancellor, Howard and other members of the council, the point at issue was the payment of Princess Elizabeth’s jointure. Edward was arguing that since she was now 13 and marriageable, the formal betrothal to the eight-year old Dauphin should be carried through and Elizabeth enjoy immediately the jointure of 60,000 crowns a year agreed by the Treaty of Picquigny. The French ambassadors’ answer to this somewhat excessive demand was that such a payment was unreasonable, contrary to the custom of France and conditional upon the consummation of the marriage. This produced such indignation among the entire council that they advised Edward to break off all relations with France. While this display may well have been orchestrated by the king, the fact that several of the most inﬂuential members of the council were putting their French pensions in jeopardy hardly argues that their receipt of such pensions made them pro-French. Negotiations continued throughout 1479–80. The victory by Maximilian over the French at Guinegatte in August 1479 slightly strengthened Edward’s hand, as did an agreement with Maximilian and Mary not to betroth their son and heir, Philip, to anyone other than Edward’s daughter Anne. Louis was aware that he had to offer some concession about Elizabeth’s dowry, but Edward was already suspicious about his sincerity and pressed very hard for the conclusion of the marriage while Louis was at a disadvantage. Anti-French feeling continued to mount in London. In May 1480 Lord Hastings was sent to take command at Calais, Gloucester was commissioned to defend the border against Scotland, and

90

YO R K I S T LO R D

Howard and Langton were commissioned to return to France with Louis’s ambassadors and demand the immediate marriage of Elizabeth and the Dauphin. This hardly suggests that Edward believed that Howard was more favourable towards Louis than he should have been, but rather that, in a deteriorating diplomatic situation, he was sending his most experienced and therefore most trustworthy negotiator. Louis’s returning envoys crossed in the king’s ship Grace Dieu, but Howard and Langton seem to have crossed in a ship of John Barker’s, presumably because none of Howard’s own were available.9 With them went some horses and dogs, a gift to Louis from Hastings, who wrote to him ‘You may be sure, Sire, that I shall ever be ready to render you all the service I can, as I have sent you word (by the returning ambassadors) and also by Monsieur de Howard, who is your very good servant and by whom you shall be told about everything’. This is not the whole text of the letter, but it is enough to indicate that Edward was willing to permit some of his closest associates to make themselves agreeable to Louis. He wanted French suspicions lulled and Louis’s sensibilities soothed. Although moving towards an alliance with Burgundy, he was loath to lose his pension and his daughter’s marriage and thought that, if he was adroit enough, he might manage to retain both. Louis received Howard as politely as ever, and distributed 1,000 marks worth of silver vessels between the English envoys; Hastings also received lavish presents and even the goodwill of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, known to be anti-French, was sought by the gift of a great bombard. Despite the gifts, Louis was stalling for as long as he could while he sought to discover what Edward was really up to. Howard was left to wander the streets of Paris and amuse himself as best he might until the king chose to proceed further.10 Louis’s spies brought him the disconcerting news that the Duchess Margaret was making an unexpected visit to her brother in London in late June 1480 in order to induce Edward to enter a ﬁrm alliance with Burgundy. This brought Louis promptly to Howard with a ﬁrm offer to pay Edward’s daughter 15,000 crowns a year until such time as her marriage to his son was solemnized. By the end of July, Howard was back in London with this offer, and Margaret wrote to Maximilian that, according to Howard, Louis was now promising Edward everything he wished, but swearing that if Edward failed him, he would make a separate treaty with Maximilian to the exclusion of England. Howard, she went on, was of the opinion that Louis would rather spend half the annual revenues of France on gifts than fail to accomplish what he wanted. This was undoubtedly not only Louis’s true frame of mind, but also one he wished Edward to appreciate, a classic example of bribing with one hand and threatening with the other.11 Howard could also endorse Louis’s determination with the news that he was preparing an army to lay siege to St.Omer or Aire in Burgundy. Despite all Louis’s efforts, Edward decided in favour of Maximilian; the treaty made in 1474 was conﬁrmed

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

91

and he promised to send 6,000 archers to Burgundy. Duchess Margaret spent the summer negotiating between her brother and her step-son-in-law. On her way home she wrote letters from Rochester: one to Maximilian dated 14 September 1480 states that out of the money she had received from Edward towards the payment of the archers, she had paid Dr Langton £24 as compensation for goods he had lost the previous year when ships of Lord Howard’s were taken by subjects of her cousins of Romont and Nassau. This sum was to be deducted from the money Maximilian must pay Howard and she had a letter from Howard in front of her agreeing to the separate payment to his colleague Langton. The two ships concerned were the Edward and the George, which had been plundered off the coast of Normandy early the previous summer.12 It was just one of many losses suffered by merchant ships during this unsettled period, but unlike most merchants, Howard was able to press for compensation at the very highest level. Nothing is more indicative of his importance during this period. In March 1481 Howard noted that he had completed the purchase of the manor of Wivenhoe in Essex from the Duke of Gloucester. This had been one of the most important former de Vere manors, brought to them by the Countess Elizabeth as part of her inheritance from her Walton mother, and therefore not a Howard one. The manor was strategically important because Wivenhoe was the port for Colchester, so it was a shrewd buy and one it can be assumed Howard initiated. The sale had been arranged the previous year, when Howard agreed to pay Gloucester 1,100 marks for it in two instalments, ‘besede al other costes & charges, wryting of the evydences thereto’. With the payment of the second instalment in March 1481, the manor became his.13 During the previous month, February 1481, Howard had received an appointment which was to link him to Gloucester in a very different way. It was not to one of his frequent diplomatic missions, but to something which may have appealed to him even more. He was given the command of a ﬂeet that was to attack Scotland in concert with a land invasion which Edward initially intended to lead himself, but then delegated to his brother. Louis of France, worried about a new league between his old enemies of England, Burgundy and Brittany, had followed his usual policy of divide and conquer and found little difﬁculty in contriving an Anglo-Scottish conﬂict that would keep Edward busy on his northern border. In turn, Edward set about dealing with James III. Bamborough Castle in Northumberland had been burned in a raid by the Earl of Angus, and Gloucester had led a retaliatory raid across the Scottish border in September 1480. On his return, plans were laid for action on a larger scale, the king to lead an invasion by land, Howard one from the sea. As a consequence of this plan, all export of grain was prohibited and ships and seamen requisitioned. The king bought at least four large ships for the burgeoning royal navy, the Holy Ghost, which was Portuguese and therefore usually referred to as the ‘carvel of Portugal’, the Marie, which came from Bilbao and was known as

92

YO R K I S T LO R D

the ‘great Spaniard’, the Trinity of Eu in France, and ﬁnally the Mary Howard, for which he paid Howard 500 marks.14 Howard’s indenture made on 23 February to do the king ‘servisse opon the see, and to be his liefenant & capteine’ was for a term of 16 weeks with a complement of 3,000 men, ‘landsmen and mariners’. for whom he was to receive payment of 15d. per man per week for their wages and 12½ d. per week for victuals, a total, according to his own accounts (which re-commence in 1480) of £5,500. The ﬂeet was to be divided in two sections, the larger under Howard sailing for Scotland, but equally importantly, the smaller, under the command of Avery Cornburgh, was to remain in the south patrolling the Channel to protect the English coast against raids by the French and prevent them sending aid to Scotland. Cornburgh indented directly with Howard for 300 mariners and 350 landsmen, and was to have the Grace Dieu, the largest of all the English ships, as his ﬂagship and a force of ﬁve smaller ones, including the new acquisition, the Trinity. Howard’s own second-in-command was Lord Cobham, with the George Cobham and the Mary of Lynn; Cobham was married to Howard’s niece, Margaret Neville.15 Although Howard had sold the Mary Howard to the king, she was to be his ﬂagship and, with the Portuguese Holy Ghost, was the largest of his share of the ﬂeet, each carrying 400 men. The second of his own ships was the Paker, the smallest of the ﬂeet, carrying only 30 men. The entire Scottish part of the ﬂeet comprised eight ships, only four of which were of any considerable size, but the English were not expecting any major opposition and intended only hit-and-run raids. Less than half the two ﬂeets consisted of royal ships and Howard had to pay each mariner from the other ships commandeered for service a sum known as ‘prest’ money. He kept meticulous accounts of how much each captain ought to receive to cover payments of wages, prest money and victuals and how much he had already been paid. The man responsible for the supply of money from the royal coffers was John Fitzherbert, one of the king’s tellers. Also copied into the accounts were the contracts Howard made with each of his captains, who, apart from Cobham and Cornburgh, were Sir Harry Wentworth, Edward Brampton, a converted Portuguese Jew, who was a gentleman usher, Robert Clifford, who, like Cornburgh, was an esquire of the body, John Waynﬂete, a sergeant-of-arms, and John Williams, marshal of the hall. All, with the exceptions of Cobham and Wentworth, were therefore holding positions in the royal household. Howard’s own retinue consisted of 150 men, listed in the accounts under the heading ‘What Gentylmen goeth with my lord Howard to the See’. His son-in-law, Robert Mortimer, was paid £9 for ‘prest’ money, which usually ran at about 2s. per man. Howard’s other three sons-in-law were also part of the expedition, John Timperley and Edmund Gorges as esquires of the royal household.16 The headquarters for ﬁtting out the ﬂeet was Harwich, and Howard seems to have divided his time between London, Ipswich and Harwich, often travelling

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

93

by boat. His accounts contain details for the ﬂeet interspersed with payments for building the Barbara, his new ship, and with his own household entries, but at this date they are not as orderly as the record for ﬁtting out the Scales ﬂeet in 1468 and it is more difﬁcult to work out exactly where the supplies came from. There is no reason, however, to suppose that the general pattern differed signiﬁcantly. There was the same difﬁculty over storage and Howard was reduced to paying Andrew Thomson, ironically a Scot who lived in Ipswich, to bring him 20 pipes over from Flanders. Small coastal vessels plied up and down between the major ports ferrying equipment and supplies. Lacking the great London warehouses of the Ratcliffe wharves, he was forced to use ‘the loft over the salt house by the churchyard’ at Harwich for storing handguns and the timber to make shafts and spars. Local smiths were employed to make thousands of caltrops (devices consisting of three spikes, one of which was always upwards; they were used mainly against cavalry). It was in London that the larger weapons, serpentines, for example, were generally made, but the smith in his new manor of Wivenhoe was commissioned to make at least one serpentine.17 The king and Prince Edward went to Sandwich to review the ﬂeet and see it sail. They were probably received on board the Mary Howard, where the commander had surrounded himself with a considerable degree of comfort (see Chapter 8). The exact date of sailing is unknown, but Howard left his wife at Harwich on 20 May, to rendezvous with Cornburgh at Sandwich, and it was probably a few days later that the ﬂeet raised anchor; certainly Lord Cobham was still ashore on 29 May. By 4 June Howard’s ships had got no further north than Yarmouth, where they put in, probably because of contrary winds, because they stayed there nearly a week and took on more supplies. By 17 June they were still only off Scarborough, where they took in some ﬁsh, but after that the winds presumably changed, because on 24 June they were ‘fast by the light at Inskith’ and the lighthouse at Inchkeith was on an island in the Firth of Forth. The chronology of action by Howard’s little ﬂeet is not easy to ascertain. According to Bishop Lesley’s History of Scotland, which, although not contemporary, is the account closest in time to the events described, he made two raids along the Forth. However, since Lesley placed his account of the ﬁrst raid immediately after mention of the death of the bishop of Aberdeen on 14 April, it was for a long time assumed that Howard’s action took place in April or early May. It more probably, however, took place on 22 or 23 June, because the ﬂeet was revictualling at Inchkeith on 24 June and is far more likely to have done that after, rather than before, the action. The raid seems to have been successful. Taking the Scots completely by surprise, Howard sailed along the southern bank of the Forth as far as Leith, where he captured the largest Scottish ships at anchor there and burnt the smaller ones before crossing to the northern shore and inﬂicting similar damage at Kinghorn and Pettenween. Eight ships were captured in all and

94

YO R K I S T LO R D

Howard even managed a landing at Blackness, where he burned the town. Lesley says that the English were not suffered to land elsewhere, but given the nature of his command, Howard probably had no intention of landing troops anywhere for more than an hour or so, but aimed at quick hit-and-run attacks in as many places as possible while he still had the element of surprise.18 From the Firth of Forth the little English ﬂeet retired to Newcastle, where from 28 June they awaited Sir John Elrington, Howard’s successor as treasurer of the household, who had come north to arrange for their revictualling and to bring the commander a letter from the king dated 6 July; it was written for Sir John to carry north on the assumption that he would make contact with Howard before any action took place. It sets out Howard’s orders as follows: . . . to brenne the Lith and other vilages along the Scottish see. Over this, we wil, and in our straitest wise require and charge you, that ye kepe the see nere about the said Lith unto the last day of August, acordyng to your endentur; which day doone and ended, we will that ye leve on the see six hundred men, whom we have commaunded to be vitailed and waged to the last day of October . . . [the names of the ships to stay were speciﬁed] . . .; and that the surplus of our menne in your retenewe ye do convey unto our said porte and town of Newcastel. Faile not of the premisses, as our very trust is in you.19

The news of Howard’s raids had not reached London by the time Edward wrote, so the king did not know that the main part of his command had already been successfully carried out. In obedience to his orders to remain until the end of August, the ﬂeet returned for a second attack which took place on 16 or 17 July. This time, lacking the element of surprise, they could do little damage, or as Lesley puts it, ‘they were repulsed by the country men’. The bishop could not have known that on 13 July Howard had paid Scots from the island of Inchcoln for bringing him food, or his faith in his countrymen might have been diminished. With the Scots now on their guard, Howard could do little except patrol the mouth of the Forth to ensure that no Scots slipped out and no French ships got through to Edinburgh. By 25 July the ﬂeet was off the Northumbrian coast, where he bought supplies from the Percies; since he was entertained by Lady Percy’s lutenist, he probably went ashore at Alnwick. The ﬁrst four days of August he spent revictualling at Hull, probably for the ships that were to remain behind until October, for the main part of the ﬂeet was home by the end of the ﬁrst week in August, when he paid off the sailors, giving many of them extra sums ‘for drink’. Howard’s successful sea raid in 1481, in many ways a forerunner of those perpetrated by his Tudor descendants, illustrates clearly the difﬁculties of naval campaigns of his time. Despite the fact that Edward IV had been building up a royal ﬂeet, only about half those under Howard belonged to the Crown, the

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

95

rest had to be commandeered from the king’s subjects. Since Edward also used his ships for mercantile purposes, he could never be sure that they would all be available if he wanted them quickly. Nonetheless, the proﬁts of these trading ventures enabled him to buy more ships, so the inconvenience was worth it. Until the Crown could afford to build ships speciﬁcally for ﬁghting purposes, much of its ﬂeet would be composed of comparatively small ships, which were preferable for trading. The Paker Howard, for instance, probably only carried a crew of about half a dozen and could squeeze in about two dozen or so soldiers when necessary. Because most of the ships were small, they had very little space available for storing supplies for the extra men. In the two months his ﬂeet was away, Howard had to revictual in a major way at Newcastle and take on extra supplies whenever the occasion offered. Yet while Howard was being successful at sea, the land attack, which should have taken place in concert with it, failed to materialize, so the English advantage was largely thrown away. Although Gloucester had made preparations, and he and Howard were in touch, it was not until too late that Edward decided not to come north in person and postponed the expedition. Having paid a visit to London, presumably to report to the king, Howard celebrated his return by going on a long hunting trip in September. The following month his extended family celebrated the marriage of his step-daughter, Lettice Norris to William Radmyld of Broadwater in Sussex, the only family wedding mentioned in the accounts, which note his contribution of many items towards the setting up of her new home. Whenever Howard visited London in future, Radmyld was never backward in his attentions, despatching dogs or gifts of game to Stepney.20 A few months after Howard’s return from Scotland, Anne Mowbray, the little Duchess of York and Norfolk, died at Greenwich on 19 November 1481, just before her ninth birthday. The cause of her death is not known, but whether it was some childish illness or whether she had been ailing for some time, King Edward had been taking steps to reinforce his son’s possession of her lands. The previous April he had raised William Berkeley’s barony to a viscountcy, but in return he insisted that Berkeley formally convey his reversionary interests to the Duke of York. Berkeley had agreed to do this in 1476, but had not actually done so. So determined to pin down the new viscount was Edward, that he made him enfeoff trustees, headed by the Archbishop of York, with Berkeley Castle and eight other manors, the enfeoffment to become void only when he had sealed the contract for the Mowbray manors. Again, there is no evidence of any approach made to Howard. He was in London in early November and visited both Greenwich and Westminster, but whether he saw the last of the Mowbrays before her death we do not know. He left London for home at the end of November, so would have been present at her obsequies. Since this year he was not spending Christmas at court, while he was still in London he gave a double silver dish to Hastings

96

YO R K I S T LO R D

worth £12, while the inﬂuential John Morton, Bishop of Ely received a nicely judged silver dish to house pens and ink as well as silver counters worth £6, both noted in Howard’s own hand in his accounts, a much rarer occurrence than in the 1460s. Christmas was spent at Stoke, where a minstrel, trumpets and several troops of players entertained the household. Lady Howard gave her daughter Catherine Berners a gold girdle and Howard’s eldest grandson, Thomas (later the 3rd duke) a little horn.21 The following year, 1482, the king again decided on action against the Scots, but this time formally delegated command to his brother right from the beginning, while the naval support was provided by a ﬂeet commanded by Sir Robert Ratcliffe, one of Gloucester’s retainers, who had commanded a small squadron off the west coast of Scotland the previous year. He lacked either Howard’s luck or his skill and failed to make much contribution to Gloucester’s success. Howard had nothing to do with this ﬂeet, not even its ﬁtting out, though he travelled with the king to Dover in April to inspect it and again in July to see it sail.22 There is no evidence as to why this was so; it is possible that Edward intended to send him on another mission to France, but more likely that Gloucester simply wanted the appointment for one of his own men. Since Howard’s last ambassadorial trip, France, England and Burgundy had continued their diplomatic manoeuvres, but the death of the Duchess Mary in March 1482 removed from Maximilian the whole-hearted support of the Burgundian people. Without active aid from England he could not hope to continue the ﬁght against Louis and sued for peace. Edward therefore had to face the consequences of playing both sides against the middle. If he had planned to send Howard back to Louis, there is no evidence that he actually did so, and from the household accounts it is clear that Howard spent an uneventful 1482 in England, most of it at home in Suffolk, though he visited the king at Eltham in April. He sent Louis a grey horse from there, and joined the king at Fotheringay for a fortnight at the beginning of June and was with him again in October. Not even an English diplomat as experienced as he could have prevented Louis from pursuing his own best interests. In the last days of 1482, by the Treaty of Arras, France and Burgundy buried all enmity and arranged for the marriage of the Dauphin to Maximilian and Mary’s daughter, with the counties of Artois and Burgundy as her marriage portion. Hoisted by his own petard, Edward lost both his pension and his daughter’s brilliant match. It could hardly have been a pleasant experience for Howard as he watched all his king’s policies collapse in ruins and Louis’s complete triumph over Maximilian. There is a payment of 40s. in mid-November during a three-week stay in London which cryptically refers to ‘havenge owt the gret seale for my Lord to Flaundres, for the mater of the Dewke of Astryche’ [Maximilian], but Howard himself did not visit Flanders at this point.23 In England, however, action which affected Howard more personally was

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

97

taking place. Edward, who still did not feel that his son’s grip on the Mowbray inheritance was secure, took action when parliament sat for the ﬁrst time since young Duchess Anne’s death. Howard left Stoke for London on 19 January 1483 in order to attend and so was present when the king had a second act passed, which conﬁrmed the provisions of the 1478 Act.24 These had come into force on Anne’s death and ensured that all the Mowbray lands she held during her lifetime remained vested in Richard, Duke of York and his heirs male, with remainder to the king and his heirs male; in default of such issue, then Berkeley’s share would revert to him or his heirs. All other lands to which Anne would have become entitled on the deaths of her mother and great-grandmother, would now come to York for his lifetime; thereafter the remaining moiety would revert to Howard and his heirs. Given the ages of the persons concerned, this would probably mean that it was Howard’s grandson, rather than he or his son, Thomas, who would beneﬁt. As far as Howard was concerned, in 1483 the act conﬁrmed to him the two former Norfolk manors, Kenton in Warwickshire, granted to his mother, and Ladyhall in Morton in Essex, granted him by the late duke. He was also conﬁrmed in the manor of Prittlewell in Essex. The act states that this was granted to Howard and his wife Margaret by the late Duke of Norfolk for Howard’s lifetime and for 20 years from the death of the duke. There is no reference to Prittlewell in any of Howard’s surviving documents, but the act says that it relates to Howard and Margaret by whatever names they were named in the duke’s grant, which suggests that the original grant was made in the late 1460s before Howard’s elevation to the peerage. Early in April 1483 King Edward was taken ill. A false report of his death reached York on 6 April, but he rallied from the ﬁrst bout and there was no real reason to suppose that the hearty king would die. Contemporaries vary in their diagnosis of the king’s illness. Mancini, in London at the time and in contact with the court, says he contracted a chill while out ﬁshing, while the Croyland Chronicler simply says it was an unknown disease. Commynes believed that it was a stroke brought on by the news of the Treaty of Arras.25 Whatever the cause, Edward was still clear-headed and conscious enough to add several codicils to his will and to attempt to reconcile quarrels between his courtiers, especially that between his stepson, Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and Lord Hastings. He was ill for about ten days and died on 9 April, a few days before his 41st birthday. Howard, who had returned to Stoke at the end of February, received a letter on 4 April from the king, although there is no indication of its subject. The messenger, paid 3s. 4d. for his errand, would presumably have given the Stoke household any news about the king’s health, though he may have left London before news of the king’s illness was public. In any event, Howard saw no reason to rush down to London. On 5 April he seems to have received a message from the queen, since he paid 20d to her ‘byrder’. Even then he does not seem to

98

YO R K I S T LO R D

have been over-anxious because he did not leave Stoke until 7 April, although he accomplished the journey in a quicker time than usual, spending only one night on the road. He reached the king just in time, for there are boat payments on 9 April as he was rowed upriver to the palace at Westminster, and that night Edward breathed his last.26 The king’s body was embalmed and then placed in St Stephen’s Chapel, next to Westminster Hall, so that all his court and the mayor of London might view the body. Here it remained for eight days with his lords and gentlemen taking turns to mount a vigil over it while arrangements were made for his funeral. On Wednesday 17 April the cofﬁn, draped with a pall of cloth of gold, was carried by knights and esquires of the body to Westminster Abbey. Thirteen bishops, headed by the Chancellor, Thomas Rotherham, now Archbishop of York, processed before the bier into the Abbey; Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, was apparently too old and frail to take part in the ceremonies. After the bishops, and immediately before the bier, walked Lord Howard, carrying the late king’s personal banner-of-arms. Bringing up the rear of the procession were all the lords temporal who were already in London, or had managed to reach the city in time. The two leading male members of the house of York, however, were absent; neither the Prince of Wales, now Edward V, in Ludlow, nor Edward IV’s surviving brother, Richard of Gloucester, in Yorkshire, were there, and the family was represented by the late king’s eldest nephew, John, Earl of Lincoln, son and heir of the Duke of Suffolk. Of Howard’s own connections, his cousin, Berkeley, his sister’s stepson, Abergavenny, and her son-in-law, Cobham, were present. After the services in the Abbey were complete, the cortege set out for Windsor. Once again, Howard headed the procession: ‘And the Lord Haward, the kinges banerer, rode next befor the forhorse bering the kinges baner upon a cowrser traped with black velvet with dyvers scochons of the kinges arms, with his mourning hode upon his hede’.27 Having spent the night at Syon Abbey, the procession reached Eton and was met by the Bishops of Lincoln and Ely and there those on horseback dismounted to ﬁnish the journey into Windsor on foot. The mausoleum for the house of York was at Fotheringhay until the late 1470s. It was there that its founder, Edward, Duke of York, had been buried and much work was done on it prior to the re-interment of the king’s father, Richard, Duke of York, and his brother, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, in 1476. For his own burial, however, Edward IV had other plans. He was rebuilding St George’s Chapel at Windsor, the chapel of the Order of the Garter. Windsor was one of the king’s favourite residences and his plans for the chapel were ambitious. Although the work was not complete at his death, and the two of his children who predeceased him, George in 1479 and Mary in 1482, had to be buried in the old chapel at Windsor, by the spring of 1483 the new one was roofed in timber, the vault of the aisle near the king’s tomb and chantry was ﬁnished and the king’s tomb

THE KING’S COUNCILLOR, 1476–1483

99

partly built. When the cortege reached the chapel, the cofﬁn, bearing the king’s efﬁgy was placed within an elaborately decorated hearse in the choir. In the evening the canons of the college of St George sang the whole psalter for their founder and then the lords and ofﬁcers of the royal household kept vigil by the body through the night. Nine lords, including Howard, stood within the hearse, knights outside it. The solemn ceremony of the funeral itself took place next day, marred only by a scufﬂe between William, Lord Berkeley and Thomas Fitzalan, Lord Maltravers, over precedence. Berkeley thought his viscountcy gave him precedence over a mere baron, but the other lords squashed his pretensions by declaring that since Maltravers was heir to the earldom of Arundel, his was the seniority. The unseemly incident, minor enough in itself, seems an indication of Berkeley’s ambition, also expressed in his determination to gain all he could in the matter of the Mowbray inheritance. It was not just those who knew him who mourned the king. Despite the increasing arbitrariness and avarice of his later years, Edward was genuinely popular with his people, and there are several surviving laments for him.28 There is no means of telling how the loss of the king he had served so long and so well affected Howard’s emotions. In practical terms, however, Edward’s death was to have signiﬁcant repercussions for Howard as well as for the realm.

This page intentionally left blank

6

The Reign of Edward V

The three months following the death of Edward IV are much the most controversial period of John Howard’s life. From 1461 until 9 April 1483 his political career had been a steady upward trajectory, without a hint of disloyalty, either to his lords, the Mowbray dukes, or to King Edward himself. While some episodes in the preceding years had reﬂected less to his credit than others, by 1483 he was ennobled, wealthy and the Yorkist regime’s most experienced and respected diplomat. In April 1483 everything changed, both for England and for Howard. Just how far was he involved in the usurpation of Richard III? Did he support Richard in order to gain the dukedom of Norfolk? Was he even, as has been suggested, responsible for the murder of the Princes himself? What motivated him can never be anything but guesswork, but what is certain is that he did not oppose the usurpation, and that he died supporting Richard at Bosworth. The events following Edward’s death are well known and it is not proposed to recount them in detail here, save where necessary to explain Howard’s actions. There is no doubt that Howard and Richard of Gloucester knew each other reasonably well. Howard had been the duke’s deputy admiral for the east coast for almost all of Edward’s reign, there is their recorded meeting at Colchester in the late 1460s, Howard’s far from admirable co-operation in Gloucester’s takeover of the Countess of Oxford’s lands in the winter of 1472–3 and doubtless other meetings which have left no record. Their views, however, almost certainly differed over the results of Edward’s invasion of France: Howard was deeply involved in the settlement at Amiens, which Richard is held to have regarded as dishonouring England. For the most part, their areas of interest were different and Richard was happy to sell off East Anglian estates he had acquired from the de Veres in order to consolidate his holdings in the north, and Howard happy to take advantage of such a situation and buy Wivenhoe from him at the market price. The two would also have presumably been closely involved in the planning of the proposed Scottish invasion of 1481 and have met regularly at court functions. There are also a number of entries in the accounts of payments to the duke’s minstrels, trumpeters and players. The payments all seem to have been made at Stoke, so presumably the duke’s men were travelling ones. That, however, seems to have been the limit of the relationship between the two men during Edward’s lifetime and there is nothing suggesting anything closer. Apart from the disparity of their

102

YO R K I S T LO R D

age and status, there is some similarity between the two: both were utterly loyal to Edward IV and, although present at court at the appropriate times, more committed to their localities than life at Windsor or Westminster. While Howard was in London for the death and funeral of his king, the two most important persons in the realm were absent: the boy king, Edward V, and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the late king’s only surviving brother. The former was at Ludlow, with his household, headed by his maternal uncle, Anthony, Earl Rivers, the latter at home in Yorkshire. In London the most inﬂuential people present were the queen, the chancellor, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, and William, Lord Hastings. How the country was to be governed during the minority of the new king was a matter to be settled by the council, of which Howard was a member. One of the difﬁculties in interpreting the events of the next few months is the dearth of contemporary sources, because the most informative were written after the event with the inevitable degree of hindsight. The account by an Italian visitor, Dominic Mancini, while neutral, was inevitably affected by a lack of understanding of the political system but was written very soon after the events that he reported. The man who was at the centre of affairs, the second continuator of the Crowland Chronicles, describes himself as a councillor and his identity has been the cause of much speculation. Although his account was written soon after Bosworth, he was in a position to know exactly what went on at council meetings and his account, in so far as it relates to the council, can be taken as accurate; his information about other events is likely to come from informed sources. The third account was by another Italian, this time the Anglicized Polydore Vergil, who was encouraged by Henry VII to write it in order to justify the Tudor usurpation to the scholars of Europe, so to that extent it was highly partial. The Anglica Historia was completed by 1513, 30 years after the events of 1483, but Vergil did have access to many men about the court who had been players or observers of what happened that spring, not least Thomas Howard.1 In April 1483 the ﬁrst issue for the council was to get the new king to London for his coronation. There was some argument on the number of men to provide a suitable escort, but complete unanimity that Edward ‘should succeed his father in all his glory’. Crowland, like a discreet civil servant, is reluctant to name names, much to the frustration of historians. He comments that the more foresighted members (unspeciﬁed) of the council thought that the king’s maternal uncles and brothers should be forbidden to have control of the prince while he was underage. This is an extremely interesting comment, because it was a negation of Edward IV’s wishes. The late king left the care of his son’s person to Rivers and it was the queen’s brother whom many of the councillors sought to prevent bringing a large quantity of soldiers to London. Hastings protested that he would rather ﬂee to Calais immediately than await the new king if he did not come with

T H E R E I G N O F E D WA R D V

103

a modest force. He feared that because of his feud with the king’s half-brother, Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, he would be at a severe disadvantage, since Edward V was bound to turn for help and advice to his mother’s family, who had overseen much of his upbringing, and he, Hastings, would lose the powerful position of inﬂuence he had held throughout Edward IV’s reign. It was Hastings who probably kept Gloucester informed of what was happening in London and urged him to bring a large body of armed men south with him. According to Crowland, Queen Elizabeth, at the request of the council and in the interests of the peaceful accession of her son, wrote to Ludlow asking her brother to limit his retainers to 2,000 men. With this Hastings was perfectly happy, since he was sure Gloucester would bring as many. Even this compromise ﬁgure was in fact a very signiﬁcant number of troops descending on the capital. The council hoped to establish a settled regime as soon as possible and set an early date for the coronation. There is no clue as to Howard’s views, though it is quite likely that he supported Hastings; he certainly dined with him on 11 April, and although much of the conversation would have been about the forthcoming funeral, it is inconceivable that the political future was not touched upon.2 In deciding on how the country should be governed over the next few years, there were two possible precedents for the council to follow: either that the late king’s brother be appointed Protector (unlike France, England had no tradition of regents) and govern with the aid of the council in a position of ‘ﬁrst among equals’, as had happened on the death of Henry V in 1422 when his son was a baby, or that the new king, who was 12, could be declared of age immediately after his coronation, and the government could thereafter be carried out in his name by his council. The young Henry VI had been declared of age in 1437 when he was 15. Edward V at 12 was intelligent and well-trained for his role and already capable of having some say in his affairs. At this stage, it is probably true to say that Gloucester was held in almost universal respect and all except the strongest supporters of the queen’s family, would approve of him heading the council during a minority. Whether he should be formally appointed Protector, however, was another matter, for would any man with such powers voluntarily lay them down? In April 1483 the council decided on the second of the precedents, to crown the young king and have him declared of age. Gloucester’s coup at Stony Stratford on the night of 29 April, in concert with Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, completely altered the political situation. Whether Richard had already decided that for his own security he had little option but to depose his nephew and take the throne, or whether each step was a reaction to the circumstances in which he found himself until the seizure of the throne itself became inevitable, is something which can, and almost certainly will, be argued about indeﬁnitely. The coup at Stony Stratford perhaps suggests the former, but whatever Richard’s motivation, it was there that the die was cast.

104

YO R K I S T LO R D

With the king in his hands, Gloucester despatched Rivers, Sir Richard Grey, the queen’s son, and Sir Thomas Vaughan, the prince’s chamberlain, who had been with him since he was a baby, to imprisonment in Yorkshire, and dismissed the remainder of young Edward’s household servants. When the news reached London, the queen and her other children rushed to sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, her son, Dorset, joined her, and her brother, Sir Edward Woodville, previously commissioned by the council to take a ﬂeet of 20 ships to sea against a French threat, hastened off to do just that, removing himself from London and ensuring that his faction had ships to hand. He is also said to have taken much of Edward IV’s treasure from the Tower with him. However, many people, probably including Hastings, felt that Gloucester, whatever his methods, should become the leader of the council, and that limiting the inﬂuence of the Woodvilles was no bad thing. It is quite probable that Howard also fell into this camp. Although he had no quarrel with the queen’s family, whose inﬂuence in East Anglia was paramount (apart from the Mowbray holdings of the young Duke of York, the queen held large numbers of Duchy of Lancaster manors there in dower, and Rivers had been another landowner there in right of his ﬁrst wife, the Scales heiress, for many years), in any struggle between them and the late king’s brother, he was likely to back the latter. The tension that was inevitably felt in the capital during the second half of April is hardly reﬂected in the household accounts and life went on as usual even while history was being changed, the dominant feature being building work Howard was having done at his Stepney premises. One or two entries do touch on what was happening at Westminster. First, he despatched his nephew and right-hand man, Thomas Daniel, to Suffolk to escort Margaret to London, which she reached on 29 April, the day of the Stony Stratford coup, and the fact that Howard sent for his wife hardly suggests he anticipated any serious trouble in the capital. A few days earlier, he had paid a messenger for bringing a letter from his son, Thomas, the second in just over a week. There is no record of Thomas attending the funeral and when he arrived in London is unclear.3 Edward V ﬁnally entered his capital on 4 May, the date originally set for his coronation. Gloucester summoned all the lords spiritual and temporal to swear fealty to his nephew and a new date, 24 June, was ﬁxed for the coronation. The council formally appointed Gloucester to the position of Protector, ‘with the consent and goodwill of all the lords’, according to Crowland, but only until the coronation and it refused to condemn Rivers and his companions as traitors, on the grounds that when he arrested them, Gloucester held no ofﬁcial position. As a body it therefore took a ﬁrm stand and remained strictly neutral between the two opposing parties, no matter what the views of individual members. Hastings might assert that all that had happened was that the government of the kingdom had been transferred from two blood relatives of the queen (Rivers and Dorset)

T H E R E I G N O F E D WA R D V

105

to two nobles of the blood royal (Gloucester and Buckingham) without bloodshed, but the continuing detention of Rivers and the others caused uneasiness, as did the refusal of the queen to leave sanctuary. In a deliberate attempt to stir up anti-Woodville feelings, Gloucester made a display of weapons supposedly taken from them at Stony Stratford. He was making it clear that he did not anticipate heading a council where all the factions were equally represented. That tension in London had eased, however, is indicated by the fact that on 9 May, Howard sent home to Suffolk no fewer than 34 members of his retinue. These were not household men, but drawn from the villages of Stoke-by-Nayland, Hadleigh, Nayland and Chelmsford, and presumably formed part of the train he had brought to the capital for the funeral. There is no indication that they had arrived after their lord or that they were specially summoned because of the uncertain political situation.4 The government of the country was now able to get under way following the hiatus and on 13 May, Howard was granted the ofﬁce of chief steward of the Duchy of Lancaster south of the Trent for life, back-dated to 21 April. The post had been held by Edward IV’s uncle, Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, who died a few days before the king, on 4 April. Howard’s appointment may not have been political, but an important post delivered into a safe pair of hands by the council. The reason for it being back-dated for three weeks is not clear, but it may have represented wages due; the annual fee was £100. On the other hand, two days later ‘my Lord gaff unto my Lord Protector a coppe of goolde and a cuer [cover], weyenge lxv unces of goold’, which was either a thanks offering for a lucrative post for which Gloucester had proposed him, or a simple gift to win favour with the most inﬂuential man in the country. On 16 May he received his summons to the new king’s ﬁrst parliament, called for 25 June, the day after the coronation.5 One urgent question for the council to settle was that of a temporary residence for the young king. He had been initially housed in the bishop’s palace at St Paul’s, but he needed somewhere more spacious when he took over his father’s household servants. The palace of Westminster was out of the question because the queen was still in sanctuary in the adjacent Abbey. Several other places were suggested and then Buckingham raised the possibility of the royal apartments in the Tower, the traditional residence prior to a coronation. This was accepted by the council as appropriate; Crowland says that it was accepted verbally, even by those who did not wish it. For historians there has been some uncertainty as to who, as Constable of the Tower, would have been responsible for the king’s reception and stay. The holder of the ofﬁce, John, Lord Dudley, was over 80 and could not be expected to perform his duties personally; that he was not out of favour is indicated by a grant of an annuity of £100 the following March. At the time of King Edward’s death, the position of his deputy was held by no lesser person than Earl Rivers, and a letter to his man of business, Andrew Dymmock,

106

YO R K I S T LO R D

written on 8 March, shows him in the process of transferring the ofﬁce to his nephew, Dorset. It was a private arrangement and left no trace in ofﬁcial records, but it does explain the rumours that his brother, Sir Edward Woodville, had large amounts of the late king’s ready money, which had been in the Tower, with him when he set sail. If Dudley was too old to be on duty at the Tower and Dorset unavailable in sanctuary, who then? Ralph Fiennes, Lord Dacre, held the ﬁrst reversion on the ofﬁce of constable, but he had, also with Dudley, been joint chamberlain to the Queen, and therefore was unlikely to have been acceptable to the Protector. John Howard held the second reversion, having been granted it in 1479. However, all these appointments were superseded on 17 July 1483, when Sir Robert Brackenbury, a loyal retainer of Gloucester, was made constable.6 Was this a formal recognition for a post he had been ﬁlling for some months, or had Howard been asked to deputize as constable in the interim by virtue of his reversionary interest, or had Richard simply appointed another deputy in place of Dorset while he made a decision about the constableship? There are no surviving administrative records for the Tower at this period, but it seems more likely that the Protector would give this key task to one of his own trusted men rather than a peer who might or might not prove supportive in a crisis. To all outward appearances, affairs in London continued to run smoothly for a month or so after the arrival of the Protector. On 6 June repayment was made to a junior member of the household who had laid out cost for ‘my Ladyes standynge in Chepe’ and ‘for wyn at the said plase’. It is not clear what procession Lady Howard had been watching, but probably the young king’s journey from St Paul’s to the Tower. Preparations were in train for his coronation and the only real cause for concern was the fact that Edward’s mother and younger brother were still in sanctuary and the ﬂeet under the queen’s brother was still at sea. At the end of the ﬁrst week in June, however, the Protector wrote to his loyal city of York requesting the assistance of a body of armed men. It may have been only one of a number of similar letters, but it is doubtful if anyone in London other than his closest adherents knew that such a request had been made. He also encouraged other leading men to send the major part of their retinues home to allay the fears of London citizens, who disliked hundreds of possibly armed men on their streets. On 13 June, the Protector called a council meeting, but divided its members so that some met at Westminster, the remainder in the Tower. Those at Westminster formed the bulk of the councillors and met under the new Chancellor, Bishop Russell of Lincoln, to proclaim the new date ﬁxed for Edward V’s coronation and settle its arrangements. According to Vergil, those speciﬁcally summoned to the Tower were a more selective group and he names ‘Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, the former chancellor, recently dismissed from his post, John Morton, Bishop of Ely, Henry, Duke of Buckingham, Thomas, Lord Stanley,

T H E R E I G N O F E D WA R D V

107

William, Lord Hastings, John, Lord Howard and many others whom he [the Protector] trusted to ﬁnd faithful either from fear or beneﬁt’.7 Vergil was writing many years after the event, though his sources were well-informed, but neither Crowland or Mancini mention Howard’s presence, which suggests that at the time he was seen neither as a prominent supporter of the Protector nor as a severe threat to him; in fact Howard’s name does not appear at all in Mancini’s narrative. Gloucester joined the councillors at the Tower and then dramatically charged Hastings, John Morton, Thomas Rotherham, and Thomas, Lord Stanley (husband of Lady Margaret Beaufort and thus step-father of the last Lancastrian claimant to the throne, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond), with plotting to join forces with the Woodvilles for his overthrow. Hastings was hustled from the room and beheaded immediately without any form of trial and the two bishops were despatched to imprisonment in different castles in Wales. ‘Thus’, says Mancini, ‘fell Hastings, killed not by those enemies he had always feared, but by a friend whom he had never doubted’.8 Since all the leading Woodvilles were either in sanctuary, in prison or overseas, there is little likelihood of a serious plot by them, and there is no independent evidence at all of a plot by Hastings. That said, in the circumstances, speculation, disquiet and potential plotting were almost inevitable, and Hastings was likely to be a focus. Nor would Gloucester have overlooked the fact that Hastings, as Lieutenant of Calais, had access to a strong military force and a base outside England; Warwick, after all, had not scrupled to use Calais soldiers for his own purposes. Either Hastings was beginning to be suspicious of Gloucester’s ultimate intentions, or the Protector judged that he would never support any deposition of Edward V, and that if he was plotting, it was likely to be for his own ends rather than in support of the Woodvilles. The major contemporary sources all state that Hastings died because he was the most loyal supporter of Edward V and leader of an inﬂuential group of men, originally including Howard, who were the moderate loyalists on the council, and therefore the Protector saw him as the main obstacle to his own passage to the throne. It seems difﬁcult to argue with this reasoning.9 The remaining councillors, presumably stunned by what they had witnessed, had received a potent warning of their likely fates if they opposed the Protector. If Howard was at the Tower, as Vergil states (though it is surprising that Crowland did not mention his presence), then at that stage he was seen as a leading moderate, rather than as a committed supporter of either Hastings or Gloucester. Apart from Gloucester’s leading supporter, Buckingham, of the four other attendees Vergil speciﬁcally names along with Hastings, two were arrested with him, and Rotherham, a trusted servant of Edward IV, was removed from the chancellorship and imprisoned because of his close association with the queen. One further person has to be considered. In a manuscript version of his History, Vergil names three men, omitted from the printed version, who were

108

YO R K I S T LO R D

in charge of a number of armed men placed by the Protector in a nearby room in the Tower. Their leader was Thomas Howard and the other two were reliable northern retainers, Charles Pilkington and Robert Harrington.10 It is entirely plausible that Gloucester would back up his second coup with force if necessary, using men long loyal to him. The surprise is that Thomas Howard, who could hardly have known the Protector well, was involved. Vergil is partially backed by Sir Thomas More, whose source may have been his mentor, Bishop Morton. In his account of the council meeting, More says that Hastings was fetched to Tower by a knight whom he says was a ‘mesne’ man, meaning of middling degree, but who at the time of writing was much more important. When Hastings stopped on the way to talk to a priest in Tower Street, his escort laughed at him, asking why he dallied so long, since he had no need of a priest yet. Edward Hall, writing much later, when all the participants were long dead, but using More’s account, names the escort as Thomas.11 Both Tudor writers imply that Thomas was privy to the Protector’s plans and that the remark was malicious. It is, however, possible to accept both Thomas Howard’s presence and his ignorance of what was to come. His joking remark to Hastings, whose way of life was notorious, is one any close associate of his might have made. Yet the only men who knew it had been made were Thomas and Hastings, and possibly the priest, so where did More get the story? Was it from Thomas himself? This is hardly likely, since it does not redound to his credit, and it is more plausible that More was just embellishing the text of his moral tale. Yet Vergil’s implication that both Howards were aware of the Protector’s plans in advance cannot be entirely dismissed. The council meeting at the Tower took place on Friday 13 June, and on the following Monday, 16 June, the council persuaded the queen to allow her younger son, Richard, Duke of York and Norfolk, to leave sanctuary and join his brother in the royal apartments of the Tower. It is likely that the decision about York was taken the previous Friday at the council meeting at Westminster, which dealt with the coronation. Howard’s own accounts note payment for eight boats up and down the Thames to Westminster on that Monday.12 We do not know the size of the boats or whether they all went upriver at the same time, but Howard would probably have had a sizable number of his household men with him. The council had certainly been trying to persuade the queen to leave sanctuary for some time, chieﬂy because it was hardly digniﬁed for the young king to be crowned while his mother and his brother and heir were hiding in sanctuary. To this extent the council were at one with the Protector, no matter whether he had other motives of which they were ignorant. The men who went to the queen on behalf of the council were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the aged Cardinal Bourchier, and the Chancellor, Bishop Russell. No one, not least the queen, doubted the integrity of the two churchmen, though both Crowland and Mancini say that the Protector and the Duke of Buckingham surrounded the sanctuary with armed men, and

T H E R E I G N O F E D WA R D V

109

the former added that Bourchier was compelled to act as he did, and the latter gave as his motive his fear of the violation of sanctuary. This looks suspiciously like hindsight.13 Crowland says that many others were likewise compelled to go with the cardinal, and Vergil again speciﬁcally names Howard. The implication of this, if Vergil is correct, is that Howard, too, was seen as someone whom the queen would trust, that he and the churchmen sincerely believed that no harm would come to the boy, and that the queen overcame her misgivings because they were men whose word she did not doubt. On that day in June nobody could possibly have imagined the fate that awaited the boys. Such are the realities of power, that with Hastings and other natural leaders imprisoned or dead, any part of the council that felt inclined to oppose further moves by the Protector would have found itself powerless to move, short of courting immediate death. Howard’s whole career had shown him to be an eminently practical man, accustomed to the rapid reversals of power that had taken place during his long career, and not one to throw away his life in a futile gesture. He had always been on friendly terms with Gloucester and would, if he were careful, be likely to do well out of the new regime. Just over a week after the death of Hastings, on Sunday 22 June, two days before the coronation of Edward V, Dr Ralph Shaw preached a sermon at St Paul’s Cross. In it he declared that both princes were illegitimate because Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth had not been legally married owing to an earlier pre-contract of marriage entered into by the king, and that Richard of Gloucester was the only legitimate heir of the house of York. Clarence’s young son, Edward, earl of Warwick, was set aside on the grounds that his father had been attainted. If Mancini’s sources reﬂected general feelings in the city, then the claims were made ‘in the face of all decency and religion’.14 Two days later, with the coronation cancelled, the same claim was made by the Duke of Buckingham to the mayor and aldermen of London at Guildhall. On 25 June, Buckingham made a similar address to a party of lords, knights and gentlemen, all gathered in London for the coronation and the subsequent meeting of parliament. Mancini says that while Buckingham’s speech at Guildhall met with little favour, the assembly of lords decided to accept Richard largely out of fear. Having been told not to maintain large retinues of men in the city, and deprived of their natural leader in Hastings, they acquiesced to Buckingham’s proposals and drew up a petition asking Richard to take the throne. On the following day, 26 June, they, together with the mayor and aldermen, met Richard at his mother’s London house, Baynard’s Castle, and Buckingham presented the petition on their behalf. Richard formally accepted and they rode to Westminster, where he took his seat in the king’s chair in the court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall. The reign of Richard III had begun. That this was all carefully orchestrated is clear from the fact that on 25 June, Rivers, Grey and Vaughan were executed without trial on Richard’s

110

YO R K I S T LO R D

orders. The northern army that had been mustering had not yet left Yorkshire, but it arrived in the capital in time to make its presence felt for the coronation, which took place on 6 July. Both before and after taking the throne, Richard III had to win as many hearts and minds as possible. In Howard he had an easy target. There is no doubt that Edward IV had treated Howard unjustly in comparison with his cousin Berkeley over the matter of the Mowbray inheritance, for Berkeley was handsomely compensated for his loss while Howard, even if he did hold long-term reversionary rights, was not. All Richard needed to do to earn his support was to offer him his rightful half-share immediately. It could be done quite simply by reversing Edward’s act of parliament, which settled the Mowbray estates on his younger son for life. A considerable proportion of the Mowbray lands were still in the possession of two widowed duchesses, Anne’s mother and great-grandmother. Her mother had been persuaded to forego most of her dower rights in order to increase the inheritance of her daughter, and the bulk of the widows’ holdings was still ﬁrmly in the hands of Catherine Neville and would remain so until her death. Howard had no claim at all upon the titles. At his death in 1476 John Mowbray held the titles of Duke and Earl of Norfolk, Earl Marshal, Earl Warenne, Earl of Nottingham and Baron Mowbray and Segrave. His daughter Anne was heiress in her own right only to the earldom of Norfolk, granted to her ancestor Margaret of Brotherton and which could therefore be held by a woman, and the baronies; the other titles, held in tail male, became extinct until such time as the king chose to grant them anew. This Edward IV had done in contemplation of the marriage between Anne and his son Richard, who was created Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Nottingham and Earl Warenne. Once married, the young duke also bore the title Earl of Norfolk and Baron Mowbray and Segrave in right of his wife. On her death without heirs in 1481, the earldom can be presumed to have become dormant and the baronies fell into abeyance between her co-heirs. Two days after he became king on 28 June 1483 and without waiting upon the niceties of parliamentary acts, Richard III granted the part of the Mowbray inheritance held by Richard, Duke of York, to its co-heirs. Much more than this, he created Howard Duke of Norfolk and Berkeley Earl of Nottingham. That Berkeley was the representative of the senior line was acknowledged by giving him the older earldom, but Howard got the dukedom because he was much more important politically. Outside the immediate royal family, there were only two other dukes: Suffolk, married to the king’s older sister, Elizabeth, and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. Since the offer of the dukedom was surely discussed in advance of its formal grant on 28 June, when Howard took up a position at Richard’s right hand as he claimed the throne in Westminster Hall on 26 June, it can be seen as a declaration that he would keep his side of the bargain.

T H E R E I G N O F E D WA R D V

111

It was a startling promotion for a man who had never been a close associate of the new king. Howard’s elevation from a simple barony was unprecedented save for the case of George Neville in 1470. Normally there would have been the intermediate step of an earldom, which would later be borne as a courtesy title by the duke’s eldest son. A month later Thomas Howard was therefore granted the Mowbray title of earl of Surrey or Warenne and in 1484 received a very generous annuity of £1,100 from the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall during his father’s lifetime in order to support the earldom.15 So surprising, indeed, was Howard’s elevation that it raises the question of what he had done, or promised to do, in return for such advancement. For the ﬁrst 500 years after the death of the princes, no mention is made of Howard in connection with their deaths. Then, in 1844, when he was editing the second book of household accounts, John Payne Collier noted an entry for 21 May 1483. A senior member of Howard’s household recording the day’s expenditure entered a payment to a workman named Basley for a day’s labour at the Tower for six men at 3d. each; at the same time he paid for the making of three beds, more than 100 feet of board, nails for the beds and two sacks of lime. Payne Collier suggested in his Introduction that these payments might have had a sinister connation, but this was not followed up for another century or more. Then in 1964, Melvyn J. Tucker, biographer of Thomas Howard, put forward a more elaborate theory.16 He based his case on a ‘strong motive and a series of interesting coincidences’. The motive, of course was the Howards’ desire to gain their rightful half-share of the Mowbray inheritance, and the coincidences may be summarized as follows: Howard was Constable of the Tower and therefore had access to the princes, the payment for the beds and lime, his past friendship with the Protector, the role he played in persuading the queen to give up York, and the support he continued to give Richard for the rest of his short reign. The theory does not stand up to close scrutiny. Howard’s position in regard to the post of Constable of the Tower has already been discussed and it will never be known who was acting as constable in the weeks prior to Brackenbury’s formal appointment. The young king was installed in the royal apartments some time before the end of May, but the arrangements for boarding his large suite may have been incomplete owing to the short notice involved. Given that Howard already had workmen busy on his house in Stepney, it is not impossible that he paid for them to put in some extra work at the Tower, providing beds for servants and whitewashing walls. However, the accounts are comprised of payments made generally for Howard’s family and household, and payment made speciﬁcally at Howard’s request is noted as ‘by my Lord’s commandment’. If Howard had had any ofﬁcial connection with the Tower, no payment relating to its business is likely to have been entered in his private accounts. There is a completely different explanation. Was the Tower referred to in the accounts in fact the Tower of London? That it was, has never

112

YO R K I S T LO R D

been questioned, but six months later Howard received a formal grant from the Crown of a house in the parish of St Thomas the Apostle, called the Tower, which had previously been leased by Gloucester himself and before that, had been held by Henry, Duke of Somerset.17 Whether this was a retrospective grant and Howard already had possession in May is impossible to determine, but it is not a possibility that can be ignored. What is certain is that the work was done and paid for nearly a month before York joined his brother in the Tower. In propounding his theory of Howard as a murderer, Tucker has to place the deed between 16 June, when York joined his brother, and 28 June, when Howard was formally granted the dukedom. Yet this is surely contradicted by both the Great Chronicle of London and Mancini, who both imply some considerable lapse of time between the boys’ disinheritance and their ﬁnal disappearance from view.18 That Howard had any hand in the death of Edward IV’s sons is inherently unlikely. That he saw their disinheritance as an opportunity to have the wrong their father had done him over the Mowbray estates righted is quite a different matter. This did not require York’s death, merely a reversal of an act of parliament. Naturally no Woodville-controlled government would pass such an act, since it was quite possibly at the Queen’s instigation that the co-heirs suffered in favour of her younger son. While there had never been any suggestion of antipathy between Howard and the Woodvilles, it is not really surprising that he preferred to give his support to Gloucester. The real question is exactly when he decided to do so. It seems likely that he supported Hastings’s view that the Woodvilles should not be allowed to dominate affairs, although he did not have Hastings’s personal motives. Hastings’s death would have come as a severe shock to members of the council, but his death made it clear to all of them that Gloucester had set his sights on ultimate power and that there was nobody left to oppose him. It was probably early in June that Howard made the decision to throw in his lot with the Protector. Whether it was before or after the death of Hastings and whether the dukedom was a bribe to support Richard, or a reward for having done so, is impossible to guess. It is, however, difﬁcult to credit that he knew in advance of Richard’s plans for Hastings and indeed there was no reason for Richard to tell him and risk Hastings being warned. None of the contemporary accounts make the inference that, since Howard held the dukedom, York was dead. Nor is he ever mentioned in connection with the boys except as likely to protect them. If Vergil is correct in saying that he was one of those who were sent to get York out of sanctuary, then the queen accepted his word, together with that of Cardinal Bourchier that no harm would come to her son, and saw no reason to distrust him. Contemporary opinion supports her view. In June, George Cely expressed fear for the life of Edward V if either the Earl of Northumberland or Lord Howard were to be slain.19 The idea that Howard was a potential victim seems also to indicate that he was not seen as

T H E R E I G N O F E D WA R D V

113

a Protector’s man, publicly at least, since the only current dealer of death was Gloucester himself. On the other hand, we do not know when the Protector ﬁrst approached Howard about the Mowbray inheritance, or indeed whether Howard and Berkeley had agreed to take advantage of a new regime and independently petition for their rights, and the idea came from them rather than as an offer from Gloucester. The gift of the gold cup to Gloucester in the middle of May would also ﬁt this explanation. That the matter was under discussion early in June is clear. On 5 June the household accounts note two items of signiﬁcance: Lady Howard instructed payment of 20d. to a servant of the Protector’s who had brought a box of wafers (which usually cost 6d. a box), while her husband paid 20s. with his own hand to a man called John Feeld ‘for to have owt sertayn wrytenges of lyvelode from my Lord Berkeley’.20 An equitable division of that part of the Mowbray lands held by the young Duke of York, which most contemporaries would have agreed had been withheld from the co-heirs unjustly and contrary to the accepted laws of inheritance, was something that the council might have agreed to if the proposal had the Protector’s support. Was this how it was? Or did Richard offer the lands and titles to Howard and Berkeley as the price for their support of his usurpation? What is incontrovertible is that two days after he came to the throne, on 28 June, Richard III afﬁxed his sign manual to a petition from Berkeley signifying his pleasure that the petition be granted.21 This was standard procedure for the granting of lands and ofﬁces. The petition was fully and correctly drawn up and requested that he, Berkeley, be granted his share of the inheritance, a share which he had previously sold to the Crown for the relief of £34,000 worth of debt and a viscountcy, but in which he retained a reversionary interest if Edward IV’s male issue died without heirs. Berkeley had presumably ordered the petition to be drawn up either as a result of discussions with Richard, or as soon as the impending usurpation became clear, or more probably, in response to the news that Richard was intending to give both the dukedom and his share of the lands to Howard. There is no similar petition from Howard. What cannot be doubted was that the whole issue of the Mowbray inheritance was under discussion while the princes were still alive and well-attended in the royal apartments, and even before York left sanctuary. A further reason for doubting whether the dukedom was a reward for Howard despatching the boys for Richard is the relative fairness of the division of the Mowbray inheritance between the co-heirs. John Howard received the available property in Norfolk and Suffolk and the bulk of those in Sussex, with a single manor in each of the counties of Bedford, Northampton and Essex, a total of 40 manors, three ‘hundreds’ and the forest of St Leonards. William Berkeley received all of the more scattered estates, with a concentration of lands in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, and, rather surprisingly, the manors

114

YO R K I S T LO R D

of Harwich and Dovercourt in Essex, which seem, on the face of it, as though they should have gone to Howard. Berkeley’s total was 58 manors, one ‘hundred’, and the castle and lordship of Bedford.22 Howard’s share, although considerably smaller than his cousin’s, had the advantage of greater territorial unity. Berkeley received the older earldom of Nottingham, but grumbled that he had received ‘too much land and too little honour’.23 Howard received the dukedom with which he had long been associated and served so diligently, even if he were the junior heir. In the circumstances of June 1483 the fact that he was, with the downfall of the Woodvilles, already one of the leading magnates in East Anglia, made it essential for Richard to gain his support. Richard of York was not murdered for his titles and lands, he was simply set aside. He died because he was the next heir to the English throne. Half of a Mowbray inheritance, already depleted by the dower interests of two duchesses, was not sufﬁcient to support a dukedom; John Mowbray had found himself impoverished with all of it. Although his own mother had died just before him in 1474, his grandmother, Duchess Catherine, was still alive, and his widow, Duchess Elizabeth, lived until 1506. In June 1483 most of the East Anglian lands were in their hands, but Duchess Catherine was dead by the end of September 1483, releasing her lands for Howard’s beneﬁt, and Framlingham and other lands held by feoffees came to him immediately. Howard, of course, brought all his own holdings to the dukedom, but on 25 July Richard III went on to grant him a further 46 manors, mainly in Cornwall and Wiltshire, but also including Lavenham and the other Essex and Suffolk manors that had formerly belonged to the Earl of Oxford. Howard had been made steward of these by Edward IV in 1475, a post he had almost immediately surrendered when the lands were granted to the queen. Also included were the lordship of Hungerford, Berkshire, and the castle and lordship of Farleigh Hungerford in Somerset and Wiltshire. On 25 July he was granted the issues, but not the manors themselves, of some 20 of Earl Rivers’ forfeited manors, largely in west Norfolk, during the king’s pleasure. This was virtually all the Scales inheritance which had come to Rivers through his wife. The Oxford and Scales holdings, together with his own estates and those of the Mowbrays, therefore, equalled those held by John Mowbray in 1475. He was granted full title to the Rivers manors in February 1485, together with 12 other manors, half of them in Somerset, and the reversion of ﬁve more, together with the toll of King’s Lynn. Thomas Howard, the new Earl of Surrey, was granted Rivers’ old post of steward of the duchy of Lancaster lands in Norfolk. Although at ﬁrst his earldom had no further endowment, his 1484 annuity of £1,100 during his father’s lifetime was equivalent to the annual value of the lands granted to the new duke.24 Richard had indeed been extremely generous to the Howards. The king had made John Howard the greatest landowner in East Anglia. The account of his receiver-general, John Penley, for 1483–4, which included the

T H E R E I G N O F E D WA R D V

115

Scales, Mowbray and de Vere holdings, but excluded all the estates in Surrey and Sussex and all lands held prior to 1483, shows receipts totalling over £1,000. The only other major surviving landowners in the region, the king’s brother-inlaw, Suffolk, and John Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, had nothing approaching his wealth or inﬂuence at court. Besides the territorial patronage, Howard received a number of lesser concessions.25 The land grants made to him were larger than those made to any other prominent man during Richard’s reign. In part, this was because, having given him the dukedom, the king had to ensure he had the means to support it. He made similarly large, though not quite as extensive, grants to Buckingham, Lord Stanley (earlier arrested with Hastings in the Tower but soon released), and the Earl of Northumberland, who, with Richard removed from the north, was now the single most powerful magnate in the north-east. What the four men had in common was sufﬁcient territorial power to make them dangerous enemies; Hastings, in contrast, had never been a territorial magnate on any large scale; his was a personal inﬂuence with Edward IV and the same had been largely true of Rivers. In East Anglia, the death of Rivers, the removal of her dower from his sister, Queen Elizabeth, Gloucester’s own elevation to the Crown and the continuing exile of the Earl of Oxford had left a power vacuum. It was not one that Richard could ﬁll using his brother-in-law, Suffolk, who had long ruled himself out of high politics, though he could be trusted to remain loyal, while his son, John, Earl of Lincoln, was promising, but had yet to prove himself. With the granting of the dukedom and the additional territorial estates, Richard made Howard his primary agent in the area and his inﬂuence paramount, rivalling that of Northumberland on the Scottish Marches and Stanley in Lancashire. The grants to Buckingham of the stewardship of 50 royal manors and lordships, the constableship of all the great royal castles and the ofﬁce of chief justice for the region made him the virtual ruler of Wales and the Welsh Marches. It made sense for the new king at least to appear to trust such men and sweeten them with grants. At the time of Edward IV’s death, John Howard was one of more prominent laymen in the realm. He did not have the personal inﬂuence with the king that the courtiers Hastings, Rivers or Dorset had, nor was he a great territorial magnate in the manner of Northumberland or Stanley, but he was one of the leaders of the second tier of political power. The Crown depended on him administratively and diplomatically, and expected him to use his inﬂuence in his locality on its behalf. Where he led, lesser men would probably follow. It was men like Howard whom the usurping Richard of Gloucester had to convince to support him, or at the least not actively to oppose him. Luckily, in Howard’s case Richard had the means to win him over. While it is not hard to dismiss the theory that Howard murdered the princes for the dukedom of Norfolk, justice in the matter of the Mowbray inheritance was a powerful incentive to support Richard rather than remain

116

YO R K I S T LO R D

neutral. With the death of Hastings, any realistic hope of opposing Richard’s inexorable advance to the throne disappeared and the ever practical Howard was unlikely to stick his neck out, even without the powerful and unlooked-for inducement of the dukedom, far in excess of all his ambitions. What Richard wanted in return was loyalty, and he was not to be disappointed.

7

The Reign of Richard III

John Howard’s exact role in the usurpation is unlikely ever to be known. It is difﬁcult to believe in the light of all that is known of his character that he would consciously have betrayed Hastings to his death, still less have been responsible for the death of the princes. It is, however, perfectly possible that Richard of Gloucester held out the carrot of the Mowbray inheritance to secure his support in any struggle for power with the Woodville faction, and that Howard had no problem in accepting it. But when did he know Richard was aiming not just for the protectorate but the throne? Was the dukedom a bribe for his continuing support? It certainly seems the most likely scenario. Whatever his personal feelings (and to those we have no clue), Howard had committed himself to the new regime and he had to make good that commitment. His ﬁrst recorded declaration of support came when he stood at Richard’s right hand as he claimed the throne in Westminster Hall. The next was at Richard III’s coronation on 6 July, which was attended by the majority of peers, who had gathered in the capital for quite a different coronation. One of Howard’s new titles was that of Earl Marshal, which meant that responsibility for the organization of the ceremonies outside the Abbey itself was shared between him and Buckingham, the Lord Chamberlain, and there was payment for boat hire to Buckingham’s residence when presumably the two worked on the details of the coronation. Howard was also formally appointed to the ofﬁce of Steward of England for the coronation on 30 June. Three days before the coronation the barons of the Cinque Ports petitioned him as High Steward in the Court of Claims to be allowed to perform their customary duty of bearing a canopy over the monarch during the procession to the Abbey, to receive the said canopy as their fee and to have seats at the coronation banquet. The High Steward granted their petition.2 Buckingham, determined to show off his pre-eminence, insisted on being master of ceremonies at the crowning itself, and it was he who had ‘the chief rule and devising’ and bore the white wand of High Steward at Westminster. Immediately before his crowning, the king took up formal residence at the Tower of London, as was the custom. On the afternoon of Saturday 5 July, the day before the ceremony, a great procession escorted him from the Tower to Westminster. The king was immediately preceded by his sword of state, borne upright in its scabbard by the new Earl of Surrey, with his father, the Earl Marshal, on his right and Buckingham,

118

YO R K I S T LO R D

as Lord Chamberlain, on his left. In the queen’s section of the procession, her litter was followed by three ‘chares’ or carriages bearing 12 noblewomen led by the king’s sister, Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, and including no less than three duchesses of Norfolk (two Mowbray widows and Margaret Howard) and the new countesses of Surrey and Nottingham.2 The evening before the coronation was spent relatively quietly at Westminster, but when the king entered the Hall with his nobles next morning at seven o’clock, it had already been cleared of people by the Earl Marshal himself on horseback. This was probably ‘my Lordes gret horse’ that had been shod a few days earlier. With the king and queen sitting under their cloths of estate, the ecclesiastical procession entered, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Bourchier. The king was raised from his seat and he joined the procession to the Abbey. Heralded by trumpets, he and the queen went barefoot and the whole way to the Abbey door was laid with cloth. Led by the ecclesiastical procession, the secular section was headed by the newly created Knights of the Bath, and following them in line came the Earl of Essex carrying the great gilt spurs, William Berkeley, Earl of Nottingham, carrying St Edward’s staff, the Earl of Northumberland, carrying the sword ‘Curtana’ unsheathed and Thomas, Lord Stanley, carrying the Constable’s mace. They were followed by Lord Lovell and the Earl of Kent carrying the swords of justice to the temporality and to the spirituality respectively, and walking abreast. Then came the Lord Mayor of London, Edmund Shaw, with the silver mace of the City of London, and Garter King of Arms in his tabard. They were followed by the Duke of Suffolk and his son, the Earl of Lincoln, bearing the sceptre and orb from the regalia. After them came Thomas Howard bearing the sword of state in a rich scabbard and ﬁnally Howard himself bearing the ‘Imperial’ crown; St Edward’s crown awaited the king on the Abbey altar. The king walked between the Bishop of Bath and Wells and the Bishop of Durham, traditional supporters of the king at his coronation. His train was borne by the Duke of Buckingham, who also carried his white staff of ofﬁce as Great Chamberlain. With the ceremony in the Abbey complete, the procession back to Westminster Hall reformed itself in similar order to the outward journey, although on the return the king himself carried the orb and sceptre and the Duke of Norfolk carried a cap of maintenance instead of the crown. While the king and queen were resting in their chambers, Howard as Earl Marshal again rode into Westminster Hall, his horse trapped with cloth of gold, and cleared everyone except the servants of the king and the Duke of Buckingham. He then spoke to Sir Robert Percy, Comptroller of the Household, and for this occasion, Marshal of the Hall, and described to him the seating arrangements for the forthcoming banquet, ‘saing unto him that the King woulde have his lordes to sitt downe at iiij bordes in the great hall’. This was a formality, because all the details would have been agreed in

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

119

advance. Howard had been one of the members of the household who had served at the banquet following Queen Elizabeth’s crowning in 1465 and the ceremony was likely to have been similar. The banquet began at 4.00 p.m. and, when all were seated, the ﬁrst course was brought in, introduced by trumpets and led in by the household ofﬁcers, and with Howard again probably on horseback. His wife sat with the senior of Queen Anne’s ladies and shared a mess with Margaret, Countess of Richmond. Howard’s daughter-in-law, the Countess of Surrey, and the Countess of Nottingham stood behind the queen and they raised a ‘cloth of pleasuance’ above her head every time she ate or drank. At the end of what was almost certainly an interminable meal, completed by the light of candles and torches, the king and queen were escorted from the Hall by Howard and the other senior ofﬁcers and retired to their chambers.3 Immediately after the coronation the king remained in London conducting business. Some of it affected Howard. Although on the surface England had accepted Richard as king, there were disturbing undercurrents of unrest and as a precaution, on 16 July he granted the new duke the sole power of supervision and array of his subjects in East Anglia and the south-east, enabling him, if necessary, to raise troops in the king’s name. Just over a week later, on 25 July, Howard was granted the ofﬁce of Admiral of England for life, a ﬁtting ofﬁce for the leading seaman of his day and one previously held by Richard himself.4 He, too, had business to attend to after the coronation. For one thing, there were large bills to be paid, both for liveries in his new colour of blue, though it seems as if his senior household members wore a combination of tawny and red, and to Coles the mercer, for damask, satin and velvet for himself and his duchess; the 15 yards of cloth of gold made into trappings for his horse alone cost £62. About a fortnight later Richard III set off on a grand tour of his new realm. He moved ﬁrst to Windsor, probably on Saturday 19 July, and ‘My Lordes grace departed to Wyndysor with the King’, where he stayed until the following Wednesday; at least two of Howard’s sons-in-law, John Timperley and Edmund Gorges, were in his train and since the party foregathered at Greenwich, presumably the trip was made by boat. However, when the king left Windsor for Reading and Oxford, the ﬁrst stage on his progress through his new realm, Howard rode back to London.5 The following day he paid for the patent of his dukedom. Various of his well-wishers took the opportunity to send him gifts, at least four or ﬁve of which were freshly killed buck. His nephew, Edward Neville, called on 1 August, and went away richer by 20s. in gifts from his uncle and aunt, with a further 10s. for his widowed mother, Lady Abergavenny. A week or so later, Lady Oxford likewise received a gift of 20s. With her husband imprisoned and attainted, she herself had received a general pardon in 1475, but she held no lands of her own and since her husband was alive she was not entitled to dower, so she had had no formal source of income until she was ﬁnally granted a pension of £100 p.a.

120

YO R K I S T LO R D

in 1482 by her cousin, the late king. It was not the ﬁrst time that Howard had given her gifts of money.6 Having become a duke, Howard’s old London home in Stepney, so convenient for business, was no longer appropriate for his residence. There is no mention among his grants of a Mowbray town house, which may well have been held in dower by one of the duchesses. An intriguing possibility is that Richard offered him his own former house, Crosby Place in Bishopsgate Street. If so, it was presumably a private loan, for there is no formal record of any lease or grant, but in early August the accounts make several references to Howard being there, perhaps making arrangements for taking it over, and minor payments to the gardener there for nails, the making of a seat and the laying of straw. When the duke and duchess came to leave London, there was payment for boat hire to bring them to Stepney, suggesting that they were lodging elsewhere. There were a number of personal purchases to be paid for, a new gold signet to be engraved, settlement with a Flemish armourer for a light suit of armour, new spurs, the repair and improvement of his garter, the gold for which cost 3s. more than the gold Howard provided; the goldsmith was also paid for the gilding of the hook that attached the duke’s sword to his belt, and for several pieces of plate. When his train set off for Stoke on 11 August it took the familiar route via Brentwood and Chelmsford where more than 130 horses were accommodated at four inns, though how many were riding horses and how large the baggage train was is impossible to tell. From there they proceeded to Colchester, to ‘my Lordes in’, which was able to provide stabling for 60 of the horses. Some of the horses were hired and Howard settled a substantial bill from Laurence the hackney man.7 By 13 August everybody was at home at Stoke, but almost immediately Howard set off again on his own progress. The king had made him the largest landowner in East Anglia. Becoming duke meant showing himself in his new position to the people who mattered in East Anglia. He went ﬁrst to Framlingham, the Mowbray castle he knew so well. It was the residence of the Dowager Duchess Elizabeth, although it was technically held by feoffees, who had correctly made it over to the new duke. Since arrangements had to be made for the duchess to move out and Howard to move in, it cannot have been an easy meeting for either of them. He then travelled on to Ipswich, Norwich, Walsingham and Thetford. By 18 August he was at Ashwellthorpe, home of the new Earl of Surrey, and then on to Bury and Lavenham and so back to Stoke by 25 August. At each stopping place he gave alms, spent lavishly and received either the local gentry or their messengers bearing gifts. During the trip he was certainly not out of touch with affairs in London, since various messengers travelled to and from the city. East Anglia, however, was no longer the sole area of Howard’s interest. He had just acquired considerable land holdings in Surrey and Sussex, so in early September he was back in London where he spent a week or so and then, on Friday 12 September,

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

121

he travelled south. He went ﬁrst to Reigate in Surrey, an important Mowbray holding, where he stayed in the castle, supplied with food by the Abbey’s prior. From Reigate the party moved on to Horsham before returning to London to rejoin Duchess Margaret about a week later.8 It was a stroke of good fortune for Richard III that Howard made this trip, for it seems reasonably certain that while he was in Surrey he heard some intimation of the proposed rising in the south that formed part of Buckingham’s rebellion. There had been murmurings in the south all summer in favour of delivering Edward V from the Tower, partly fomented by men who had been members of Edward IV’s household and who were genuinely loyal to his son, partly by Woodville supporters and partly by men like some of the Courteney family in Devon, former Lancastrians eager to stir up trouble. At the end of August the king appointed a commission of oyer and terminer, headed by Buckingham and Howard, for the city and suburbs of London and the belt of counties that surrounded it; Lord Cobham, married to Howard’s niece, and her half-brother, Lord Abergavenny, both key Kentish landowners, were members of the commission and so, too, was Duchess Margaret’s stepson, William Norris.9 It was probably this appointment that brought Howard immediately back to London and the trip south of the Thames may have been a fact-ﬁnding mission as much as a ducal tour. While he was at Horsham, three of Sir Gilbert Debenham’s men arrived, and since Debenham was an old East Anglian colleague from Mowbray days and was also a member of the commission, it seems likely that they brought important news from London. At some point in September the Duke of Buckingham declared himself on the side of the rebels. The duke had been Richard’s chief ally in the usurpation and had been commensurately rewarded. Why he turned his coat has never been satisfactorily explained. At the same time, the rumour that the princes had met a violent death began to circulate in a far more positive form than the vague suspicions held hitherto. Lacking Edward V as an alternative king, the rebels settled on the only Lancastrian claimant left, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond (son of Lady Margaret Beaufort, through whom he derived his claim), provided he agreed to marry Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth.10 Simultaneous outbreaks were planned throughout the south, while Buckingham was to march into the midlands from Wales, and Richmond landed with a force from Brittany on the south coast. The outbreak was timed for 18 October, but the conspiracy was too widespread for it to remain a secret and it seems likely that when Howard returned from his trip to Surrey about 18 September he had some idea of what was afoot in the south. If he knew, then so did the council, which would also have had news from elsewhere in the country. Since the Crowland Chronicler considered that Richard had a network of spies to keep him informed, perhaps it was not luck but planning which ensured his most experienced general was in London. The machinery of

122

YO R K I S T LO R D

royal defence was therefore set in motion quickly and efﬁciently. Howard’s opportune presence in London, and the power of supervision and array of the king’s subjects he had been granted in July, meant that the king at Leicester was able to leave the defence of his capital in the duke’s capable hands and concentrate his own forces against the western rebels. The chronology of events in the south in which Howard was involved come from his accounts, and these are hardly satisfactory for the purpose. They were not a record of what Howard was doing and certainly not of any ofﬁcial action he was taking. The best that they can do is note odd payments that were made for messengers. On 7 October, Howard personally paid his servant Lenthorpe 20s. to ride into Kent to speak to William Schell, another member of his household and probably his huntsman. What Schell was doing there we do not know, it may have been nothing to do with the rebellion at all, but on 10 October, probably on Lenthorpe’s return, Howard immediately sent another messenger into Kent and the next day sent one to Rochester, and then despatched a force of more than 70 men to Gravesend under Sir John Middleton and Sir John Norbery, likely to have been the total number of men he could put in the ﬁeld from his own immediate train. His nephews, Thomas Daniel and Edward Neville, went with them, and the latter’s half-brother, Abergavenny, was also alerted by messenger. A few days later Lord Cobham was contacted, and the messenger, Thomas Thorpe, was directed to go on to Rochester to alert the authorities there. Howard himself was rowed upriver to consult the Chancellor, Bishop Russell of Lincoln, in company with a man named Cleford of Kent, who probably had ﬁrst-hand information.11 At the same time, Howard was despatching men to raise forces in East Anglia. A letter sent to his old colleague-in-arms, John Paston, on 10 October, asked him to bring ‘six talle felaws in harnesse’ to London, explaining ‘the Kentysshmen be up in the weld, and sey that they wol come and robbe the cite, which I shall lett yf I may.’ The implication was that the Kentish rising was merely one of the periodic outbursts to which the Kent commons were particularly prone. It is possible, but unlikely, that that was all he thought it to be himself.12 The letter was presumably only one of a large number sent to gentlemen of Norfolk and Suffolk. One disadvantage of Howard’s presence in London rather than at Stoke or Framlingham meant that he was unable to oversee the raising of local troops himself and there is no doubt that Paston and many of his fellow East Anglians were not inclined to turn out to support the new king at the request of the new duke. The core of the rebels were men like themselves; with the exception of Buckingham, they were gentry, not peers, many of them former members of Edward IV’s household, happy to support Gloucester’s claim to the protectorate, but shocked and horriﬁed by his later actions. Howard’s elevation to the dukedom was far too recent for him to have had time to weld the Mowbray client body into a coherent support network for himself.

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

123

King Richard, who was at Lincoln, seems to have received the news of the outbreak of rebellion on 11 October and sent immediately to York for assistance. He summoned his forces to meet him at Leicester on 20 and 21 October, but Howard was still in London organizing its defence. It is on the ﬁrst of the dates, 20 October 1483, that the chronological sequence of entries in the household accounts ceases, initially probably because his senior men were too busy to compile the accounts, but they were presumably restarted in a new memoranda book which has since been lost. Although the daily accounts in the surviving book are followed by lists of men Howard raised for the king, there is nothing to shed light on his day-to-day actions. In London he presumably remained in daily contact with the Chancellor, Bishop Russell, and other members of the council; he had already sent a reassuring message to the king’s mother, the Duchess of York, and he received his forces as they came in from the East Anglian towns and villages, spreading them out to guard the southern approaches to the city.13 The body of men he had sent so promptly to Gravesend meant he was in control of the vital crossing of the Thames, thus preventing the rebels from encircling the city to link up with Buckingham’s forces from the midlands and rebels in Essex. Forced to abandon their attempt on London, the southern rebels moved as far west as Guildford and halted there. The king dealt swiftly and successfully with the rising in the midlands and the south-west, and potential rebels in the north-west kept their heads down and waited for another occasion. Henry Tudor, arriving too late, simply turned round and headed back to Brittany.14 After the crushing of the rebellion, only mopping up operations were left. Thomas Howard was sent off to Bodiam Castle in Sussex, whence the leading rebels from Guildford had retreated. It took him two weeks to besiege the castle into surrender. For the Howards perhaps the most painful aspect of the rebellion was the involvement of two close friends, Sir William Norris and his brother, John. Not only were they the duchess’s step-sons, they had been associates of Howard’s for more than 20 years. Sir William, however, was married to the Earl of Oxford’s sister and this may have inﬂuenced his decision to rebel. A reward for their capture (together with ones for other prominent rebels) was offered on 23 October. John, who was still at large as late as February 1484, when Howard was ordered to ﬁnd him, escaped attainder and was pardoned, quite probably at Howard’s request, but it took William, who was attainted and lost his estates, longer to obtain his pardon.15 That the rebellion collapsed as quickly as it did was in some measure due to Howard. His effective defence of London not only prevented it perhaps falling to the rebels, but also meant that the king was able to concentrate his forces on crushing them in the west. It is the only occasion when Howard’s military abilities can be seen in enough isolation for them to be judged, but if a grasp of strategy and swift, effective action with the minimum forces can be classed as essential attributes of a successful commander in the ﬁeld, then the

124

YO R K I S T LO R D

verdict of posterity in naming him a man ‘skilful in warres’ is probably correct. His accounts show the care with which he organized and supplied men, a skill not less important than strategic ability, but more often overlooked. While militarily successful in London, Howard’s inability to keep East Anglia completely loyal to Richard III was one of his few political failures. The best that can be said is that there was no serious rising in the region, although Colchester, where he had been so inﬂuential for so long, was a rebel centre. Among them was John Scraton, whose father, another John, had been a member of Howard’s household since the 1460s, and it seemed that the father had also become implicated. On the latter’s arrest in 1485, the duke wrote to the town bailiffs, Thomas Christmas and Richard Plomer, ‘And as for that false traytor Skraton that is in your Ward, I charge you that ye kepe hym fast as ye will answer to the kyng for hym and his dedes for I am sewer I have grownde to preve hym as false as his sone’.16 To fail to keep an entire region loyal was one thing, but to lose the loyalty of one of his own men was a bitter pill for the duke to swallow. With the loss of detail provided by the daily accounts, the vividness of Howard’s life is lost to us. His son, Thomas, says in his epitaph that, having received the dukedom to which he was the rightful heir, his father (and Thomas himself) ‘served the said king Richard truly as his subjects during his life, living at home in their own countries and keeping honourable houses’.17 The clear implication from this is that neither Howard nor his son spent much time at court or played an active political role in affairs. How far this was true or how far Thomas was later disassociating himself from Richard in light of the Tudor view of the last Plantagenet is impossible to tell. Certainly it seems credible as far as John Howard was concerned. Unlike his son, he held no household appointment, he had vast new estates to administer and, as he was now an elderly man, all circumstances point to him spending most of his time at Framlingham. The grants of lands and ofﬁces in East Anglia should have enabled Howard to develop a regional hegemony there. He had certainly not had time to do so before the rebellion broke out, and a number of the old Mowbray connections were implicated. While Richard almost certainly did not blame him for being unable to keep tighter control so soon after his elevation, the king’s change in tactics, from continuing to keep his brother’s servants and ofﬁcials in power, to bringing in men from outside areas who had been his own trusted servants as Duke of Gloucester, was followed in East Anglia as well as in the south and west. It may also be that, after Buckingham’s defection, the king was chary of allowing any magnate total control of an area. As it was, simply in terms of the estates he held, the new Duke of Norfolk was the most prominent territorial magnate in the country. After the death of Buckingham, he outranked the Earl of Northumberland, whose position in the north, however, was more autonomous; the only other duke, Suffolk, the king’s brother-in-law, he had long out-classed in personality and inﬂuence even

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

125

when still only a baron. There is little evidence of the inﬂuence Howard was able to exert in his own region, particularly in regard to local ofﬁces and commissions. The sheriffs appointed during Richard’s reign were both connected with the royal household rather than with Howard and only a few men who can clearly be identiﬁed as his associates sat on the commissions of the peace. Yet his status derived not only from his dukedom and estates, but also from his standing at court and from 30 years of political and social inﬂuence in the area.18 None of the reign’s more or less contemporary historians suggest that the duke was a political inﬂuence behind the throne. Mancini does not refer to him at all, the Crowland Chronicler only names him once before his account of the battle of Bosworth (see below), while Vergil refers to him only twice before Bosworth, namely on the occasion of his visit to Westminster with the Archbishop of Canterbury and others on 16 June and his elevation to the dukedom, where he describes Howard as ‘a man very pollytyke and skilfull in warres’.19 His new rank meant that he was not sent abroad on any diplomatic trips, though before Edward’s death he was the country’s single most important envoy, and there is little evidence to indicate that he spent much time in London at court or at the centre of government. He was, however, appointed to several commissions of oyer and terminer and array during 1484, and to others for the delivery of certain prisoners from Newgate and Guildford gaols. Whether he in reality played an active role in them is another matter.20 Richard III’s only parliament met in January 1484, having been postponed from the previous autumn because of the rebellion. Richard needed to have his title to the throne ratiﬁed, he needed parliamentary authority for acts of attainder against the rebels, and he wished to begin a programme of reforming legislation that would enhance his somewhat battered reputation. A private act reversed Edward IV’s settlement of dower estates upon his queen, but there was no similar act reversing the settlement of the Mowbray estates on Richard, Duke of York. This was presumably because the king had no wish for the name of his younger nephew to be on everyone’s lips again. The Crowland Chronicler records that soon afterwards, by special command of the king, almost all the lords spiritual and temporal and the leading knights and gentry of the king’s household, the chief amongst whom was the Duke of Norfolk, gathered on a February afternoon in a certain downstairs room near the corridor leading to the queen’s apartments. There each person subscribed his name to a new oath, undertaking to adhere to the king’s only son, Edward, as their supreme lord, should anything happen to his father.21 The irony of the situation could hardly have escaped the notice of anyone there, an irony given greater force two months later. Early in April 1484, close to the ﬁrst anniversary of Edward IV’s death, the country was shaken by the death of the young Prince of Wales at Middleham in Yorkshire. Edward was the king’s only legitimate child after nearly 12 years

126

YO R K I S T LO R D

of marriage and it seemed unlikely that Queen Anne would produce another, despite her comparative youth. The king’s nearest male relative was his nephew, Edward, Earl of Warwick, only just a little older than the prince, and whose right to the throne had already been set aside. His nearest adult male relative was another nephew, his sister Elizabeth’s son, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln and heir to the Duke of Suffolk. A few weeks earlier, while parliament was in session, the former Queen Elizabeth had been persuaded to bring her daughters out of sanctuary to the king at Westminster, and as Dame Elizabeth Grey, she was granted a modest pension. Although she believed Richard to have murdered her sons, she had to think of the future for her daughters. The plan to marry Elizabeth to Henry Tudor was in abeyance following the failure of the rebellion, and Richard promised to have the girls at court and ﬁnd suitable husbands for them. Even if declared illegitimate, they were still the daughters of a king. There is no doubt that the eldest, Elizabeth, as her father’s heir, was a major problem for him. Most other potential candidates for her hand would become as dangerous as Tudor. When James III of Scotland made strong peace overtures to England in the early months of 1484, after several years of more or less constant warfare in which Howard had played a not undistinguished part, he did not receive an immediate response. In the end, however, Richard needed peace and security on his northern border to allow him to turn his attention to France and Brittany. Scottish envoys seeking a peace treaty and a marriage alliance were met at Nottingham in September 1484. The king gathered an impressive number of his lords about him and received the ambassadors in state, seated in the great hall of Nottingham Castle with his royal canopy above him. It would have been unthinkable for Howard not to have been in attendance on such an occasion and when two commissions were appointed to settle the terms of the peace treaty and to make arrangements for the marriage of James’s heir, the future James IV, he was appointed to both. This time it was not Princess Cecily who was the proposed bride, but Richard’s niece, Anne de la Pole, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, and since both sides were in general agreement, the negotiations, which began on 14 September, were not protracted.22 When they had been completed, Howard presumably returned to Suffolk and there are no further references to his presence elsewhere for the rest of the reign. It would, however, have been unlike Howard not to have spent some of his time in London. At the end of November he was appointed to a commission of oyer and terminer ‘touching certain treasons and offences’ committed by William Colyngbourne and John Turburvyle. The former is best known for his lampoon ‘The Rat, the Cat and Lovell our Dog/ Rule all England under the Hog’, but the real reason for his trial was his treasonable correspondence with Henry Tudor in the summer of 1484, urging him to invade England in the autumn.23 It is quite

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

127

likely that the commission to try Colyngbourne was one in which Howard played an active part. The seriousness with which the charge was regarded is evidenced by the fact that the commissioners’ names include those of two dukes, 13 lords, the mayor of London and nine regular judges, even if many of them may not have taken part. Although Henry Tudor did not take up the invitation to invade in the summer of 1484, his position in exile was changing. Richard was pressing the Bretons for a treaty which would involve Tudor being handed over to him. Luckily for Tudor, Bishop Morton, in exile in Flanders, got wind of what was planned and warned him in time for him to ﬂee to France. If Tudor was dangerous in Brittany, in France he posed a far more serious threat, since the French king immediately recognized him as the heir to the English throne and thus put serious heart into the exiles. Within days of Henry’s arrival in France there was a rising in East Anglia, centred on Colchester and led by the Brandons, former Mowbray retainers, who seem to have transferred their allegiance to the de Veres. Richard had ordered the imprisoned John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to be transferred from his long-term prison in the castle of Hammes, near Calais, to greater security in England, but like Tudor, de Vere was lucky. At about the same time, in early November 1484, he made a dramatic escape from prison in the company of his gaoler, James Blount, and joined Henry Tudor’s growing band of exiles. This was not only a propaganda coup for Henry, it provided him with an experienced English commander. Howard probably heard the news with very mixed feelings. His personal liking for the young earl of the 1460s and his compassion for his wife were all very well, but Oxford had opposed Edward IV and Howard was now in possession of the greater part of the de Vere estates. The uprising in the summer of 1483 had made it clear that Howard would not be able to keep East Anglia entirely loyal to the king, and the unrest in late 1484 reinforced that view. While it came to nothing at that point, and the winter of 1484 was largely quiet, men who might otherwise have been quite content to accept Howard’s leadership in the region, refused to do so while he was acting on behalf of Richard III. If the duke was in London in late November 1484, it is quite possible that he spent Christmas with the court at Westminster. The Crowland Chronicler, in rather puritanical spirit, said that far too much attention was paid to singing and dancing, but he also noted something that with hindsight he regarded as signiﬁcant. Edward IV’s elder daughters took their place at court and there was ‘vain exchanges of clothing’ between Queen Anne and Lady Elizabeth, eldest daughter of the dead king, who were alike in complexion and ﬁgure. The people spoke against this and the magnates and prelates were ‘greatly astonished’. The loan of a gown from a kind queen to an impoverished niece might have aroused a little court gossip about their current difference in status and nothing more, but it was an incident much magniﬁed in the coming months. Soon after Christmas,

128

YO R K I S T LO R D

Queen Anne became seriously ill and in the middle of March she died. Even before her death, rumours were circulating, according to Crowland, that the king was contemplating marriage to his niece as the only way to secure the Crown. The chronicler indicates that several members of the council were aware of the king’s plans, which resulted in serious opposition, particularly from Richard’s northern supporters. Many of these had been inherited by the king from Queen Anne’s father, Warwick, and they feared that a marriage to Elizabeth would lead to a resurgence of Woodville inﬂuence to their detriment. So strong was the reaction that Richard was forced into a humiliating denial of any such marriage plans, not only before the council, but to a gathering of the mayor and citizens of London.24 He at least solved one problem by marrying off Elizabeth’s next sister, Cecily, to Ralph Scrope, younger brother of his supporter, Lord Scrope of Bolton. This was disparaging even for the illegitimate daughter of a king (Richard married his own bastard daughter, Katherine, to the Earl of Huntingdon), but particularly so for Cecily, who, if her father had lived, would probably have become queen of Scotland. The death of Queen Anne, however, opened up considerable diplomatic and dynastic possibilities for the king. Names of possible foreign brides were canvassed and within a few days of her death, emissaries were on their way to Portugal to treat for the hand of the king’s sister, Joanna, for Richard and that of his cousin, the Duke of Beja, for Elizabeth. The marriage proposal for Elizabeth is conﬁrmed by Portuguese sources and was almost a perfect solution for Richard. A foreign match away from the key realms of northern Europe would remove the danger of Elizabeth as an alternative claimant to his throne, since the Portuguese were unlikely to mount an expedition in support of it. The fact that the embassy departed so soon after the death of the queen suggests that it had been planned during the weeks of her fatal illness. Was Elizabeth’s proposed match initially negotiated independently and delayed because of the opportunity that arose from the queen’s death, or was it subordinate to that of the king? It is against this diplomatic background that one of the most puzzling episodes of Howard’s life should be read. It concerns a letter written to him by Elizabeth in February 1485. The letter itself has long since disappeared and evidence for its existence comes from the historian, George Buck, who saw it among Howard papers in the seventeenth century and noted its contents, but was not afforded the opportunity to copy it.25 [the Lady Eli]zabeth, being very desirous to be married, and growing not only impatient of delays, but also suspicious of the [success,] wrote a letter to Sir John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, intimating ﬁrst therein that [he was the] one in whom she most [afﬁed,] because she knew the king her father much lov[ed him,] and that he was a very faithful servant unto him and to the king his brother then reigning, and very loving and

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

129

serviceable to King Edward’s children. First she thanked him [Norfolk] for his many courtesies and friendly [ofﬁces, an]d then she prayed him as before to be a mediator for her in the cause of [the marriage] with the k[i]ng, who, as she wrote, was her only joy and maker in [this] world, and that she was his in heart and thoughts, in [body] and in all. And then she intimated that the better half of February was past and that she feared the queen would n[ever die]. And these be her own words, written with her own hand and this is the sum of her letter, . . .

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that what is written above is a reconstruction by a modern editor of what Buck noted down from memory, made later additions to, and which was then re-edited by his great-nephew. What the letter actually said cannot be reconstructed now with any certainty. None of the latter was aware of the existence of the Portuguese negotiations and presumed that the only marriage that Elizabeth could possibly be referring to was with the king. If it was, it is rather surprising that she would have written anything so frank to Howard. She was not a naïve girl, but a sophisticated 19-year old, well aware of the ways of the court, and probably writing with the knowledge and approval of her mother. For her, a respectable foreign match, away from the tensions, suspicions and dangers of England would have seemed highly appealing, particularly given the apparent failure of Tudor to fulﬁl his plans to marry her himself. Everything depended on the willingness of the king to pursue the Portuguese match for her, and that in turn depended on his acceptance that she was loyal to him. The most intriguing reference was to the queen. Its apparent callousness comes only from the editor’s supposition of missing words. Was it known that her sickness by mid-February was mortal? Probably, and if so, was Richard already planning a possible Portuguese match for himself or was her illness distracting the king from what Elizabeth was so keen to see happen? In such a delicate situation, who better to advise her in a diplomatic match and persuade the king to carry it out than her father’s most trusted negotiator and her uncle’s most prominent supporter? Unfortunately we have no clue about Howard’s response. The other interesting point to be made is that, while Elizabeth saw the need to write such a letter, she is hardly likely to have made such references to Howard’s love and service to her father and his children if she believed him to have had anything to do with the deaths of her brothers. The negotiations with Portugal were sidelined by the increasing unrest at home and the threat from Henry Tudor abroad. From being a last-minute stopgap in the summer of 1483, with French backing he had become the only possible alternative candidate for the throne. If 1484 had remained largely peaceful, it was unlikely that 1485 would be the same and Richard’s preparations were well in hand. At the end of 1484 general commissions of array were issued and then followed by a general circular to the commissioners appointed in each shire.

130

YO R K I S T LO R D

This indicated that many men of standing had promised some time earlier that they would supply a speciﬁed number of men for the king’s army whenever he required them. Howard’s own accounts show that as early as the previous February, the duke had promised Richard to put 1,000 men in the ﬁeld at his own expense.26 One of his clerks then proceeded to enter a list of names which had been compiled by Robert Worseley. These were Howard’s own men, recruited from his estates. The list contains about 700 names, rather than 1,000 (including such entries as ‘Thomas Kechyn and his man’) and although they are classiﬁed in rough groupings, in some cases it is difﬁcult to decide why they have been so grouped. The ﬁrst section is quite straightforward and topographical; it gives the names of men recruited from each of nearly 50 villages and hundreds, almost all of them in which Howard owned land. In the case of many places it was no more than a handful of men, but his home of Stoke-by-Nayland, only a small village, contributed 31 men. Ipswich sent a dozen men to him personally in addition to its agreed contribution to the royal army. The second group of names is headed by Howard’s nephew, Edmund Daniel, and includes three of his sons-in-law, Gorges, Timperley and Mortimer, together with senior household men like Bliant and Braham. It seems to be the ﬁghting force recruited from the household and numbers about 60, but does not include men the gentlemen of the household would have brought with them. The third group consists of the names of those who brought with them one or two others; some household names are included and Thomas Thorpe committed to 11 men and George Daniel a dozen; it may be that these were settled in their own homes and no longer lived primarily with the household. A fourth group seems to contain yet more household men, some of whom, like John Davy, certainly held manors elsewhere. Two of the most senior ofﬁcials, John Knight, Howard’s auditor, and James Hobart, his long-standing legal advisor and now steward of his Suffolk estates, both agreed to contribute men, Knight six of them, and Hobart, three, the latter agreeing to recruit as many more as he could. These were almost all, but not exclusively, men drawn from Norfolk and Suffolk, so what of the duke’s other estates? The list actually begins with Chalcombe in Northamptonshire, with eight men under their constable, Richard Molle, and continues with Kenton in Warwickshire, the estate that had belonged to Howard’s mother, and which contributed 11 men. There is no mention at all of any of the new estates in the south-west, but Reigate in Surrey agreed to furnish ten men under their bailiff. In addition, Sir Harry Rosse, Thomas Hoo and Richard Lewkenor undertook to raise a force from the ducal tenants in Surrey and Sussex. There is no doubt that Howard was able to fulﬁl his obligation to the king of 1,000 men, at least on paper. While a few of the men whose names are so meticulously listed may not in the end have gathered to attend their lord in August 1485, it can be assumed that the great majority of them did. That their

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

131

names have come down to us is a rare survival and yet another instance of the signiﬁcance of the record-keeping by Howard’s ofﬁcials. When Henry Tudor and his expeditionary force landed safely at Milford Haven near Pembroke on 7 August, it can only have come as a relief to the king. He was prepared militarily, having succumbed to his brother’s practice, which once he had sternly denounced, of exacting large benevolences from persons of almost every rank, and reﬁning it by threatening anyone of standing who did not support him militarily with the loss of all his goods, possessions and his life. As early as June the king had stationed himself in the centre of his kingdom, at his favourite castle of Nottingham, and on 22 June he commanded a general muster. Howard was in Suffolk and set about gathering up his force. Quite apart from his own men, he had to provide a focal point for the gathering of lesser gentlemen and their troops. On Sunday 14 August he received news of Tudor’s landing from the king, who had learned of it on 11 August, so the news had crossed the country, via the king at Nottingham in seven days, a remarkable speed given the conditions of the time; Tudor did not reach the English border at Shrewsbury until 15 August. Immediately the king’s message reached him, Howard almost certainly sent out large numbers of letters, similar in nature to the one he sent to his old colleague, John Paston: Welbelovyd frend, I cummaunde me to yow, letyng yow to undyrstond that the Kyngs enmysse be a land, and that the Kyng wold hafe set forthe as uppon Monday but only for Howre Lady Day [the Assumption of Our Lady, 15 August]; but for serten he gothe forward as uppon Tewsday, for a servant of myne browt me the sertente. Wherfor, I pray yow that ye met with me at Bery, for, be the grace of God, I purpose to lye at Bery as upon Tewsday nyght, and that ye brynge with yow seche company of tall men as ye may goodly make at my cost and charge, be seyd that ye have promysyd the Kyng; and I pray yow ordeyne them jakets of my levery, and I shall contente yow at your metyng with me. Yower lover, J Norfolk27

How many of the recipients responded positively, we do not know, but despite the king’s threats, Paston did not join the muster at Bury St Edmunds. Like many others, he sat out the coming conﬂict. Henry Tudor had moved up through Wales towards the Stanley territory of north Wales and Lancashire, gathering recruits as he went, and had then turned east to cross the border at Shrewsbury on 15 August. Richard had every reason to be suspicious of the Stanleys, fearing rightly that Lady Margaret Beaufort would induce her husband to support her son. Before he allowed Lord Stanley to leave court, the king demanded that his heir, George, Lord Strange, remain as a hostage. When Strange tried to escape and was recaptured, he confessed that he and his

132

YO R K I S T LO R D

uncle, Sir William Stanley, had conspired to help Tudor, but begged for mercy and promised that his father would come to the king’s aid. Richard III had much the stronger army, but the country was a seething mass of suspicion and uncertainty as he moved his forces down from Nottingham to Leicester to cut off the rebels when they headed towards London. As Howard led his own small army out from Bury on the morning of Wednesday 17 August to rendezvous with the king, he had to move as quickly as possible. The distance was approximately 80 miles, a four-day march, so unless his force was all mounted rather than on foot, unlikely given its size, they would not have reached Leicester before 20 August. They had only a short time to rest and prepare and then Richard led his army out of the town on Sunday 21 August ‘with great pomp, wearing his diadem upon his head, and accompanied by John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland [in charge of many of the loyal northern forces] and other great lords, knights and esquires and a countless multitude of commoners’.28 His spies ensured the king knew the whereabouts of the rebel army, and he set up camp 8 miles from the town, near Merevale Abbey. There is no contemporary account of the battle that took place the following day and even its exact location is disputed. The Crowland Chronicler, as beﬁtted a man in holy orders, gives no military details, but it is to him that we owe the story of Richard’s disturbing dreams the night before the battle. Polydore Vergil wrote 20 years afterwards, but certainly had access to men who had fought there. It is Edward Hall, whose account was published much later in the sixteenth century, who mentions that during the night a warning was pinned to Howard’s tent, declaring ‘Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold, for Dickon thy master is bought and sold’.29 It may be a story based on an accurate recollection, it may not, but it sums up the air of suspicion and low morale which seems to have pervaded the royal camp that morning. In fact, Howard had no need to participate in the actual battle; he was nearly 60 years old and having brought up his forces, he could have delegated command to his son and remained in the rear and nobody would have thought the worse of him for it, given the sheer physical effort and stamina required to ﬁght on foot in armour. He fought, of course. From the sources available and with so much uncertainty about the battle, some basic facts seem unassailable: ﬁrst, that as the king’s most reliable major supporter, Howard was given command of the vanguard of Richard’s forces; second, that for much of the battle only the two vans were engaged; third, that Howard died on the ﬁeld. The vanguard was probably composed of about a third of the army, which best estimates put in the region of 10,000 men, and if it followed custom would have consisted of two wings of archers, with the main body of men-at-arms in the centre, centred round Howard, his son, Thomas and their household men. Facing them was Henry Tudor’s vanguard, commanded by John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and consisting mainly of French mercenaries. It is not

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

133

clear whether, when Richard launched his cavalry charge at Tudor, it was at least in part because he saw that Howard’s standard was down and knew his vanguard would be in difﬁculties, or whether, when the king’s standard went down, Howard sought to withdraw the vanguard and was killed in the retreat. The apocryphal story is that Howard and John de Vere were locked in hand-to-hand combat and that the duke’s visor was struck off, and with his face unprotected, he was fatally struck in the head with an arrow, thus neatly exculpating Oxford from being personally responsible for his death. With the king and Norfolk dead, the battle came to an abrupt end: no medieval battle continued after the death of one side’s leaders. After the defeat at Bosworth, John Howard’s body was accorded greater dignity than that of the late king. Richard’s body was stripped naked, slung across the back of a horse and taken to the house of the Franciscans in Leicester where it was exposed to public view for two days and then buried in an unmarked grave. Howard’s body, initially interred at Leicester, was later borne back home to be buried at Thetford Priory, the traditional burying place of the dukes of Norfolk.30 We do not know how many of his household died with him, but Thomas was wounded and Robert Mortimer, one of his sons-in-law, was certainly also killed. It is hardly surprising that in the immediate aftermath of the battle there was confusion about the role of the leaders of the king’s army; Northumberland either could not, or chose not to, bring up his force, while the Stanleys watched and waited until the politic time for Sir William Stanley to throw their men into the mélee on Tudor’s side, the ﬁnal turning point of the battle. Indeed, the ofﬁcial report carried to the city of York from the battleﬁeld declared that it had been lost through the treachery of the Duke of Norfolk.31 While it was probably an honest mistake, it was certainly not beyond Henry Tudor to sow further confusion by deliberately smearing loyal Yorkist commanders to discourage further resistance to his new regime. For the Howards, the defeat was a family disaster. In a shabby move, Henry Tudor attainted both John and Thomas for treason by the simple device of dating his reign to the day before Bosworth. Thomas was committed to the Tower and all their estates were conﬁscated. Thomas’s imprisonment does not seem to have been too harsh. He was housed as beﬁtted his rank and he had three of his men with him. In December 1485, the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir James Ratcliff, submitted his costs for boarding various prisoners, among which was the entry, ‘Item, for the bourding of the erle of Surrey by the space of iiii wokes every woke at xls. – viii li. Item, for the bourding of iii men of the said earle by the space of iiii wokes, xxxs.’32 In March 1486 Thomas was pardoned of treason, but lost his dignity as an earl and was imprisoned at the king’s pleasure. Henry’s pleasure lasted for another three years and it was not until early in 1489 that he was ﬁnally released and restored to his earldom. His punishment had lasted long

134

YO R K I S T LO R D

enough and the king needed him. He was sent north to the Scottish borders to work his way back into royal favour, which he did energetically, and in a gradual process, continually dependent on good behaviour, he was restored to the estates of his father. The process was complete by 1495 when the seal was set upon the Howards’ rehabilitation by the marriage of the queen’s sister, Anne, daughter of Edward IV, to Thomas’s heir, Thomas. It was not until the next reign, after his great victory over the Scots at Flodden in 1514, when he was over 70, that he was granted his father’s dukedom. What became of the Howard women during the ﬁrst few years after Bosworth? The Duchess Margaret, though she lost her title was, in practical terms, cushioned ﬁnancially by the dower she received from her two former husbands, and her home at Tendring Hall formed part of her jointure, which she was permitted to keep, living there quietly until her death in 1494, when the probate of her will described her as ‘formerly duchess of Norfolk’.33 Elizabeth, Countess of Surrey, as the wife of an attainted prisoner rather than a widow, was less fortunate, but as an heiress she was permitted to retain her own lands, which included the Surrey family home at Ashwellthorpe.34 In addition, her heir was not one of her sons by Surrey, but the son of her ﬁrst marriage, John, Lord Berners, who was married to her husband’s half-sister, Catherine Howard. Berners, who was 18, is not named as having been at Bosworth, and so escaped political oblivion, but he was too young to have any political standing and could do little to help his step-father. When the disastrous news of the battle reached his mother, the countess prudently retired with her younger children to Minster Priory in Sheppey. The only glimmer of hope on the horizon was Henry VII’s decision to grant the lordship of Framlingham and other manors in Suffolk and Bedford to John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, to hold only until the king granted him other lands to their value. This suggested that he might be willing to restore those properties at least to the Howards.35 During the ﬁrst part of Henry VII’s reign, the wheel of fortune which had cast the Howards down, had raised the Earl of Oxford up again. With his own restored lands augmented by new grants from the king, and with considerable inﬂuence at court, he held a position of great authority in East Anglia. John de Vere handled the situation with great skill, helped by the fact that, although he had been absent for more than 15 years, he was coming home to an area where he was known and where former followers like the Pastons would welcome him. Perhaps because of his own loyalty to a cause which had seemed lost, he was magnanimous to those on the other side who had paid the same price for their own loyalty. Countess Elizabeth lost no time in appealing to his chivalry and he offered his protection generously. She was unlikely to have known him well, since she had married Surrey after Oxford had ﬂed into exile, but almost certainly knew his impoverished countess, Margaret, and may have helped her

THE REIGN OF RICHARD III

135

in the past. While the Howards had beneﬁted from the downfall of the de Veres, they had not sought it, and Oxford seems to have borne no grudges. He promised to be a good lord to Surrey and his wife, and, in addition, witnessed a similar promise from the newly powerful John Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter. Six weeks after the battle, Elizabeth wrote to the new sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, none other than John Paston. He had offered to provide horses for her to bring her children back from Sheppey to their home, and she thanked him for his ‘greet kyndnes and loving disposicion towardys myn lord and me at all tymes’, but said she had been told that Fitzwalter had taken it upon himself to dismiss all Surrey’s servants at Ashwellthorpe on the grounds that they had used unﬁtting language about the new king. She protested against this ofﬁciousness, saying that she was sure that Paston and his fellow gentlemen of the shire would know that the earl’s servants ‘had not ben of that disposicion to be lavas of theyr tungys whan they had moore cause of booldnes than they have nowe’. She felt that she could not manage without ten or 12 men even living quietly and hoped Paston could remind Fitzwalter of his promise to be a good lord to her. Unlike Fitzwalter, she said, she had found ‘myn Lord of Oxenforth singuler very goode and kynde lord to myn lord and me, and stedefaste in hys promys, wher by he hath wonne myn lordys service as longe as he leevyth, and me to be his trewe beedwoman terme of myn lyve; for hym I dred mooste, and yit as hither to I fynde hym beste’.36 It is a heartfelt tribute to Oxford’s magnanimity. It was the eighteenth-century antiquarian, William Hutton, in his account of the battle of Bosworth, who told the story of Howard being engaged in hand-tohand combat with Oxford, and dying, not under Oxford’s sword, but when hit by an arrow. Hutton puts into the earl’s mouth this tribute to his fallen cousin: ‘A better knight could not die, but he might die in a better cause’.37 As an epitaph for John Howard it can hardly be improved. The idea that Howard would not, in the circumstances, have wished to survive Bosworth cannot be entirely dismissed. His whole career had been spent in the service of the house of York and he was too old and too stubborn a man to have wanted to come to terms with Henry VII, as his son Thomas was honestly able to do. He died as he had lived, ﬁghting for York, and according to the values of his age, there could have been no better way to go.

This page intentionally left blank

8

Domestic Life

Despite his years of royal service, John Howard’s interests were focused on East Anglia, and, at least in part, it was for his inﬂuence there that Edward IV valued him. Despite the convenience of sometimes residing at Bray in Berkshire, which belonged to his second wife, Suffolk is where he seems to have preferred to be. His period at Calais as deputy-lieutenant in the 1470s was by far his longest time from home, otherwise his various military and naval campaigns, his embassies, tours of duty at court and terms as MP never took him from Suffolk for more than a few months at a time. When he was in London for any lengthy period, his family and household moved to Stepney with him. This suggests that both his marriages were at least comfortable if not happy ones, since if they had been otherwise, Katherine or Margaret would have remained in Suffolk while he was away. It is therefore important to focus ﬁrst on his family and household and then on the house in which they spent most of their time. The Howard family was not, by medieval standards, a particularly large one, but it had one rather unusual feature. Howard’s mother, Lady Margaret, continued to reside with her son at Tendring Hall. Most widows, on the marriage of their sons, would have moved to a dower property and set up their household there. That Lady Margaret did not is shown by a household list that dates from the mid-1450s. It is headed, not by Howard, but by ‘My lady Margaret Grey’, followed by ‘John Howard the foreseid her sone’.1 Apart from the immediate family, the household contained ﬁve gentlewomen, one of whom is described as ‘Rose FrenchWoman’, who was almost certainly Lady Margaret’s maid and may have been with her all her married life. There were eight gentlemen, including a priest; 25 yeoman, and a clerk. For a man of Howard’s modest standing at the time, this was not a small household and it reﬂected the status of his mother, at least in part, but is also another indication of the increasing ﬁnancial success of his business ventures. Probably because her son had married very young and spent time away from Framlingham in service with his lord, Lady Margaret had remained at home to assist him in running the estates rather than moving away; there is no evidence of how her daughter-in-law felt about this. Lady Margaret remained at Tendring until her death, which probably took place in 1459.2 The household list shows that Howard and his wife, Katherine Moleyns, had six children. Whether others had died in infancy is not known, but to rear all

138

YO R K I S T LO R D

one’s children to adulthood was unusual in the Middle Ages. Howard’s marriage to Katherine had taken place in the early 1440s, certainly not later than 1443, the year that his son and heir, Thomas, was born. Nicholas, the second son, was usually named together with Thomas in their father’s accounts. That may, however, only reﬂect their sex rather than their closeness in age and Nicholas could have been several years Thomas’s junior. Besides the two boys there were four daughters. Although it is not possible to be certain about either their ages or the order of their birth, if it may be assumed that whenever the accounts list all four by name, they do so in order of seniority, then Isabel was the eldest, followed by Anne, Margaret and Jane. In the 1450s household list, Nicholas and Jane are the last named of the family and their father added them in his own hand. It was the norm for children of the Howards’ class to be sent in their teens to join the household of someone rather higher than them in status, as Howard himself had entered Norfolk’s service. For some reason, Howard’s sons do not appear to have done so. Thomas, who left an interestingly biographical epitaph, certainly makes no mention of it, but says he spent ‘a sufﬁcient season at the grammar school’.3 This is a striking indication of his father’s belief in the importance of learning, which is underlined by his support of several local boys at Cambridge, but it was unusual for a gentleman’s son in the 1450s.4 Whether Nicholas followed Thomas to school, we do not know, but an intriguing entry in the accounts for 1464 suggests that he did. On his return for the north in that year, Howard gave both his sons 20d. and also gave the same sum to their schoolmaster.5 Either the household had a resident tutor, which, given that Thomas was over 20 in 1464 and Nicholas not more than a few years younger, seems unlikely, or it was the occasion of a meeting with a former master. Unless boys were going on to university, formal education was likely to stop in their mid-teens. Another possibility is that Howard had set up a school in Stoke, perhaps when his sons no longer needed the services of their master. In 1465 he noted that Loppom, an Ipswich glazier owed him 20s. for the cost of boarding his son when he was at school in Stoke. Whether or not either Thomas or Nicholas had been away in service, they were both at home in the early 1460s, given the number of times their names occur in the accounts for that period. They accompanied their father on his trips to London, and Thomas went with him to Calais in 1466. There is no evidence that either of his sons was with their father on his military expeditions in the ﬁrst half of the 1460s, although this does not necessarily mean they were not. Boys in their later teens might well have been expected to form part of a ﬁghting force, even if they were kept to the rear during an actual engagement. Edward IV was a seasoned soldier by the time he ascended the throne at 19, and his brother Edmund was killed at Wakeﬁeld when only 17. If the Howard boys were not with their father, it would have been unusual. Nicholas was a member of Lord Scales’ expedition to Brittany in 1468,

DOMESTIC LIFE

139

and there is evidence to suggest that on his return he left home permanently, perhaps to take up service in another household. After that, there is no mention of him anywhere, and how and where Howard’s second son died is unknown. Thomas, meanwhile, had entered royal service in 1467. There is evidence that Howard’s daughters, unlike his sons, did receive some part of their upbringing in the households of suitable ladies. While such evidence is lacking for the two older girls, Isabel and Anne (though they may have been in the train of the young Duchess of Norfolk at Framlingham and Isabel was travelling independently in early 1465), it exists for the two younger ones. All four girls were at home when the accounts begin in 1462, and there are numerous entries for gowns and shoes purchased for them and their waiting woman, Margaret Notbem, who seems to have received much the same as her young mistresses. In May 1465, the third daughter, Margaret, with her possessions in a newly purchased coffer, was in London (where her father paid for her to watch the grand tournament against the Burgundians) on her way to the household of Lady Norris in Berkshire. Although only the wife of a knight, Sir William, Jane Norris was a family connection, for she was the daughter of the Earl of Oxford and Elizabeth Howard. Howard seems to have escorted Margaret there himself, and while there gave 40s. at the christening of Lady Norris’s child. In March 1466 it was Jane’s turn to leave home, escorted by her father’s squire, Thomas Moleyns, to join the household of the Countess of Oxford. This may have been the dowager Countess, Elizabeth, or Margaret Neville, the new wife of John, the 13th earl.6 It was during this period that Howard’s daughters by Katherine were married. These marriages raise a number of interesting points. The only marriage for which details survive, that of Margaret to John Wyndham, took place in 1467, which suggests that her older sisters would have married before her, but none of the marriages feature in the accounts, and Isabel, Anne and almost certainly Jane, were still unmarried at the end of August 1467.7 With one possible exception, we do not know when their marriages were contracted, although it seems likely that it was in the late 1450s or early 1460s, before Howard became seriously wealthy and inﬂuential. While it was customary for sons of the upper gentry to marry up, particularly if they were the heir, most of their sisters married down, and there is nothing particularly unusual in Howard’s choice of husbands for his girls, although nothing very ambitious, either. He was simply extending his connections among fellow gentlemen in East Anglia, marrying his daughters to their heirs. Howard’s eldest girl, Isabel, was matched to Robert Mortimer, whose father held several manors in Suffolk. They probably married in the late 1460s and the couple’s only surviving child, Elizabeth, was born about 1476. While Robert never entered his father-in-law’s household, he formed part of his train when required, and there are frequent mentions of him in the accounts for the 1480s. He was

140

YO R K I S T LO R D

certainly planning to attend him on the French expedition of 1475. Howard wrote on his behalf: ‘My lord, after all dew recommendacion please it yew that I may have a proteccion for a gentilman of myn which hath endented with me to go over to do the kyng and me servisse for a yere called Roberd Mortemer given the ﬁrst daye of May at my pouer loggyng at Stepney’. The requisite safe-conduct was duly granted but was subsequently revoked because Robert delayed in London.8 He did, however, take 18 men on the Scottish expedition and was with Howard at Bosworth, dying alongside him. Isabel’s second sister, Anne, made a distinctly better marriage, which suggests that Isabel’s match was arranged in the late 1450s, before Howard’s rise to prominence under the Yorkists. Edmund Gorges was the son and heir of Walter Gorges and his wife Mary, the daughter and heiress of Sir William Oldhall, one of the Duke of York’s most senior men. Walter’s father, Sir Theobald Gorges of Wraxall in Somerset, was another of York’s men, but the young couple seem to have settled in Norfolk rather than Somerset. Walter was one of Howard’s tenants, renting from him the manor of the Howe from 1465 onwards, although there is no evidence that the couple actually lived in that manor. Walter’s two young sons, Edmund and John, were taken into Howard’s service at much the same time and the marriage arranged between Edmund and Anne. In February 1466 Gorges received 20 marks in part payment of the marriage and when he died the following September, it was only natural for Howard to take steps to secure Edmund’s wardship and the marriage rights that went with it; for this he paid the Crown £200 p.a. as well as £8 15s. 8d. for the patent. Edmund inherited eight manors in Devon and Somerset from his Gorges grandfather together with his father’s land in Norfolk when he came of age in 1478; this makes it likely that he was younger than his bride. When they married is not known, but Anne gave birth to a child in August 1482, and her step-mother, Lady Howard, gave 20s. when the baby was christened at Stoke-by-Nayland. The couple seem to have spent much time in her father’s household. While Anne Howard’s marriage was to another member of the local gentry, the Gorges match linked the Howards to long-standing servants of the king’s father and thus national politics, which was probably part of its attraction.9 John Wyndham, the future husband of Margaret, Howard’s third daughter, entered the household in the mid-1460s, where the ﬁrst reference to him is in the household list of 1465, when he was 14. His father, also called John, was a new man. He was from a very obscure background but had made a large amount of money in trade, which may have been how Howard encountered him, and set about converting his wealth into land, the chief of which was the manor of Felbrigg, gaining status as he did so. Whether the match with Margaret Howard was made before or after young John came to live at Stoke is not known, but quite possibly at the time he entered the household in about 1464. In January 1465

DOMESTIC LIFE

141

Margaret received from her father ‘a device of gold’ worth 40s., the only valuable gift to any of his daughters that the accounts record, but explicable perhaps as a betrothal gift. The marriage articles were dated 6 July 7 1467 and stipulated that Howard should clothe both bride and groom for the ceremony, and that for two years after he should keep the couple, their servants and horses, in food and drink. In October 1467 Wyndham was given a gown of black damask and a black velvet doublet and 10s. in cash, possibly at the time of a marriage, and if Howard did support the couple for two years, then the ending of his responsibility may have been marked by the gift in November 1469 of 20s. to Wyndham and 10s. to Margaret.10 Wyndham may not have permanently resided with the household, but he certainly continued to spend much time with it, even after he came into his inheritance in 1475 at the age of 24. The last of Katherine Howard’s daughters, Jane, was matched to John Timperley, the son of one of Howard’s fellow members of the Duke of Norfolk’s council. John Timperley senior, of Hintlesham in Suffolk, was very active in local affairs and sat as an MP on a number of occasions. His son is said to have been born about 1446 and to have entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1463, and there is no evidence of him serving Howard as a boy. It is not always easy to distinguish his career in many places from that of his father, but he was ﬁrst elected to parliament himself in 1469, soon after he came of age. The date of his marriage to Jane is not known, but may well have been during the late 1460s. Like Howard’s other sons-in-law once they had set up their own establishments, Timperley was in attendance on Howard when required. He accompanied him to Scotland as an esquire of the royal household and was in London with him during the crucial early summer of 1483, but it is interesting to note that many of the references to John and Jane Timperley in the accounts are for gifts of money. Like Edmund Gorges and Robert Mortimer, but unlike John Wyndham, Timperley is included on the list of men Howard raised for Richard III and may therefore reasonably be assumed to have been at Bosworth.11 All the marriages Howard arranged for his four elder daughters were entirely conventional for a man in his position. They were to the eldest sons of local landed gentry families. The matches served to form links with other men in similar positions to Howard in East Anglia, but they did not really take account of his rising political fortunes. This makes it likely that they were arranged before he took any major steps on the national stage. All four young men remained in his circle and Edmund Gorges and John Timperley were made esquires of the royal household before the end of Edward IV’s reign, probably at Howard’s behest, but other than that, none of them received any political advancement greater than was to be expected of their background. Amidst all the largesse Howard received from Richard III, their gains and appointments were modest in comparison. Two were made commissioners for musters in their home counties, Edmund Gorges

142

YO R K I S T LO R D

for Somerset and John Timperley for Suffolk; the latter had his annuity of £20 granted in 1482 conﬁrmed. John Wyndham was allowed to borrow £150 from the Crown (was his wife’s father unwilling to lend it?). Howard’s nephews did rather better in comparison; since they had not inherited land, they needed ofﬁces, and the duke was instrumental in ensuring that George Daniel was granted the ofﬁce of bailiff of the lordships of Cookham and Bray in Berkshire (the area where the new duchess’s dower lands by her Norris husband lay), and his older brother Thomas, already a yeoman of the Crown, was made bailiff of Hatﬁeld while the temporalities of Bishop Morton of Ely were in royal hands. Of all Howard’s young male relatives about his household, only his sons-in-law Robert Mortimer and the young Lord Berners apparently received nothing.12 Tendring Hall, where Howard lived and raised his family, had belonged to his grandmother, the heiress Alice Tendring. It had come into her family in 1285 and although she was the last of her name, and all traces of the medieval building have long since disappeared, it retained that name into the twentieth century.13 Howard’s grandfather, Sir John, took up residence there in about 1408 after he married Alice Tendring and may well, in view of his wealth, have carried out considerable improvements to the manor house. Since her family came from the ranks of local rather than county gentry, there is no reason to suppose that it was more than merely respectable in size. That the elder Sir John left the house in a state of good repair and probably carried out some rebuilding can be deduced from the fact that he was also responsible for substantially rebuilding the parish church, work he is unlikely to have undertaken while his own house required work. In addition, during the ﬁrst decade of Edward IV’s reign, while his grandson was becoming both wealthy and inﬂuential, there is no record of any major improvements being carried out. It is even possible that the elder Sir John completely rebuilt the house. That the house was luxurious enough to have water laid on is clear from a payment to the plumber for mending lead pipes in 1481. In that year Lord Howard did, however, undertake some large scale work; he was adding to his consequence by building a private chapel. It is quite clearly an addition to the main building, since in the spring of that year he made an agreement with John Perrekyn of Mile End, that the brickmaker should supply him with 80,000 ‘good and lawful brykke, in a kelne and my Lord schal pay xviii d. for a M [thousand]; and my Lord schal fynde him wodde and sande and strawe’ and that he should make them at Wivenhoe (his newly acquired manor in Essex), where there were presumably more facilities than at Stoke. He also had 22,000 tiles delivered to Stoke for both roof and ﬂoors, so the chapel was clearly substantial in size. The work went on apace and in February 1482 Howard delivered six ‘sommes’ of glass to the glazier by the Austin Friars’ Gate, London, for them to be prepared for the chapel windows. Each ‘somme’ of glass had 24 ‘tabuls’, half of which were plain glass and the rest consisted of six ‘tabuls’ of blue glass, ﬁve

DOMESTIC LIFE

143

of green and two of purple. For the payment of 2d. per foot of plain glass the glazier was to ﬁnd his own lead and arrange for the carriage of the glass to Stoke. Howard cautiously added in his own hand ‘and the toder glase for x d. a fote, gefe it be wel and sewerely werkte’. Even at this late stage in his career, very little escaped his personal attention. The new chapel was completed by May 1482 and Sir Pers, the chaplain, received 7s. when he sang his ﬁrst mass for Lord and Lady Howard and Lord and Lady Berners, and there are a number of payments for clothes for the ﬁve children of the chapel choir. The chapel, if it took the normal form for such private chapels, would have been two-celled, the outer for the congregation and an inner one forming the chancel separated from it by a chancel screen. Prior to its building, Howard and his family would almost certainly have heard Mass in a private closet near to his bedchamber. Even after the building of the chapel, which was for the use of the household, they may have continued to use the closet themselves, as the de Veres did at Castle Hedingham.14 The other building in Stoke-by-Nayland for which Howard was in part responsible, unlike the chapel, still stands. As with most English parish churches, that of St Mary the Virgin, Stoke-by-Nayland, dates from many different periods, but it is substantially an early ﬁfteenth-century building for which Howard and his grandfather should take the credit. When his grandmother’s mother, Katherine Tendring, made her will in 1403, she bequeathed £10 towards the repair of the church. The building was clearly then in a poor state of repair and Katherine’s son-in-law went on to rebuild the greater part of it upon the old foundations, probably incorporating those parts that were in reasonably good condition. At some time after his grandfather’s death in 1437, John Howard continued the work, adding the most distinctive feature, the great tower, 120 feet high and a landmark for miles around. On the tower and on the new font, which was decorated with the badge of Edward IV, Howard had a coat of arms engraved. This has caused concern ever since, for the arms comprise Howard impaling Tendring, and could only have been those borne by the older Sir John after his marriage to Alice Tendring, and yet architecturally the tower is clearly of a date later than 1437. It seems to have been a self-effacing gesture of Howard, raising his grandfather’s arms rather than his own, but it was important in local terms to make the link to the Tendring family. In the window probably erected in the Tendring Hall chapel Howard’s own image carries the arms of Howard quartering Mowbray, while his signet bears only the Howard arms.15 When he inherited his grandmother’s estate in 1437, Howard was in the uncomfortable position of having a house ﬁt for the very wealthy man his grandfather had been, but with very few resources of his own to maintain it. His inheritance consisted only of the manor of Tendring, or Stoke, Hall, several sub-manors in Stoke-by-Nayland, and four other manors in nearby parishes: Bowerhouse in the parish of Boxford, Sprottes in the parish of Polstead, Stanstrete

144

YO R K I S T LO R D

in the parish of Brettenham and Leffey in the parish of Snape. Howard held all these manors as early as 1446 when he levied a ﬁne on them to conﬁrm his ownership as he came of age and presumably they were all part of his grandmother’s inheritance; Bowerhouse and Sprottes had been willed to his uncle Henry under Alice Tendring’s will and should have descended to his daughter Elizabeth; presumably Howard purchased them either from his uncle or more probably from Elizabeth’s husband, Henry Wentworth. In the 1460s, the annual income from all these manors was in the region of £150 p.a.16 In addition, his mother’s manor of Kenton in Warwickshire passed to him on her death in 1459. There is no evidence that his ﬁrst wife, Katherine Moleyns, brought land as her dowry, and probably her cash dowry was used to provide dowries for Howard’s two sisters – a not-uncommon custom at the time. Until 1461 any additional income which Howard required had to be earned from his business ventures. The accession of the Yorkist dynasty changed this state of affairs radically. Early in 1462 Howard and his heirs were granted the manors of Leyham alias Overbury Hall and Wherstede in Suffolk, Smethon Hall in Essex, Dontish and Devenish in Dorset, and Hereford and Meyton Hall in Norfolk, forfeited by their Lancastrian owners. In 1464 he arranged to sell back the two Dorset manors for 1,000 marks to their original owner, Sir Nicholas Latimer, who had been renting them from him for the two previous years. It would thus appear that by 1464, Howard held 12 manors, seven he had inherited and the remaining ﬁve from the 1462 grant. A surviving valor [rental] of his lands for 1463–4 also includes the former Howard manors of East Winch and Brokehall, which then belonged to the de Veres, that Howard held for a period early in Edward’s reign, but for which he never acquired a legal title. His mother’s manor of Kenton in Warwickshire is included at a value of £16 p.a. (it was rented to Sir Richard Verney), but not her manor of Hinton in Cambridgeshire, which had reverted to the Mowbrays on her death; in 1464 the farmers of both manors are noted as paying off arrears in the accounts. Regarding a further manor, Ladyhall in the parish of Moreton, Essex, he notes that he held in fee from the Duke of Norfolk, but makes no mention of when he was granted it; Norfolk also later granted him the manor of Prittlewell in Essex.17 The valor is a summary of Howard’s potential income for 1463–4, rather than his actual one, since like others of its type, it makes no differentiation between the current year’s charge and any arrears, either owing or paid off. Since it is the only one known to exist and there are therefore no comparators, only general conclusions can be drawn from it, but it may be assumed with a reasonable degree of safety that the gap between potential and actual yield on Howard’s estates was not particularly large. His holdings were small enough to ensure close personal attention and it seems unlikely that a man who kept such meticulous personal accounts, checking and annotating them with his own hand, would tolerate estate ofﬁcials who were inefﬁcient, let alone dishonest. With this reservation in

DOMESTIC LIFE

145

mind, it is still of some value to calculate Howard’s potential income from the valor, and use it to obtain some idea of how he managed his estates. The group of manors and sub-manors in the parish of Stoke-by-Nayland he retained in his own hands, though the payment of rents for various tenements and parcels of land suggest that he was not farming very much of it himself. The rents and proﬁts from these were collected by his bailiff, Thomas Lyndsey, and for the year 1463–4, Lyndsey was liable for the payment of £133 11s. 11d. The manor of Bowerhouse in nearby Boxford, of which Lyndsey was also bailiff, was included in this sum.18 All Howard’s other manors were farmed, or leased, the valor giving the name of the farmer and the rent for which he was liable. The most lucrative was East Winch, the Oxford manor, assessed at £45, the least was Sprottes at £6 13s. 4d. The sums listed in the valor suggest that Howard’s potential income from his lands in the year 1463–4 was about £400; the valor itself gives no total and it is useless to speculate how much of that he actually received. The valor also notes the income from the two London houses granted him by Edward IV, who was well aware of Howard’s business interests, and also from a ‘great hospicium’ in London. This latter was not a royal grant and must be presumed to have been purchased by Howard. It was the White Hart Inn in Stepney, close enough to his London home to accommodate conveniently the overﬂow of men and horses from it. The income from these three properties was £10 16s. 8d., to which the valor adds the returns from the hundred of Tendring and the lordship of Colchester, both granted to him in 1462, being £11 6s. 9d. and £30 16s. 4d. respectively and bringing the total potential income to about £450 p.a. Appended to the valor of his lands and property is a list of Howard’s ofﬁces. His royal appointments of king’s carver and constable of Norwich head the list, for which he received £40 and £20 p.a. respectively. They are followed by a number of ofﬁces he held from private persons. As a result of his position on the duke’s council, Howard’s abilities had been recognized by others before he came to the notice of the king. By 1464 he was acting as steward of the Duchess of York’s lordship of Clare, with lands throughout Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, an ofﬁce he may have held since the late 1450s (see p. 21). He was also steward of the dowager Duchess of Norfolk at Harwich, the Duke of Suffolk for Dedham in Essex, Lady Scrope for Nayland, Suffolk, Richard Grey, Lord Powys, for all his lands in Suffolk, the Prior of Canterbury at Hadleigh and Monks Eleigh, the Abbot of Osyth for all the priory lands in Norfolk and Suffolk and the Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, likewise.19 The concept of good lordship, so essential to the smooth running of the realm, is usually discussed in terms of nobles, but it functioned at almost all levels of society. A ‘lord’ needed to be able to reward and promote his men and keep them loyal to him, and Howard may have owed some of these ofﬁces to Norfolk’s recommendation as well as his own abilities. He was then able to appoint his own men to lesser ofﬁces within his stewardships, thus

146

YO R K I S T LO R D

enhancing his own standing. Howard’s stewardships might seem insigniﬁcant in the great scheme of things, but they indicate the trust placed in his abilities by a variety of those above him in the regional hierarchy. In addition to these, the Duke of Norfolk paid him a fee of £20 for the constableship of his castle of Holt in Denbighshire, and the young Duke of Gloucester paid him an unspeciﬁed sum to perform the ofﬁce of sub-Admiral of Norfolk and Suffolk, presumably on the instructions of his royal brother. In all, Howard’s ofﬁces brought him in an annual income of £120 6s. 8d., bringing his potential income to nearly £600, but from the fees of his ofﬁces he would have had to pay a deputy to do much of the actual work. This level of income, while not quite up to that of his grandfather, would have placed Howard among the wealthier gentry of the region some twenty-ﬁve years after he came into his small inheritance. It takes no account of his income from business, which is discussed elsewhere. The extent of Howard’s estates did not remain static in the following two decades of Edward IV’s reign. A few months after Lady Howard’s death in 1465, her husband restored to the de Vere family the three former Howard manors which had been leased in 1462 under somewhat questionable circumstances. A number of authors have suggested that a feud between the Howards and the de Veres existed and it is easy to see how that idea might have arisen. Two families, with a possible grievance over land between them, on opposing sides during a civil war, gives rise to such speculations, but it is quite clear during the 1460s that, on the contrary, they were on amicable terms. The return of the manors is one indication of this. Giving them up may have been rather a wrench; the most important of the three, the old Howard family home of East Winch was the only place, other than Tendring and Stepney, where Howard and his family had stayed for any length of time. Countess Elizabeth’s second son, John, had been permitted to succeed his father as 13th earl, and Howard made several hunting trips with him, which lasted for days, and, as we have seen, his daughter, Jane, entered the countess’s household. According to evidence in his accounts, Howard may have purchased two more manors soon after the valor was drawn up in 1464, but his next acquisitions were royal grants. In June 1475 he was granted some of the estates of the newly attainted Earl of Oxford in tail male. These consisted of four Suffolk manors and two in Cambridgeshire. To this was added two months later the stewardship of Hedingham Castle, the town of Lavenham and all other lands and manors in Suffolk and Essex formerly held by John de Vere and currently in the possession of Richard of Gloucester. The following November he surrendered this stewardship in return for ﬁve manors in Essex and Lavenham in Suffolk for an annual fee to the Crown of £10. In 1478 Howard surrendered the manor of Dullingham, part of the 1475 grant and worth £29 p.a., which he ‘relinquished at the king’s desire’, receiving in return those of Whymple in Devon and Downham Hall in

DOMESTIC LIFE

147

Whestle, Suffolk, both of which had formerly been held by the king’s attainted brother, the Duke of Clarence.20 These grants were made during a period for which no accounts survive, and no ﬁnancial or administrative details survive for them, save for one exception. In the account book for the period 1462–71, there are several drafts of letters in Howard’s own hand, and one is addressed to John Braham, appointing him receiver of the group of manors round Stoke-by-Nayland.21 The accounts and other sources provide evidence that Howard was buying and selling small parcels of land, but the last manor he acquired before the end of Edward’s reign is the only one for which proof of purchase survives.22 This was the manor of Wivenhoe, once part of the Countess of Oxford’s inheritance from her mother, Joan Walton, which had passed with the rest of her lands to the Duke of Gloucester. In 1480 he sold it to Howard for 1,100 marks, to be paid in two instalments, ‘besides all other costs and charges, writing of the evidences thereto’. In London in January 1482 the second payment was made and Gloucester’s secretary, John Kendall, brought him the deeds; in return Howard presented the duke with eight crossbows. Wivenhoe, the port for Colchester, was a shrewd buy for Howard, but an expensive one, since the price was higher than that paid by Sir Nicholas Latimer to buy back both his Dorset manors from Howard in 1464.23 Assessing the difference all these new manors made to Howard’s income is difﬁcult, lacking as we do even the unsatisfactory evidence of the earlier valor. However, each of his original manors, though varying widely in the annual income they produced, brought in an average of £20 p.a. Using this ﬁgure as a guide then, the two newly purchased manors, together with the seven Oxford and Clarence manors, had a potential proﬁt of about £120 p.a., less the £10 steward’s fee. The wealthy manor of Wivenhoe may have brought in twice that; it was worth between £30–40 p.a. in the reign of Henry VII. By this, the roughest of calculations, Howard’s income from land at the time of Edward’s death may have been £700–800 p.a. This is above the value of the Countess Elizabeth’s inheritance of Howard lands, which was approximately £600–700 p.a., while her son’s income from de Vere lands has been calculated at about £1,000 p.a. To Howard’s income from land should be added the income from his ofﬁces, the proﬁts from his shipping business and, later, the rewards from his embassies; these probably brought his income to about the same level, if not higher, as that of the young earl in the 1460s.24 The surviving accounts for 1463–9 compiled by Thomas Lyndsey, Howard’s bailiff for the manors around Stoke that he retained in his own hands, were written on sheets of paper very similar to those of the household and are in a similar clerk’s hand, and probably came from an estate account book. Lyndsey was also responsible for the collection of rents and issues for the other Suffolk manors, for which he received 33s. 4d. p.a., together with 6s. 8d. for a gown. Overseeing the

148

YO R K I S T LO R D

administration of all the estates was Howard’s steward. No one is given that title in the ﬁrst set of household accounts which run to 1471, though it is clear that John Braham was discharging these duties; he is described elsewhere of being of Boxted, gentleman. In the second set of accounts John Bliant is described as the steward. His name occurs in the ﬁrst set in a similar capacity and it may be that he began as Braham’s assistant. Bliant was a man of considerable standing, with his own servants, and although he accompanied his lord on the Scottish naval expedition, he usually remained at Stoke during Howard’s absences, sharing the running of affairs with Lady Howard, if she was not with her husband. His main tasks were the hiring and payment of seasonal labourers, the purchase of stock and the upkeep of buildings. He would also have been responsible for the holding of manor courts and general oversight of all the estates. Howard’s farming economy was designed mainly to support his growing household; he kept large numbers of sheep – in 1467 he noted that he had more than a thousand – which provided the household with wool and left enough over to sell. Since the home farms were unable to provide all the meat the household required, Wolpett Fair seems to have supplied most of the extra livestock. In the autumn of 1465 the accounts contain a detailed list of the sheep and cattle at Stoke itself, where they had been bought, and by which member of the household, and it was probably drawn up in advance of the Martinmas slaughter, which would keep the household in meat throughout the winter. The list is a good illustration of the care and attention that went into the accounts. It is clear from this that Howard took a close interest in what was going on and certainly did not leave all the purchasing to his staff.25 He took an even closer interest in his ﬁsh ponds. Despite the relative closeness of Stoke to the sea, fresh salt-water ﬁsh did not feature largely on the menu at Stoke. Most of the ﬁsh consumed came from his own ponds, of which there were a large number on the home manors, many of them named in the accounts. There is a series of entries relating to the ponds for the years 1462–8, a great many of which are in Howard’s own hand. On 28 January 1468 he wrote: I breke myne greteste ponte in the parke and howete of that I toke in gret bremes, lxv (65) And pote theme in to the mel ponte, the wesche is new mad; and I pote the same day in to the same ponte vi (6) grete karpes; and the same day I pote in to the same ponte in lytel karpes xii xx (12 score). And in grete tensches the same tyme xliii (43), in smale tensches xx (20). In lytel bremetes lxvi (56), in roches xii xx (12 score), in perches vi xx (6 score).26

Each spring and autumn saw the main purchases of meat on the hoof, but throughout the year there was constant trade with local butchers, particularly for goods such as pigs, geese and pigeons. Purchases were obviously heavier when the

DOMESTIC LIFE

149

main part of the household was away from Stoke at Stepney; while it was at Bray the estate probably furnished most of what was needed. As with meat, much of the corn supply came from Howard’s own estates. In addition to what was grown on the demesne, he came to various arrangements with his tenants: the farmer of his manor of Meyton Hall in Norfolk, besides his cash rent, was also liable for a corn rent of 60 ‘semes’ (quarters) of barley, while on one occasion he purchased from Sir Pers, his private chaplain, who held the living of nearby Polstead, all his tithe corn for a year for the sum of £10. The household may have baked its own bread at Stoke, but in London it made use of a local baker called John Melton to such an extent that in September 1483 he received a payment of £20. The same pattern is true for beer, the third staple of a medieval diet; judging by the delivery of 221 pounds of hops at Stoke, brewing was practised there as it was in any other household of size, but there are also notes of large quantities of beer being purchased. With his shipping interests Howard had no difﬁculty maintaining a supply of good quality wine. On one occasion in 1464, when a ship belonging to Richard Felaw, his Ipswich agent, came in with a cargo of wine, Howard arranged for a pipe of white wine and a pipe and two ‘tercyans’ of red French wine to be sent to his manor of Winch, miles away in Norfolk near Lynn, where the family spent time that year, and a similar amount to Stoke. In September 1483 he was licensed to import 100 tuns of wine free of duty and his secretary paid 4s. 0d. for the sealing and enrolling of the licence. It did not specify that the wine had to be for his own consumption and he was free to sell any surplus if he wished. A man of Howard’s wealth also had no difﬁculty in obtaining more exotic goods for his kitchens: pomegranates, oranges, ﬁgs, dates, almonds, cinnamon and saffron all feature in the accounts. Indeed, he owned a shop in Cheapside in the 1480s which was rented by a grocer called Sandys, who supplied much of it.27 The household accounts only contain scattered pieces of information about Howard’s relations with his tenants. A number of the more important tenants were, not unnaturally, members of the household. John Davy took over the tenancy of Stanstrete from his father after he had been in the household for at least a year. Robert Thorpe, who held some land at Overburyhall, was probably the Norwich alderman of that name with whom Howard had frequent business dealings and whose brother, Thomas, was a senior member of the household. Walter Gorges, who rented the manor of the Howe, was a man of some standing, whose father, Sir Theobald Gorges, came from Wraxall in Somerset. On Walter’s death in 1466 Howard acted as his executor and for £200 acquired the wardship of his two young sons, both of whom were already in his household.28 Perhaps because he kept a close check on his rents, Howard seems never to have had any serious trouble with his tenants, and certainly he appears to have avoided the tedious and expensive processes of litigation with them. He also kept an eye on his lesser dues as a landowner, and in 1465 there is an intriguing note to the effect that the

150

YO R K I S T LO R D

farmer of East Winch had found a coffer full of plate and that the king had not yet received a penny of his rightful due for such treasure trove.29 A picture of Howard as a landowner emerges somewhat scrappily from the accounts. He pursued a policy of purchasing manors at a time when only a relatively small amount of property came on to the open market, the vast majority of estates descending by inheritance or will. Often men had to buy whatever was available in the hope of being able to exchange it for something more convenient when the opportunity arose. That Howard was able to purchase more than one manor in the region of his existing estates argues both skill and determination in the land market, and probably an ability to pay over the odds for something that he wanted. He was a careful and efﬁcient administrator, who went through his personal accounts every week, checking and annotating, and therefore was very unlikely to let estate accounts escape his vigilance. Edward Stafford, third Duke of Buckingham, in the early sixteenth century is sometimes cited as the earliest known example of a lord who kept detailed records of his ﬁnancial position in his own hand, but Howard certainly did so, both before and after he became a peer, and continued the practice throughout his life.30 Having looked at the evidence which gives some indication of how Howard handled the estates that supported his family and household, attention now needs to be turned on his home itself and the style in which he lived. The household increased over the years until it consisted of the best part of 150 people. Even if they did not all live in Tendring Hall, the manor house must still have been of considerable size, though there are few clues to it. In May 1482, craftsmen from London were employed to provide windows for the chapel, but the local glazier, Robert Lawson, was called in to glaze the window of the young Lady Berners’s chamber. This was Catherine, Howard’s youngest daughter, his only child by his second wife, who was married as a child to the young Lord Berners. In May 1482 she may have been 14 and old enough for the marriage to become an actuality. Was this perhaps a chamber for the young couple or had her married status ensured that even as a child she had her own chamber? If so, the window was of some considerable size, and therefore so too was the chamber, for it took Lawson and his men ten days to complete the work. Nor would it have been the only major room in the house that had glass, still a comparative luxury, since Howard is hardly likely to have given his daughter something he and his wife and other children did not already have in their chambers. Certainly as early as 1465 an Ipswich glazier had supplied 9 feet of glass for a closet, probably for the master’s own private use. Another type of ﬁtment that Howard installed were chimney pieces; he bought three in London in September 1482 and had them carefully shipped to Stoke, probably for installation in the family’s private rooms rather than in the hall or public rooms.31 Another means of reducing discomfort from damp or draughts was the custom

DOMESTIC LIFE

151

3. John Howard, Duke of Norfolk: late sixteenth century, commissioned by Lord Lumley.

of hanging tapestries on the walls. The ﬁnest examples were imported from Flanders and northern France, the very best coming from the region of Arras. Since Howard was a wealthy man and his ships travelled regularly to Calais, it is hardly surprising that his home had plenty of examples of real arras on the walls, while lesser folk had to make do with painted canvas. When he married Margaret

152

YO R K I S T LO R D

Chedworth, several pieces of arras are listed among his gifts to her. Unfortunately none of the references give any indication of the subject of the tapestries, whether religious, mythological or classical, which might give some clue as to Howard’s taste. The sole exceptions are the set of nine hangings he bought in August 1483, which featured lions, the Norfolk crest, and four pieces of arras purchased in the following October. These illustrated the story of ‘Gressel’, that is, Patient Griselda, a popular moral tale and probably intended for a lady’s chamber, quite probably Lady Berners’s; a bed covering was purchased at the same time.32 Arras was not the only type of hanging purchased and would have been reserved for the family’s own rooms and the main reception rooms. Apart from the beds included in the list of presents to Margaret and mentioned elsewhere, no furniture features in the accounts; any new benches, tables and chests which were required may well have been made by Howard’s own carpenter. The most revealing piece of evidence of the furnishings Howard considered indispensable for his comfort – and an impressive list it is – features in the equipment he took with him on the naval expedition to Scotland. Aboard his ﬂagship were carried carpets, curtains, sheets, towels, napkins, tablecloths, quilts and pillows of down, featherbeds, and four counterpoints of tapestry. Many of his bowls, spoons and basins were silver, including a ‘grete bassyn of silver’ and a ‘pyssing basin of silver’, and there are plenty of references in the accounts to the purchase of silver vessels for the family and guests as well as pewter for the household. However, the most interesting item on the list is a ‘casse with iiii gobeletz’. These were probably glass goblets requiring a protective case and would have been very expensive. Nor were these the only glasses he owned, for in 1482 he went to Colchester especially for a ‘gret glasse’.33 The glass goblets in their case were almost certainly accompanied by a positive library of books – 12 in all. These were probably only a small proportion of those he owned, since he was unlikely to risk losing his whole collection at sea. The selection of titles is illuminating. None were devotional, which is slightly surprising; most were light romances or stories of heroes and battles, including one on Baldwin, Count of Flanders and two on the Trojan War. Two were treatises on chess and dice, and also included was the ever popular La Belle Dame Sans Merci. All the books were in French and form just the kind of selection a soldier of cultivated but unscholarly mind might travel with for relaxation. Whether they were manuscript copies or in the new medium of print is impossible to tell; at least ﬁve of the titles had been printed by 1481, either in England or abroad, and as an indication that Howard’s taste in literature was very much that of his fellows, most of the other titles were printed in the following few decades. Two of them, Les Dites des Sages and one on ancient Troy, Caxton chose to print in English. The selection for Scotland did not contain the MS copy in English of ‘Dives et Pauper’, which Howard purchased, together with an unidentiﬁed French

DOMESTIC LIFE

153

book, in 1464 for a cost of 13s. 4d. Another manuscript book, this time probably a psalter or book of hours, was purchased in 1467 from Thomas Lympnour of Bury. It was lavishly illuminated with 8 full-page illustrations and 21 half pages, in addition to the capitals, and together with the vellum and cost of binding, he spent 37s. 8d on it.34 The list of clothes Howard took to Scotland is also the best indication of his way of dress, although there are frequent scattered references to the purchase of clothes throughout both sets of accounts. The wardrobe of an admiral had undoubtedly to be rich and impressive, but they were not of the kind of sober hue that a nobleman of advancing years might have been expected to favour. Two doublets of crimson satin were packed and one of ‘popegay’ colour (i.e. popinjay, usually used to describe a shade of turquoise); he also took a short mantle of blue velvet, a short gown of tawny velvet and two long gowns, one of black satin lined with purple velvet and the other russet furred with leopard skin. Finally, in case it was required to impress the Scots, he took a jacket of cloth of gold. Minor things like seven pairs of hose, two pairs of slippers and three other pairs of shoes are listed, but there is no mention of what linen was taken. Over the years Howard patronized a great number of drapers, never appearing to bestow his patronage exclusively on a single shop at any one time. Most cloth for his own use or for that of members of his family came from London. One of his biggest single recorded expenditures was for the tournament of 1467, when purchases of satin, velvet, damask and cloth of gold from the Lombard merchant Humphrey Gentile resulted in a bill for £96 8s. 4d., so large that Howard had to pay it in instalments.35 At about the same time he contracted with a tailor called Robert Mesenden to work for him for a year solely on his own clothes and those of his wife, paying him the handsome sum of 26s. 8d. plus his keep. Members of the household received a gown each year as part of their payment, and the cloth for these, usually worsted or Kendall cloth, was purchased locally in Suffolk. Having detailed the lavish spending on his own comfort and appearance, it is only fair to note that Howard was simply behaving as all his peers would have done in a period when a man’s position and worth were to a considerable extent judged by what he could afford to spend on clothes and hospitality. Unusually for his time, two images of John Howard survive; to call them portraits would not be accurate. A stained glass window, formerly either in his chapel at Tendring Hall or in the South Chapel in Stoke-by-Nayland church, shows him kneeling in full armour, save for his helm which is beside him, and with his surcoat bearing his coat of arms. Before him is an open book, presumably a missal. His face is turned three-quarters to the front and shows slender, regular features and light brown hair cut at the front in a type of pudding-basin style, but longer at the back. It is possible that Howard commissioned it himself to mark his building of the chapel, but it seems more likely that it was commissioned by Duchess

154

YO R K I S T LO R D

Margaret as a memorial after his death, particularly since the armour emphasizes his soldierly death. While unlikely to be a true portrait, it almost certainly bears some resemblance to her husband. This is supported by the fact that the body, probably that of Howard (see Chapter 7, note 30) disinterred in Framlingham Church in 1841, had light-coloured hair. In the late sixteenth century, John, Lord Lumley, commissioned a picture of the ﬁrst Duke of Norfolk. He was an early antiquarian, closely connected to the fourth duke and uncle of the latter’s heir, Philip, Earl of Arundel, and one of his interests was collecting portraits of his ancestors and those families with which he was connected. John Howard is depicted soberly but richly dressed in Tudor costume, wearing his Garter badge and his hair is shown in a similar style and colour as that of Edward IV. His face is long and strong featured, but is most striking for its long moustache, certainly not a ﬁfteenth-century fashion. It is possible that the picture was based on likenesses of the fourth duke and his son, but whether they resembled their progenitor is anybody’s guess.36 If Howard was a heavy spender on his own account, he was also a generous man to others less fortunate to himself, as indeed was expected of a man in his position. Whenever he travelled, he would open his purse; his workmen and ships’ crews were often given a little extra on top of their wages for drink, and any messenger or one who did him service was well rewarded. Whenever he was a guest in someone else’s house, at the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, or at Wivenhoe with Oxford, the cooks, the porters, the chamber servants were never forgotten, nor were the maids in any inn where he stayed. Henry Elyse, a gentleman who had turned hermit, was a favourite recipient of alms, not just small sums, but as much as 6s. 8d. at a time. Often when Howard went to Colchester, the friars received generous donations and so did any churchman with whom he came into contact. While not obviously deeply pious, Howard was certainly conventionally devout, as the building of his chapel indicates. The most interesting examples of his generosity are those he made on the spur of the moment, often borrowing from one of his men to do so because he had no cash on him: My Lord payde to Robard Clarke for alms he leyde owte at Colchester townys end, ii.d. and to the lasyares, vi.d.’; ‘memorandum that my Lord borued of Braham at Colchester to geff to a man that was at debate with Thorppes man (What was the subject of the debate that so caught his attention?); ‘to a poer man that had hows brent, ii.s.37

Nor was his charity entirely at random. He supported several local boys at Cambridge, either wholly or in part.38 There is no evidence as to whether or not Howard played an instrument himself, but he seems to have been fond of music in all its forms. He employed trained choristers to sing in his chapel and boarded them with the local priest, Sir William,

DOMESTIC LIFE

155

and there are several references to named singers. He sought out copies of anthems and chose song books for them, and his new chapel had an organ installed as soon as it was built. The household also had its own harpist, a musician named Thomas. Nor was Howard averse to talent spotting, for in October 1482 my Lord made covenaunte with Willm Wastell of London, harper that he shall have the sone of John Colet, of Colchester, harper, for a yere to teche hym to harpe and to synge, for the whiche techynge my Lord shall give hym xiii.s. iiii.d. and a gown.

By that date the household probably had its own minstrels, since an item in the accounts records the cost of mending a lute for them, but it might possibly have been for a visiting troupe, like that of the Duchess of Norfolk, which visited Tendring Hall in 1481 and received 3s. 4d. for their pains, while in the same year, the martial music of the Duke of Gloucester’s trumpeters stirred him to give them 5s. Much earlier, on St George’s Eve in 1464, six minstrels of the Earl of Warwick had received as much as 6s. 8d., and three of the Duke of Suffolk’s 3s. 4d., while the king’s trumpeters were also given 6s. 8d., perhaps because such visits were then rarer and therefore more valued occasions.39 Musicians were not the only performers who thought it worth their while to visit Stoke-by-Nayland, and on a number of occasions the household welcomed strolling players. At Christmas 1481 it was a troupe from Coggeshall, followed a few days later by one from Hadleigh. There seems to have been an abundance of plays at this particular festive season, for a few days after the village players came the Earl of Essex’s players. This is a very early known troupe under the patronage of a nobleman and gives Essex some distinction, but Richard of Gloucester had a similar band that played at Stoke the following Christmas. Even when players came at Christmas, the household provided its own Twelfth Night ‘disguisings’ and in 1482 Howard paid a large bill to Gerard of Sudbury for stuff that was required for the entertainment and which included more than four dozen sheets of gold and silver paper, gold foil, glue, pack thread, and the unlikely item of a pound of gunpowder, as well as Gerard’s labour. For the rest of the year, the household made do with the antics of its own two fools, Tom and Richard, the latter known as the fool of the kitchen, neither of whom occur in the earlier accounts and are yet another indication of Howard’s status.40 For the rest of the year, leisure time was whiled away with cards and chess as wells as books and music. A bag of chessmen as well as a book on chess were part of the indispensable equipment Howard took to Scotland with him, and on another occasion he paid a ‘limner’ 20d. for painting two chessboards. Card games were a relatively new pastime in England, but had become an extremely popular form of gambling. While campaigning at Holt Castle in 1464, long winter evenings meant considerable sums of money changed hands. On one such night

156

YO R K I S T LO R D

the Duke of Norfolk’s steward had to lend Howard 4 marks to pay his own debts and 13s. 4d to pay the duke’s, receiving his money back in instalments over the next ten days, presumably when Howard’s luck had changed. The older game of ‘tables’ or backgammon remained popular, but Howard seems to have been no luckier at it than at cards, once losing the large sum of 28s. 4d. The accounts, however, may cast an unfavourable light on either his luck or his skill, since they probably only record money lost or lent, while his winnings went straight into his own purse. On another occasion he found himself playing a banker to the tune of 8s. 3d. when Lady Scales found herself embarrassed by her losses.41 Howard’s other pastimes were rather more strenuous. He indulged in hunting and archery whenever possible, the former usually meaning a few days away from home, either at Castle Rising with his brother-in-law, Thomas Daniel, or with Oxford at Lavenham or Wivenhoe. There are fewer references to hawking, though payment for a hawk’s bag and bells indicate that he did own birds and he spent money on refreshment when out hawking. Archery was another temptation to gamble; at the Holt he lost 7d. at a match, but in London in 1466 he was prepared to wager 10s. on his own skill in a match against Sir Harry Waffers, and he gave the latter’s wife the money to hold until the contest was over; sadly, the outcome is unknown. When in London he was able to play tennis and once lost 3s. 4d. to Sir Robert Chamberlain. ‘Pykynge’ or bowls was yet another opportunity for a wager on a test of skill and on one occasion he lost 4d. to Lord Stafford. By and large these games of skill were played away from home, they were amusements to be found in London or on campaign. Hawking, music, chess and reading were the more domestic pleasures to be had at Tendring Hall.42 Assessing the approximate size of Howard’s household prior to 1471 is relatively easy, because of the survival, in the accounts and elsewhere, of several nominal lists.43 Use of them is not without pitfalls, since they seem to include only those persons actually present at Tendring when the list was drawn up; for instance, a list of 1466 omits one or two senior household men, who were clearly away on their master’s business. The earliest list dates probably from about 1455 (see above, p. 137) and shows that the Howard household was then about 40 strong, consisting of eight gentlemen, a chaplain and nearly 30 yeomen. In contrast there were only ﬁve waiting women. Because there was no female equivalent of the term yeoman, they were all described as gentlewomen, although they may have come from quite a wide social range. The list of yeomen is headed by Reynold Hill, but Alison and Elizabeth Hill, surely close relatives, are among those described as gentlewomen. When the next surviving list was compiled in 1466, all the gentlemen, save one, were still there, but neither Reynold Hill nor his kinswomen are included, which suggests that they were of an older generation and served Howard’s mother. The other women, Rose Delory (the Frenchwoman), Agnes Banyard and Edith Moleyns (a kinswoman of Katherine, Lady Howard)

DOMESTIC LIFE

157

are all included in the new list though, by this time, Edith was married to Robert Cumberton, also a member of the household. From the lists compiled in 1466 and 1467 it is clear that in the preceding ten years, Howard’s household had more or less doubled in size, reﬂecting his growing importance. It now consisted of 21 gentlemen and about 50 yeomen. The number of women, however, had only increased by two, one of them, Margaret Notbem, being the waiting woman for Howard’s daughters. This is entirely typical of a medieval gentry household, which consisted almost entirely of unmarried men. The few women retained to wait on the ladies of the family came from gentle or prosperous yeoman stock and did not perform menial tasks. While gentlemen in the household might marry, particularly if they were landowners, their wives were settled separately. Yeomen members, if they inherited the family property and wished to marry, probably resigned their position at that point. Servants could not support wives and children, who would also have distracted them from their service, and a great many remained single all their lives. Nor could a virtuous household have large numbers of lower status women in its midst, since this would simply have encouraged loose behaviour. The sisters of the yeomen members would have stayed at home to help on the family farm or taken service with other yeoman households. According to the regulations issued under Edward IV for the conduct of the royal household, which also gives the establishments suitable for other ranks from a duke to an esquire of the body, Howard, as a knight, might be expected to spend £100 p.a. on maintaining his household.44 About three-quarters of this sum would be expended on food and wages. Howard was spending far more than this, yet another indication that, even before his elevation to the peerage, he was living as well as many members of its ranks and probably better than some. For the jousting at Smithﬁeld, he put 70 men into his livery and, while they may not all have been permanent members of his household, it seems safe to say that most of them were. The payment of wages to household members occurs throughout the accounts, but not in such a way as enables an accurate assessment of annual expenditure to be made. Howard did not sit down once a month with all his people lined up before him to receive their wages. Instead, payments of odd sums are made at various times, sometimes just to one person, sometimes to half a dozen or so, presumably when he had cash to hand. As far as can be judged, the majority of the lesser members of the household were paid 3s. 4d. per month and their seniors twice that sum. The longest and most detailed list occurs for the period 1466–7, where a number of men have their payments for a whole year recorded and which illustrates quite clearly the irregular way that they were paid. Just as one example, Ralph Barleyscoles received 57s. 8d. for the period January to December 1467 and it was made in 12 payments, but the amounts varied from 1s. 0d. to 10s. 0d.45 Ralph, who ranked below the gentlemen of the household, but who was a long-standing servant of some position,

158

YO R K I S T LO R D

therefore received approximately £3 p.a. in cash wages, with most of his living expenses provided for. As a very rough calculation then, with well over 100 people to wage in 1467, Sir John Howard was spending between £200 and £300 a year on wages alone when the total expenditure on a baron’s household was expected to cost him only about £500. In addition to their wage, each household member might expect to receive the gift of a new gown and a pair of shoes each year, or the cash equivalent. Occasionally special conditions were agreed for a new member. In 1467 Howard obtained the services of an ‘archer de maison’, or an archer of the elite kind that Warwick described to Louis XI as worth two ordinary archers, even English ones. To persuade this man, Daniel, to enter his employ Howard contracted to pay him no less than £10 p.a. with two gowns and a house in the village for his wife. As an extra inducement, Daniel was given on the spot two doublets, a gown, boots, two spears, a bow and arrow and a shooting glove, all noted by Howard himself. When next in London he bought a bow for his own use; it cost 2s. 0d., but two for Daniel cost 10s. 0d. Howard was not in danger of getting his priorities wrong.46 The most senior men, that is, those with speciﬁc positions, were largely gentlemen. Howard’s own squire, Thomas Moleyns, was clearly a family connection of his ﬁrst wife, though not a close one, for the Moleyns family died out in the main line during Katherine’s lifetime. He was also one of the few who married, for in 1465 the accounts note that Howard gave his wife at her wedding 20s., and he also gave his daughters Isabel and Anne 20d. each to give to the bride.47 The two Moleyns, Edith and Thomas, who may have been brother and sister, were not the only family connections living at Tendring. Howard’s nephews, Thomas, Edmund and George, sons of his sister Margaret and the disgraced Thomas Daniel were gathered in and given a home, certainly after 1461 if not before. The eldest, Thomas, became his uncle’s most trusted lieutenant and his name occurs in the accounts almost more frequently than any other, and he is always given the title Master Daniel. His younger brothers both accompanied Howard on the Scottish expedition and are mentioned in the later set of accounts, but they probably did not remain permanently in the household, for Edmund certainly trained as a lawyer.48 In contrast, Howard’s wards, Edmund and John Gorges, remained with him and were regarded as members of the family. Other senior household men, Braham, Bliant, Thorpe and Davy have already been mentioned in the context of Howard’s estate management. Among their fellows, at least four men can be identiﬁed as bearing responsibility for the compilation of the household memoranda books. John Skinner, Thomas Dalamar, Giles Seynclow and his brother, Thomas, all wrote up different passages in the same period. One night in November 1481, Giles Seynclow records an argument he had had with his lord over the accounts, which at this point he was keeping. Howard claimed Seynclow should have 5s.4d. in hand while the latter reckoned

DOMESTIC LIFE

159

it should be only 4s.7d. and was prepared to prove it from the accounts. Nothing shows more clearly the care with which Howard examined and checked the accounts than this entry.49 Thomas Dalamar does not occur in the accounts before the marriage of Howard and Margaret Chedworth, and may perhaps have been recruited in Berkshire, although there is no evidence that he was actually in her household there. John Skinner entered Howard’s household at some time in the 1470s and is frequently mentioned in the second set of accounts. Unlike almost all the others, he was not from East Anglia; he came from Reigate in Surrey, where his father had sat as an MP. It was a borough dominated by the Mowbrays, and John’s brother, Richard, followed in his father’s footsteps and became almost the permanent parliamentary member for the town. John trained as a lawyer and was appointed as under-sheriff of Surrey and Sussex in 1483. He is the only member of the household, besides members of Howard’s own family, who served as an MP, sheriff, or indeed on the bench. James Hobart, who was Howard’s lawyer, sat on the Suffolk bench throughout the Yorkist period and Thomas Howard did so for Norfolk from about 1471 onwards, but no other member of the household did so, despite their gentle birth, because they were not substantial landowners. That Howard could obtain such appointments if he chose is illustrated by the fact that he paid for William Chedworth’s commission to the Middlesex bench in 1467. If Howard did not solicit local appointments for his people, still less did he use his inﬂuence at court to obtain ofﬁces or grants from the Crown. His own son, Thomas, and his sons-in-law, Edmund Gorges and John Timperley, who became esquires of the body, are the sole exceptions. While the household accounts are the most useful source of information for Howard’s domestic life, the account of his receiver, John Penley, for the ﬁrst year he held the dukedom, does throw some light on his domestic life as duke. First, he was anxious to bring his new seat of Framlingham Castle, where he had spent so much time in his decades of Mowbray service, up to the level of domestic comfort to which he was accustomed. Repairs and renovations to various buildings, chambers and towers required large quantities of lead, timber and other materials and the services of an army of masons, carpenters, plumbers, smiths and other workmen and labourers. By 1485 Howard is credited with bringing the castle up to the standard revealed in the inventory made at the death of his son in 1524. His receiver-general’s account for 1483–4 certainly notes more than £160 spent on repairs and improvements to the castle’s buildings, chambers and towers and wages for a wide variety of workmen. The details were all given in ﬁve paper notebooks, which Penley examined in preparing his account and then noted that he had handed over to the personal keeping of the duke. Basic expenditure of food, drink and fuel for the household alone came to more than £400 and Penley notes all the sums that were paid over directly into the hands of the duke and duchess.50

160

YO R K I S T LO R D

There are no drafts of personal correspondence in the accounts as there are of business letters. On the whole, late ﬁfteenth-century correspondence was business orientated. Personal communication was done by messenger or as a postscript to a more formal letter. This being so, it is hard to compile a fully rounded picture of John Howard. However, even from the indirect evidence of his ﬁnancial memoranda something emerges. The direct and rather bullying nature sometimes shown in his business tactics is not to be found in his personal relations. There he was an exacting but generous master, a more than generous husband and, as far as can be judged, a kind father, in short, a paternal ﬁgure whose direct inﬂuence extended over more than a hundred people. In his private life he seems to have been very much a man of his age, active into old age, competitive, highly self-conﬁdent and prepared to back his abilities in hard cash. Fond of chess, books and music, and while not a scholar in the manner of one or two of his peers such as the earl of Worcester or Lord Scales, yet by being cultivated and valuing learning in others, he was far more typical of his day than they were.

9

Shipping and Business Interests

John Howard’s ship-owning is too important a subject to be dealt with piecemeal in the chronological account of his life and it makes sense to deal with it separately, viewed as a background to his royal service. Where that service involved ships, then the commissions to which he was appointed and the ﬂeets for which he requisitioned have been detailed as part of his political career. Howard’s interest in the sea and shipping seems to have been an early development. Although his great-great-grandfather had been Edward III’s Admiral of the North Seas, his grandfather, the most important inﬂuence on the young Howard, has no recorded dealings with the sea. It is hardly surprising that an ambitious and capable man whose landed estate was modest would set about making money some other way. Unfortunately, until the 1460s, from when his earliest surviving accounts date, there is virtually no evidence of how he was doing it. It is equally clear from those accounts, however, that by then he was a well-established ship-owner and it is reasonable to assume that during the 1450s, when it looked as if the Duke of Norfolk and his retainers would never be able to rely on royal patronage for any length of time, Howard turned his energies in the direction of the sea. Ship-owning in the late Middle Ages, as in more recent centuries, was generally a matter for the Crown and the mercantile classes, but although it could not be said that large numbers of the peerage and gentry concerned themselves with shipping and trading, it was certainly not unknown. The royal ﬂeet built up by Henry V to facilitate his campaigns in France and keep open lines of communication was largely sold off during the minority of his son and its trained body of shipmasters dispersed on the grounds that there was no enemy naval force to justify retention. When things began to go wrong for the English in France, the error of this policy became obvious, but by then it was too late.1 One alternative tried by the Crown in the decades that followed was sea-keeping by licence, whereby unpaid squadrons organized by peers or merchant syndicates undertook to ‘keep the sea’ in return for all proﬁts save for the shares due to the Lord Admiral, who was always a senior peer. This amounted to little more than privateering, piracy licensed by the Crown. Another alternative was to raise a ﬂeet by the indenture method, under which ship-owners agreed to rent the Crown their ships and crews for a speciﬁed period of time and place them under the command of a royal ofﬁcer.

162

YO R K I S T LO R D

Superiority at sea fell to the ﬁrst-comer and rarely lasted for longer than a single summer, and did not change hands as a result of sea battles. If you could get your ﬂeet to sea before your enemy there was little he could do but look to his defences, and if you could catch his ﬂeet in harbour before it was ready and destroy it, then you could achieve a naval victory, as the English had done over the French at Sluys a century earlier. Thus naval warfare needed early and efﬁcient organization, something to which the government of Henry VI was quite unequal. Another aspect of the loss of control of the sea was the revival of piracy, efﬁciently suppressed by Henry V, and as we have seen, Howard was appointed to a number of commissions to investigate piracy. Apart from chasing pirates and keeping the seas free for English merchant shipping and ﬁshing boats, the ﬂeets put together in the middle of the ﬁfteenth century were also intended to protect English ports from attack, ferry troops to the continent when required and generally impress any enemy with England’s ability to defend itself. A ﬂeet could rarely stay at sea for longer than 6–8 weeks, but by patrolling a restricted area and mounting the odd raid on an enemy port, it could show its superiority and gain popularity at home. The keeping of the sea, ensuring the freedom of the North Sea and English Channel for English shipping, was vitally important to English trade. It was particularly relevant in the case of Calais, the sole remaining toehold of the English in France, where its Merchant Staple was the key to the wool and cloth trade on which English prosperity depended. In 1456 during his second protectorate, the Duke of York appointed his wife’s nephew, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, to the key post of Captain of Calais. In the following year, the government had little choice but to appoint him to the emergency military command of Keeper of the Seas after the French made a dawn raid on Sandwich. Warwick held the post for the rest of the reign, despite efforts by the government to remove him once York had lost power. He was able to do this for a number of reasons: he earned the loyalty of the garrison by ensuring they received their wages, previously badly in arrears, he built up a naval force from the proﬁts of piracy, and crown revenue from the proﬁts of the Staple and earned himself popularity at home by ‘keeping the sea’. Warwick’s piracy was blatant and indiscriminate. It did not matter whether the victims were enemies, like the Castilians, or parties to trade agreements like the Genoese and the Hanseatic League, a group of German ports which dominated the trade of northern Europe and the Baltic. To Warwick and his fellow Englishmen, they were all foreigners and thus fair game, but his activities caused serious problems for the government’s foreign relations. The earl had built up his ﬂeet to 12 ships by 1458 and had at least ten in commission in 1462–4.2 While the Earl of Warwick was the supreme example of a nobleman owning ships, a number of other peers, including the Earl of Oxford, owned one or more

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

163

ships and could also be called on to help build up a royal ﬂeet when required, but most members of the gentry probably did not have the ﬁnancial wherewithal to be involved in ship-owning. On occasions when the Crown needed ships to convey an embassy or ferry troops to the continent, it was forced to requisition ships from merchants, who resented the cost and loss of trade, or from noble ship-owners. Howard’s ships were used primarily for trading, but were commandeered for royal ﬂeets when required. It was an obligation upon him as a royal servant to bear the loss of trade that this involved. Those ordered to make arrangements for requisitioning ships for the Crown were obliged to meet the expenses from their own pockets in the ﬁrst instance. Only when the voyage was complete could they reclaim repayment from the exchequer. Requisitioning for a ﬂeet, therefore, was a task that could only be given to those who were well-off. Nothing is more indicative of Howard’s growing afﬂuence as well as his local importance, and its recognition by the new Yorkist regime, that from early in Edward IV’s reign he was commanded to requisition ships. When their ships were not required for use by the Crown, nobles could use them for trading, or convoying, or most probably a combination of the two. Organizing a convoy had been the Crown’s response to threats to mercantile shipping for centuries and had been regularly used for the Bordeaux trade while Gascony was English. Funding, however, was another matter, and the convoys were paid for by the ship-owners who beneﬁted from them. Not all convoys were organized by the Crown and there is every reason to believe that many ship-owners like Howard came to private agreements with local merchants to provide protection for their little ﬂeets. The middle of the ﬁfteenth century, when Howard began his business ventures, saw the increasing dominance of London in foreign trade and the concentration of the latter on Calais and the Low Countries. Another change was the reduction in size of the ships concerned. Whereas earlier in the century there are records of ships being as much as 800–900 tons, now a decrease in size was universal throughout Europe. There seems to have been nothing on the east coast bigger than 150 tons and most ships were between 50–100 tons.3 Small ships were easy and quick to load, needed a smaller crew, could enter almost any harbour, however poor, and thus be used for coastal as well as cross-channel trading, and enabled merchants to minimize the risk of loss. Merchants were also safeguarded against serious loss by share-owning. If they part-owned a ship they avoided freight charges on their goods, their shares were easily tradable and space could be found for the goods freighted by the ship’s master and other merchants and traders, large or small. In East Anglia, the most prosperous ports were Ipswich and Yarmouth. The latter was too far away to be of interest to Howard, but by the early 1460s he owned property in Ipswich and employed Richard Felaw, a local merchant, as his agent. It would be reasonable, therefore, to assume that in the 1450s Howard started mercantile business in a

164

YO R K I S T LO R D

small way, owning shares in ships while he built up capital to purchase his ﬁrst ship outright. He was not, however, involved in overseas trading himself unless he was working entirely through an agent, since a study of the customs records show very few payments of duties on goods shipped by him. The accounts for the royal customs fall into two classes, enrolled and particular. Enrolled customs accounts, compiled by royal ofﬁcials in each port, give the total quantities of goods shipped in the cases of merchandise such as wool and cloth on which speciﬁc duties were paid and give total values for miscellaneous goods on which duties were paid proportionately. They were returned annually to the Exchequer and are unrivalled in Europe for their comprehensiveness, but they are of no use for tracing individual ships or traders. This has to be done through the particular accounts, entries made in each port relating to each ship entering and leaving for foreign ports, noting the name of the ship, her master and home port, the cargo and the names of the traders who owned it and the duty payable, but not, alas, the names of the ship owner or owners if they were not also trading. Large numbers of these accounts survive, but only a fraction of the whole; the names of merchants, of ships and their tonnage can, and have been, checked from other sources and found accurate.4 A study of the particular accounts for Ipswich, which include those for its subsidiary ports of Colchester, Dunwich and Harwich (all places in which Howard had an interest), and selected accounts for London and King’s Lynn for the period covering 1450 to 1485 reveal very few payments of customs duties on goods shipped by him, and the ﬁrst occurs in 1467; there is also a note in the accounts for March 1469 relating to the payment of customs money owed to the king.5 This suggests that even at the beginning of his mercantile career, Howard was not trading overseas in goods. Once he owned ships outright he was not using them to carry his own cargo. He was presumably therefore, using them largely for the carrying trade, ﬁnding it more lucrative and more straightforward. For instance, the London customs accounts for 19 March 1481 show the arrival of the Christopher Howard, whose master, William White, had long been one of Howard’s captains. The Christopher was bringing in a cargo of small goods, including knives, small armour, mirrors, rings, shears, hemp and timber, shipped by four alien merchants, probably German, whose share of the goods amounted to between £10–£18 each.6 Where the ship had come from is unrecorded, and naturally there is no indication of the carrying charges that would have been levied on Howard’s behalf. Despite the importance of his business and maritime activities, much less is known about them than the way he handled his estates. The methods of accounting proﬁts from land were well-established and formal, as may be seen from surviving valor and account rolls, but the opposite is true for proﬁts a lord might make from other sources. These went, not into the hands of his receiver, but straight into his own privy purse. No records for Howard’s

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

165

business ventures survive and details have to be gleaned from his household accounts or other sources. Although Howard’s appointments to maritime-related commissions in the 1450s and early 1460s indicate the Crown’s reliance on him in the ﬁeld of east coast shipping affairs, they provide no ﬁrm evidence that he was a ship-owner himself. The earliest proof of this comes, as might be expected, from his own accounts. William Canynge of Bristol is generally supposed to have been the greatest ship-owner of the Yorkist period, equalling Warwick, whose ﬂeet consisted of about ten ships of which he was the owner, the largest, the Great Mary, being of 500 tons burthen. Of the 17 sea-going ships registered in the port of Bristol, Canynge owned ten, including the second largest ship in the country, the Mary and John of 900 tons burthen. The largest, the legendary Grace Dieu, formerly Warwick’s and then owned by the Crown, had been built in Hull for Henry VI and was ‘as large as a carrack or larger’; a carrack was a large ocean-going merchantman distinguished by high superstructure fore and aft. It is not possible to assess exactly how many ships Howard owned at any one time, or indeed the total number. Sometimes it is not clear whether he is victualling and paying the sailors of a particular ship because it was his or whether he was doing so purely on royal business. This difﬁculty arises over the Trinity of St Osyth, whose sailors he paid in May 1481. This ship has therefore been omitted from any tentative total and only vessels for which there is a record of purchase or a clear possessive pronoun, e.g. ‘my little ship of Mantyre (Manningtree)’, or name, e.g. the George Howard, are included. The ﬁrst volume of Howard’s surviving accounts is dominated by payments made in the early 1460s for a ship he was building at Dunwich. He seems to have received some ﬁnancial help from Edward IV: ‘the king oweth me £30 for money laid down for the carvel of Dunwich’.7 This suggests that it may have been a royal ship whose construction Howard was overseeing, though this is unlikely given all the entries in his personal accounts, or that the king was ﬁnancing a part share in it. The balance of ownership between Howard and the Crown is unclear, but it has been estimated that she cost £170 to build.8 The ship, which was to be named the Edward in honour of the king, was built by John Spens. Begun in 1463 and not ﬁnally completed until 1466, she was a carvel. This was a new Mediterranean style of ship-building, in which a frame of timbers was clad with planking laid edge to edge; the customary north-European method was ‘clinker’, with each plank overlapping the one below. The chief characteristic of carvels was their speed, an attribute naturally desirable for both trading and ﬁghting. The Dunwich carvel was not particularly large, probably about 80–100 tons, but was still bigger than most east coast shipping. She was certainly big enough to make voyages to Spain and Prussia and to be used for the conveyance of a state visitor.9 She also had three masts, an innovation that reached northern Europe

166

YO R K I S T LO R D

during the ﬁfteenth century, for, besides the main mast, Howard purchased a mast for the ‘musyn’ and two sail yards for it and the ‘fuk’ or foremast. Although the ship had begun life at Dunwich, as soon as the main body of the vessel was complete she was brought down to Harwich via Orwell Haven for ﬁtting out. She was caught by a storm on the way, and Howard rewarded the seamen who had helped rescue her.10 Once in Harwich, Howard spent two days going over her in October 1465, and he continued to visit the shipyard regularly throughout that winter. The new ship’s cables and rigging were made by Nicholas Chateryse, the Duke of Norfolk’s ropemaker at Framlingham, and in March 1466 Howard bought 200 ells of canvas from Thomas Breten of London and paid Harry and Persone 16d. for sewing the sails; the spread of her sails contained another innovation, square sails under the bowsprit, for the accounts contain a reference to her ‘sprete sail’. Within the ship was a brick oven, essential to provide hot food and fresh bread for anything more than a short coastal voyage, but the dangers of such a big oven in a small wooden ship must have been considerable. The Edward’s oven may have been situated quite deep in the hold, where its weight also acted as ballast. Its construction required 800 bricks, 250 house tiles and 134 paving tiles and it took six days to build; the man who was to be in charge of it was the ship’s cook, named Blowebelle.11 The ship’s ﬁnishing touches were provided by painted ‘pavyses’ or large shields, which used up 2 lb of ordinary paint, 1 lb of white lead paint and ½ lb of red, and young Petman was paid 6d. for his labour in painting them; at the prow was an image of ‘Our Lady’.12 The carvel was provided with a ‘spynas’ or pinnace, a large ship’s boat. That the ‘spynas’ was decked is clear from the footage of board bought, together with at least eight oars and a sail measuring in breadth 14 cloths and in depth 8 yards. Howard’s ﬁscal prudence, even in this great enterprise, is demonstrated by the fact that the sail was second-hand, purchased from Perse, a Harwich brewer, who also provided the oars and boards, together with two anchors and two ‘pavyses’; the boat was sold in 1481 to Cobbe of Harwich for £2 3s. 4d.13 While the Edward was intended primarily for trading, that did not mean that she was unarmed. European ships had been carrying guns from the late fourteenth century and by the mid-ﬁfteenth century they were universal. Such artillery was intended not to sink other ships, but to protect the vessel and its cargo from pirates and were therefore used against crews rather than ships. By Howard’s time, all ships would have carried two or three small canon, but because his were likely to be requisitioned for royal ﬂeets, they carried substantially more; the Edward had 15 bombards.14 With the carvel ready for launching, Howard had to address the question of its crew. For much of the Middle Ages, ships had only three ranks of seamen: master, lodesman or navigator, and mariner.15 By the ﬁfteenth century, however, other specialized ranks had developed, and the carvel, like most large merchant

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

167

ships carried a master, purser, lodesman, boatswain, cook and ship’s boy; one of Howard’s other ships, the large Mary, also had a quartermaster. The master of the new carvel was William Parker, promoted from one of Howard’s smaller ships, the Trego. Her purser was Thomas à Chambre, who, according to one of Howard’s memoranda, was a captured Scot originally intended as an exchange for an English prisoner, but who remained in Howard’s service. The lodesman was John Young of Deptford, hired speciﬁcally for a voyage to Prussia but retained as a permanent crew member. The ship’s cook, Blowebelle, has already been noted, and the ship’s boy was called Roger; the boatswain is the only ofﬁcer not named anywhere in the accounts.16 Crew members could be paid in any of three ways for a mercantile voyage, by a share in the proﬁts of the voyage, by the right to ship goods themselves, or payment either by time or for a given voyage. The ﬁrst two were not widespread and were reserved generally for the most senior members of the crew; William Parker certainly shipped goods on his own account. The seamen were usually paid by voyage, half when the ship loaded at its destination so that they could buy goods to ship back if they could afford it, and the rest at the journey’s end. Howard frequently presented his seamen with coats, gowns and other clothing; this may have represented a part of their wages or some sort of livery. The accounts clearly indicate the nature of their diet while at sea: salt beef, salt ﬁsh, bread and beer were the staples, with occasional luxuries like bacon, cheese or oatmeal. While the Crown’s exact role in the ﬁnancing of the Edward is not clear, her ownership remained with Howard. His success in building the carvel, however, led to commissions to oversee the building of other royal ships. Among the drafts of letters in Howard’s own hand which feature in the accounts are several referring to three ships the king had desired him to have built as quickly as possible. One draft is in the king’s own name, requiring the unnamed recipient to let Howard have oaks at a favourable price; the warrant was actually issued in October 1467. One is addressed to Edward himself and carries Howard’s apologies for not being able to answer the king’s summons to a January council at Coventry (thus clearly dating it to 1468). He was in London with the ‘cunningest maker of ships that I could get, to the intent in all haste to make such two ships as I promised your highness I would do’ but he could not come to Coventry because he had injured his leg descending from a ship into its boat, and could neither walk nor travel easily. To another correspondent he gives a second reason he could not come, namely that he was visiting the shipyard every day overseeing a ship that he promised the king he would make in all haste, and did not like to leave until the work was ﬁnished.17 Edward IV, as Warwick’s cousin, certainly appreciated the importance of naval power and was busily trying to amend the decades of royal neglect under Henry VI. It is clear that Howard was a key ﬁgure in his rebuilding of the royal navy. His pre-eminence on the east coast was recognized as early as

168

YO R K I S T LO R D

about 1463 by his appointment as vice-admiral for Norfolk and Suffolk, under the young Duke of Gloucester, Admiral of England.18 None of Howard’s other ships are as fully documented as the Edward. Entries in his accounts refer to both sales and purchases for ships in 1465. He paid the bailiffs of Yarmouth 33s. 4d., the last instalment of the purchase price of a carvel belonging to the town, which now came into his possession. There is nothing to indicate the size or name of the carvel, nor is it possible to identify it with a named ship anywhere else in the accounts. In the same memorandum is a note that he owned a balinger [an oared sailing vessel used for both military and trade purposes] at Harwich. It is not clear whether it was this or another balinger that Thomas à Chambre sold for him in 1466 for 8½ marks. Howard sold, or contemplated selling, other ships at this period. In an undated letter to John Norris, he requested Norris to take good care of a mast he owned at Deptford because he had a prospective purchaser for it, and he reminded Norris that he had previously asked him to sell his hulk [a merchant vessel with a ﬂat bottom and a single mast] at Deptford and the boat that went with it, and now added that if he could ﬁnd a purchaser for the Michael of Barnstable, he was to sell that too on Howard’s behalf. There is no record of the sale of either ship but there is no further reference to them in the accounts. In April 1467 he sold his share of a balinger to Hugh Candy, but on the understanding that if Candy ever came to sell it, he would give Howard ﬁrst refusal. There is also a note that in the mid-1460s he owned a balinger at Harwich and another at Ipswich and that John Hull of Cley had recently bought a ship from him for £12. This degree of activity in the mid-1460s, although not conclusive evidence, certainly suggests that Howard was well established in the shipping business and was probably so before the accession of Edward IV. In the ﬂeet that Howard joined in 1462 under the Earl of Kent, two ships, the George and the Christopher, may have been his; he certainly owned ships of those names at a later period; seamen from the Christopher were twice used to supplement the crew of the Edward.19 In his letter to John Norris, Howard also mentions money received by him for the freight of a ship of his called the Margaret. In August 1466, while at Calais, he bought a cable and a ‘stey’ weighing three hundredweight for his ‘little ship of Mantyre (Manningtree)’, which despite its diminutive size, was probably a coastal trading vessel since he called it a ship and not a balinger or ketch. It may, perhaps, have been that described as ‘my ship called the Katherine’, which in March 1469 sailed for an unknown destination with a cargo of lead weighing more than 4 tons and worth £22 2s. It was the Margaret which helped the new carvel out of a creek on her journey down to Harwich for ﬁnishing, for which her master received 20d. In 1472 she and the George were involved in a trading dispute with the Mercers’ Company (see below pp. 174–5). There is no mention of the George in Howard’s own accounts, but since the dispute concerned a voyage to Zeeland, neither vessel

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

169

was merely a coastal ship. In 1475 the masters of the Margaret, the George and the Thomas Howard were commissioned to take mariners for a royal ﬂeet. There is only one other reference to the Thomas, when her steward and purser, John Dobere, contracted to serve Howard for a year in 1468 for a gown and 26s. 8d., but in 1475 the identiﬁcation of her as Howard’s is quite clear.20 Only brief references indicate that the ships named above belonged to Howard. This is not so for ﬁve larger ships, the Mary Howard, the Trego Howard, the Paker Howard, the Christopher and the Barbara. No mention is made of the Mary in the ﬁrst set of Howard’s accounts, so it may be assumed that she was built or purchased after 1470, but in 1481 she was sold to no lesser person than the king himself to form part of the ﬂeet destined for Scotland. For that voyage she carried a complement of 400 mariners and soldiers, only one hundred less than the great Grace Dieu, which was left guarding the Channel. Since the latter was over 900 tons, it may be supposed that the Mary was well over 500 tons. The king paid Howard 500 marks (£333 6s. 8d.) for her, a bargain price, since he paid £600 for the Holy Ghost, a Portuguese ship he bought from two Genoese merchants and which held the same complement as the Mary and so was presumably much the same size.21 The 500 marks were paid over to Howard by Thomas Leyham, a servant of the Duke of Gloucester, Admiral of England. The Mary’s master was Robert Michelson, a native of Hull, who had been the lodesman on the Anthony, a Burgundian ship which had brought Edward IV home from exile in 1471. Her purser, Thomson, was paid in money, guns, salt and other goods worth £14 on the journey to Scotland by Howard in lieu of money owed him while he was still in Howard’s employ. As a ﬁghting ship the Mary had a quartermaster, John Pitman. The seamen on the Scottish voyage were paid on a share system, Pitman and the master receiving two shares and 34 other seamen one share each, which came to a total of £9 10s. for a month’s wages. This was far from the whole crew, however, since at the beginning of the voyage, Howard noted that the Mary had 160 mariners in her complement of 400 men.22 A second of Howard’s ships, the Paker, also served on the Scottish expedition of 1481. She was a much smaller ship than the Mary, with a full compliment of only 30 men, the smallest ship, in fact, on the voyage. She was, nevertheless, an ocean-going ship, not a mere coastal vessel, for on her return from Scotland she set off on a voyage to Bordeaux. Her master, Simond Read, was probably fairly new to Howard’s employ, for there is no earlier reference to him in the accounts, but her purser, John Hobbes, had worked his way up since the time in 1466 when he had been in charge of the Edward’s pinnace. The Trego was not a member of the Scottish expedition, either because she was too small or because she was absent on a mercantile voyage. She was, however, one of the earliest ships known to be in Howard’s possession, perhaps as early as 1462, when, as the Mary Trego of Harwich, master, William Parker, she entered Ipswich harbour with a cargo of

170

YO R K I S T LO R D

wool.23 Parker’s subsequent mastership of the Edward suggests that he had been a trusted captain of Howard’s for some time. There appears to be no obvious explanation for the unusual names ‘Paker’ and ‘Trego’, though the latter, when added to Mary, suggests that it was originally a surname. Medieval ships were usually given the names of people, with a few exceptions such as Turtle or Grace Dieu, but since the number of Christian names in use at the time was small this led to confusion and the name of the owner or the ship’s home port was usually added. The Barbara was built at Ipswich for Howard in 1481 under the supervision of a man named Buriff of Bryklesey [Brightlingsea, Essex]. Since she sailed to Bordeaux in convoy with the Paker, she too, was an ocean-going vessel. Cargoes from Gascony were almost invariably wine and in March 1482 her purser was rewarded for bringing wine to Stoke-by-Nayland on her return.24 The Christopher was a fair-sized ship, referred to as the Christopher Howard in the customs accounts of 1481 noted earlier. Her crew was used to supplement that of the Edward for an important diplomatic voyage to Burgundy in 1467. Presumably a skeleton crew was left on board the Christopher, but 28 of her crew transferred and were packed in with the 37 of the Edward’s normal complement in order to impress the Burgundians with the speed and efﬁciency of English ships. A month earlier both ships had sailed together from the east coast to London. The Christopher’s master, William Bere, lodesman, John Hammond, and the seamen were all paid prest money, the extra payment made in compensation when men temporarily entered royal service. The Christopher was also supplied with provisions for, and thus presumably sailed with, Lord Scales’s ﬂeet in 1468 and is included in the list of ships assumed to comprise Howard’s own ﬂeet in 1470.25 One further ship may be identiﬁed as Howard’s. The Margery of Sandwich is noted in the accounts when he arranged for her master, William Marsh, and 11 other seamen to be transferred to the Trego for a voyage, probably in 1464, while William Parker was still her master. For this Marsh and his men were provided with jackets and given 2s. 0d. each for wages. There is another passing reference to the Margery in 1481, when it is noted that Howard owed her former purser, Thomson, £14, from the time when the ship was his.26 This, then, gives a total of 12 ships positively identiﬁed as Howard’s: the Edward, the Mary, the Paker, the Trego, the Margaret, the Christopher, the George, the Thomas, the Barbara, the Michael of Barnstable, the Katherine and the Margery of Sandwich. This total does not include the carvel purchased at Yarmouth, which was probably one of those listed above, the hulk at Deptford, the Harwich balinger or his ‘little ship of Mantyre’, for which no further details exist, unless they, too, were one of the above. What is impossible to calculate is how many of the ships were in his possession at any one time. Although his ﬂeet cannot quite be compared to that of Canynges, which numbered ten on one occasion, or the royal ﬂeet, which by the end of Edward IV’s reign may have numbered as many as 18,

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

171

Howard was without doubt one of the largest ship-owners in the country. It has already been noted that the evidence from customs accounts suggests that Howard was shipping goods himself only rarely and that his ships were therefore being used for the more lucrative and straightforward carrying trade.27 There is little in his surviving accounts which illustrates his business activities, although there are numerous references to money transactions with merchants. They do, however, contain one record of the chartering of his ships. On 19 September 1481 he freighted the Paker and the Barbara, for which this may have been a maiden voyage, to Bordeaux. The charter party consisted of William Shore, citizen and mercer of London (and husband of the king’s favourite mistress, Jane), Thomas Caldwell, John Martin, John Dexter, William Parker, at this date master of the Paker, his son John, and Howard himself. The Barbara’s export cargo was divided between all the same men except Dexter, Shore having 15 tons, Martin and the Parkers 10 tons each and Caldwell 5 tons. In the Paker, a smaller ship, Shore and Caldwell had 5 tons each and Dexter 10 tons, while Howard himself had just 2 tons in each of the ships. There is no indication at all of what the cargo consisted, either on the outward or return voyage, though on the latter it was almost certainly wine and this was probably the voyage on which Howard paid duty on 7 tuns of Gascon wine at Ipswich the following March. The second part of the deal was a currency transaction. Howard bore the costs of the voyage and agreed with Shore that he would deliver 200 crowns (for investment in return cargo?) to Bordeaux and receive 5s. for every crown i.e. its full value, within 40 days of the ships’ return. Parker was to take custody of the money, together with a further 76 crowns on his lord’s behalf.28 Plotting the voyages of Howard’s various ships is not an easy task, since customs ofﬁcials did not always enter all the information about each ship that they were supposed to. In theory the name of the ship, her master and home port should all have been logged, but often only the master’s name or only the name of the ship and her port are given. Since most ships bore Christian names of a fairly limited range, without the name of the port, the only means of identiﬁcation is the master’s name. Similarly, if only the master’s name is given, it is almost impossible to tell whether he had changed ships. For instance, in August 1462, the Mary Trego of Harwich, master William Parker, left Ipswich with a cargo of wool; in April 1467, when Howard shipped 30 woollen cloths in Parker’s ship, this was presumably the newly completed Edward, to which he had been appointed as master, but no such indication is given in the customs accounts, and in 1482 the ship Parker brought home from Gascony we know only from other evidence to have been either the Paker or the Barbara. Generally speaking, it is the accounts for subsidies of tonnage and poundage paid on wine and wool which give all categories of information, while the accounts for petty customs are less detailed; it was because Parker’s cargo in 1462, for instance, was wool that all the details

172

YO R K I S T LO R D

were given. Clearly, for most of the time Howard’s ships were not engaged, unlike those chartered by the king, in the wool and tin trade. Whichever ship Parker captained, he made wide-ranging journeys. When the Edward was completed, John Hammond was engaged as a lodesman for a voyage to Prussia and in March 1467 Parker brought her into Ipswich laden with goods belonging to Cologne merchants. This seems to have been a regular run, for she went there twice in 1467 and at least three times in 1472 carrying goods as varied as inkhorns, fustian and featherbeds; in November 1467 Howard had to pay 20 marks for her repair at Portsmouth.29 None of the other men identiﬁed from the household accounts as a master of a Howard ship is named in the customs accounts, but John Hammond, the lodesman, progressed to command of a ship, probably one of Howard’s, and took it regularly in and out of London from 1471 onwards, usually with cargoes of cloth. Throughout the 1470s, in the absence of the household accounts, there are few clues as to whom Howard’s captains were and without this knowledge the customs accounts cannot yield very much. It seems safe to assume that the smaller ships plied up and down the east coast and only the larger ships were making overseas voyages and were therefore eligible to pay customs. One example is the George, for which a charter agreement survives from 1476. On 25 October of that year, Howard, her master, John Bawdewyn, and purser, James Towe, leased the ship to William Lawrence, Marmaduke Chaplayn and John Baldry, London merchants, so that they could carry 100 tons of wheat to Biscay in Spain. What remained of the cargo space available, Howard and his ofﬁcers were free to use. Five weeks after their arrival in Spain, the merchants or their factors were to load 100 tons of iron for the return journey to London. Howard was responsible for the full equipment of the ship, including ‘hablements of werre’, and the crew of 27 and their victualling, and if the ship was lost due to weather, the loss was his. On the other hand, if she was lost to enemy action, then the merchants were to bear the loss. If an enemy prize was taken, two thirds of the value of it would go to Howard and his men, one third to the merchants. For all this, Howard was to be paid £100 when the ship returned to London.30 The carrying trade was not the only use to which Howard put his ships during peacetime. A surviving document is entitled ‘The Debts of the men of the Coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk’ and begins: Item, Where that the Awners of the Caches and Veseles of the costes [coasts] of Norfolke and Suffolke oughte (owe) my master as goode as vi xx li. (£120) for waftyng them with his Carvell, it (sic) so that my master is content and thorow with them of Dunwiche for al the dwellers in that towne.31

The document is dated 1469 and goes on to detail arrangements made at the

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

173

instigation of certain London merchants for convoying six named ships from Crowmere, presumably ones on which they were transporting goods. Similar arrangements were made for seven ships from Walberswick, again with the ships and the merchants named, for which Howard agreed a payment of £3 6s. 8d. Sometimes he received payment in kind; the men of Crowmere paid in salt ﬁsh and William Baste of Sizewell with a cask of salt herring. On 16 February 1469 Howard agreed to convoy all the ships of Southwold for the round sum of £5 which they paid on the spot. For at least part of the time, therefore, Howard’s ships were earning their keep twice over, both by carrying goods and convoying smaller vessels. The convoying here is likely to have been up and down the coast rather than longer voyages. This need for convoying was due to some extent to the activities of English pirates, against whom the Crown issued constant commissions; their main targets were foreign merchants, but they were certainly not above attacking their fellow countrymen. The main purpose of convoys, however, was to protect small ships from attack by foreign vessels, the result of England’s political relations with France and her economic relations with the merchants of the Hanseatic League of German ports. The background to this state of affairs is dealt with elsewhere, as is Howard’s personal dealings with Hanse ships (see Chapter 3, pp. 60–1 and Chapter 4, p. 71). It is clear from the fact that he purchased property in each of the main ports used by his ships that Howard liked to keep a close eye on their comings and goings. His London house was in Stepney, a Middlesex village well beyond the eastern walls of the city and hardly the most convenient place for an ambitious royal servant to live. This is because it seems to have been bought in the late years of Henry VI’s reign, purely with business in mind; there is no mention of its purchase in the early accounts, and by the time these begin, his use of the house seems to be ﬁrmly established. The southern part of Stepney contained the hamlet of Ratcliffe, with thriving docks and warehouses lining the river and stretching without a break as far as the Tower of London. Howard’s house was in Bath Row and in later years, as his importance grew, he never sought to exchange it for anywhere more convenient for Westminster and it was not until he was made a duke that he sought alternative accommodation. For decades the Thames was his highway, and whenever Howard was in London there are frequent payments to watermen for boat hire. The house was certainly not a small one (when Lady Howard was ordering repair work done on the garden walls, 200 feet of timber was involved), but as his household grew, it could not accommodate everyone. Howard solved that problem by purchasing a nearby ‘great hospicium’, the White Hart, in the early 1460s; the landlord, Richard Heyward, is referred to in the accounts as his tenant and paid him the substantial rent of £7 p.a. It became regular practice for some of his men and most of the horses, often 30 or 40 at a time, to be quartered there if the household was in town for a lengthy stay.32

174

YO R K I S T LO R D

When Howard purchased his house the location was chosen because it gave him easy access to the city, and perhaps because it was cheaper than the equivalent further west. Initially it was in the business areas of the city rather than the governmental areas of Westminster that his interests lay. In 1467 his ties with the London merchant class were strengthened when he married Margaret Chedworth, widow of John Norris of Bray and previously the wife of Nicholas Wyfold, a wealthy grocer and Lord Mayor in 1450–1. Margaret was closely related to, probably the niece of, William Chedworth, Clerk to the Common Council of the city. Evidence of the family connection comes in 1477 when Howard and William Chedworth petitioned the mayor and aldermen on behalf of Chedworth’s daughter. The matter was a ﬁnancial one, but essentially family business and Howard is most unlikely to have been involved unless his wife was closely connected to William Chedworth. In February 1467, a month after his marriage to Margaret, Howard purchased a commission for William Chedworth on the Middlesex bench at the same time as he paid for one for himself in Berkshire, where Margaret’s Norris dower lands lay.33 Howard’s relations with the merchants of London were not all amicable. On 20 November 1472 he threatened to sue the Mercers’ Company for the sizable sum of £120. The dispute sprang from what was probably the misunderstood terms of a charter party. Thomas Ilom, Richard Rawson and other members of the Company had agreed to freight two of Howard’s ships, the George and the Margaret Howard, as part of a ﬂeet to visit Zeeland at the time of the Bamis Fair, promising that on the return journey Howard’s two ships would be laden with goods before any of the other ships in the convoy, yielding only to the king’s ship, the Trinity and to the Old Helen of London. One ship was loaded at a time and obviously a fully laden ship returned a greater proﬁt for both its owner and the merchants. The substance of Howard’s complaint was that, although all the other ships came home fully laden, accompanied by some extra Burgundian ships also laden, his George returned lacking half her complement of freight and the Margaret lacking 24 ‘grete pakkes’. The claim he therefore made was for compensation for the equivalent of half his freight charges. The Mercers, for their part, declared that they had kept their part of the agreement and that it was Howard’s masters who had defaulted and any loss incurred was their responsibility. The disagreement hinged on how long the ships should have remained in Zeeland waiting for their return freight. The Mercers said the agreement was for 30 working days after they unloaded, but that Howard’s ships had waited for only 32 days altogether, which included ﬁve Sundays, St Matthew’s day and St Michael’s day; these, together with four days for reloading meant that they left port 11 days earlier than the agreement required. Two days after they left, only partially laden, enough goods came down from the Mart to more than fully load the convoy, hence the need for the additional Burgundian ships.34

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

175

While the evidence from the court records of the Mercers’ Company may not be totally free from bias, the dispute does seem to hinge on a simple misunderstanding on the number of days the ships were to remain in port, and it may well be that Howard’s masters were the ones in error. Howard’s own attitude suggests that perhaps they were. Instead of resting his case on the interpretation of the time agreed to remain in port, he simply reiterated his intention of having his loss made good. By hiring other ships, the merchants were in contempt of the charter party. If he was not compensated, he declared his intention of suing the company and if he did not win the suit, of seizing the merchants’ goods in the Thames, at Calais or wherever he might ﬁnd them. Since at this date he was deputy lieutenant of Calais, the threat was not one to be taken lightly, nor could the Mercers really afford to offend someone as inﬂuential as Howard. Certainly they were not prepared to call his bluff and let him go to law, so it may be that their case was not as strong as their own records suggest, but the signiﬁcant feature of the case is that, even if they felt justiﬁed under the law, they accepted it would be quicker and easier to settle out of court and retain Howard’s goodwill into the bargain. ‘Perceiving his cruel disposition and purpose’, they therefore asked Thomas Chatterley, a mercer from whom Howard purchased cloth and who enjoyed his favour, to act as a negotiator. Three weeks later Chatterley declared himself successful. Unfortunately the sum agreed in the settlement is not mentioned, but the Mercers’ Company gave Howard an additional gift of 20 marks ‘to be our good lord and lover’. Even without knowledge of his side of the dispute, Howard clearly acted in an over-bearing manner, a trait apparent on other occasions when his wishes were thwarted. If his sense of justice appears defective, his awareness of his own standing was not. He judged that even the Mercers, a rich and inﬂuential Company, would hesitate to set themselves against a peer who enjoyed the king’s favour. Indeed, Howard was only following a precedent set by Edward himself, who acted towards the Mercers in an equally peremptory manner on another occasion.35 If a major London company hesitated before incurring Howard’s displeasure, then his inﬂuence over the merchants of Ipswich, Harwich and Colchester was presumably considerable. He owned property in each of the towns, simplifying his trips to keep an eye on his business interests, and giving him some stake in the affairs of the town. In March 1466 he purchased from Dame Anne Morpeth her place in Harwich, with its gardens, for 100 marks, with a draft of the agreement in his own hand. Just a month later he exchanged a copyhold estate in Dovercourt, which he had just entered, for a house and a quay at Harwich. It suggests that the Morpeth house was to be for residential purposes, the house and quay for business. The latter he arranged to have immediately rebuilt by William Hill of Ipswich; it was to include a tower for which nine cartloads of stone were brought from Dovercourt. In April 1467 a tiler was paid to ‘pergete,

176

YO R K I S T LO R D

whighte and bemefelle’ the new building and was provided with 2,000 bricks. The house stood on the quay known as Power’s Quay, named after Howard’s agent in Harwich, John Power, who probably also had property on the quay. Power was repaid in 1481 for repairs to Howard’s house which he had overseen and in the same year he sold Howard canvas and other equipment for the new Barbara. There are a number of other references to him supplying Howard with items for his ships.36 At Colchester Howard had the ofﬁcial residence of the castle, of which he was constable, from 1461; this meant, of course, that he was of paramount importance in the town. In his turn, the importance of the town to him is suggested by the fact that by 1481 he paid for a lamp to be kept continuously burning in St Nicholas Church, perhaps in memory of his son, Nicholas. That he also owned property there is made clear from payment for a delivery of 22,000 tiles made to ‘my Lord Howard’s plasse’ by the tiler Richard Parke in March 1481, who delivered a similar number to Stoke. A few months later, Howard made a covenant with carpenter Richard Turner to build a new wall, for which work he was paid 14s. 4d. and told to obtain the timber from Kingswood Heath, but whether this was for his own house or one of the ‘tenantrys’ which Turner was in the process of building for him is unclear; Howard arranged for one of the latter to be dismantled, carted to Stoke and re-erected by Turner. He also owned the Swan Inn, rented to William Martin for 7s. p.a. The only reference to property in Ipswich is an entry relating to £4 paid for ‘Wyston’s place’. It is too small a sum for a major building and was probably, therefore, an addition to an existing holding. Ipswich was too important a centre for Howard not to have a residence that could accommodate some of his household on his visits, since he attended sessions of the peace and parliamentary elections there as well as conducting business. His agent in the town, Richard Felaw, was a prominent local merchant who ﬁtted out Howard’s ships, collected the annual £20 owed Howard from the fee-farm from the town bailiffs and generally acted as his right-hand man. His name occurs in the accounts far more frequently than most of Howard’s other business associates.37 Like businessmen of any age, Howard dealt in cash as little as he could, and the household accounts, which do not even cover most of his activities in that ﬁeld, supply numerous examples of the use of bills and covenants to replace cash dealings. Where cash had to be used, it was usually paid in instalments. This practice was common to all social spheres, as is illustrated by Howard’s receipt for 10 marks from Thomas Hoar, in payment for the same sum owed him by Sir William Peche on behalf of the Duke of Norfolk in 1464. This was a mere drop in the ocean of Norfolk’s debts to his cousin, which in that year amounted to £547 14s. 2d., to which sum Howard noted in his own hand, ‘and . . . ﬁve hundred marks more’.38 At the same date he recorded that the king owed him £90 in

SHIPPING AND BUSINESS INTERESTS

177

repayment for ofﬁcial duties, including £50 Howard had lent him and £20 for the plate on which the queen was served at her coronation. These sums, totalling nearly £1,000 (greater than the annual income of many peers), were not likely to have been forthcoming from his landed estates, and indicate just how successful his business ventures had proved. While it is possible to make a rough assessment of the income from Howard’s lands, even an approximate calculation of his proﬁts from his ships cannot be reliably attempted. There are no surviving accounts and only a few illustrations from the household accounts from which certain indications can be drawn. Some degree of speculation, however, may perhaps be allowed. If the sum of £120 which he claimed from the Mercers’ Company was the true loss incurred on the lack of half the freight on the George and the Margaret during a two-month return voyage to Zeeland, then he expected to make a proﬁt of £120 per ship; that this is a reasonable ﬁgure is conﬁrmed by the 1476 charter party, when the George, not fully freighted for a voyage to Spain and back, earned £100. Even if each ship made only two similar voyages each year, with coastal voyaging in the winter months, then each would bring him, at a conservative estimate £300 p.a. gross proﬁt. Obviously expenses were heavy, crews had to be fed and paid and ships repaired and reﬁtted, but the proﬁts from convoying would have helped to offset these. With a ﬂeet of even ﬁve ocean-going ships, and he may have had more, his net proﬁts may well have been in excess of one thousand pounds per annum. The loss of ships was a frequent hazard for medieval ship-owners, and it would have been the greatest good luck if Howard escaped his share, but there is no record of any such natural loss due to the weather, only to the depredations of commercial enemies (see Chapter 5, p. 91 and note 23 below). His ships did, however, see far more frequent and lengthy royal service than any merchant owner would have accepted with a good grace, considering the loss of income involved. The only positive statement that can be made regarding Howard’s proﬁts on shipping, is that they probably exceeded the approximate £1,000 p.a. that his estates brought in, and helped to make him far wealthier than the majority of his peers.

This page intentionally left blank

Appendix

The Date of John Howard’s Birth

It has been noted that Howard’s mother, Lady Margaret Mowbray, was still unmarried in 1422 but was certainly Robert Howard’s wife by 1426, when his mother, Alice, referred to her daughter-in-law in her will. Margaret’s son, John, could not therefore have been born before 1423, although early accounts of the Howard family have given his birth as c.1420. The period around 1425–6 might seem to be the most likely date, but this is contradicted by evidence in the Papal Registers. In an account of the proceedings to obtain a dispensation for the marriage of Lord Hastings’s son and heir and the Hungerford heiress, Howard was one of a number of witnesses, all of whom were required to give their age. Some of them gave this as a round number, 50 years and more, 40 years and more, but several, including Howard, were more speciﬁc. The proceedings took place on 11 August 1478 and Howard declared he was 48 years and more.1 This would indicate that he was born after August 1428 but before July 1430. He may have been a triﬂe vague about his exact age, but he was certainly declaring that he was between 48 and 50. Howard’s statement appears, however, to be contradicted by his conveyance of his inheritance, in the spring of 1446, to a group of trustees, something he could not have done until he was legally of age. If this was attained at the usual age of majority, that is, 21, then it would put his birth date back to early 1425. The other possibility is that he was declared of age before he was 21. For the king’s tenants-in-chief this was possible, but only by royal licence. Howard was not a tenant-in-chief, but for any lands he held from his cousin, the Duke of Norfolk, the duke could declare him of age before he was 21. It would not have been to Norfolk’s advantage to do so, but he might have done it at the request of his aunt. It is also worth noting that in the spring of 1446, John’s uncle Henry was murdered, leaving him the only surviving male Howard. The date of the birth of Howard’s son, Thomas also has to be borne in mind. This has always been given as 1443, based on his age given in certain years later in his life, which are consistent and which there is no reason to doubt.2 If John Howard was indeed born between 1428 and 1430 he would have been not more than 16 at the time of his son’s birth. This would have required him to have been married as soon as he was legally old enough, i.e. at 14. There is no doubt that his wife, Katherine Moleyns, was older than he, so such a scenario was by

180

APPENDIX

no means impossible. If he was married very young, and already the father of an heir, then there is more reason for him to have been declared of age at about 18. The conveyance of his lands to trustees, one of whom was a connection of his wife’s, would suggest that it was done as part of a marriage settlement, and immediately he would have been legally able to do so. Until the evidence of the papal register is taken into account, all appears normal: birth c. 1425, marriage and fatherhood in his late teens, reaching his majority of 21 in 1446. If his own evidence that he was more than 48 in 1478 is accepted, then it is just possible that he was a father at 16 and declared of age at 18. It would, however, be unusual; early marriage tended to occur when the bride was an heiress rather than the bridegroom the holder of only a small estate. However, since he already held his estates and could thus afford to support a wife, and as Katherine Moleyns was several years older than he, and her father had long been dead, it is possible that her family was pressing for an early marriage in order to get her off their hands. Ultimately we are unlikely ever to know for certain when John Howard was born. A date of about 1425 seems in many ways more likely than one as much as ﬁve years later. He ﬁrst served as a member of parliament in 1449; for a man as young as 24 to sit was rather unusual, and for one of less than 21, extraordinary. It, is however, very difﬁcult to reject Howard’s own statement. If he was indeed born between 1428 and 1430, then his mother and her nephew, the duke, were responsible for his early marriage and coming of age.

Endnotes

Notes to Prologue 1 ‘Household accounts of Sir John Howard, 1462–1471’ in Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. T. H. Turner (Roxburghe Club, 1841), hereafter cited as H.B.I, p. 487. For a modern reprint, details of the memoranda books, together with their provenance, and printed transcripts of many other surviving documents, see The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–1471, 1481–1483, Introduction by Anne Crawford (Alan Sutton for Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1992), pp. x–xii, hereafter cited as Howard Household Books. In it, the Roxburghe Club edition is reproduced using the same page numbers, so references can be accessed in either work. 2 Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, (1834–37) ed. N. H. Nicolas, vol.1, pp. 272–4. 3 James Ross, ‘The de Vere Earls of Oxford’, unpublished D.Phil thesis, Oxford University, 2005, p. 51. His biography of John de Vere, thirteenth Earl of Oxford 1442–1513 is forthcoming. 4 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 7–15 Richard II, vol. XVI (1974). 5 CPR 1446–1452, p. 62. I would like to thank James Ross for allowing me to see a draft of his forthcoming article on the murder of Henry Howard and its legal aftermath. 6 G. Brennan and E. P. Statham, The House of Howard (1907) and J. M. Robinson, The Dukes of Norfolk (1982) both quote this without a reference; the source cannot be traced. 7 William Worcestre, Itinararies, ed. J. H. Harvey (Oxford, 1969), p. 361; ‘Gregory’s Chronicle’ in The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. James Gairdner (Camden Society, 1876), p. 163, also refers to the incident and says 30 or more drowned. 8 TNA PROB 11/2. 9 John Page, ‘The siege of Rouen’ in The Historical Collections, p. 7. 10 Arundel Castle MS: A1642 R I box 1. 11 TNA E 403/652 m.2, 12, 19. 12 BL Add. Charter 17209 m.9. 13 CCR, 1405–1409, p. 501. 14 Testamenta Vetusta (1826), ed. N. H. Nicolas, vol.1, p. 211.

Notes to Chapter 1: The Duke of Norfolk’s Chamberlain 1 Warwickshire Record Ofﬁce: CR 1886/282. 2 Colin Richmond, ‘East Anglian politics and society in the 15th century’, in Medieval East Anglia, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 186–7. 3 See Philippa Maddern, Violence, Crime and Public Disorder in East Anglia, 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992), p. 15, 230–2.

182

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 – 3 0

4 For a summary of these and subsequent events, based closely on the letters, see Helen Castor, Blood and Roses (2004), p. 43 ff. 5 Calendarium Inquisitionum Post Mortem sine Escaetarum, ed. J. Bayley and J. Caley, (Record Commission, 1828) vol. 4, p. 85. William and his predecessors had been styled Lord Moleyns since the reign of Edward III, but had not been summoned to parliament by personal writ, the customary route to being raised to the peerage; see Cokayne, G.E., The Complete Peerage, (new edn) eds V.H. Gibbs, et al. 6 Calendar of the Feet of Fines for Suffolk, ed. W. Rye (1900), p. 302; TNA CP 25(1)/ 224/118/17. 7 Castor, Blood and Roses, p. 83. 8 Arundel MS G1/3; TNA E 101/410/3. 9 TNA KB 9/118/1 no, 22; KB 9/118/2, part 1, no.17; KB 27/768, rots.31,46d,74,76,78. By the mid-1460s relations with Duchess Alice had improved enough for her to grant him a warrant to ‘take vi quyke dere whan he wulle in her parke of Langam’; H.B.I, p. 472. 10 See Edward Hall, Chronicle, ed. H. Ellis (1809), p. 228. 11 J. Stevenson, The Wars of the English in France, vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 486–90; Hugh Talbot, The English Achilles: The Life of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury 1383–1453 (1981), p. 160; A.J. Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France 1427–1453 (1983), p. 114, 136–8. 12 Roger Virgoe, ‘Three Suffolk parliamentary elections of the mid-ﬁfteenth century’, BIHR, 39 (1966), pp. 188–90; TNA CP 40/771 rot,475d, KB 27/775 rot.20d. 13 The Paston Letters, ed. James Gairdner, vol. 3, pp. 38–9. 14 TNA CP 40/781, rot 214d. The case was repeatedly postponed and probably eventually settled out of court; CPR 1452–1461, p. 301. 15 Ibid., p. 494. 16 TNA KB 9/285, m. 25, 286, mm. 15,17; H.B.I, p. 273; H.B.II, p. 359, 362 17 TNA E 401/858; CCR 1454–1461, p. 205. 18 Ipswich Record Ofﬁce, HA 246/B2/498. 19 Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1461–71, p. 9. 20 TNA E 404/72/1/80 21 Edward Hall, Chronicle, p. 256. 22 Calendar of State Papers: Venice, vol. 1 (1864), p. 99.

Notes to Chapter 2: The Yorkist Servant, 1461–1464 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

TNA E 404/72/1/80. Paston Letters, vol. 3, pp. 273–4. Ibid., p. 275. Ibid., p. 276. C. H. Williams, ‘A Norfolk parliamentary election, 1461’, EHR, 40 (1925), pp. 79–86, transcribing TNA KB 29/92, rot.15. Paston Letters, vol. 3, p. 36; wrongly dated by Gairdner to 1455. Ibid., p. 280, 290. CPR 1461–1467, p. 10, 124. TNA E28/29. Lord Roos was captured and executed in 1464 and his widow then married one of Norfolk’s men, Thomas Wingﬁeld. Her son remained in exile until the accession of Henry VII. CPR 1461–1467, p. 27. He did not always ﬁnd his fee promptly paid; see Howard Household Books, p. xlviii; D. A. L. Morgan. ‘The king’s afﬁnity in the polity of Yorkist England’, TRHS, 5th series, 23 (1973), p. 4, 15. A. R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV: the Black Book and Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester, 1959), p. 106, 225. See also Fifteenth Century Attitudes: Perceptions of society in late medieval England, ed. R. Horrox (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 70–1. There are a number of references in

N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 1 – 4 6

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

183

the accounts to Howard fulﬁlling commissions on behalf of Norfolk and his duchess, see, for example, H.B.I, p. 152, 154, 160, 332, 299, 365. TNA KB 9/297, mm 49–55; KB 27/804 rot.3. As note 5 above; while the report is written in Latin, as all legal documents were, reported speech is given in English. TNA KB 29/92, rot.15. Paston Letters, vol. 3, p. 303. Ibid., pp. 313–14. Ibid., vol. 4, p. 2. Rotuli Parliamentorum, vol. 5, p. 472, 474. CPR 1461–1467, p. 119. There is no formal record of the naval appointment; his fee for the ofﬁce is listed in a valor of 1464, see Howard Household Books, p. xlviii. CPR 1461–1467, p. 111. H.B.I, pp. 176–7, 251–2. TNA CP40/821, rot.436r, d, 543; James Ross, ‘The De Vere earls of Oxford’, op.cit., pp. 147–8. TNA E403/825, m.4. TNA E28/89. Presumably either for evading customs duties or not shipping through the only permitted channel of the Staple at Calais. For payments towards the ﬁtting out, see H.B.I, p. 188, 192–4. CPR 1461–1467, p. 204. See C. L. Scoﬁeld, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth (1923, repr. 1967), vol. 1, p. 258n. H.B.I, pp. 149ff.; Paston Letters, vol. 4, pp. 59–61. Paston Letters, vol. 4, p. 66; J. C. Wedgwood, History of Parliament: Biographies, 1439–1509 (1936), p. 473. CPR 1461–1467, p. 277. Ibid., p. 302; H.B.I, p. 188 ff, 196, 217–20. H.B.I, pp. 218–19, 225. Ibid., pp. 149–56, 154–5, 456. Ibid., p. 226 ff, 462. There is a long series of accounts of the payment of wages and the supply of equipment to the men with him on this expedition (p. 439 ff.). Ibid., p. 160. Paston Letters, vol. 4, pp. 95–6. When Bamborough Castle fell in 1462, its commander, Somerset, had been captured. He was pardoned and shown great favour by Edward, but had then reverted to his Lancastrian allegiance at the end of 1463. H.B.I, p. 159, 184, 239, 452–4. Ibid., pp. 194–6, 263. Ibid., p. 269. Ibid., pp. 275–82. Ibid., pp. 480–2. Ibid., p. 164, 483.

Notes to Chapter 3: The Yorkist Servant, 1465–1471 1 2 3 4 5 6

H.B.I, pp. 196–7, 545–6. Ibid., p. 168, 287, 289–90, 463–4, 467. Ibid., pp. 300–4, 504–5. Ibid., pp. 507–8. Paston Letters, vol. 4, pp. 211–13. H.B.I, p. 301, 339–40, 385, 511, 356–68, 371; TNA C76/150 m 6, 155 mm.18, 26; E403/835 m. 2, 836 m. 3. 7 H.B.I, p. 369, 383–4; CPR 1461–1467, p. 553.

184

N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 7 – 5 5

8 TNA, PROB 11/4; PROB 11/5. 9 The bishop and William Chedworth were brothers, but no connection between them and Sir John Chedworth can be traced. Howard was later involved in family business with William, making it clear that Margaret was related to him, and the most likely relationship was that of uncle and niece; they could, however, have been cousins. See Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, ed. P. Jones, (1954) vol.5, roll A 96, m.4. 10 H.B.I, p. 329, 378, 425, 560. 11 Ibid., pp. 383–4, 387–8; Paston Letters, vol. 4, pp. 262–4; TNA E403/839 m.6. For further references to jewellery, see H.B.I, p. 155, 286, 490. 12 H.B.I, p. 586, xliii; H.B.II, p. 167, 209, etc.; TNA PROB 11/10, 13 May 1490, proved 3 December 1494. 13 H.B.I, pp. 399–400. 14 Household Books of John, Duke of Norfolk and Thomas, Earl of Surrey, 1481–1490, ed. J. Payne Collier (Roxburghe Club, 1844), hereafter cited as H.B.II, p. 337. For a modern reprint, see Howard Household Books. In it, the Roxburghe Club edition is reproduced using the same page numbers, so references can be accessed in either work. 15 H.B.I, pp. 170–1; not William Bensted, who was one of Howard’s own London men. 16 Ibid., pp. 264–5. 17 H.B.I, p. 172. John Hobbes was a long-standing member of the household and various members of the Raynesford family had connections with Howard. Apart from these and a few other examples, Howard’s dealings with his neighbours have perforce been largely sacriﬁced to the narrative of his role in national events. See J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The client network and connections of Sir John Howard (Lord Howard, Duke of Norfolk) in north-east Essex and south Suffolk’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Essex (2008). This had not become available for public inspection at the time of going to press. 18 B.L. Add. MS 34,889, f. 59; printed in Howard Household Books, p. xxxviii, and Paston Letters, vol. 4, pp. 277–8. 19 For a detailed description, see Excerpta Historica, ed. S. Bentley (1831), pp. 171–212; Mémoires d‘Olivier de la Marche, ed. H. Beaune et J. d’Arbaumont (Paris, 1883), vol. 3, pp. 48–54. 20 Paston Letters, vol. 4, pp. 279–80; H.B.I, p. 170, 468. In 1464 the duke owed him over £500, to which Howard added a note that it had since increased by another 100 marks; the most the duke could repay at that point was a mere 10 marks. Ibid., pp. 467–8. 21 H.B.I, pp. 408–10. 22 H.B.I, p. 369, 423, 428, 430; Scoﬁeld, Edward the Fourth, vol. 1, p. 435. The diplomatic manoeuvring at this period was intense and highly complex; for details see C. D. Ross, Edward IV, (1974) pp. 104–25, and Scoﬁeld, pp. 393–439. 23 H.B.I, p. 250, 383, 428, 430; Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae etc. ed T. Rymer, (1704–35), vol. 5, pt. 1, p. 149. 24 H.B.I, pp. 173–4. For a detailed discussion of the records, personnel and activities of the council at this period see J. R. Lander, ‘The Yorkist council and administration, 1461–1485’, EHR, 73 (1958), pp. 27–46, and ‘Council administration and councillors, 1461–1485’, BIHR, 32 (1959), pp. 138–66. 25 Paston Letters, vol.4, p. 298; TNA E403/840 m.6; see Excerpta Historica, ed. S. Bentley, pp. 227–39, for a full description of the reception given to Margaret and her train. Three years before her marriage, the accounts note that she owed Howard for 7 yards of white sarcenet for two shirts (H.B.I, p. 164). 26 H.B.I, pp. 580–1. See also John Ashdown-Hill, ‘Yesterday my lord of Gloucester came to Colchester . . .’, Essex Archaeology and History, 3rd ser., 36 (2001), pp. 212–17. 27 TNA E404/74/1/43, 65; E403/840 m.10; E403/841 m. 8; E405/48 m.1d. 28 H.B.I, pp. 512–31. The entries on these pages almost exclusively concern the ﬂeet; see Howard’s summary, pp. 488–9.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 5 – 6 8

185

29 Ibid., pp. 567–80; TNA E404/74/1/65. 30 Rotuli Parliamentorum, Record Commission, vol. 5, p. 634; R.L. Storey, ‘English ofﬁcers of state, 1399–1485’, BIHR, 31 (1958), p. 92. 31 A. R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV (Manchester. 1959), p. 106, 225; CPR 1467–1477, p. 98, 387, 516; TNA E361/7 m.71–4; E403/841 mm. 7, 10, 14; E403/843 m.1.; E405/48 m. 1d; E405/49 m. 1d. 32 See E. Power and M. M. Postan, Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century (1933), pp. 131–2, 378, n.74, and Ross, Edward IV, p. 365. 33 CPR 1467–1477, p. 132. 34 H.B.I, p. 175, 180, 365. 35 Paston Letters, vol. 5, p. 32. An array of new clothes had been bought for Nicholas in May that year, suggesting that he might have been about to leave home for service elsewhere; apart from an entry in the accounts for the following November, when ﬁve pairs of shoes were bought for him, this is the last that is ever heard of Howard’s second son. 36 Scoﬁeld, Edward the Fourth, vol. 1, pp. 499–501. 37 CPR 1467–1477, p. 204; TNA E403/835 m.2. 38 TNA E404/74/2/111. A warrant two months earlier still referred to him as Sir John. He was not summoned to parliament as a peer until the following October. 39 Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes, ed. J. Calmette et C. G. Durville (Paris, 1924), vol. 1, p. 195; The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (1938), p. 210. In view of their later dealings, Commynes may have received the information from Howard personally. See also C. F. Richmond, ‘Fauconberg’s Kentish rising of May 1470’, EHR, 85 (1970). 40 Catalogue des rolles gascons, normands et francoises (1743), ed T. Carte, vol. 3, p. 361, where his name is mistakenly given as Thomas; TNA E404/74/3/31. 41 Michael Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence (rev.edn, 1992), pp. 77–8, 94; TNA, E405/51 rots. 1,2; E404/74/2/111, C67/44 m.2. 42 We owe the information to a report sent home by Gerhard von Wesel, a Cologne merchant based at the Hanseatic headquarters in London, the Steelyard; John Adair, ‘The newsletter of Gerhard von Wesel, 17 April 1471’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 46 (1968), pp. 65–9. 43 Paston Letters, vol. 5, p. 95, 97; H.B.I, p. 548ff.; Scoﬁeld, Edward the Fourth, vol. 1, p. 577.

Notes to Chapter 4: The King’s Councillor, 1471–1475 1 TNA E404/75/1/16. 2 D. Grummitt, ‘Calais and the Crown, 1450–1558’ in The English Experience in France c. 1450–1558, ed. D. Grummitt (2002), p. 50. 3 Scoﬁeld, Edward IV, vol.2, p. 11; TNA, C76/150 m.6, 155 mm.18, 26; C81/1504/27, 28; CPR 1467–1477, pp. 290–2; David Grummitt, The Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in England, 1436–1558 (Woodbridge, 2008), p. 11. 4 Paston Letters, vol.5, p. 111. 5 Grummitt, ‘Calais and the Crown, 1450–1558’, pp. 47–50; David Grummitt, ‘William, Lord Hastings and the Defence of Calais, 1471–1483’ in Social Attitudes and Political Structures in the Fifteenth Century, ed. T. Thornton (Stroud, 2000). 6 Paston Letters, vol.5, p. 111, 137. 7 Arundel MS G1/3. It is not clear when Thomas received his manors, probably when he left home for royal service, but possibly when he obtained his majority. 8 H.B.II, p. 222. 9 TNA C81/1504/27, 28; Scoﬁeld, Edward the Fourth, vol.2, p. 28; ‘The Record of Bluemantle Pursuivant’, in English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1913), pp. 384–5. 10 Warkworth, John, ‘A Chronicle of the ﬁrst thirteen years of the reign of King Edward the

186

11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 9 – 8 4

Fourth’, ed. J. O. Halliwell, in K. Dockray, ed. Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV (Gloucester, 1988) pp. 25–7; C.L. Scoﬁeld, ‘The early life of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford’, EHR, 39 (1914), p. 238. Calendar of Proceedings in Chancery in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (Record Commission, 3 vols, 1827–32), vol.1. pp. xc, 22. TNA C263/2/1/6. See M.A. Hicks, ‘The last days of Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford’, EHR, 103, no. 406 (1988), pp. 76–95. CCR 1468–1476, pp. 334–5. The lands were conveyed in three parcels and not all of the trustees were named for each of the three conveyances. In none of the cases were all the trustees named persuaded to make conveyance to Gloucester. TNA C1/1/145, printed in Calendar of Proceedings in Chancery, op.cit. Ibid. CCR 1468–1476, p. 335; TNA C1/1/145; TNA C4/2/51. English sources are surprisingly silent on this success; see John D. Fudge, Cargoes, Embargoes and Emissaries: The Commercial and Political Interaction of England and the German Hanse 1450–1510 (Toronto, 1995), p. 72, quoting Hanse records. Historical Manuscripts Commission, 11th report, vol.7, p. 95. The letter containing this information was written on 1 June by William Dengayn of Staple Inn to Sir William Calthorp and, while dated by the editor to c.1475, almost certainly refers to 1473. Scoﬁeld, Edward IV, vol.2, p. 68; H.B.I, p. 332. TNA C76/156 mm. 8, 26; C76/157 mm. 9, 14, 25, 27. Paston Letters, vol. 5, p. 188, 194. Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989), p. 253; Essex Record Ofﬁce D/DQ 14/124/3/40, which consists of notes and memoranda about the case. I owe the reference to Howard’s involvement to Neil Coates, to whom I am very grateful. Ibid. CPR 1467–1477, p. 525. Ibid., p. 538. F. P. Barnard, Edward IV’s French Expedition of 1475: The Leaders and their Badges, (1925), pp. 24–5, 78–9; J. Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631), p. 834. Even after the death of the last Mowbray duke, Howard’s standard in 1481 continued to bear the white lion, H.B.II, p. 44. Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires, ed. J. Calmette et C. G.Durville, vol. 2, p. 31. Commynes was a conﬁdential councillor of Louis XI and therefore had knowledge of political decisions at a high level; his testimony of all that follows is therefore exceptionally valuable. Ibid., p. 32. Ibid., pp. 39–43. CPR 1467–1476, p. 583. Commynes, Mémoires, pp. 44–54. Ibid., pp. 54–67; Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments, p. 834. Commynes, Mémoires, p. 60, 68–9. CPR 1467–1476, p. 545, 547. Jean de Troyes, ‘La Chronique Scandaleuse’, printed in Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes, ed. Lenglet du Fresnoy (Paris, 1747), vol. 2, p. 120. Bibliotheque Nationale, MS francais 10375 (quoted in Scoﬁeld, Edward the Fourth, vol. 2, p. 146n); Commynes, Mémoires, p. 241. B.N. MS francais 10375.

Notes to Chapter 5: The King’s Councillor, 1476–1483 1 CPR 1467–1477, p. 605; T.H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: a study of their trade and commercial diplomacy (Cambridge, 1991), p. 235.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 4 – 9 9

187

2 CPR 1476–1485, p. 22, 50. 3 B.N. MS francais 4054 ff. 213–29 (quoted in Scoﬁeld, Edward the Fourth, vol. 2, app. xii); Rymer, Feodera, vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 79; Commynes, Mémoires, ed. J. Calmette et G. Durville, vol. 2, pp. 248–9. 4 Rotuli Parliamentorum, vol. 6, pp. 169–70. A few months later, Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk, requested an exempliﬁcation of the act and its provisions that the act should not be prejudicial to Sir Humphrey Talbot, John, Lord Howard and Margaret his wife, or Jane, wife of William Lord Berkeley, in certain manors (CPR 1476–1485, p. 96); all of them presumably holding those manors from the late duke for life. 5 While this is not the place to rehearse the details of the feud which spanned more than one generation on each side and resulted in the last private battle in England at Nibley Green in 1470, they can be found in John Smyth, The Berkeley Manuscripts: Lives of the Berkeleys, ed. Sir John Maclean (Gloucester, 1883). The debts owed by William Berkeley, his brothers and his late father to the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury and the late Lord Lisle, their son, amounted to a staggering £34,000. Berkeley was to deliver to the king all his obligations to the Talbots, and if in the meantime he was to be arrested for any of them, Edward would discharge them (Rot. Parl. 22 Edward IV m13). 6 CPR 1476–1485, p. 111, 112, 120, 137. 7 Rymer, Feodera, vol. 5, pt. 2, p. 97. 8 J. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Histoire de Flandres (Brussels, 1847–50), vol. 5, p. 314. 9 For general background to all these negotiations see Scoﬁeld, Edward the Fourth, vol. 2, p. 245 ff; TNA E404/76/4/135. Howard was paid £100, £80 for his own costs and £20 towards those of the French envoys. 10 B.N. MS 6987 f.140, (quoted in Scoﬁeld, vol. 2, p. 281) and Commynes, Mémoires, pp. 244–6; also Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes, ed. Lenglet du Fresnoy (Paris, 1747), vol. 4, pp. 6–9. 11 Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 576–9. 12 Ibid., p. 607; TNA C76/163, m. 4–6. 13 H.B.II, p. 18. 14 CPR 1476–1485, p. 240, 249–50; TNA E28/92; H.B.II, p. 9. 15 H.B.II, pp. 9–11. 16 Ibid., pp. 4–13, 15, 243–9. 17 Ibid., p. 13, 23–8, 33, 47, 72. 18 Ibid., pp. 74–9; J. Lesley, History of Scotland from the Death of King James I in the year 1436 to the year 1561 (Bannatyne Club, 1830), pp. 44–5. 19 H.B.II, p. 274, where it was copied into the household book. 20 Ibid., p. 82, 84, 88–95, 103, 105–10; 282, 309, 400, 459, 465. 21 Ibid., p. 138, 145–6. 22 Ibid., p. 186, 216, 219. 23 Ibid., p. 312. 24 Rot. Parl., vol. 6, pp. 205–7. 25 The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, ed. Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (1986), p. 564; Dominic Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard III, ed. and trans. C. A. J. Armstrong (Oxford, 1969), p. 59; Commynes, Mémoires, ed. du Fresnoy, vol. 4, p. 95. 26 H.B.II, pp. 378–9, 383–4. 27 Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, The Royal Funerals of the House of York at Windsor (The Richard III Society, 2005), p. 37. All details of the funeral come from this work, pp. 7–40. 28 Ibid., p. 88.

188

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 2 – 1 1 7

Notes to Chapter 6: The Reign of Edward V 1 The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486; Dominic Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard III; Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History, ed. H. Ellis (Camden Society, 1844). See also Michael Hicks, ‘The second anonymous continuation of the Crowland Abbey Chronicle 1459–86 revisited’, EHR, 122 (2007). 2 Crowland Chronicle, p. 155; H.B.II, p. 384. 3 Ibid., p. 385, 388, 396. 4 Ibid., p. 390. 5 British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. Rosemary Horrox and P. W. Hammond, 4 vols (Richard III Society, 1979–83), vol. 1, p. 7; H.B.II, p. 391, 393, 395; CPR 1476–1485, p. 501. 6 CPR 1476–1485, p. 364, 452; E.W. Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock and the papers of Anthony, Earl Rivers, 1482–1483’, BIHR, 41, (1968), p. 225. 7 H.B.II, p. 399; Mancini, Usurpation, p. 95; York Records: Extracts from the Municipal Records of the City of York, ed R. Davies, (1843), p. 149; Vergil’s English History, p. 180. 8 Mancini, Usurpation, p. 111. 9 Ibid.; Vergil, p. 180; Crowland Chronicle, p. 159. 10 Denys Hay, Polydore Vergil (Oxford, 1952), p. 197, 204–5. 11 Sir Thomas More, The History of the Reign of King Richard III, ed. R. S. Sylvester (Complete Works, Yale edition, 1963), vol. 2, p. 51; Edward Hall, Chronicle, ed. H. Ellis (1809), p. 361. 12 Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483, ed Christine Carpenter (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 160–1; H.B.II, p. 402. 13 Crowland Chronicle, p. 488; Mancini, Usurpation, p. 109. 14 Mancini, Usurpation, p. 95. 15 CPR 1476–1485, p. 358, 479. 16 H.B.II, pp. xiii, 394; Melvin J. Tucker, The Life of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and Second Duke of Norfolk, 1443–1524 (The Hague, 1964), pp. 38–45. The theory was ﬁrst expounded in a lecture by the late S. T.Bindoff. See also Anne Crawford, ‘John Howard, Duke of Norfolk: A possible murderer of the Princes?’, in Richard III, Crown and People, ed. J. Petre (Richard III Society, 1985), pp. 90–4. 17 CPR 1476–1485, p. 411; TNA C81/1638/61. 18 The Great Chronicle of London (1938), p. 234; Mancini, Usurpation, p. 93. 19 The Cely Papers, ed. H. E. Malden (Camden Society, 1900), pp. 132–3. 20 H.B.II, p. 399. Wafers were small, light, crisp cakes, often served with wine. 21 TNA C81/1529/5,6. 22 Rotuli Parliamentorum, vol. 6, pp. 410–12, where Thomas Howard’s petition of 1489 for the reversal of his attainder lists all the estates his father had enjoyed. Berkeley had to surrender his share to the Crown under the waiver he had agreed with Edward IV in return for the payment of his debts. All he actually gained was the earldom and an annuity of 400 marks during the lifetime of the remaining dowager. He was rescued from the bargain by Richard’s death without heirs (see Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service, p. 304). 23 J. Smyth, The Berkely Manuscripts: Lives of the Berkeleys, ed. Sir John Maclean (1883–5), vol. 2, p. 126. 24 CPR 1476–1485, pp. 358–9, 363, 365, 497; Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. Horrox and Hammond, vol. 1, p. 72, 74–5, 80–1, 206, 213. 25 Ibid., ff. 28, 52, 98, 161d, 186; BL Add. Ch. 16,559; CPR 1476–1485, p. 541.

Notes to Chapter 7: The Reign of Richard III 1 CPR 1476–1485, p. 358, 360; Revd. Dr. Milles, ‘Observations on the Wardrobe Accounts for

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 8 – 1 3 0

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

189

1483’, Archaeologia, 1 (1779), p. 374; The Coronation of Richard III: the Extant Documents, ed. Anne F. Sutton and P.W. Hammond (Gloucester, 1983), pp. 197–9. Ibid., pp. 26–7. Ibid., pp. 36–46; H.B.II, p. 412. CPR 1476–1485, pp. 362–3; the man appointed as Howard’s deputy admiral for the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk, the post he himself had held for so long, was a man from Norfolk with links to Richard as Duke of Gloucester, William Boleyn. Was this the ﬁrst connection of the Howard and Boleyn families which was to prove so fateful under the Tudors? H.B.II, pp. 411–12, 413–16. Ibid., p. 100, 417–23; If Howard was still giving Margaret de Vere gifts of money after she received her pension, it is highly likely that he was helping her ﬁnancially before 1482. Ibid., p. 416, 419–20, 423–4, 426; some part of the house still survives; it was moved to Chelsea and re-erected in the twentieth century; pp. 427–8, 431–2. Ibid., pp. 433–52, 456–62; ibid., pp. xlviii–lvii (BL Add. Ch. 16559). CPR 1476–1485, p. 465; H.B.II, p. 458. Crowland Chronicle, p. 165. H.B. II, pp. 468–72. One of the household men sent to Gravesend, named only as Bonting, has been tentatively identiﬁed as John Bouteyn, a yeoman of the crown who joined the rebels at Maidstone, but it seems unlikely that a junior member of Howard’s household (his name occurs a number of times in the accounts) was also a yeoman of the crown. Louise Gill, Richard III and Buckingham’s Rebellion (Gloucester, 1999), p. 77. The best account of the rebellion is in Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989). Paston Letters, vol. 6, p. 73. H.B. II, p. 472, 479. For details of the rebellion and its participants, see Gill, Buckingham’s Rebellion and Horrox, Richard III. CPR 1476–1485, pp. 370–1; BL Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. Rosemary Horrox and P. W. Hammond, vol. 1, p. 117; vol. 2, p. 91. TNA C 244/136/8; H.B.I, p. xli, 273, 279, 288, et al.; H.B.II, p. 69, 156, 200–1, 342, 468; Horrox, Richard III, p. 282. Weever, Funerall Monuments, p. 834. Limitations of space prevent a detailed study here of Howard’s relations with men of his locality, but see Ashdown-Hill, J., ‘The client network and connections of Sir John Howard (Lord Howard, Duke of Norfolk) in north-east Essex and south Suffolk’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Univerity of Essex (2008). This thesis was not available for public inspection at the time of going to press in 2009. Crowland Chronicle, p. 171; Vergil, English History, p. 178,190, 222, 224. CPR 1476–1485, p. 397, 465, 489. Crowland Chronicle, p. 171. Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. James Gairdner, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1861, 1863), vol. 1, pp. 63–7. The references are to Richard’s loyal servants, William Catesby, Richard Ratcliffe and Francis, Lord Lovell; the white boar was Richard’s badge. See C. D. Ross, Richard III, (1981), p. 202. Crowland Chronicle, pp. 175–7. Sir George Buck, The History of King Richard III, ed. A.N. Kincaid (Gloucester, 1979), pp. 190–1; B. Williams, ‘The Portuguese connection and the signiﬁcance of the holy princess’, The Ricardian, vol. 6 (1982–84), pp. 138–45, 235–6; Marie Barnﬁeld, ‘Diriment impediments, dispensations and divorce: Richard III and matrimony’ The Ricardian, vol. 17 (2007), pp. 95–8; Antonio S. Marques, ‘Alvaro Lopes de Chevres: A Portuguese Source’, Ricardian Bulletin (Autumn 2008), pp. 25–7. H.B. II, pp. 480–92.

190 27 28 29 30

31

32 33 34 35 36

37

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 1 – 1 4 0

Paston Letters, vol. 6, p. 85. Crowland Chronicle, p. 179. Ibid., p. 181; Vergil’s English History, pp. 222–3; Edward Hall, Chronicle, p. 419. His remains were almost certainly among those removed by his grandson, the third duke, to Framlingham Church at the time of the dissolution. When Howard tombs there were opened in 1841, among the remains were those of an older (judging by the state of the teeth) body, wrapped in lead, and with severe damage to the front of the skull. At the time, the bones were not examined sufﬁciently closely to determine whether it was a male or female body, but the consensus is that it is likely to have been the body of John Howard. The large hole at the front of the skull perhaps suggests a blow with a battle axe or sword rather than an arrow. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The opening of the tombs of the dukes of Richmond and Norfolk, Framlingham, April,1841’, The Ricardian, vol. 18 (2008). Michael Bennett, The Battle of Bosworth (Stroud, 1985), p. 155. Any suggestion that Howard also turned traitor to Richard is dismissed by the most recent, detailed study of the battle by Michael K. Jones, Bosworth, 1485: Psychology of a Battle (Stroud, 2002), p. 174, 176. Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, ed. William Campbell, 2 vols (1873–77), vol. 1, pp. 207–8. TNA PCC 16 Vox. Those parts of her inheritance which were held by Surrey as part of their jointure were technically forfeited. The couple received a licence to enter into her Tylney inheritance in 1493. CPR 1485–1494, p. 458. For the re-establishment of the Howard family see Roger Virgoe, ‘The recovery of the Howards in East Anglia, 1485–1529’, in Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays Presented to S. T. Bindoff, eds F.W. Ives, R.J. Knecht and J.J. Scarisbrick (1978). Paston Letters, vol. 6, pp. 87–8. Surrey and Fitzwalter had been at odds in early 1483 over the disputed Norfolk county election to parliament when Thomas Howard was one of those returned, and John Radcliffe, as he then was, brought a legal case claiming that he had been elected. The case was later dropped. See Roger Virgoe, ‘An election dispute of 1483’, Historical Research, 60 (1987). William Hutton, The Battle of Bosworth Field, ed. J. Nichols (1813), p. 106.

Notes to Chapter 8: Domestic Life 1 The Norwich and Norfolk Archaeological Society collection contains three household lists for the Howard family; they all bear the same reference, shelf 2, no.6. 2 A writ of diem clausit extremum issued on 18 October 1459 to the Suffolk escheator concerning ‘Margaret, late wife of John Howard, knight’, surely refers to her, however inaccurate the description; there is no other obvious candidate, Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1452–1461, p. 245. In 1463/4 the accounts note rent arrears for her two manors, and that for Kenton in 1463 says ‘in hys dayis and in my lady his moderys dayis’, H.B.I, pp. xlvii, 178. 3 J. Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631), p. 839; Thomas did not say where his school was, but Ipswich, in view of Howard’s connections with the town, seems likely. His agent, Richard Felaw, was a notable contributor to the school at Ipswich. (N. Carlisle, Endowed Grammar Schools (1818), vol. 2, p. 521). 4 H.B.II, p. 214, 379, 338. 5 H.B.I, p. 179, 269. 6 Ibid., p. 290, 292, 338, 378, 487, 508. 7 Ibid., p. 318, 421, 582. 8 BL Cotton Vesp. F XIII, f. 49; Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry VII (HMSO, 1898), vol. 1, p. 100, 433; CPR 1467–1476, p. 548; Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1437–1445, pp. 92–3.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 0 – 1 4 7

191

9 CPR 1452–1461, p. 541; CPR 1461–1467, p. 205, 527; CCR 1476–1485, p. 103; H.B.I, p. 327, 369, 386, 466; H.B.II, p. 282. 10 H.B.I, p. 490; Arundel MS G1/3, all documents relating to Howard carry this reference and are not further differentiated; there is a note in the hand of Peter Le Neve, the eighteenth-century Norfolk antiquarian responsible for preserving the Paston correspondence, who had clearly seen the articles, which do not survive; H.B.I, p. 427, 536, 540; CPR 1467–1477, p. 151; The Hon. H. A. Wyndham, A Family History 1410–1688: The Wyndhams of Norfolk and Somerset (1939), vol. I, p. 23. Margaret and John were the ancestors of the Earls of Egremont; she was dead by 1490 when John married Lady Eleanor Scrope. 11 J. C. Wedgwood, History of Parliament: Biographies, 1439–1509 (1936), p. 587; H.B.II, p. 4, 479. 12 Ibid., p. 4; B.L. Harl. 433, ed. Horrox and Hammond, ff. 331d, 69d, 313d, 332, 25d, 33d, 312d, 104d. 13 The last house on the site bearing this name, designed by Sir John Soane for the Rowley family in 1784, was demolished in 1955. 14 H.B.II, p. 30, 57, 139, 141, 157, 200, 213, 380; Medieval Framlingham, ed. John Ridgard (1985), p. 6; Annabel Ricketts, The English Country House Chapel (2007), p. 11,13, 236. 15 F. Engleheart, The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Stoke-by-Nayland (1963), pp. 17–19; Engleheart has a reproduction of John Constable’s ﬁne view of the tower; Weever, Ancient Funerall Monuments, p. 775; TNA WARD 2/57B/205/49. 16 Evidence of exactly what Howard inherited from his grandmother’s estate on his grandfather’s death is not available. The latter’s IPM excludes land held in right of his wife (TNA C139/88 no.56). Alice Howard’s will left her son Robert the family home and the Stoke-by-Nayland estate together with the manors of Buxhall and Wrethenham in Suffolk, but there is no evidence that the latter two were ever in her grandson’s possession. However, she left her tenements of Sprottes and Bowerhouse, together with two Norfolk manors, Terrington and East Walton, to her younger son Henry in tail (TNA PROB 11/3, ff. 49r-50v). The former were in John Howard’s possession by 1446 (Walter Rye, Calendar of the Feet of Fines, Suffolk (1900), p. 302. Sprottes is elsewhere called a rod of land in Polstead (TNA WARD 2/57B/205/49). 17 CPR 1461–1467, p. 111; Arundel MS G1/3,; H.B.I, p. 558; H.B.I p. 178, 186, 567. The latter reference is the only one to Hinton and was to arrears owed to Lady Margaret; probably the manor reverted to Norfolk on her death in 1459. Howard notes elsewhere that Lady Hall in Moreton and a manor called Ryarsh in Kent (for which there is no other reference) were his fee for his ofﬁce of chamberlain to Norfolk and that they were worth £13 6s. 8d. and £20 p.a. respectively. At the same time he notes his other ofﬁces and fees, a similar, but not identical list to that in the valor (Ibid., pp. 456–7). 18 Arundel MS G1/3; Lyndsey’s accounts are for the period 1464–9 but do not cover all the manors; those for which sums appear and which are probably actual receipts, are very similar to the ﬁgures given for potential income in the valor. Under Lyndsey, each of the individual manors or sub-manors may have had its own bailiff; Howard granted his bailiff of Stoke Hall, William Melle, a tenement and cottage known as Sefowlis, in Stoke in exchange for a tenement called ‘Karteris’ in August 1465; Melle was to pay an annual rent of a red rose (TNA WARD 2/57A/205/15, 22). 19 C. Rawcliffe and S. Flower, ‘English Noblemen and their advisers: consultation and collaboration in the later Middle Ages’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986); Howard Household Books, pp. xlvii–iii; H.B.I, p. 457. The fees for his various stewardships brought him in more than £30 p.a.; the abbess of Maldon also appointed him to a similar ofﬁce, H.B.I, p. 185. Lady Scrope, although not further identiﬁed, was almost certainly Elizabeth, Lady Scrope of Masham, who was widowed in 1455 and took the veil immediately; she died in March 1467 (TNA C140/21/41/6). 20 CPR 1467–1477, p. 538, 545, 547; CPR 1476–1485, p. 120. 21 H.B.I, pp. 558–9; CPR 1467–1477, p. 297.

192

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 7 – 1 6 4

22 For example, TNA WARD 2/57B/49 and note 18 above; H.B.I, p. 176, 327; H.B.II, p. 212. 23 H.B.II, p. 18, 158, 161; CCR 1476–1485, p. 216. 24 James Ross, ‘The de Vere earls of Oxford, 1400–1513’, unpublished D.Phil thesis, Oxford, 2005, p. 51. 25 H.B.I, pp. 554–5; the ﬁgures are given in roman numerals. 26 Ibid., pp. 561–4. 27 H.B.II, p. 208, 349, 441, 465; H.B.I, p. 274, 276; a tierce was one third of a pipe and a pipe generally held 105 gallons; a tun contained 252 gallons; e.g. H.B.II, pp. 25–6, 32. 28 Ibid., p. 466; CPR 1461–1467, p. 527. 29 Ibid., p. 474. 30 K. B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973) pp. 50–7; H.B.I, p. 456; H.B.II, p. 138, 443. 31 H.B.I, p. 511; H.B.II, p. 188, 285. 32 Ibid., p. 421, 467. 33 Ibid., pp. 275–6, 326, 486, 490–1. 34 Ibid., p. 277; H.B.I, p. 260, 419–20; Paston Letters, vol. 5, p. 4. 35 H.B.I, pp. 413–15. 36 Another version of the Lumley/Arundel portrait is in the Royal Collection, see Oliver Millar, The Tudor, Stuart and early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (1963), p. 53 and Pamela Tudor-Craig, Richard III (National Portrait Gallery, 1973), pp. 87–8. 37 H.B.I, p. 509; H.B.II, pp. 105–6, 169, 175, 365, 367, 432. 38 Ibid., p. 214, 338, 379. 39 Ibid., p. 114, 116,145, 149, 158, 161, 163, 170, 286, 300; H.B.I, pp. 258–9. 40 H.B.II, p. 45, 146, 149, 324, 336, 339; a ‘disguising’ was a form of masque, common at court in the sixteenth century, but it is rare to ﬁnd evidence of such a thing in a nobleman’s household this early. 41 H.B.I, pp. 237–8, 481; H.B.II, p. 158, 275. 42 H.B.I, p. 250, 252, 277, 300–1, 368, 431; H.B.II, p. 32, 104. 43 Ibid., p. 582 ff.; Introduction to Howard Household Books, appendices d, e, f. 44 A. R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV (Manchester, 1959), p. 110. 45 H.B.I, p. 244, 245, 354, 587–621. 46 Ibid., p. 423, 429, 590–1. 47 Ibid., p. 511. 48 CCR 1476–1485, p. 110. 49 H.B.II, p. 133 50 BL Add. Ch. 16, 559.

Notes to Chapter 9: Shipping and Business Interests 1 N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea (1997), p. 147. All deﬁnitions of ship types and sailing terms in this chapter are taken from Rodger. See also R. Ward, The World of the Medieval Shipmaster: Law, Business and the Sea, c. 1350–1450 (Woodbridge, 2009). 2 A. J. Pollard, Warwick the Kingmaker (2007), p. 128, 131. 3 G. V. Scammell, ‘English merchant shipping at the end of the middle ages: some east coast evidence’, EcHR, 2nd series, 13 (1961), p. 332. 4 See E. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, The English Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1963), pp. 26–7. 5 TNA E122/52/49, Ipswich; H.B.I, p. 537. 6 H. Cobb, The Overseas Trade of London: Exchequer Customs Accounts, 1480–1 (London Record Society, 1990), p. 32.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 6 5 – 1 7 6

193

7 H.B.I, p. 186. 8 TNA, E404/72/4 no. 43; Rodger, Safeguard of the Sea, p. 154; G. V. Scammell, ‘Shipowning in England c.1450–1550’, TRHS, 5th series, 12 (1962), p. 112. 9 H.B.I, p. 332, 408, 418. 10 Ibid., p. 200, 333. 11 Ibid., p. 203, 207, 210, 334. Archaeologists discovered the remains of two brick ovens on board the Mary Rose (built 60 years later), each containing about 2,000 bricks (more than twice the size of the Edward’s) and supporting a very large cauldron. Here the ovens were situated deep in the hold, forward of the main mast, where their weight formed part of the ballast, and the Edward’s oven may have been similarly situated. 12 Ibid., p. 332, 344, 347, 350. 13 Ibid., p. 331; H.B.II, p. 23. 14 K. de Vries, ‘The effectiveness of ﬁfteenth century shipboard artillery, Mariners’ Mirror, 84 (1998), pp. 389–93. 15 D. Burwash, English Merchant Shipping, 1460–1540 (Toronto, 1947), p. 82. 16 H.B.II, p. 243; H.B.I, p. 332, 473. 17 Ibid., pp. 172–3. 18 The appointment is included in a list of fees appended to the 1464 valor of Howard’s estates (Arundel MS G1/3). 19 H.B.I, pp. 394–5, 405, 410, 470, 478–9, 560; John Norris was the stepson of Howard’s second wife and often acted as his agent in London. 20 Ibid., p. 367, 535, 593; CPR 1467–1477, p. 525. 21 H.B.II, p. 3; TNA E28/92. 22 H.B.II, p. 116, 243. 23 There is a cryptic reference to the ‘new Trygo’ in 1481, ibid., p. 19, so the ‘old’ one may have been lost. 24 H.B.I, p. 333, 342; H.B.II, p. 3, 66–7, 74, 112, 167; TNA E122/52/44. 25 H.B.I, p. 405, 410, 489, 524; for details of this ﬂeet see Chapter 3, pp. 54–5. 26 Ibid., p. 449; H.B.II, p. 116. 27 E. Power and M. M. Postan, (eds.), Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century (1933), p. 242, suggest, for instance, that if Canynge employed all ten of his ships in a normal year he might enjoy a gross return of £10,000, but in this case it would include proﬁts on his own goods shipped. 28 H.B.II, p. 112. 29 TNA E122/194/19, 20, 22, London; H.B.I, p. 430. 30 Townshend MSS, Raynham Hall, Norfolk, Box 125; printed in Howard Household Books, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. 31 Arundel MS G1/3; The Medieval Latin Word List gives convoying as the meaning for wafting, with an earliest use of 1482; this earlier reference may be its ﬁrst documented use. 32 Paston Letters, vol. 4, p. 264; H.B.I, p. 456; H.B.II, p. 47, 135, 220, 316, 355, 400–1. 33 Calendar of the Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 1437–1482, ed. P. Jones, 2 vols (1926–61), vol. 1 Roll A96, m. 4; H.B.I, p. 387; CPR 1461–1467, p. 567. 34 Acts of the Court of the Mercers Company, ed. L. Lyall and F. Watney (1936), pp. 63–5. 35 Ibid., p. 118 ff. 36 H.B.I, pp. 336–7, 395, 454; H.B.II, p. 65, 118, 201, 294. 37 H.B.I, p. 188, 200, 339, 337, 350, 396; H.B.II, p. 30, 31, 121, 150, 200, 428. Howard’s house in Colchester is identiﬁed by John Ashdown-Hill as the building now known as the Red Lion in the High Street. 38 Ibid., p. 467.

194

N O T E S T O PA G E 1 7 9

Notes to Appendix 1 Calendar of Entries in Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 1471–1484, ed. J. A. Twemlow (1955), pp. 687–93. I am very grateful to Brad Verity, who brought this reference to my attention. 2 See, for example, Calendar of State Papers: Venice, vol. 2, p. 219.

Bibliography

The place of publication is London unless otherwise cited.

PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES Acts of the Court of the Mercers’ Company, ed. L. Lyell and F. Watney (1936). British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. R. Horrox and P.W. Hammond, 4 vols (Richard III Society, 1979–83). Calendar of Close Rolls, 1405–1485, 14 vols (HMSO, 1931–1954). Calendar of Entries in Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 1471–1484, ed. J. A. Twemlow (1955). Calendar of Feet of Fines for Suffolk, ed. W. Rye (1900). Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1437–1445, 1452–1461 (HMSO, 1940). Calendarium Inquisitionum Post Mortem sine Escaetarum, ed. J. Bayley and J. Caley, 4 vols (Record Commission, 1828). Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 7–15 Richard II, vol. XVI (HMSO, 1974). Calendars of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 1–12 Henry VII, vol. I (HMSO, 1898) Calendar of the Letter Books of the Corporation of London, ed. R. R. Sharpe (1899–1912). Calendar of the Muniments of the Borough of Harwich, Harwich Corporation (1932). Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1391–1485, 17 vols (HMSO, 1897–1911). Calendar of the Plea and Memoranda Rolls of the City of London, 1437–1482, ed. P. E. Jones, 2 vols (1926–61). Calendar of Proceedings in Chancery in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 3 vols (Record Commission, 1827–32). Calendar of State Papers: Milan, vol. 1 (HMSO, 1913). Calendar of State Papers: Venice, vol. 2 (HMSO, 1864). Camden, William, Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine (1605). Catalogue des Rolles Gascons, Normands et Francoises, ed. T. Carte (1742). The Cely Papers, ed. H. E. Malden (Camden Society, 1900). Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (1905). Chronicles of the White Rose, ed. J. A. Giles (1845). The Coronation of Richard III: the Extant Documents, ed. Anne F. Sutton and P.W. Hammond (Gloucester, 1983). Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox (1986). Commynes, Philippe, Mémoires, ed. J. Calmette et G. Durville (3 vols, Paris, 1924). Commynes, Philippe, Memoirs, ed. and trans. M. Jones (1972). Commynes, Philippe, Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes, ed. Lenglet du Fresnoy (Paris, 1747). Excerpta Historica, ed. S. Bentley (1831). Feodera, Conventiones, Litterae etc., ed. T. Rymer, vol. 5 (1704–1735). The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (1938). ‘Gregory’s Chronicle’ in The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. James Gairdner (Camden Society, 1876).

196

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hall, Edward, Chronicle, ed. H. Ellis (1809). ‘Historie of the arrival of King Edward IV A.D.1471’, ed. J. Bruce, in K. Dockray, (ed.), Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV, (Gloucester, 1988). ‘Household accounts of Sir John Howard, 1462–1471’ in Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. T. H. Turner, (Roxburghe Club, 1841). Household Books of John, Duke of Norfolk and Thomas, Earl of Surrey, 1481–1490, ed. J. Payne Collier (Roxburghe Club, 1844). The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–1471, 1481–1483, Introduction, Anne Crawford (Alan Sutton for Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, Stroud, 1992). The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478, ed. A. R. Myers (Manchester, 1959). Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483, ed. C. Carpenter (Cambridge, 1996). Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1861, 1863). Letters and Papers Illustrative of the English in France during the Reign of Henry VI, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1864). Mancini, Dominic, The Usurpation of Richard III, ed. and trans. C. A. J. Armstrong (2nd edn, 1969). Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, ed. W. Campbell, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1873–77). Mémoires d‘Olivier de la Marche, ed. H. Beaune et J. d’Arbaumont, 4 vols (Paris, 1883–88). More, Sir Thomas, The History of the Reign of King Richard III, ed. R. S. Sylvester (Complete Works, Yale edition, 1963). Page, John, ‘The siege of Rouen’ in The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. J. Gairdner (Camden Society, 1876). The Paston Letters, ed. J. Gairdner, 6 vols (1904; repr. 1983). Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. B. H. Putnam (1938). Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, ed. N. H. Nicolas, 6 vols (Record Commission, 1834–1837). ‘The record of Bluemantle Pursuivant’ in C. L. Kingsford, (ed.), English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1913). Records of the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson and J. C. Tingley, 2 vols (Norwich, 1906–10). The Red Paper Book of Colchester, ed. W. G. Benham (Colchester, 1902). Registrum Thome Bourgchier, 1454–1486, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay, 2 vols (Canterbury and York Society, 1957). Rotuli Parliamentorum, vols 5–6 (Record Commission, 1767–1777). ‘Stonor Letters and Papers’, in C. L. Kingsford, (ed.), English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1913). Testamenta Vetusta, ed. N. H. Nicolas, 2 vols (1826). Troyes, Jean de, ‘La Chronique Scandaleuse’ printed in Mémoires de Philippe de Commynes, ed. Lenglet du Fresnoy (Paris, 1747). Vergil, Polydore, Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History, ed. H. Ellis, (Camden Society, 1844). Wardrobe Accounts of Edward IV, ed. N. H. Nicolas (1830). Warkworth, John, ‘A Chronicle of the ﬁrst thirteen years of the reign of King Edward the Fourth’, ed. J. O. Halliwell, in K. Dockray, ed. Three Chronicles of the Reign of Edward IV (Gloucester, 1988). The Wars of the English in France, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1861–4). William Worcestre, Itinararies, ed. J. H. Harvey (Oxford, 1969). Worcestre, William, ‘Annales’, in The Wars of the English in France, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols (Rolls Series, 1861–4). York Records: Extracts from the Municipal Records of the City of York, ed. R. Davies (1843).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

197

SECONDARY SOURCES Adair, J., ‘The newsletter of Gerhard von Wesel, 17April 1471’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 46 (1968). Anstis, J., The Register of the Order of the Garter (1724). Armstrong, C. A. J., ‘Some examples of the distribution and speed of news in England at the time of the Wars of the Roses’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to F.M. Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948). Ashdown-Hill, J., ‘The client network and connections of Sir John Howard (Lord Howard, Duke of Norfolk) in north-east Essex and south Suffolk’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Univerity of Essex (2008). Ashdown-Hill, J., ‘The opening of the tombs of the dukes of Richmond and Norfolk, Framlingham, April, 1841’, The Ricardian, 18 (2008). Ashdown-Hill, J., ‘Yesterday my lord of Gloucester came to Colchester . . .’, Essex Archaeology and History, 3rd ser., 36 (2001). Barnard, F. P., Edward IV’s French Expedition of 1475: The Leaders and their Badges (1925). Barnﬁeld, M., ‘Diriment impediments, dispensations and divorce: Richard III and matrimony’, The Ricardian, 17 (2007). Beaven, A., Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols (1908–13). Bennett, M., The Battle of Bosworth (Stroud, 1985). Blomeﬁeld, F., An Essay towards a Topographical History of Norfolk, 11 vols (1805–1810). Blow, J., ‘Nibley Green’, in English Society and Government in the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. M. D. Crowder (1967). Brennan, G. and Statham, E. P., The House of Howard, 2 vols (1907). Brown, A. L., ‘The king’s councillors in ﬁfteenth-century England’, TRHS, 5th series, 19 (1969). Buck, G., The History of King Richard III, ed. A. N. Kincaid (Gloucester, 1979). Burne, A. H., Battleﬁelds of England (1950). Burwash, D., English Merchant Shipping, 1460–1540 (Toronto, 1947). Carlisle, N., Endowed Grammar Schools. 2 vols (1818). Carus-Wilson, E. M. and Coleman, O., England’s Export Trade, 1275–1547 (Oxford, 1963). Castor, H., Blood and Roses (2004). Cobb, H., The Overseas Trade of London: Exchequer Customs Accounts, 1480–1 (London Record Society, 1990). Cokayne, G. E., The Complete Peerage (new edn, ed. V. H. Gibbs and others, 13 vols 1910–1959). Conway, A., ‘The Maidstone sector of Buckingham’s rebellion’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 37 (1925). Copinger, W.A., The Manors of Suffolk, 7 vols (1905–11). Crawford, A., Introduction, The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, 1462–1471, 1481–1483 (Alan Sutton for Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, Stroud, 1992). Crawford, A., ‘The Mowbray inheritance’ in Richard III: Crown and People, ed. J. Petre (Richard III Society, 1985). Crawford, A., ‘John Howard, Duke of Norfolk: a possible murderer of the princes?’ in Richard III: Crown and People, ed. J. Petre (Richard III Society, 1985). Crawford, A., ‘Victims of attainder: the Howard and de Vere women in the late ﬁfteenth century’ in K. Bate and M. Barber, eds, Medieval Women in Southern England (Reading Medieval Studies, 15, 1989). J. Dallaway and E. Cartwright, A History of the Western Division of the County of Sussex (2 vols., 1815–32). Davies, R. R., ‘Baronial accounts, incomes and arrears in the Later Middle Ages’, Ec.HR, 2nd series, 21 (1968). de Vries, K., ‘The effectiveness of ﬁfteenth-century shipboard artillery’, Mariners’ Mirror, 84 (1998).

198

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dugdale, W., The Baronage of England, 2 vols (1675). Dunham, W.H., ‘Lord Hastings’ indentured retainers, 1461–1483’, Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Science, 39 (1955). Edwards, J. G., ‘The emergence of majority rule in English parliamentary elections’, TRHS, 5th series, 14 (1964). Engleheart, F., The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Stoke-by-Nayland (1963). Fudge, J. D., Cargoes, Embargoes and Emissaries: The Commercial and Political Interaction of England and the German Hanse 1450–1510 (Toronto, 1995). Gairdner, J., History of the Life and Reign of Richard III, (2nd edn Cambridge, 1898). Gill, L., Richard III and Buckingham’s Rebellion (Gloucester, 1999). Gray, H.L., ‘Incomes from land in England in 1436’, EHR, 49 (1934). Grummitt, D., The Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in England, 1436–1558 (Woodbridge, 2008). Grummitt, D., ‘Calais and the Crown, 1450–1558’, in The English Experience in France c. 1450–1558, ed. D. Grummitt (2002). Grummitt, D., ‘William, Lord Hastings and the Defence of Calais, 1471–1483’, in Social Attitudes and Political Structures in the Fifteenth Century, ed. T. Thornton (Stroud, 2000). Hammond, P. W., The Battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury (Stroud, 1990). Hammond, P. W. and Sutton, A. F., Richard III: The road to Bosworth Field (1985). Haward, W. I., ‘Economic aspects of the Wars of the Roses in East Anglia’, EHR, 41 (1926). Hay, D., Polydore Vergil (Oxford, 1952). Hicks, M., False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence (rev’d edn.1992). Hicks, M., ‘The last days of Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford’, EHR, 103, no. 406 (1988). Hicks, M., ‘The second anonymous continuation of the Crowland Abbey Chronicle 1459–86 revisited’, EHR, 122, no. 496 (2007). Historical Manuscripts Commission, 9th Report, vol. 1. Historical Manuscripts Commission, 11th Report, vol. 7 and App. 7. Horrox, R., Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989). Horrox, R., ed. Fifteenth Century Attitudes: Perceptions of society in late medieval England (Cambridge, 1994). Houghton, K. N., ‘Theory and practice in borough elections to parliament during the later ﬁfteenth century’, BIHR, 39 (1966). Howard, H., Indications of Memorials of the Howard Family (Corby Castle, 1834–6). Hutton, W., The Battle of Bosworth Field, ed. J. Nicholls (1813). Ives, E. W., ‘Andrew Dymmock and the papers of Anthony, Earl Rivers, 1482–3’, BIHR, 41 (1968). Ives, E. W., Knecht, R. J. and Scarisbrick, J. J., eds, Wealth and Power in Tudor England (1978). Jalland, P., ‘The inﬂuence of the aristocracy on shire elections in the north of England, 1450–1470’, Speculum, 47 (1972). Jones, M. K., Bosworth, 1485: Psychology of a Battle (Stroud, 2002). Kendall, P. M., Richard the Third (1955). Kendall, P. M., The Yorkist Age (1962). Kendall, P. M., Warwick the Kingmaker (1957). Kervyn de Lettenhove, J., Histoire de Flandres, 6 vols (Brussels, 1847–50). Kingsford, C.L., Prejudice and Promise in Fifteenth Century England (Oxford, 1925). Kingsford, C.L. (ed.), English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1913). Lander, J. R., ‘Attainder and forfeiture, 1453–1509’, The Historical Journal, 4 (1961). Lander, J. R., Conﬂict and Stability in Fifteenth Century England (1969). Lander, J. R., ‘Council, administration and councillors, 1461–1485’, BIHR, 32 (1959). Lander, J. R., ‘Edward IV: the modern legend – and a revision’, History, 41 (1956). Lander, J.R., English Justices of the Peace, 1461–1509 (1989). Lander, J. R., ‘Marriage and politics in the ﬁfteenth century: the Nevills and the Wydevilles’, BIHR, 36 (1963).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

199

Lander, J. R., The Wars of the Roses (1965). Lander, J. R., ‘The Yorkist council and administration’, EHR, 73 (1958). Lesley, J., History of Scotland from the Death of King James I in the year 1436 to the year 1561, (Bannatyne Club, 1830). Lloyd, T. H., England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: a study of their trade and commercial diplomacy (Cambridge, 1991). McFarlane, K. B., The Nobility of Later Medieval England (1973). Maddern, P., Violence, Crime and Public Disorder in East Anglia, 1422–1442 (Oxford, 1992). Marques, A.S., ‘Alvaro Lopes de Chevres: A Portuguese Source’, Ricardian Bulletin (Autumn 2008). Millar, O., The Tudor, Stuart and early Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (1963). Milles, Revd, Dr., “Observations on the Wardrobe Account for 1483’, Archaeologia, vol. 1 (1799). Moir, E., The Justice of the Peace (1969). Morgan, D. A. L., ‘The king’s afﬁnity in the polity of Yorkist England’, TRHS, 5th series, 23 (1973). Myers, A. R., The Household of Edward IV: the Black Book and Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester, 1959). Myers, A. R., ‘The outbreak of war between England and Burgundy in February 1471, BIHR, 33 (1960). Pollard, A. J., ‘Estate management in the later Middle Ages: the Talbots and Whitchurch, 1383–1525’, Ec.HR, 2nd series, 25 (1972). Pollard, A. J., John Talbot and the War in France 1427–1453 (1983). Pollard, A. J., Richard III and the Princes in the Tower (1991). Pollard, A. J., The Worlds of Richard III (2001). Pollard, A. J., Warwick the Kingmaker (2007). Power, E. and Postan, M. M., Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century (1933). Pugh, T. B., ‘The magnates, knights and gentry’, in Fifteenth Century England, 1399–1509: Studies in Politics and Society, ed. S. C. Chrimes, C. D. Ross and R. A. Grifﬁths (Manchester, 1972). Pugh, T. B. and Ross, C. D., ‘Baronial incomes in the ﬁfteenth century’, Ec.HR, 2nd series, 6 (1953). Pugh, T. B. and Ross, C. D., ‘The English baronage and the income tax of 1436’, BIHR, 26 (1953). Rawcliffe, C., ‘Baronial councils in the later Middle Ages’, in Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England, ed. C. D. Ross (Gloucester, 1979). Rawcliffe, C. and Flower, S., ‘English noblemen and their advisers: consultation and collaboration in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986). Richmond, C. F., ‘The Earl of Warwick’s domination of the Channel and the naval dimension to the Wars of the Roses, 1456–1460’, Southern History, 20–1 (1998–9). Richmond, C. F., ‘English naval power in the ﬁfteenth century’, History, 52 (1967). Richmond, C. F., ‘East Anglian politics and society in the 15th century’, in Medieval East Anglia, ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 2005). Richmond, C. F., ‘Fauconberg’s Kentish rising of May 1471’, EHR, 85 (1970). Ricketts, A., The English Country House Chapel (2007). Ridgard, J. (ed.), Medieval Framlingham (1985). Robinson, J.M., The Dukes of Norfolk: A Quincentennial History (Oxford, 1982). Rodger, N. A. M., The Safeguard of the Sea (1997). Rogers, A., ‘The Lincolnshire county court in the ﬁfteenth century’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, (1966). Rosenthal, J. T., ‘Fifteenth century baronial incomes and Richard, duke of York’, BIHR, 37 (1964).

200

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ross, C. D., Edward IV (1974). Ross, C. D. Richard III (1981). Ross, J. ‘The de Vere Earls of Oxford’, unpublished D.Phil thesis, Oxford University, 2005. Scammell, G. V., ‘English merchant shipping at the end of the middle ages: some east coast evidence’, Ec.HR, 2nd series, 13 (1961). Scammell, G. V., ‘Shipowning in England, c. 1450–1550’, TRHS, 5th series, 12 (1962). Scoﬁeld, C. L., ‘The early life of John de Vere, thirteenth earl of Oxford’, EHR, 39 (1914). Scofield, C. L., The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, 2 vols (1923, repr. 1967). Smith, G., The Coronation of Elizabeth Woodville (1935). Smyth, J., The Berkeley Manuscripts: The Lives of the Berkeleys and History of the Hundred of Berkeley, ed. Sir John Maclean, 3 vols (1883–5). Storey, R. L., The End of the House of Lancaster (1966). Storey, R. L., ‘English ofﬁcers of state, 1399–1485’, BIHR, 31 (1958). Studies in Medieval History Presented to F.M. Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford, 1948). Sutton, A. F. and Visser-Fuchs, L., The Royal Funerals of the House of York at Windsor (Richard III Society, 2005). Talbot, H., The English Achilles: The Life of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury 1383–1453 (1981). Thrupp, S., The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 1300–1500 (Chicago, 1948). Torlesse, C. M., Some Account of Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk (1877). Tucker, M. J., The Life of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey and Second Duke of Norfolk, 1443–1524 (The Hague, 1964). Tudor-Craig, P., Richard III (National Portrait Gallery, 1973). Vale, M. G. A., ‘The last years of English Gascony, 1451–1453’, TRHS, 5th series, 19 (1969). Virgoe, R., ‘Crown, magnates and local government in ﬁfteenth-century East Anglia’ in J. R. L. Highﬁeld and R. M. Jeffs, eds, The Crown and Local Communities in England and France in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1981). Virgoe, R., ‘An election dispute of 1483’, Historical Research, 60 (1987). Virgoe, R., ‘Three Suffolk parliamentary elections of the mid-ﬁfteenth century’, BIHR, 39 (1966). Virgoe, R., ‘The recovery of the Howards in East Anglia, 1485–1529’ in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht and J. J. Scarisbrick, eds, Wealth and Power in Tudor England (1978). Vries, K. de, ‘The effectiveness of ﬁfteenth century shipboard artillery, Mariners’ Mirror, 84 (1998). Ward, R., The World of the Medieval Shipmaster: Law, Business and the Sea, c. 1350–1450 (Woodbridge, 2009). Wedgwood, J. C., History of Parliament: Biographies, 1439–1509 (1936) Wedgwood, J. C., History of Parliament: Register, 1439–1509 (1938). Weever, J., Ancient Funerall Monuments (1631). Williams, B., ‘The Portuguese connection and the signiﬁcance of the holy princess’, The Ricardian, vol. 6 (1982–84). Williams, C. H., ‘A Norfolk parliamentary election, 1461’, EHR, 40 (1925). Wodderspoon, J., Memorials of the Ancient Town of Ipswich (1850). Wood, C. T., ‘Richard III, Lord Hastings and Friday the thirteenth’ in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. R. A. Grifﬁths and J. Sherborne (Gloucester, 1986). Wyndham, H. A., A Family History, 1410–1688: the Wyndhams of Norfolk and Somerset (1939).

Index Members of royal families are indexed under their Christian name and peers under their family name. Aberdeen, Bishop of 93 Abergavenny, Lord, see Neville Agincourt, battle of 5 Aire 90 Alnwick castle 36–8, 94 Amiens 77, 79–80,101 Angus, Earl of, see Douglas Anthony, Bastard of Burgundy, Count de la Roches 50–1 Anne, dau. of Edward IV 89, 134 Arblaster, James 70 Argent, William 21 Arms, College of 75 Bluemantle Pursuivant, 68 Garter King of 75, 118 Arras, Treaty of 96–7 Artois, county of 76, 96 Ashton, William, kt. 18 Ashwellthorpe 67, 120, 134–5 Avery, Thomas 73 Baldry, John, merchant 172 Baltic Sea 57, 70 Bamborough castle 36–8, 91, 184n. 34 Banyard, Agnes 157 Barham Down 75 Barker, John 90 Barleyscoles, Ralph 157–8 Barre, Richard 37 Barnet, battle of 62–3, 65, 67, 69 Baste, William 173 Bath, Knights of 118 Bath & Wells, Bishop of, see Stillington Bawdewyn, John 74, 172

Baxter, Piers, chaplain 70 Beauchamp, Anne, Countess of Warwick 69 Beauchamp, Elizabeth, Lady Abergavenny 12 Beaufort, Margaret, Countess of Richmond 107, 119, 121, 131 Beaufort, Edmund, Duke of Somerset 13, 15, 17–18, 41 Beaufort, Henry, Duke of Somerset 112, 114 Beaufort, Thomas, Duke of Exeter 7 Bedfordshire 113, 134 Beja, Duke of 128–9 Benet, Sir, priest 44 Bere, William 170 Berkeley, Isabel, Lady, see Mowbray Berkeley, James 16 Berkeley, Thomas 16 Berkeley, William, Lord Berkeley, Earl of Nottingham 83, 87–8, 95, 97–9, 110, 113, 118, 188n. 5, 190n. 22 Jane, wife of 119, 188n. 5 Berkeley castle 95 Berkshire 139, 159, 174 Bernard, Robert 40–1 Berners, Lord, see Bourchier Berney, John 28–9, 31–3 Berney family 11 Berwick-upon-Tweed 10, 16 Biscay 172 Blackness 93 Bliant, John 130, 148, 158 Blount, James 127

Blount, Walter, Lord Mountjoy 54–5, 67 Blowebelle, ship’s cook 166–7 Bodiam, castle of 123 Boleyn, William 190 Bordeaux 16, 46, 163, 169–71 Bosworth, battle of 1, 101, 125, 132–3, 135, 140 Bourbon, Cardinal of 80 Bourbon, Jean, Bastard of 78 Bouchage, Sieur de 79 Bourchier, Henry, Earl of Essex 70, 88, 105, 155 Bourchier, Henry (the younger), Earl of Essex 118 Bourchier, Humphrey, kt. 67 Bourchier, John, Lord Berners 67–8, 134, 142–3, 150 Bourchier, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury 98, 108–9, 112, 118, 125 Bourchier, Thomas 70 Bouteyn, John 190n. 11 Bowerhouse, manor of, co. Suff. 143–5 Boxford 143, 145 Boxted 148 Brackenbury, Robert, kt. 106, 111 Bradeston, manor of, co. Norf. 11, 13 Braham, John 130, 147–8, 154, 158 Bramber castle 40 Brampton, Edward 92 Brandon family 127 Bray, manor of, co. Berks. 46–7, 137, 142 Braytofft, Katherine 46

202 Brentwood 120 Breten, Thomas 166 Brettenham 143 Brews, Thomas 48 Brézé, Piers de, seneschal of Normandy 37 Brightlingsea 170 Brittany 54, 74, 78, 91, 121, 123, 127, 138 Duke of, see Francis Broadwater 95 Bromley, John, kt. 40 Brokehall, manor of, co. Suff. 6, 144 Brooke, John, Lord Cobham 55, 92–3, 98, 121, 122 Broome, Nicholas 32 Bruges 23, 45, 53, 71–2, 74 Buck, George 128–9 Buckinghamshire 11 Burgundy 46, 51–2, 54, 62, 66, 71–2, 74, 78, 86, 90–1, 96, 170 Dukes of, see Philip, Charles Bastard of, see Anthony Buriff, . . ., shipbuilder 170 Bury St Edmunds 41, 45, 53, 120, 131–2 Abbot of 23, 25, 154 Butler, James, Earl of Wiltshire 35 Buxhall, manor of, co. Suff. 193n. 16 Caister castle 33 Calais 3, 5, 10, 16, 21, 37, 45–6, 48, 51, 54, 58, 59–61, 65–8, 71–5, 81, 84, 86, 89,102, 107, 127, 135, 138, 151, 162–3, 168, see also Guines, Hammes Captaincy of , see also Neville, Hastings garrison 63, 65 Pale 66, 72 Rysbank 66 Staple of 65, 162, 183n. 24 Caldwell, Thomas 171 Calthorp, William, kt. 187n. 17

INDEX

Cambridge 45 King’s College, provost of 145 University of 138, 154 Cambridgeshire 2, 67, 74 Candy, Hugh 168 Canterbury 75 Prior of 145 Canynge, William 165, 170, 195 Castillon, battle of 16 Castle Rising 11, 41, 156 Catesby, William 191 Caxton, William 152 Cecily, dau. of Edward IV 74, 126–8 Cely, George 112 Chalcombe 130 Chamberlain, Robert, kt. 156 Chamberlain, Roger, kt. 19 Chamberlain, William, kt. 27–8, 31 Chambre, Thomas, purser 167–8 Channel, English 61, 72, 74, 92, 162, 169 Chaplayn, Marmaduke, merchant 172 Charles, Count of Charolais, Duke of Burgundy 45, 52–3, 55, 59, 68, 71, 75–8, 81, 84 Charles, Dauphin of France 78, 86, 89–90, 96 Chateryse, Nicholas, ropemaker 166 Chatterley, Thomas, mercer 175 Chaucer, Alice, Duchess of Suffolk 10, 15, 29, 84, 182 Chedworth, John, kt. 46, 184 Chedworth, John, Bishop of Lincoln 47, 184 Chedworth, Margaret, see Howard Chedworth, William 47, 159, 174, 184 Chelmsford 105, 120 Cheney, John 79 Cheshire 11 Chester 40 Cheyne, John, kt. 79, 81

Chichester, Bishop of, see Moleyns Christmas, Thomas 124 Cinque Ports 117 Clare, Honour of 21, 44, 53, 145 Clarke, Robert 44, 154 Claxton 15, 19 Clerke, John 44 Clerke, Roger 44 Clifford, Robert 92 Clifford, Thomas, Lord 17 Clifford, Thomas 73–4 Cobham, Lord, see Brooke Coggeshall, players of, 55 Colchester 7, 45, 53, 91, 101, 120, 124, 127, 147, 164, 175–6 Abbey 62 castle 29, 62 friars of 44, 154 Howard’s house in, 20, 120, 196n. 37 lordship of 145 St. Nicholas Church 176 Swan Inn 176 Colet, John, harper 155 Coleys, ----, mercer 119 Collier, John Payne 110 Cologne, merchants of 70–1, 172 Colyngbourne, William 126–7 Commons, House of, see Parliament Commynes, Philippe de 66, 75–80, 97, 186–7 Compiegne 77 Constable, Robert, kt. 29 Conyers, Robert, kt. 38 Cookham, lordship of, co. Berks. 142 Coppini, Francesco, papal legate 23 Corbeil 5 Cornburgh, Avery 92–3 Cornwall 68, 114 Duchy of 111 Cornwallis, Thomas 14 Council, King’s 18, 52–3, 59, 89, 102–6, 108, 112–3, 121, 123, 128, 167 Courtney family 121

INDEX

Coventry 21, 54, 167 Crowmere (Cromer) 173 Crosby, John, kt. 71 Crowland Chronicler 97, 102–4, 107–9, 121, 125, 127, 132 Cumberton, Robert 157 Dacre, Lord, see Fiennes Dalamar, Thomas 158–9 Damme 53 Daniel, Edmund 13, 130, 158 Daniel, George 13, 130, 142, 158 Daniel, Thomas 11, 12–13, 17, 29, 35, 40, 104, 122, 142, 156, 158 Daniel, Thomas, the younger 13, 158 Danzig, merchants of 70, 84 Dartmouth 16 Dauphin of France, see Charles Davy, John 130, 149, 158 Debenham, Gilbert, kt.18– 19, 28, 121 Dedham 145 Delory alias Frenchwoman, Rose 137, 157 Delves, John, kt. 65 Denbighshire 14, 39–40 Dengayn, William 187n. 17 Denmark 57 Denys, Thomas 25–6, 28 Derbyshire 113 Devenish, manor of, co. Dorset 35, 144 Devereux, Walter, Lord Ferrers 1, 67, 75 Devon 121, 140 Earl of, see Stafford Dexter, John 171 Dobere, John, mariner 169 Doncaster 39 Donker, Frederick 44 Dontish, manor of, co. Dorset 35, 144 Douglas, Archibald, Earl of Angus 91 Dover 5, 96 Dovercourt 38, 45, 50, 114, 175

Downham Hall in Whestle, manor of, co. Suff. 146–7 Dudley, John, Lord Dudley 88, 105–6 Dudley, William, Bishop of Durham 78, 118 Dullingham, manor of, co. Cambs.146 Dunstable 22 Dunstanborough castle 36–8 Dunwich 164–6, 172 Durham 25 Bishop of, see Dudley Dymmock, Andrew 105 East Anglia 1, 10, 14, 17, 20, 34, 48, 58, 62, 87, 104, 114, 119–20, 122, 124, 127, 134, 141, 159, 163 East March, Keeper of 16 East Walton, manor of, co. Norf. 193n. 16 East Winch, manor of, co. Norf. 2, 26–7, 35–6, 41, 144–6, 149–50 Edgecote, battle of 59 Edmund, Earl of Rutland 21, 98, 138 Edward I 3 Edward III 161 Edward, Earl of March, Edward IV 21–4, 27, 33, 35, 41–2, 45, 55, 65–6, 69, 72, 104, 120, 138, 175 death and funeral 97–99, 101–2, 125 foreign policy 52–5, 57, 68–9, 71–2, 74–82, 84, 86–7, 88–91, 96 household 30, 56, 122, 157 marriage 43–4, 109 and Mowbray inheritance 83–4, 87, 95, 97, 110, 112 naval affairs 91–5, 166–7, 169 personal relations with Howard 21–2, 42, 45, 83 and Warwick’s coup 58–62 Edward, Prince of Wales, Edward V 65, 93, 98, 101–4, 107, 109, 112, 117, 121

203 Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI 17, 22, 61, 63 Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Richard III 125–6 Edward, Duke of York 98 Edward, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence 109, 126 Elizabeth, dau. of Edward IV, Queen 60, 78, 86, 88–90, 96, 121, 126–8 Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, sis. of Edward IV 110, 117 Elne, Bishop of 88 Elrington, John, kt. 56, 93 Eltham 42, 96 Elyse, Henry, hermit 154 Ely, Bishop of, see Grey, Morton Essex 2, 7, 20, 38, 43, 68, 80, 113, 123 Esterlings, see Hanseatic League Eton 98 Evreux, Bishop of 78 Exeter, Duke of, see Beaufort Eye 15 Farleigh Hungerford castle 114 Feeld, John 113 Felaw, Richard, merchant 39, 57, 149, 163, 176, 192 Felbridge, John 31 Felbrigg, manor of, co. Norf. 140 Ferrers, Henry, kt. 4 Ferrers, Lady, see Mowbray Ferrers, Lord, 4 see also Devereux Ferrybridge 23 Fersﬁeld, manor of, co. Suff. 6, 36 Fiennes, Richard, Lord Dacre 53, 88, 106 Firth of Forth 93–4 Fitzalan, Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk 4, 5–6 Fitzalan, Richard, Earl of Arundel 4 Fitzalan, Thomas, Lord Maltravers 98

204 Fitzherbert, John 92 Fitzwalter, Walter, Lord 22 see also Radcliffe Flanders 71, 84, 88, 93, 127, 151 Flodden, battle of 134 Fogge, John, kt. 56, 57 Fotheringhay castle 41, 96, 98 Framlingham, co. Suff. 6, 12–13, 15, 18, 45, 114, 120, 122, 124, 134, 137, 139, 154, 159,166, 191n. 30 France 4–5, 15–16, 52, 54, 60, 68, 71, 75–81, 83, 86, 96, 101, 103, 127, 173 Francis, Duke of Brittany 37, 54, 74–5 Fuller, Edmund 20 Garter, King of Arms, see Arms, College of Garter, Order of 5, 67–8, 98 Gascony 163, 170 Gate, Geoffrey, kt. 61, 68 Genoa, merchants of 20 Gentile, Humphrey, mercer 153 George, Duke of Clarence 30, 42, 58–9, 61, 86–8, 109, 147 George, son of Edward IV 98 Gerard of Sudbury 155 Gorges, Edmund 92, 119, 130, 140–2, 149, 158–9 Gorges, John 140, 149, 158 Gorges, Mary Oldhall 140 Gorges, Theobald, kt. 140, 149 Gorges, Walter, 140, 149 Gould, Thomas 32 Grantham 37 Grassay, Jacques de, Sieur de Yors 77 Gravesend 46, 54, 122, 123 Greenwich 33, 95, 119 Grefyngk, Barnard 84 Gresham, James 28 Gresham, manor of, co. Norf. 11 Grey, Henry 27–8, 31 Grey, John, kt. 9 Grey, Ralph, kt. 36–7

INDEX

Grey, Reginald, Lord Grey of Ruthin 9 Grey, Richard, Lord Powys 145 Grey, Richard, kt. 104, 109 Grey, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset 97, 103–4, 106, 115 Grey, William, Bishop of Ely 69–70 Gruythuse, Louis de, Seigneur de Gruythuse 46, 68 Guienne 16–17, 78 Guildford 123, 125 Guinegatte, battle of 89 Guines 45, 59, 65–6, 68 Hadleigh 105 players of 155 Hall, Edward 108, 132 Hammes fortress 59, 66, 68, 127 Hammond, John, mariner 170, 172 Hamner, John 40 Hanseatic League 56–7, 60, 62, 70–2, 162, 173 Harﬂeur 4, 61 Harlech castle 38, 40 Harrington, Robert 108 Harwich 7, 36, 38–9, 41, 45, 54, 92–3, 114, 145, 164, 166, 168, 170, 175–6 Power’s Quay 175–6 Hastings, William, Lord 36, 37, 41, 45–6, 52, 62, 71, 75, 81–2, 90, 95, 97, 102–4, 107, 109, 112, 115–16 as Lieut. of Calais 66, 72, 89, 102 Hatclyf, William 71 Hatﬁeld 142 Hedingham castle 80, 143, 146 Hedgeley Moor, battle of 41 Henham 15 Henry III 3 Henry V 4, 16, 103, 161–2 Henry VI 5, 10, 17, 21–3, 29, 35, 59, 62–3, 103, 162, 165, 167 Henry VII, see Tudor

Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke 58 Herbert, William, Earl of Huntingdon 128 Hereford, manor of, co. Norf. 35 Hertfordshire 2 Hexham, battle of 41 Heydon, John 11 Heyward, Richard 173 Higham 21 Hill, Alison 156 Hill, Elizabeth 156 Hill, Reynold 156 Hill, William 175 Hintlesham 141 Hinton, manor of, co. Cambs. 9, 144, 193 Hoar, Thomas 176 Hobart, James 84, 130, 159 Hobbes, John 50, 169, 184 Holland, Constance, Countess of Norfolk, Lady Grey 9 Holy Land 2, 6–7 Holt castle 39–40, 146, 156 Hoo, Thomas 130 Horsham 121 Hoveman, Henry, of Lubeck 84 Howard, Alice 3, 6, 15, 142, 144, 179, 193 Howard, Anne 138–40, 158 Howard Catherine, Lady Abergavenny 7, 12, 119 Howard, Catherine, Lady Berners 67–8, 96, 134, 143, 150, 152 Howard, Edmund 68 Howard, Edward 68 Howard, Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford 2, 4, 7, 15, 35–6, 69–70, 73, 101, 139, 146–7 Howard, Elizabeth, Mrs Wentworth 144 Howard, Henry 3, 7, 144, 179, 193n. 16 Howard, Jane 138, 141, 146 Howard, Joan 2–3, 147 Howard, Isabel 138, 139–40, 158 Howard, John I, kt. 2–3, 6–7, 9, 142, 143

INDEX

Howard, John II 2, 6, 7 Howard, Katherine Moleyns 33, 40–1, 43–5, 137–8, 144, 146, 157, 158, 179–80 Howard, Margaret Chedworth 46–7, 67, 72–3, 93, 96–7, 104, 113, 117, 119, 121, 134, 137 140, 142–3, 148, 150, 151, 154, 159, 174 Howard, Margaret Mowbray 2, 3–4, 5–7, 9, 83, 137, 144, 179–80, 192n. 2 Howard, Margaret Plaiz 2–3 Howard, Margaret, Mrs Daniel 7, 12–13, 158 Howard, Mary 3 Howard, Nicholas 41, 55, 58, 138–9, 176, 185–6 Howard, Philip, Earl of Arundel 154 Howard, Robert 2–4, 6–7, 179, 193 Howard, Thomas, Earl of Surrey or Warenne 12, 51, 62–3, 72–3, 75, 84, 102, 104, 120, 159 marriage & family 67, 135 and Mowbray inheritance 97, 111, 114, 188 and Richard III 107–8, 117–18, 123–4, 132–3 royal service 51, 55, 79, 91 youth 41, 45–6, 138–9, 179, 192n. 3, n. 36 Howard, Thomas, later 3rd duke of Norfolk 68, 96–7, 134, 191n. 30 Howard, Thomas, later 4th duke of Norfolk 154 Howe, manor of, co. Suff. 149 Howes, John 32 Hull 94, 165, 169 Hull, John 168 Hungerford, Robert, Lord Moleyns 11–12, 14, 16, 38, 41 Hungerford, lordship of 114 Hutton, William 135 Île de Rhé 37 Île Dieu 37 Ilom, Thomas, mercer 174

Inchcoln, island of 94 Inchkeith, lighthouse of 93 Ipswich 7, 39, 45, 48, 54, 92–3, 120, 163–4, 168, 171, 175–6, 192n. 3 Ireland 21 James III 74, 76, 91, 126 James IV 74, 126 Jenney, John 19 Jenney, William 19 Jerusalem 7 Joanna of Portugal 128 John, Duke of Bedford 17, 43 see also Luxembourg Katherine of Valois, Queen 4–6 Katherine, bastard dau. of Richard III, Countess of Huntingdon 128 Keche, John 26, 35 Kechyn, Thomas 130 Kendall, John 147 Kent 122 Kenton, manor of, co. Warw. 9, 14, 97, 130, 144, 192n. 2 Kerdiston, barony of 15, 19, 29 Kerdiston, Thomas, kt. 15 Kinghorn 93 King’s Lynn 2, 11, 36, 39, 41, 62, 71–2, 114, 149 Kingswood Heath 176 Knight, John 130 Ladyhall in Moreton, manor of, co. Essex 97, 144, 193n. 17 Lancashire 131 Lancaster, Duchy of 104–5, 114 Langton, Robert 40–1 Langton, Thomas 153 Latimer, Nicholas, kt. 35, 144, 147 Lavenham 35, 53, 80, 114, 120, 146, 156 Lawrence, William, merchant 172 Lawson, Robert, glazier 150 Le Coquet 37 Leffey, manor of, co. Suff. 67, 143

205 Leicester 17, 41, 113, 122–3, 132–3 Leith 93–4 Lesley, John, Bishop of St. Andrews 93–4 Lewkenor, Richard 130 Leyham, Thomas 169 Leyham, manor of, co. Suff. 35, 144 Lincoln 39, 123 Bishop of, see Chedworth, Russell Lincolnshire 61, 67 Lockwood, Richard 84 London 17, 19, 22, 28, 41, 46, 54, 59, 60, 66, 86, 90, 92, 95, 119, 121–3, 140, 170 Austin Friars’ Gate 142 Baynard’s Castle 109 Bishopsgate Street 120 Bread Street 35 Cheapside 73, 106, 149 Crooked Lane 36 Crosby Place 120 customs accounts 164, 172 Deptford 168, 170 Fleet prison 33–4 Great Chronicle of 112 Guildhall 109 Mayor and aldermen 46, 98, 109, 118, 128 Mermaid Tavern 35 Newgate gaol 125 Ratcliffe 93, 173 Smithﬁeld 43, 51, 157 St Paul’s Cathedral 105–6 St Paul’s Cross 109 St Thomas the Apostle, parish of 112 Stepney (Howard’s house in) 55, 69, 95, 104, 119, 137, 140, 146, 173–4 White Hart Inn 145, 173 Stratford nunnery 69–70 taverns 55 Thames 20, 46, 108, 121, 123, 173 Tower of 39, 63, 88, 104, 105–6, 108, 110, 117, 133, 173 Loppam, . . ., glazier 138

206 Louis XI, King of France 36–7, 46, 52, 54, 59–62, 75–82, 83, 88–91, 96, 127, 158 Lovell, Francis, Lord Lovell 118, 191n. 23 Lowestoft 3 Lubeck 70–1, 84 Lude, Sieur de 78 Ludlow 98, 102, 103 Lumley, John, Lord Lumley 154 Luxembourg, Jacques of, Count of St Pol 43 Luxemburg, Jacquetta of, Duchess of Bedford, Countess Rivers 22, 43 Lympnour, Thomas 153 Lyndsey, Thomas 145, 147, 193n. 18 Maldon, Abbess of 194n. 19 Mancini, Dominic 97, 102, 107–9, 112, 125 Manningtree 45, 165, 168, 170 Marche, de la, Olivier 51 Marchaunt, John 31 Margaret of Anjou, Queen 17, 21–3, 36–7, 43, 61–2, 84, 86 Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy 45, 53, 86, 89, 90–1, 185n. 25 Margaret of Brotherton, Countess of Norfolk 110 Marsh, William 170 Martin, John 171 Martin, William 176 Mary, dau. of Edward IV 98 Mary, Duchess of Burgundy 84, 86, 96 Maximilian, Archduke of Austria 86, 88–90, 96 Melle, William 193n. 18 Melton, John, baker 149 Melun 5 Mercers’ Company 168–9, 174–5, 177 Merevale Abbey 132 Mesenden, Robert, tailor 153 Meyton Hall, manor of, co. Norf. 35, 67, 149

INDEX

Michelson, Robert 169 Middleham castle 59, 69 Middleton, John, kt. 72, 122 Middlesex 159 Milford Haven 131 Minster Priory 134 Mint, Royal 55 Moleyns, Adam, Bishop of Chichester, 12 Moleyns, Edith 157–8 Moleyns, Eleanor, Lady Moleyns 11–12 Moleyns, Katherine, see Howard Moleyns, Thomas 139, 158 Moleyns, William, Lord Moleyns 11, 182n 5, see also Hungerford, Whalesborough Moleyns, William 11 Molle, Richard 130 Monks Eleigh 145 Montgomery, Thomas, kt. 34, 69–70, 81, 84, 86 More, Thomas, kt. 108 Morpeth, Dame Anne 175 Mortimer, Elizabeth 139 Mortimer, Robert 92, 130, 133, 139–40, 142 Mortimer’s Cross, battle of 22 Morton, John, Bishop of Ely 78, 86, 96, 98, 106–8, 127, 142 Mountjoy, Lord, see Blount Mowbray, Anne, Duchess of York and Norfolk 83, 87–8, 95, 97, 110 Mowbray, Elizabeth, Countess of Suffolk 4, 6 Mowbray, Esmond 4 Mowbray, Isabel, Lady Ferrers, Lady Berkeley 4, 6, 16, 83 Mowbray, John I, 2nd Duke of Norfolk 3–5, 9 Mowbray, John II, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, 9, 10, 12, 14–15, 17–23, 25, 27, 30, 33, 34, 145–6, 161, 179 Mowbray, John III, 4th Duke of Norfolk 34, 36–40, 42, 45, 50–1, 53–4, 62, 75,

83, 87, 101, 110, 114, 166, 176–7, 183n. 11, 185n. 20, 193n. 17 Mowbray, Margaret, see Howard Mowbray, Thomas, 1st Duke of Norfolk 2, 4 Mowbray, Thomas, Earl of Norfolk and Nottingham 9 Mowbray inheritance 83, 97, 110, 113–4 Nancy, siege of 84 Nayland 105, 145 Neuss 75 Neve, Peter, Le 193n. 10 Neville, Anne, Duchess of Buckingham 22 Neville, Anne, Princess of Wales, Queen 61, 118–19, 126–8 Neville, Cecily, Duchess of York 13, 44, 49, 53, 73, 109, 123, 145 Neville, Edward, Lord Abergavenny 12, 47, 55, 98 Neville, Edward 119, 122 Neville, George, Bishop of Exeter, Archbishop of York 23, 57–8, 68, 70 Neville, George, Duke of Bedford 60, 111 Neville, George, Lord Abergavenny 121–2 Neville, Isabel, Duchess of Clarence 58, 61 Neville, John, Lord Montagu, Earl of Northumberland 36–7, 41, 57, 60, 63 Neville, Katherine, Duchess of Norfolk 12, 19, 83, 87, 97, 110, 114, 117, 145 Neville, Margaret, Countess of Oxford 69, 119, 134, 139, 190n. 6 Neville, Margaret, Lady Cobham 92 Neville, Richard, Earl of Salisbury 13, 17, 21, 22 Neville, Richard, Earl of Warwick 13, 17, 21, 22, 25, 30, 36, 45, 52–5, 58–63, 76, 81, 89, 128, 158

207

INDEX

as Capt. of Calais 21, 57, 66, 107, 162 naval affairs 165, 167 minstrels of 155 Neville, Thomas, Bastard of Fauconberg 60–1, 63 Neville, William, Lord Fauconberg, Earl of Kent 23, 36–7, 60, 118, 168 Newcastle 25, 37, 93, 95 Newmarket 41 Nibley Green, battle of 188n. 5 Nicholas V, Pope 12 Norbery, John, kt. 122 Norfolk 2, 10, 13, 19, 20, 34, 43, 58, 67, 113, 122, 130, 172 coroner of 25 elections 14, 17–18, 27–9, 31–4, 38 Norfolk and Suffolk, sheriff of 11, 23, 25, 84, 125, 135 Normandy 78, 91 Norris, Anne/Jane 48 Norris, Jane, see de Vere Norris, John 46–7, 123, 174 Norris, John, the younger 47, 168, 195n. 19 Norris, Lettice 47–8, 95 Norris, William, kt. 36, 47, 121, 139 Norris, William, the younger 47–8 North Sea 34, 71, 84, 161–2 Northampton, battle of 21, 25 Northamptonshire 113 Northumberland 36–9, 91 Northumberland, Earls of, see Percy, Neville Norwich, William 34 Norwich 29, 38, 58, 62, 120 castle 32 Notbem, Margaret 139, 157 Nottingham 126, 131–2 Ogle, Robert, Lord Ogle 37 Oldhall, William, kt. 140 Orleans, siege of 11 Orwell Haven 166 Outlaw, Richard, mariner 39, 57

Overybury Hall, Layham, co. Suff. Oxford 119 earls, countesses of, see de Vere, Neville Paris 79 Parke, Richard, tiler 176 Parker, John 171 Parker, William 74, 167, 169–70, 171 Parliament 51, 62, 97 elections see Norfolk, Suffolk Paston family 2, 9, 10 Paston, Clement 33 Paston John I 11, 19, 25–9, 31–3, 35, 58 Paston, John II, kt. 48, 58, 66, 67, 72 Paston John III 34, 37, 40–1, 48, 53, 67, 72, 122, 131, 135 Paston, Margaret, 11, 34, 38, 58 Paston, William 11 Peche, William, kt. 68, 176 Pembroke 131 Earl of, see Herbert Penley, John 114, 159–60 Percy, Henry, Earl of Northumberland 17, 60, 94, 112, 115, 118, 124, 132–3 Percy, Robert, kt. 118 Percy family 94 Perrekyn, John, brickmaker 142 Pers, Sir, chaplain 142, 149 Philip, Duke of Burgundy 45, 50–1, 89 Picardy 59, 66, 76 Picquigny 79–80 Treaty of, 80, 84, 86, 89 Pilkington, Charles 108 Pitman, John, mariner 169 Pittenweem 93 Plaiz, John, Lord Plaiz 2 Plaiz, Margaret, see Howard Plessis-du-Parc-les-Tours 86 Plomer, Richard 124 Plymouth 16 Pole, de la, Anne 126

Pole, de la, John, Duke of Suffolk 10, 21, 38, 42, 62, 98, 110, 115, 118, 124, 145 minstrels of 155 Pole, de la, John, Earl of Lincoln 98, 115, 118, 126 Pole, de la, William, Duke of Suffolk 10–12, 14, 17 Polstead 7, 143 Pontefract 39 Portsmouth 54, 172 Portugal 128–9 merchants of 20 Power, William 176 Powys, Lord, see Grey Price, William 27–9, 31 Prince, John 73–4 Prittlewell, manor of, co. Essex 88, 97, 144 Prussia 57, 72, 167, 172 Queenborough 20 Radcliffe, John, Lord Fitzwalter 115, 135, 192n. 36 Radmyld, William 48, 95 Ratcliff, James, kt. 133 Ratcliffe, Richard 191 Ratcliff, Robert, porter of Calais 68 Ratcliffe, Robert, kt. 96 Rawson, Richard, mercer 174 Raynesford, Michael 50 Read, Simond 169 Reading 41, 119 Abbey of 41 Reigate 121, 130, 159 Priory of 121 Restout, . . ., merchant of Rouen 82 Richard II 4 Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Richard III 34, 53–4, 60, 62, 69–70, 73–4, 77, 89, 90, 91, 95–6, 98, 141, 146, 168–9 Admiral of England 101, 119 Buckingham’s rebellion 121–3 coronation 117–18 coup 103–7 death of 133

208 Richard, Duke of Gloucester (continued) personal relations with Howard 53–4, 69–70, 101, 105, 113, 147 players, minstrels of 101, 155 reign of, see Chap. 7 Richard, Duke of York 13–15, 17–18, 20–2, 98, 162 Richard, Duke of York and Norfolk 83–4, 87, 95, 97, 101, 104, 106, 108–12, 114 117, 125 Richmond, Earl of, see Tudor Robin of Redesdale, rebellion of 58 Rochester 91, 122 Roden, William 40 Roos, Thomas, Lord Roos 41, 182n. 9 see also Tiptoft Rosse, Harry, kt. 130 Rosse, William 72 Rotherham, Thomas, Bishop of Lincoln, Archbishop of York 79, 81, 89, 95, 98, 102, 106–7 Rouen 5, 82 Roydon 11 Russell, John, Bishop of Lincoln 71, 98, 106, 108, 122, 123 Ryarsh, manor of, co. Kent 193n. 17 Rysbank fortress 55, 59 St. Albans, battles of 17, 22, 25 St. Leger, Thomas, kt. 78–9 St. Leonard’s, forest of 113 St. Michael’s Mount 68 St. Omer 90 St. Osyth 70 Abbot of 145 St. Pierrre, Sieur de 78 St. Pol, Count of, see Luxembourg Sandwich 20–1, 37, 54, 93, 162 Sandys, . . ., grocer 149 Scales, Elizabeth, Lady 41–2, 104, 114, 156 Scales, Thomas, Lord 13–14 see also Woodville

INDEX

Scarborough 93 Schell, William 122 Schellen, Nicholas 84 Scotland 41, 63, 68, 74, 84, 101, 126, 134 naval expedition against 91–4, 96, 140, 153, 155, 158, 169 Scott, John, kt., marshall of Calais 68, 71 Scraton, John 124 Scraton, John the younger 124 Scrope, Eleanor, Lady 193n. 10 Scrope, Elizabeth, Lady Scrope of Masham 145, 194 Scrope, John, Lord Scrope of Bolton 75, 128 Scrope, John 3 Scrope, Ralph 128 Senlis 78 Sergaunt, Robert 74 Seynclow, Giles 35, 42, 158–9 Seynclow, Thomas 158 Sharneburne, Thomas 18–19, 32 Shaw, Edmund, Lord Mayor 118 Shaw, Ralph, Dr. 109 Sheppey 134–5 Ships: Anthony of Burgundy 169 Barbara 93, 169–71, 176 Christopher Howard 37, 51, 54, 60, 164, 168–70 Edward 51–2, 60–1, 91, 165–72, 195n. 11 George Cobham 92 George Howard 37, 74, 91, 165, 168–70, 172, 174–5, 177 Grace Dieu 90, 92, 165, 169 Great Mary 165 Helen (New) of London 53 Helen (Old) of London 174–5 Holy Ghost of Portugal 91–2 James 57 Jenet 84 John of Newcastle 54

Katherine Howard 168, 170 Margaret Howard 60, 74, 168, 170, 174–5, 177 Margery of Sandwich 170 Marie of Bilbao 91 Marie of Leith 84 Marie of Sandwich 84 Marie Sanz Piere 61 Marie Talbot of Lynn 36, 38, 57, 92 Marie Thomson 36 Mary and John 165 Mary Howard 92–3, 167, 169–70 Mary Rose 195n. 11 Michael of Barnstable 168, 170 Paker Howard 92, 95, 169–71 Thomas Howard 74, 169–70 Trego Howard als Mary Trego 169–71, 195n. 23 Trinity 60–1 Trinity of Eu 92 Trinity of St Osyth 165 Valentine of Newcastle 46 Ships’ masters, see Barre, Bawdewyn, Bere, Hammond, Marsh, Michelson, Outlaw, Parker, Read, Sergaunt, White, William Shore, Jane 171 Shore, William, mercer 171 Shrewsbury 131 Earl of, see Talbot Sizewell 173 Skinner, John 158–9 Skinner, Richard 159 Sluys, battle of 162 Smethon Hall, manor of, co. Essex 35, 144 Snape 143 Somerset 114, 140 Duke of, see Beaufort Somme, River 79 Southampton 52, 61 Southwell, Richard 28 Southwold 173 Spain 172, 177 Spens, John, shipbuilder 165

209

INDEX

Sprottes, manor of, co. Suff. 143–5, 193n. 16 Stafford, Edward, 1st Duke of Buckingham, widow of, see Neville Stafford, Edward, 3rd Duke of Buckingham 150 Stafford, Henry, Duke of Buckingham 103, 105, 106–10, 115, 117–18 rebellion of 121–124 Stafford, Humphrey, Lord Stafford, Earl of Devon 58, 156 Staffordshire 67 Stanley, George, Lord Strange 131–2 Stanley, Thomas, Lord Stanley 44, 75–7, 106–7, 115, 118, 131–2 Stanley, William, kt. 132, 133 Stanstrete, manor of, co. Suff. 67, 143, 149 Stapleton, Miles, kt. 28 Stillington, Robert, Bishop of Bath and Wells 59, 118 Stoke-by-Nayland, Suff. 3, 7, 9, 21, 39, 41, 43, 45, 48–9, 62, 96–8, 101, 105, 120, 122, 130, 140, 142–3, 145, 147–9, 170, 176 see also Tendring Hall church of St Mary the Virgin 26, 45, 143, 153 school in, 138 Stoke Poges 11 Stony Stratford 103–4 Sudbury 49, 53 Suffolk 2, 7, 10, 15, 17, 20–1, 41, 43–4, 67, 74, 80, 83–4, 104, 113, 122, 126, 130, 134, 137, 145, 172 Duchess of, see Chaucer Duke of, see de la Pole elections 28, 48 sheriff of, see Norfolk Surrey 115, 120–1, 130 Earl of, see Howard sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, 159 Sussex 40, 87, 113, 115, 120, 130 Syon Abbey 98

Tailboys, William, kt. 37 Talbot family 87 Talbot, Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk 17, 40, 42, 53, 83, 87, 97, 110, 114, 120, 139, 183n. 11, 188n. 4 Talbot, Humphrey, kt. 188n. 4 Talbot, John, Earl of Shrewsbury 16, 188n. 5 Talbot, John, Lord Lisle 16, 188n. 5 Tendring, Alice, see Howard Tendring, Katherine 143 Tendring, William, kt. 3 Tendring Hall, Stoke-byNayland 3, 9, 12, 43, 134, 137, 142, 143, 146, 150, 155 chapel of 26, 142–3, 153 Tendring, hundred of 145 Terrington, manor of, co. Norf. 193n. 16 Tewkesbury, battle of 62, 65 Thetford 45, 120 Priory 83, 133 Theydon Garnon, manor of, co. Essex 73–4 Theydon Gregories, manor of, co. Essex 73–4 Thomas. Duke of Clarence 17 Thomson, Andrew 93, 169 Thorpe, Robert 149 Thorpe, Thomas 122, 130, 149, 158 Thwaites, Thomas, bailiff of Guines 68 Timperley, John 31, 141 Timperley, John, the younger 92, 119, 130, 141–2, 159 Tiptoft, John, Earl of Worcester 37, 39, 160 Tiptoft, Philippa, Lady Roos 29, 183n. 9 Towe, James, mariner 172 Towton, battle of 23, 25, 27, 36 Troyes, Treaty of 5 Tucker, Melvyn J. 111 Tudor, Henry, Earl of Richmond, Henry VII 102, 107, 121, 123, 126–7, 129, 131–4, 135

Tudor, Jasper, Earl of Pembroke 22 Tunstall, Richard, kt. 52, 86 Turburvyle, John 126 Turner, Richard, carpenter 176 Tylney, Elizabeth, Countess of Surrey 67, 72, 119, 134–5 Tylney, Frederick, kt.67 Usﬂete, Gerard, kt. 4 Utrecht 71, 72 Vaughan, Thomas, kt. 43, 69, 104, 109 Venice 4 merchants of 20 Vere, de, Aubrey 35 Vere, de, Jane, Lady Norris 47, 123, 139 Vere, de, John, 12th Earl of Oxford 10, 14, 20, 25–7, 35, 58, 162 Vere, de, John 13th Earl of Oxford 3, 6, 42, 62–3, 68–9, 115, 123, 127, 132–5, 139, 146, 154, 156 see also Howard Vere, de, family estates 69–70, 73–4, 80, 91, 101, 114–5, 146 Vergil, Polydore 102, 106–7, 109, 112, 125, 132 Verney, Richard, kt. 144 Vervins 81 Waffers, Harry, kt. 156 Wakeﬁeld, battle of 22, 138 Walberswick 173 Wales 60, 107, 115, 121, 131 Walgrave, Thomas, kt. 36 Walsingham 28, 120 Walton, Joan, see Howard Warenne, earldom of, see Howard Warwick, Earls of, see Beauchamp, Neville Warkworth castle 37 Wastell, William, harper 155 Waynﬂete, John 92 Wenlock, John, Lord Wenlock 45, 53, 61, 66 Wentworth, Harry, kt. 92

210 Wentworth, Henry, see also Howard Wentworth, Philip, kt. 19 Wesel, von, Gerhard 186n. 42 Westminster 46, 80, 95, 98, 102, 104, 106, 108, 127, 173 Abbey 65, 98, 105, 117–8, 125 Court of King’s Bench 109 Hall 98, 109–10, 118 Parliament Chamber 65 St. Stephen’s Chapel 87–8 sanctuary 105, 108 Westwode, Thomas 20 Whalesborough, Margery, Lady Moleyns 11 Wherstede, manor of, co. Suff. 35, 144 Whitchurch 40 White, William, mariner 164 Whymple, manor of, co. Devon 146 Wiggenhall, manor of, co. Norf. 7 Willerby, George 57 William, Sir, priest 155 William, Thomas, 37

INDEX

Williams, John 92 Wiltshire 114 Earl of, see Butler Winchester, earldom of 68 Windsor 51, 98, 102, 119 St George’s Chapel 98–9 Wingﬁeld, Robert 19 Wingﬁeld, Thomas 28, 183n. 9 Wingﬁeld 15 Wingﬁeld, John 18–19 Withiale, Thomas 73 Wivenhoe 45, 93, 154, 156 manor of 91, 101, 142, 147 Wolpett Fair 148 Woodhouse, Henry 11 Woodville, Anthony, Lord Scales, Earl Rivers 37, 41–3, 50–5, 61–2, 86, 88, 102–5, 109, 114–15, 160, 170 Woodville, Edward, kt.104, 106 Woodville, Elizabeth, Lady Grey, Queen 43–5, 47, 50, 58, 62, 97, 102–4, 106, 108–9, 112, 115, 119, 125–6, 138 Woodville, John, kt. 58–9, 87

Woodville, Richard, Earl Rivers 43, 59, 61 Worcester, Earl of, see Tiptoft Worseley, Robert 130 Worm, John 32 Wotton, Robert, friar 44 Wraxall 140, 149 Wrethenham, manor of, co. Suff. 193n. 16 Wyfold, Isabel 46, 48 Wyfold, Nicholas, grocer 46, 174 Wyndham, John 31, 140 Wyndham, John, the younger 139–42, 193n. 10 Yarmouth 93, 163, 168, 170 Yattenden, manor of, co. Berks. 47 York 23, 38–9, 41, 97, 106, 113, 123 York, Duke of, see Richard Yorkshire 62, 67, 98, 104, 109 Young, John, lodesman 167 Zeeland 168–9, 174–5, 177