Philippa Langley: The King's Grave

On Richard’s courage, and his final moments in battle, the provisional ideas of Bob Woosnam-Savage are from ‘The Violent Death of the King in the Car Park’, a talk given at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, on 27 March 2013. For another who may have struck Richard In those final, terrible moments: Raymond Skinner, ‘Thomas Woodshawe, “Grassiour” and Regicide’, Ricardian, IX (1993). Rhys ap Thomas’s duel with Richard is recounted in the seventeenth-century family history: Ralph Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and His Family: A Study in the Wars of the Roses and Early Tudor Politics (Cardiff, 1993).

The history attributed Richard’s death to Rhys himself, but it was one of his followers who almost certainly killed him. For the praise poem: Edward Rees, A Life of Guto’r Glyn (Aberwystwyth, 2008). Information on the Rhys ap Thomas bed has been kindly provided by Sioned Williams, Curator of Furniture at the National History Museum, Cardiff.

For the story of Thomas Redeheid see Paul Murray Kendall, Richard III (London, 1973) p. 136. For Richard’s sense of humour: from Leicester Castle, on 18 August 1483, Richard sent an important letter to the French king, Louis XI. The letter was carried by Richard’s groom of the stable: ‘I pray that by my servant, this bearer, a groom of my stable, you will let me know in writing your full intention…’ Kendall, Richard III, pp. 255–6.

For the letter to Chancellor Russell see Kendall, Richard III, p. 324. Kendall remarks on the generosity of the letter. For the full text of the poem see Andrew Breeze, ‘A Welsh Poem of 1485 on Richard III’, Ricardian, XVIII (2008), pp. 46–53.

For analysis indicating the Tudor instigation behind it, see Annette Carson, ‘Dafydd Llwyd’s Poem’, Ricardian Bulletin, autumn 2008, pp. 35–49.

William Bracher, yeoman of the crown, owed his promotion to royal service through informing Richard of the uprising in the West Country in 1483: Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1476–85, pp. 373, 390 (grants of lands and offices in Devon, Somerset and Dorset for ‘good service against the rebels’). Catesby’s role as agent of Richard III in Brittany was crucial in precipitating Henry Tudor’s flight from the duchy at the end of September 1484: Cliff Davies, ‘Richard III, Brittany and Henry Tudor’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 37 (1993).

For the revealing wording of Richard’s grant of an annuity to Saxton Church on 19 February 1484: Tim Sutherland and Armin Schmidt, ‘Towton 1461: An Integrated Approach to Battlefield Archaeology’, Landscapes, 4 (2003).

For Thomas Gregory’s pride in his service ‘cum Henrico Septimo apud Bosworth Field’, in the earliest use of the actual battle name: the Shakespeare Centre (Birthplace Trust), DR10/1349, a deed of 26 October 1500. Henry VII’s first parliament is described in Cavill, English Parliaments. Material on the Stanley-Harrington dispute is drawn from Michael Jones, ‘Richard III and the Stanleys’, in Richard III and the North, ed. Horrox. For the political climate of the time see Paul Strohm, Politique: The Languages of Statecraft Between Chaucer and Shakespeare (Notre Dame, Indiana, 2005) and Grummitt, Short History of the Wars of the Roses. Thomas Barowe’s bequest is from Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘Richard III and the University of Cambridge’, in Richard III and East Anglia, ed. Visser-Fuchs.

On legitimacy and the Tudor claim to the throne: Michael Bennett, ‘Table Tittle-tattle and the Tudor View of History’, in People, Places and Perspectives: Essays on Later Medieval and Early Tudor England, ed. Keith Dockray and Peter Fleming (Stroud, 2005).

For the de la Pole pedigree see Philip Morgan, ‘“Those Were the Days” – a Yorkist Pedigree Roll’, in Estrangement, Education and Enterprise in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Sharon Michalove (Stroud, 1998). Cliff Davies, ‘Information, Disinformation and Political Knowledge under Henry VII and Early Henry VIII’, Historical Research, 85 (2012) provides an important reassessment of the Tudor view of history. Jane Sacheverell’s petition is in University of Nottingham Library, GB159 Mi5/168/23.

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