Richard III's 'Beloved Cousyn' E-Book

John Ashdown-Hill

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

In 1455 John Howard was an untitled and relatively obscure Suffolk gentleman. Thirty years later, at the time of his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field, he was Earl Marshal, Duke of Norfolk, Lord Admiral and a very rich man (and his direct descendant is Duke of Norfolk today). How had Howard attained these elevations? Through his service to the House of York, and in particular to King Richard III during the setting aside of Edward V. John Ashdown-Hill examines why Howard chose to support Richard, even ultimately at the cost of his life; what secrets he knew about Edward IV; what he had to do with the fate of the 'Princes in the Tower;' and what naval innovations, hitherto ascrided to the Tudors, he promoted. Based on original research and containing previously unpublished material, Richard III's 'Beloved Cousyn' is an important contribution to Ricardian scholarship.

Leseprobe

To my friends, the Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulchre in Colchester, who helped me to commemorate John Howard and his men at St John’s Abbey, and especially to Sister Stephanie, who took a special interest in my progress, and Sister Mary Stephen, who is one of John Howard’s descendants.

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks for their kind and invaluable assistance are due to the staff of the Essex Record Office, the Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich branch), the British Library, the archival and library staff of His Grace the Duke of Norfolk at Arundel Castle, and the library staff of the Society of Antiquaries of London. I also owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Dr Chris Thornton, who supervised my PhD research, and to the members of my supervisory board: Dr Joan Davies and Dr Herbert Eiden. My thanks also go to Annette Carson and Dave Perry, who kindly read draft versions of the text, and corrected typographical and other errors; and likewise to Cath D’Alton and Geoff Wheeler who supplied illustrations. I should also like to thank my PhD examiners, Professor Anne Curry and Professor John Walters, without whose encouragement I might never have attempted to make parts of my thesis more widely available in the form of this book.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

List ofAbbreviations and Symbols

Introduction

1 A Suffolk Gentleman

2 Black and Blue

3 ‘The High and Mighty Princess’

4 Father Figure?

5 ‘Trusty and Well-Beloved’

6 The First English Carvel

7 Innovations

8 The Howard Lifestyle

9 My Lord Chamberlain

10 Secrets of the King’s Bedchamber

11 The Death of Edward IV

12 ‘Bastard King’

13 Ducal Progress

14 ‘The King’s Kinsman’

15 John Howard’s Religious Life

16 Post-Mortem Moves

Appendix 1

The ‘Gregory’s’ Dispute: Cecily Neville’s Draft Letters

Appendix 2

Parliamentary Representatives for Ipswich and Colchester during the Yorkist Period

Appendix 3

1483: The Calendar ofthe Year ofthe Three Kings

Appendix 4

Man-at-Arms ofKnown origin in North Essex and South Suffolk, Contracted to Serve John Howard in the 1480s

Bibiliography

Plates

Copyright

List of Abbreviations and Symbols

BL

British Library

BM

British Museum

B.OB

W.G. Benham, ed., Colchester Oath Book

CCCC

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

CHM

Calendar ofMuniments, Harwich

CP

G.E. Cockayne, The Complete Peerage, London, 1910–59

CPR

Calendar ofPatent Rolls

Cr. Chr.

N. Pronay and J. Cox, eds, The Crowland Chronicle continuations 1459–1486, London, 1986

ERO

Essex Record Office

Gothic

R. Marks & P. Williamson, eds, Gothic, Art for England 1400–1547, London: V&A, 2003

HHB

A. Crawford, ed., Howard Household Books, Stroud, 1992

HM

Harwich Muniments

HP Biog.

J.C. Wedgwood and A.D. Holt, History ofParliament 1439–1509 – Biographies ofthe Members ofthe Commons House

IRO

Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich Branch)

J.Ch.

I.H. Jeayes, ed., Descriptive Catalogue ofa Collection ofCharters sometime preserved at Gifford’s Hall in Stoke-by-Nayland, Co. Suffolk, unpublished, IRO, S 347

Mancini

C.A.J. Armstrong, ed., Dominic [sic] Mancini, The Usurpation ofRichard III, Gloucester, 1984

MEJ

R.W. Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery, London:V&A, 1992

NPG

National Portrait Gallery

ODNB

Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography

PL

N. Davis, Paston Letters and Papers ofthe fifteenth century, 2 vols, Oxford, 1971; 1976

PPE

N.H. Nicolas, ed., Privy Purse Expenses ofElizabeth ofYork & Wardrobe Accounts ofEdward IV, London: W. Pickering, 1830; reprinted London: F. Muller, 1972

R3MK

A. Carson, Richard III, the Maligned King, Stroud 2008

Ric.

The Ricardian

Road

P.W. Hammond and A.F. Sutton, Richard III – the Road to Bosworth Field, London, 1985

Soc. Ant.

The Society of Antiquaries of London

TNA

The National Archive [formerly PRO]

V&A

Victoria and Albert Museum

VCH

Victoria County History

WRO

Warwickshire Record Office

Q

J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The client network, connections and patronage of Sir John Howard (Lord Howard, first Duke of Norfolk) in north-east Essex and south Suffolk’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Essex, 2008

Introduction

This book arose largely out of research for my PhD thesis. The latter was essentially local in its focus, concentrating in detail upon John Howard’s client network and patronage in north Essex and south Suffolk. But inevitably it also considered John Howard’s national importance. Reviewing Howard’s service to and relationship with the Yorkist kings produced new evidence, new interpretations and new perspectives, and these form the basis of the present study.

Although the presentation of material is sequential within each chapter – and in general terms, within the book as a whole – a complete chronological account of John Howard’s career was not my aim. The individual chapters are thematic in their approach, while the overarching purpose of the book is to examine every aspect of John Howard’s relationship with the ruling house of York.

Studying those men and women who were key figures in the entourage of the Yorkist kings is of interest in its own right, but it also has the potential to shed new light upon the enigmas of the period. Certainly, through this study, we discover much about John Howard himself: his technological awareness, the state of his health, his leisure activities, his government service, his relationship with the royal family and others, his beliefs, and perhaps something of his character. But at the same time hopefully a clearer picture also emerges of the Yorkist era as a whole. As a result of the evidence presented here we can now accord due credit (perhaps for the first time) to Edward IV’s role in building up the navy, and the reader is invited to reconsider the standard assessment of Edward’s character.

At the same time, new light is shed on the key events of 1483 and the accession of Richard III, as these are re-examined in minute detail in the light of John Howard’s day-to-day experience of the course of events.

All my references to John Howard’s surviving household accounts give details of the original manuscript source as well as the more readily accessible 1992 published transcripts. This is because the latter contain a few errors of transcription, a number of discrepancies in folio numbering, and a few omissions (full details of which can be found in Q, appendix 1).

Conventions

The following conventions have been adopted:

Spelling

Dates

In the fifteenth century the calendar year in England began on Lady Day (25 March), and not on 1 January. Therefore, for dates falling between 1 January and 24 March the usual convention is followed. February 1464/5 means February 1464 (medieval calendar) or February 1465 (modern calendar).

1

A Suffolk Gentleman

… they seid to me they wolde have [Chaumberleyn], but not Howard, in asmeche as he hadde no lyvelode in [Norfolk].

John Jenney, 1455

On 10 December 1455 an untitled and relatively obscure Suffolk gentleman received for the first time an official commission from the government of Henry VI.1 His name was John Howard and, since he was the fifth known member of his family to bear that name, we shall call him John Howard V. Although Howard’s family origins amongst the Suffolk gentry clearly made him eligible to serve on government commissions of the peace, or of array, and although he had for some years been old enough for such nominations, none had ever previously been addressed to him by the crown. From the point of view of the Lancastrian regime, Howard was tainted by the wrong associations. In the ongoing dispute between the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk and the de la Pole dukes of Suffolk, John Howard’s family connections and personal commitment placed him on the wrong side.2

Thirty years later, on 22 August 1485, John Howard V was killed at the battle of Bosworth, fighting for the house of York against the Tudor invader who pretended, not very convincingly, to represent the claims of the house of Lancaster.3 By then, Howard was a wealthy man.4 Under the Yorkist dynasty he had risen through the ranks of knight, admiral and baron. He was several times a peer, Earl Marshal of England and Duke of Norfolk, and he died commanding the vanguard of his sovereign’s army. In the course of those thirty years the change in Howard’s status had been tremendous, and his influence and patronage had grown enormously.

Those years had witnessed Howard’s transformation into a ‘new magnate’. In the power vacuum left by the ineffectuality of his Mowbray kinsmen, the dukes of Norfolk, the eclipse of the de la Poles (earls and dukes of Suffolk), and the ultimate flight of the de Veres (earls of Oxford),5 Sir John Howard first became the dominant lord in Suffolk (rather as Sir Thomas Montgomery did in neighbouring Essex). However, Howard ultimately rose even higher. From a position in which he played a key but regional role in the eastern counties, he became a figure of national importance. In serving the house of York, John Howard also became one of the principal figures shaping that dynasty’s future: he built Edward IV’s navy; lawyers whom Howard retained subsequently went on to serve the royal family; he acted as a diplomat between Edward IV and the Burgundian and French courts; he even touched on the most private aspects of Edward IV’s life, serving as an intermediary for the enigmatic Eleanor Talbot, and having close links with the Shore family.

Enjoying the trust of both Edward IV and Richard III, and closely linked by ties of blood and friendship with both the Mowbray and Talbot families, Howard ultimately became a leading player in the dramatic events which marked the final years of Yorkist rule in England. The decision which he made in the summer of 1483 to support the accession of Richard III in the face of the rival claims of Edward IV’s children, the probable reasons for that decision, and Howard’s role in the events which followed, are all vital pieces of evidence in a complex jigsaw puzzle, the complete pattern of which has yet to be fully comprehended. The true significance of Howard’s part in these dramatic happenings has never hitherto been properly documented or understood.

John Howard V’s date of birth is not recorded, but when he received his first commission in 1455 he was at least thirty years old, and had been married for twelve years or more to Catherine de Moleyns, a baron’s daughter6 who had already borne him six children. During the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries his Howard forebears had risen from humble beginnings in north Norfolk. Like the Pastons later, their route to worldly success was initially via a legal career. From simple beginnings the early fourteenth-century Howards established themselves in a small way as members of the local landed gentry. It had been John Howard III who, as a result of his second marriage to Alice, daughter and heiress of Sir William Tendring of Stoke-by-Nayland, settled the family in Suffolk.

John Howard V was something of a hybrid. His grandfather, Sir John Howard III, had made a very good first marriage, and a second marriage which at least left its descendants (of whom John Howard V was ultimately the chief) in possession of a little landed property. Sir John Howard III figures in the Suffolk records of the first decades of the fifteenth century as a man of some local consequence. However, his second son, Sir Robert Howard II, was a relatively minor knight of no great lineage or achievements, who died comparatively young and who figures scarcely at all in national and local records – though like some of his ancestors and successors, he was a naval commander.7 In fact, Robert Howard II’s one towering achievement in terms of his family’s future was his marriage. His wife, the mother of John Howard V, was Lady Margaret Mowbray, one of the daughters of Thomas Mowbray, first Duke of Norfolk, and descendant of Edward I.8

We know neither the date of Margaret’s birth nor that of her marriage to Robert Howard. However, Margaret’s father died in 1399, so she must have been over twenty years old when she married Robert, who was her first husband.9 It seems certain that she married relatively late and somewhat beneath her. It has been asserted that there is some evidence of a frosty relationship between Lady Margaret and her mother, Elizabeth Fitzalan, the dowager Duchess of Norfolk, and that this may well indicate that Margaret married against her mother’s wishes. In fact, the evidence for this assertion is somewhat controversial.10 But Robert Howard’s inferior status cannot be questioned. It is not even certain that he had received knighthood prior to his marriage, for he appears in the Colchester Borough records in 1418–19 untitled.11 Indeed, his elder half-brother, John Howard IV, seems never to have attained knightly rank.12 Robert’s father, Sir John Howard III, figures frequently in deeds of the 1430s from Stoke-by-Nayland.13 Although details of the collateral Howard pedigree are not clear, Sir Robert Howard probably had cousins in varying degrees, whose descendants play a minor role in the story of the dynasty.14 A William Howard is mentioned at Stoke-by-Nayland in 1471,15 and a John Howard, who is not one of those shown on the family trees published here, occurs in Colchester records of about the same period.16 There is also one obscure mention of a priest, ‘Howard’s son’, where it is not clear which Howard is meant.17

Robert Howard’s and Margaret Mowbray’s son, the young John Howard V, was probably born in or around 1422. He gravitated naturally into the entourage of his maternal uncle, John Mowbray, second Duke of Norfolk. Later he also served his cousin, the third Mowbray duke, and finally his cousin’s son, the fourth (last) Mowbray duke. Despite the fact that he occupied a position of power and influence in the Mowbray retinue during the minority and young adulthood of the fourth Mowbray duke, the thought can scarcely have entered his head that one day the Mowbray line would be extinct, and that he himself would succeed to the dukedom of Norfolk. Nevertheless, John Howard’s life story represents a tale of steady, if somewhat slow progress to that unexpected pinnacle.

For many years he was a simple esquire. Being in the orbit of the Mowbrays, he was drawn with them into the service of their cousin, Richard of Cambridge, Duke of York. One can therefore argue that John Howard was virtually born a Yorkist. At any rate, neither he nor anyone else (including the government of Henry VI) seems ever to have been in much doubt as to where his probable loyalties would lie. By 1460, if not before, John Howard was personally acquainted with York’s eldest son, the young Edward, Earl of March. Their names occur together as feoffees in a deed of 27 August 1460, relating to a messuage and lands in Higham and Stratford St Mary, Suffolk.18 Shortly after the date of this feoffment, when the Earl of March attained the throne as Edward IV, it was only natural that John Howard, as one of the supporters of the new dynasty, should also rise in rank. On 28 June 1461, at Edward IV’s coronation, Howard was knighted.19 Edward IV, who employed him regularly, would later (late 1469 or early 1470) create him Baron Howard. Later still, in 1483, Edward’s brother, Richard III, raised him to the dukedom of Norfolk, thereby founding a new ducal dynasty which has lasted to the present day.

It is tempting to speak of the relationship which grew up between Howard and the Yorkist princes as one of friendship, and this is a point to which we shall return later. There is certainly evidence that Edward IV generally favoured him, though the relationship was perhaps not without its ups and downs, as we shall discuss in due course. For the moment, however, let us merely observe that Howard and the king were by no means of an age. Howard was twenty years Edward’s senior, and although he was some ten years younger than the Duke of York, Howard was certainly old enough to have been Edward IV’s father, since his own eldest son, Thomas Howard, was about Edward’s age. We shall return to this age gap in Chapter 4, when its possible implications will be more fully explored.

The relationship between Howard and Edward’s younger brother, the future Richard III, has also been spoken of in terms of friendship, and again, there is certainly evidence of the trust reposed in Howard by Richard. But here too, it is very important to bear in mind the age gap between the two men. As we shall see in Chapter 4, in Richard’s case Howard may well have been perceived by the young royal duke as something of a surrogate father-figure – a role strengthened, perhaps, by Howard’s close ties of service to Richard’s mother, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York.

It was probably early in the 1460s that John Howard was appointed Cecily Neville’s steward in respect of the honour of Clare. There was a significant degree of overlap between those who served Cecily Neville, those who served the Mowbrays, and those who served John Howard. This is particularly noticeable in respect of the retention of legal advisers. Although it is difficult to be certain which of the three first employed (and subsequently recommended) such lawyers and other servants, it is clear that exchanges and recommendations did take place. These issues are examined more fully in Chapter 3.

Sir John Howard V remained intimately linked with the house of York and its fortunes throughout the Yorkist period. In 1470, when Edward IV was forced to seek refuge in the Low Countries during the Lancastrian Readeption, Howard’s power and influence in the eastern counties was at its nadir. Some of his close associates from the Mowbray entourage accompanied Edward IV into exile,20 however, Howard himself remained behind in England, taking sanctuary at St John’s Abbey in Colchester, together with one of Lord Hastings’ brothers.21 Neither Howard nor his cousin the Duke of Norfolk (who was forcibly detained at this time in London by the Earl of Warwick) was on hand to offer personal support when Edward IV and his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, tried to land at Cromer, in Norfolk, on Tuesday evening, 12 March 1471.22 Nevertheless, the Duke of Norfolk slipped out of London and made his way back to the eastern counties, to raise support for the house of York in Norfolk. Howard meanwhile emerged from his sanctuary at Colchester Abbey and in April 1471 it was reported ‘that þe Lord Howard hath proclaimed Kyng E[dward] Kyng of Inglond in Suffolk’.23 Howard rejoined Edward in person soon after the king’s return to London.

What was John Howard really like? We shall, of course, return to this point later, but it may be helpful to begin with some impression of his appearance and character. In terms of his physical appearance there are no surviving fifteenth-century representations, so for an idea of his looks we are dependent upon the work of later artists. However, the so-called ‘portrait’ of Howard displayed at the present Duke of Norfolk’s home, Arundel Castle, is a sixteenth-century representation, and there is no reason whatever to suppose that it accurately depicts Howard’s features or colouring.

Contemporary representations of Howard did once exist, but they are lost. Nevertheless, two such representations were recorded before the originals disappeared. One of these was a stained-glass representation at Stoke-by-Nayland, and the second, a similar figure at Long Melford. The original location of the Stoke- by-Nayland glass is variously reported in the surviving sources. John Weever, who in 1631 published an inaccurate engraving of this figure, described it as being in ‘the east window of the private chapel of Tendring Hall’.24 George Vertue (1684–1756), who produced a painting of the same glass, said that it was in the parish church at Stoke-by-Nayland.25 It is, of course, conceivable that the glass was moved at some stage. Alternatively it may have been in the east window of the south chapel of the parish church which, to this day, houses burials of the Tendring and Howard families, and which may have been regarded as ‘the Tendring Hall chapel’. A later engraving of the same Stoke-by-Nayland glass was published in James Dallaway’s AHistoryoftheWesternDivisionoftheCountyofSussex (1815–30). However, there is no reason to suppose that the glass itself still existed as late as the early nineteenth century, and it is therefore probable that Dallaway (or his engraver) worked at second hand, from Vertue’s painting.

A second stained-glass figure of John Howard V was once among the fifteenth- century donor portraits in the windows of Long Melford Church, to the rebuilding of which Howard contributed. A lithograph of this figure, taken from an apparently seventeenth-century drawing or engraving, is reproduced in G.H. Ryan and L.J. Redstone, TimperleyofHintlesham,aStudyofaSuffolkFamily (London, 1931). Unfortunately, Ryan and Redstone give no earlier source for their illustration. However, the original of their lithograph so obviously reflects the style and fashions of the reign of Charles I that its value is somewhat questionable.

Previous writers seeking a representation of John Howard V have tended to favour Dallaway’s nineteenth-century engraving of the Stoke-by-Nayland stained glass. However, as we have seen, it is unlikely that Dallaway (or his engraver) ever saw the original window. Vertue, on the other hand, clearly did see the original fifteenth-century stained glass at Stoke-by-Nayland. Since the earlier (seventeenth-century) copies of Howard’s figure both from Stoke-by-Nayland and from Long Melford are of dubious accuracy, it seems likely that Vertue’s ‘John Howard’ is the nearest we can now get to a contemporary representation. It is therefore George Vertue’s visual image of the mature but still slim and youthful-looking Howard of the 1460s, with fair or light-brown hair, which is illustrated here.

As for John Howard’s character, he undoubtedly had a sense of his own rank and importance. He was capable of displaying both pride and anger at times. In 1455 his cousin, the third Mowbray duke, put Howard’s name forward as a prospective candidate for election to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Norfolk. This recommendation was opposed by the local gentry on the grounds that Howard ‘hadde no lyvelode in the shire’. John Jenney, a member of the Duke of Norfolk’s council, reported that when he heard of this opposition ‘Howard was as wode [mad] as a wilde bullok’.26

His most obvious characteristic, however, seems to have been his loyalty. Recently ‘the point has been made that individual aristocrats were guided by concepts of honour and loyalty’ in the fifteenth century, and that self-aggrandisement and self-interest were not their only possible motivations.27 Howard was consistently loyal to the last two Mowbray dukes of Norfolk and trusted by his cousins. He showed the same loyalty also to the house of York, as personified successively by Richard, Duke of York, and his sons, Edward IV and Richard III. As we shall see later, the divisions within the house of York after the death of Edward IV confronted Howard – and others – with a choice which some found difficult, between the previously accepted heir, Edward V, who was now found to be illegitimate, and his uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Richard III). Howard’s associate and former superior in Calais, Lord Hastings, certainly had problems with it. However, for reasons which we shall explore in due course, Howard never seems to have hesitated over whether Edward V or Richard III was the true heir of the dynasty. His loyalty seems to have been accorded to Richard from the moment of the latter’s arrival in London, and was thereafter unswerving. It extended ultimately to dying at Richard’s side on the battlefield of Bosworth in 1485. Howard’s courage cannot be questioned. It is also clear that he was an effective military leader, diplomat and government representative at local level.

Later generations of the Howard dynasty would be noted for their religious commitment, maintaining their Catholic faith in an England which had become Protestant, at no small cost to themselves. Some have sought to argue that there is no evidence of anything more than conventional piety on the part of John Howard V.28 Nevertheless, there is clearly evidence of some religious commitment on his part – for example in his patronage of churches and in his record of pilgrimages. While the latter certainly conforms to the norms expected of a man of his rank and time, in Howard’s case it perhaps goes beyond the minimum requirements, and may be evidence of genuine faith. It is surely not without significance that, as we shall see in Chapters 13 and 15, there was to be an overt religious motivation at the very heart of Howard’s formal, public celebration of his elevation to the dukedom of Norfolk in the summer of 1483. The evidence on this point has not hitherto been noticed or explored.

Notes

1. CPR 1452–1461, p. 678. Howard had on one previous occasion in 1452 been sent by Henry VI to promote friendship between his father-in-law, Lord Moleyns, and John Clopton: PL, vol. 2, pp. 79–80. He also served in the war in France 1452–53: CP, vol. 9, p. 610.

2. See C. Richmond, ‘Mowbray, John [VI], third Duke of Norfolk’ (ODNB).

3. A. Crawford, ‘Howard, John’ (ODNB); J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Lancastrian Claim to the Throne’, Ric. 13 (2003), pp. 27–38; J. Ashdown-Hill, The Dublin King (Stroud, 2015), p. 67.

4. ‘One of the richest peers in the kingdom’, Crawford, ‘Howard, John’ (ODNB, vol. 28, p. 390).

5. John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford (husband of Elizabeth Howard), and his eldest son, Aubrey, were executed in 1461. His younger son, John, was later allowed to succeed to the earldom, but was arrested and briefly imprisoned for plotting against Edward IV in 1468. The 13th earl subsequently seems to have been involved in the plots of the Earl of Warwick. In 1470 he joined Margaret of Anjou in France, returning to England on the restoration of Henry VI. He fled again when Edward IV returned. H. Castor, ‘Vere, John de, twelfth Earl of Oxford’; S.J. Gunn, ‘Vere, John de, thirteenth Earl of Oxford’ (ODNB).

6. For details of the Moleyns family and their title see Θ, subsection 2.3.1.

7. J.M. Robinson, TheDukesofNorfolk:aquincentennialhistory (Oxford: OUP, 1982), p. 4. Robinson believes that he may have fought at Agincourt, though no evidence is cited for this opinion.

8. R. Archer, ‘The Mowbrays, Earls of Nottingham and Dukes of Norfolk to 1432’ (unpublished D. Phil thesis, Oxford, 1984), pp. 179–81, argues forcefully that Margaret Mowbray was the first Mowbray Duke of Norfolk’s youngest daughter, the eldest being Elizabeth, Countess of Suffolk (who had no children and became a nun) while the second was Isabel, Lady Ferrers (later Lady Berkeley). Archer’s evidence for this conclusion seems to be chiefly the fact that in 1483, following the extinction of the direct Mowbray line, Richard III awarded ‘the title which was of elder creation, namely the earldom of Nottingham’ to the Berkeley co-heirs. Against this one must set the undoubted fact that the Howard co-heir was awarded the significantly higher rank of Duke of Norfolk, together with the hereditary post of Marshal of England, considerations which possibly leave room for continued speculation regarding the relative seniority of Margaret and Isabel.

9. Subsequently, following Sir Robert Howard’s death, Lady Margaret remarried. Her second husband was an old family friend and connection, Sir John Grey of Ruthin. It is as Lady Grey that she appears in some of the Howard accounts.

10. Archer claims this inference is reinforced by the date of the marriage, which she states coincided with the dowager Duchess of Norfolk’s last illness. This seems unlikely to be the case. The dowager Duchess of Norfolk died on 8 July 1425, but Robert and Margaret seem to have married three or four years earlier. The coolness (if it existed) could equally have been associated with Elizabeth Fitzalan’s remarriages and the births of further children. Archer considers that Margaret Mowbray’s first marriage may have been a love match: Mowbrays, pp. 179–81.

11. B.OB, p. 99.

12. On 10 January 1426/7 he is named without any title as the recipient of property, in a conveyance by William Clopton esquire of (Long) Melford: J.Ch., p. 73.

13. J.Ch., pp. 75–7; December 1430 – June 1432. See also Θ, section 2.

14. Robert also had a younger full-blood brother, Henry (b.c. 1389), who is mentioned in their mother’s will of 13 October 1426, TNA, PROB 11/3, ff. 49–50.

15. J.Ch., p. 80.

16. In 1476–7, for example, John Howard, shipman, prosecuted Henry Purser for debt in the Colchester courts. His guarantor was Thomas Lalleford, a member of Lord Howard’s affinity. ERO, D/B5 CR 76, m. 3r. See Θ, subsection 4.3.8.

17. This mention occurs in April 1453: PL, vol. 1, p. 249.

18. IRO, HA 246/B2/498; feoffment by William Argent of Chevington to Edward, Earl of March, John Howard esquire, William Bury, Robert Cumberton, Robert Bernard and Thomas Moleyns. Like Howard himself, Robert Bernard was a well-known member of the Mowbray affinity. On the other hand, Robert Cumberton and Thomas Moleyns were members of Howard’s own affinity. Both men, in fact, were related to him – and to one another – by marriage (see Θ, section 2).

19. PL, vol. 2, p. 239.

20. Sir Robert Chamberlain and Sir Gilbert Debenham were certainly with the king in Flanders: J. Bruce, ed., HistorieoftheArrivallofEdwardIVinEngland (London: Camden Society, 1838), p. 2.

21. H. Kleineke, ‘Gerard von Wesel’s newsletter from England, 17 April 1471’, Ric. 16 (2006), pp. 66–83 (p. 80).

22. Bruce, Arrivall, p. 2.

23. PL, vol. 2, p. 406.

24. Weever’s engraving of the glass more closely resembles Henry Lilly’s 1637 drawing of the stained-glass figure of Sir John Howard III (which was then in the windows of the parish church at Stoke) than other representations of the Stoke-by-Nayland glass image of his more famous grandson, the first Duke of Norfolk.

25. The representation of Howard reproduced here is taken from an engraving of Vertue’s painting.

26. PL, vol. 2, p. 120. For John Jenney see also Θ, subsection 4.14.5.

27. A.J. Pollard, ‘Fifteenth Century Politics and the Wars of the Roses’, TheHistorian (spring 1998), pp. 26–8 (p. 27).

28. A. Crawford, ‘The Private Life of John Howard: a study of a Yorkist Lord, his family and household’ in P. Hammond, ed., RichardIII:Loyalty,LordshipandLaw (Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1986), pp. 6–24 (p. 17), remarks that John Howard’s books do not provide evidence of religious devotion. That may be true, but he certainly supported local cult centres (see Chapter 15).

2

Black and Blue

Item, my Lord bout v. yerdes ofblak velvet, prise ofthe yerd xij s. whereofmy Lord sent to Mastres Jane Tymperley, by his servaunt Laurence, a lyvere iiij yerdes.

Howard Accounts

In this chapter we shall briefly examine John Howard V’s power base in the eastern counties, considering its origin, its expansion, and the manner in which its existence was proclaimed and demonstrated in visual and tangible form. It was the existence and ongoing expansion of Howard’s local power-base which made his support desirable to the house of York; a thing to be wooed and solicited by the dynasty by means of grants of lands, offices, favours and honours, all of which will be explored later (see Chapter 5).

The first year of the fourteenth century had found the Howard family based in Norfolk, where it held two manors: East Winch and Fitton (Wiggenhall St Germain).1 By purchase and by a series of astute marriages the family subsequently accumulated a substantial patrimony, comprising manors in Norfolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk. Of this patr imony, John Howard V would eventually inherit only two manors: Tendring Hall (Stoke-by-Nayland) and Fersfield (near Diss). The reason for this meagre inheritance was simple: John Howard V’s father, Sir Robert Howard II, was a younger son. Most of the Howard estates were inherited by Robert’s elder half-brother, who left them to his only child, Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Oxford.

Thus, at the start of his career John Howard V was merely a minor Suffolk gentleman. His Suffolk base remained important throughout his life, and although Howard subsequently obtained estates in many parts of the country, his principal seat up until two years before his death remained Tendring Hall at Stoke-by-Nayland. In June 1483, upon his elevation to the dukedom of Norfolk, the focus shifted to Framlingham Castle, also in Suffolk.

For the greater part of his life a significant proportion of his political, social, economic and cultural activity was firmly based within approximately a twenty-mile (thirty-two kilometre) radius of Stoke-by-Nayland, taking in Colchester and Ipswich, and extending as far as Harwich in the east and Bury St Edmunds in the north-west. Of course Howard travelled, and had interests much farther afield. For most of his life, however, this comparatively compact region represented his ‘home range’.

The origins of John Howard V’s gentry connections and client network were various, and not all of them can be traced or fully reconstructed. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern and document amongst those names which have been preserved in relation to John Howard V as a young man (prior to his aggrandisement under the Yorkist dynasty) men and women who came from families which had previously served Howard’s paternal grandfather, and who therefore had a hereditary link with the Howard family. Robert Mannok seems to be a case in point, for the Mannock family had also been linked with Sir John Howard III. Next, we find examples of people who entered Howard’s orbit as a result of his own connection with the Mowbray network. The Tymperley family of Hintlesham is one instance. In the first half of the fifteenth century they were Mowbray clients, butfrom the 1470s they became closely linked with John Howard, and the Tymperley heir married one of Howard’s daughters. In fact, it is clear that after the family line of the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk died out, a number of former Mowbray clients were attracted to Howard’s service as the natural successor of the Mowbray dukes. Others among Howard’s early associates were apparently attracted to his service as a result of his first marriage. An obvious example of this phenomenon is Thomas Moleyns, a presumed cousin of Howard’s first wife, Catherine.2

‘The corporate sense of the household was reinforced by marks of identification.’3 Thus a lord’s clients received and wore his distinctive livery, which might also be given, as a sign of friendship, to colleagues. Livery comprised clothing of a distinctive colour or colours; a kind of uniform,4 which the lord might require his retainers to wear on specific occasions. Thus, in 1240–42 the Countess of Lincoln stipulated that her livery should be worn at mealtimes.5 To briefly summarise the history of livery, its evolution was intimately connected with the growth of paid retinues and factional rivalry. In 1390, Parliament had perceived the issuing of livery as an abuse which it petitioned Richard II to curb. In April 1400, Henry IV specifically prohibited the distribution and wearing of any livery within his kingdom, except that of the king himself.6 Yet this enactment quickly proved a dead letter. By the second half of the fifteenth century any lord with a claim to status had his own livery, and was issuing it to his supporters and friends.

A lord’s retainers received and wore his livery as a sign of their allegiance to him. Some of his colleagues might also wear it on suitable occasions as a token of friendship. The giving and receiving of livery was an important part of the service obligation. Indeed, for a lord to withhold from a retainer the gift of his livery, though possibly of rare occurrence, was highly significant, as can be seen in 1469, when the last Mowbray Duke of Norfolk refused his livery to John Paston III and others with whom he was in dispute over the possession of Caister Castle.7

The distribution and wearing of livery was the principal means by which a fifteenth-century lord made manifest his ‘worship’. Howard, therefore, naturally made use of livery and badges in his household and retinue throughout his career, though, as we shall shortly see, the precise details of his livery changed as his career progressed. The Howard accounts and other fifteenth-century sources record numerous gifts of cloth or clothing to retainers. Not all of these constituted formal livery. Dr Carol Chattaway has proposed certain criteria for distinguishing formal livery from other, more general gifts of clothing or fabric.8 These include regular distribution, to a defined group, of fabric or clothing of a standard colour, and the distribution of standard badges where the colour and the design are clearly linked to the distributor. To Chattaway’s criteria we should add, as an alternative possibility, gifts of fabric the colour of which is specifically related to the recipient. It is clear, for example, that on occasions Edward IV presented to members of his retinue cloth of their own livery colours.9

Details of the livery colours and badges of some noble families are known. Surviving evidence indicates that the Talbots of Shrewsbury had a dark green livery,10 while the Mowbray livery colour was ‘crymeson engreyned’, or ‘cremyson owt of greyn’, the ‘greyn’ or grain being an insect which was used to produce a high quality crimson dye.11 One previous writer has suggested that the Howard livery colours were red and blue.12 This is clearly an error, and one which we shall presently correct. Murray and blue were actually the livery colours of the house of York.13 The wearing of one particular livery did not exclude the possibility that others might also be worn on occasions. Client networks overlapped, and even rival service ties were not necessarily mutually exclusive. John Howard himself certainly wore the crimson livery of his Mowbray cousins, and the numerous references in the Howard accounts to the purchase of red and blue fabric are examples of Howard dressing himself and members of his household in the Yorkist royal livery, thus publicly proclaiming his Yorkist allegiance.

‘By the end of the fourteenth century … it became fashionable to extend the [affinity] group further by the use of livery collars and badges.’14 Such badges probably had a heraldic origin and may date back as far as the twelfth century, but in the late fourteenth century and the fifteenth century the wearing of badges bearing a lord’s device became widespread.15 The use of flower emblems is well-attested in the fifteenth century, and included the well-known white rose of York.16 The punning Mowbray ‘flower’ badge actually comprised sprigs of mulberry leaves,17 while the personal emblem of Elizabeth Talbot, wife of the last Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, may have been the borage flower.18

Not all such livery badges were flowers. The now-extinct talbot hound was the family badge of the Duchess of Norfolk’s own Talbot family, and examples of talbot hound livery badges have survived.19 As an alternative to their mulberry sprig emblem, the Mowbray family had a second livery badge which comprised a white lion rampant.20 This badge was also used by Sir John Howard as his personal livery badge, but it was ‘differenced for Howard with an azure crescent’, while the Mowbray dukes were still living.21 Later, the new Howard dynasty of dukes of Norfolk used the white lion badge undifferenced, just as it had been used by their Mowbray cousins and predecessors prior to 1474. A sixteenth-century livery badge depicting a white lion rampant and inscribed on the reverse for Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, was recently discovered at Cressing Temple, Essex, and is now in the Braintree Museum.

In some cases, lords are known to have given out their badges as gifts to reinforce ties of loyalty.22 Such gift badges were often intrinsically valuable. Examples survive in silver, and even in gold and enamel.23 Sir John Howard is known to have proclaimed his Yorkist loyalties by owning and wearing a Yorkist collar ‘of gold with 34 roses and suns set on a corse of black silk with a hanger [pendant] of gold garnished with a sapphire’.24 In 1465 Howard purchased from ‘Arnold gooldsmythe a devyse of goold for mastres Margret’, and later that year he gave his new wife two sumptuous devices in the form of collars, each of fourteen links, alternately enamelled and set with rubies, diamonds and pearls.25 The precise design of these collars is not recorded.

As for the livery colour of Sir John Howard V, for most of his career this was black. There is ample evidence in support of this contention.26 The most important testimony is a long list of recipients of black fabric from Sir John Howard, similar to a list recording his distribution of the Mowbray crimson to the Duke of Norfolk’s affinity.27 Unfortunately this issue of black cloth has hitherto been consistently misinterpreted. As published by Beriah Botfield in 1841,28 it was dated to November of year five of Edward IV (1465), and assumed to be the issue of mourning for the first Lady Howard, Catherine de Moleyns, who died around 14 November 1465. All subsequent writers have followed Botfield in this assumption, but unfortunately Botfield’s reading of the year date of this entry was incorrect. A careful re-examination of the original manuscript has shown that there are at least two strokes after the ‘v’ of the year number, so that the regnal date is probably year seven of Edward IV. This would date the issue of the black fabric to November 1467.29

The list of named recipients of the black fabric itself proves that this cannot have been issued in mourning for Catherine de Moleyns.30 Briefly, the recipients include ‘My Lady; Mastres Jane her dowter; Mastres Isabelle her dowter; Mastres Letuse her dowter [and] Master William hir sones’.31 ‘My Lady’ can only be one of Howard’s two wives, and in this instance it is obvious that Margaret Chedworth (Howard’s second wife) is meant, because the names which immediately follow are those of Margaret’s children by her previous husbands: Isabel Wyfold and Lettice and William Norris.32 ‘Mastres Jane her dowter’ is probably Margaret Chedworth’s youngest Norris stepdaughter.33 Howard did not marry Margaret until January 1466/7, and since the black fabric list is dated to November, it follows that November 1467 would be the earliest possibility. A comparison between the black fabric distribution list and the two household lists of Howard and his bride-to-be, drawn up in January 1466/7, a few days before their marriage,34 also shows that the issue of black fabric cannot have taken place in 1465, because the cloth was distributed to a mixed group of retainers, some of whom had been members of Howard’s household prior to his second marriage, while others came from the household of Margaret Chedworth.35

The obvious alternative is that the list records a distribution of Howard livery. Clear supporting evidence for this interpretation exists elsewhere in the form of other records of the issue of black fabric by John Howard V, though only in some of the entries is this black fabric specifically stated to be the Howard livery. In the early summer of 1465, while distributing the crimson Mowbray livery fabric to Mowbray clients on behalf of his cousin, the Duke of Norfolk, Howard issued four and a half yards of ‘blak a lyr’ to Dr Hew.36 In the same year he issued black fabric to his lawyer, James Hobart, to whom on other occasions he gave the crimson Mowbray livery, or the murray and blue livery of the house of York.37 On 15 April 1467 Sir John Howard paid Robert Rochester’s man 21s. for three and a half yards of ‘blakke a lyre’.38

The wardrobe accounts of Edward IV for 1480, listing the presentation of liveries by the king to officers of his household, specify ‘to the Lord Howard … Blac velvet, ix yerdes’.39 Sir John’s daughter, Jane, who received an allocation of black cloth with other members of her family and the household in 1467, went on to marry John Tymperley,40 who then entered the service of his father-in-law, both in the Howard household and in the navy. In November 1482 Lord Howard sent his daughter Jane Tymperley four yards of what is specifically stated to be Howard livery cloth of black velvet.41

Later in his career, probably when he was raised to the dukedom of Norfolk, John Howard seems to have changed his livery colour. He did not, however, adopt the crimson of his cousins, the former Mowbray dukes. Instead his new livery as Duke of Norfolk was blue – the same colour that he had used during the lifetime of the Mowbrays to difference their white lion livery badge for the use of his own retainers. Again, the evidence for this change is quite clear from the Howard accounts. In 1482, as we have seen, Lord Howard had still been issuing black livery. Indeed, as late as 17 April 1483 a purchase of eleven yards of black cloth is recorded, though this might possibly have been in connection with the death of Edward IV.42 In 1483, however, the cloth purchased ‘for my lordes leverey’ was not black but blue.43

Notes

1. Robinson, Dukes, pp. 1–4.

2. This summary of the origins of Howard’s client network is necessarily very brief. The subject is treated more fully in Θ.

3. C.M. Woolgar, TheGreatHouseholdinLateMedievalEngland (London, 1999), p. 9.

4. Although the cloth was usually issued as measured lengths rather than made up into garments.

5. Woolgar, GreatHousehold, p. 9.

6. MEJ, p. 245. The livery of a lord could still be worn when serving overseas.

7. John Paston wrote: ‘my Lord of Norffolk gave Bernard, Broom nor me no gownys at thys seson, wherfor I awaytyd not on hym; notwythstandyng I ofyrd my servyse for Þat seson to my lady, but it was refusyd, I wot by avyse. Wherfor I purpose no more to do so’: PL, vol. 1, p. 545.

8. C.M. Chattaway, ‘When is a Livery not a Livery? Distributions of Clothing at the late fourteenth century Burgundian Court’, lecture presented at the MEDATS Conference, TheDevelopmentofLiveriesandUniformsinEurope before 1600, London, 20 May 2006.

9. See below and PPE.

10. Green seems to have been the Talbot livery colour, at least in the early fifteenth century; B. Ross, AccountsoftheStewardsoftheTalbotHouseholdatBlakemere, 1392–1425 (Shropshire Record Series: University of Keele 2003), pp. 44–5 & passim.