This is an extract from a paper written in 2006 about the death and burial of Richard III:
Richard was always genuinely
concerned that people should have a fitting burial and that their souls should
be cared for by prayer. How, then, was his body buried and in what way was his
soul cared for as it made its journey to the next world? A chronicle of the
household of Sir Thomas Frowyk states that,
the same yere
Kyng Richard was scelyne att Redmore feld viij mile Beseide Coventr’ upon seint
Bartilmewis eve eve {sic} And bered ate Laycet’ in the new (vorke) god have his
soulle.[1]
According to the
minutes of a council meeting at York on 14 May 1491, William Burton, a
schoolmaster of St Leonard’s in that city stated that Richard was ‘… beried in
a dyke like a dogge’.[2] Burton was rebuked for this remark by those who
insisted that Henry VII had buried the late king ‘like a noble gentilman’.
However, chroniclers would seem to support Burton, at least up to a point. The Great Chronicle, states that Richard was
taken to Leicester ‘and there irreverently buried.[3] Jean de Molinet adds that
‘[Richard] without royal solemnity was buried at the entrance to a village
church,’[4] while Vergil reports that Richard, having been put on public
display at the Franciscan’s at Leicester ‘was buryed two days after without any
pompe or solemne funerall.’[5]
The precise facts of Richard’s
burial are obscure and contradictory. Quite simply, no documents exist that
state where he was buried, where he now lies or even where his body was exposed
prior to burial. However, it is possible to gather together what can be known
and suggest a scenario.
The two accounts that are most contemporaneous with the events they
describe state that Richard was buried in a ‘little hermitage’ (Valera) or at
Newarke (the Frowyk chronicle). Next, documents written shortly afterwards suggest
that Richard was buried in the ‘choir at the Friars Minor in Leicester’ (Rous),
‘a dyke like a dogge’ (Burton), or in ‘a village church’ (Molinet). Documents
dating from the middle of the 1490s, some ten years after Bosworth, show
Henry’s intention to erect a tomb for Richard:
Walter Hylton,
alabaster man: indentures made between Walter and Sir Reynold Bray and Sir
Thomas Lovell, knights, concerning the making of a tomb in the church of the
Grey Friars, Leicester, for the body of King Richard III.[6]
The Privy Purse expenses of Henry
the Seventh for 11 September 1495 show that the king paid James Keyley £10 1s
for a tomb for the late King Richard.[7]
There followed a dispute between
the two contractors, who took the case to Chancery. In the Chancery record, the
tomb was described as being built at the ‘Newark’, which is then crossed out
and replaced with ‘friars’.
Slightly later is Fabyan’s account, in which Richard is buried at ‘the
fryers at Leyceter’, while The Great Chronicle of London puts the site
of Richard’s burial as Leicester. Vergil writes that Richard was ‘browght
to thabbay of monks Franciscanes at leycester…and ther was buryed two days after without any pompe or solemne
funerall’. Finally, Nichols asserts that Richard was buried by Henry in
the chief church of Leicester, called St Mary’s and belonging to the order and
society of the Grey Friars.
From this evidence it seems that
Richard’s body was probably stripped on-site and perhaps subjected to further
insult. It was then slung across a horse and carried to Leicester, where it was
exposed to public view, naked except for a course black cloth covering the
middle portion. As we saw in the case of Richard’s brother, Edward IV, such
exposure was unusual and it went against the prescribed procedure.
Nevertheless, it assured everyone that the king really was dead, and it
discouraged impersonators.
After a period of two days or so,
Richard was buried. We can discount Jean de Molinet’s report of him being
buried in a village church, since Leicester was, at that time, a town. It did,
however, boast an Augustinian
hermitage,[8] so Valera’s remark that Richard was laid to rest in such a place
is not impossible. However, the Frowke chronicle, in contradiction to Valera,
asserts that Richard was buried at the Newarke. Again, this is not impossible.
The remark made by Burton at the council meeting at York can be dismissed for
the spiteful attack on Richard that it was. Even if Richard did not have a tomb
suitable for a king, he was clearly not thrown into a dyke; he was at least
accorded the dignity of a church burial. Rous offers yet another location: the
choir of the Friars Minor at Leicester.
The two documents, dating from the 1490s and concerning Henry’s order
for a tomb for Richard, post-date Rous but only just. It seems that this period
marks the turning point of the mystery of Richard’s place of rest. The
chronicles that come after these three are unanimous in their assertion that
Richard was buried at the Grey Friars, the Franciscan monastery at Leicester.
From this information, a sequence of events can be conjectured and a solution
to the mystery suggested.
Richard’s body was carried back to Leicester from the field of battle.
It was put on public display at one of the churches there, possibly that of the
Augustinian friars, or the Newarke. These churches are also candidates for the
burial. Henry VII, travelling to Leicester in 1495, perhaps experienced a pang
of guilt that a King of England should be buried in such humble surroundings.
He ordered a proper tomb and monument to be erected, and two contractors were
engaged. As we have seen, they fought over the contract, taking the case to
Chancery. The resultant document reveals some uncertainly regarding Richard’s
burial place at that time. It originally said ‘Newarke’, but this name was
replaced by ‘friars’. It can be conjectured that Richard was originally
buried in the Newarke, but was later moved to the church of the friars.
There is a sound reason why the
Newarke would have been an inappropriate place in which to bury King Richard
III: the Newarke had a strong Lancastrian connection. In April 1330, Henry,
Earl of Lancaster obtained a licence to establish a hospital at Leicester.
Patronage of it passed to Henry’s son, also called Henry, who was created Duke
of Lancaster in 1351. He enlarged his father’s foundation and, two years later,
was granted permission by the pope to transform it into a collegiate church. It
subsequently passed into the care of Henry’s son-in-law, John of Gaunt who
passed it to his son, Henry Bolingbroke, who would later come to the throne as
Henry IV.
Known as the Collegiate Church of
the Annunciation of St Mary in the Newarke, it is this church in which Richard
might originally have been buried. Given its Lancastrian heritage, it cannot be
wondered if Henry VII had felt uncomfortable with the thought of a Yorkist king
resting there. It is certainly possible that he remedied the situation by
transferring Richard’s remains from the church to that of the Grey Friars
priory. The documents commissioning the contractors support the suggestion that
Richard had been moved, and subsequent chroniclers are unanimous in their
assertion that he rested at the Grey Friars, or Franciscans. Richard, then, was
buried in holy ground, and his soul would benefit from the prayers of the monks
as they performed their rites and services.
Initially, it appears that the
grave was little out of the ordinary until ‘king Henry the Seventh caused a
tomb to be made, and set up over the place where he was buried, with a picture
of alabaster representing his person.’[9] This is the tomb of which the
documents of the 1490s speak, and the commissioning of which was the reason for
a dispute between the two contractors. Henry spent £10 1s on it. While paltry
in comparison to the great sums spent by Henry on his own tomb, it is not an
insignificant sum. It enabled a ‘fair tomb of mingled-coloured marble, adorned
with his statue’[10] to be built, but was it an appropriate tomb for a king of
England?
Richard had always done his best to
provide suitable resting places for people, high-born or low, who had been
killed in his service. He had ensured that their souls would be prayed for. The
tomb of his son at Sheriff Hutton, if such it is, shows a grieving figure,
which might represent Richard himself; it features God the Father, who hears
the prayers, dries the tears and comforts the mourning of all. Angels attend
the spirit of the departed and offer comfort to the bereaved figure. Who
grieved for Richard? Did this tomb of mingled-coloured marble bear the mourning
figures Richard had ensured would watch over the souls of others? Did angels
guide him to eternal peace, ultimately to meet God the Father whom Richard had
served so well in life? We cannot know. No one thought to describe the tomb,
except to say that it carried the dead king’s effigy.
If we are to believe John Nichols,
an epitaph for Richard was planned and written. The historian claims to have
seen a copy of it in a ‘recorded manuscript book chained to a table in a
chamber on the Guildhall of London’, the text of which, translated into English
reads:
I who am laid
beneath this marble stone,
Richard the
Third, possess’d the British throne.
My country’s
guardian in my nephew’s claim,
By trust betray’d
I to the kingdom came.
Two years and
sixty days, save two, I reign’d;
And bravely
strove in fight; but unsustain’d,
My English left
me in the luckless field,
Where I to
Henry’s arms was forc’d to yield.
Yet at his cost
my corse this tomb obtains,
Who piously
interr’s me, and ordains
That regal
honours wait a king’s remains
Th’ year
thirteen hundred t’was and eighty-four,
The twenty-first
of August when in its power
And all its
rights I did to the Red rose restore.
Reader, whoe’er
thou art, thy prayers bestow,
T’atone my
crimes, and ease my pains below.
As can readily be seen, there are
serious problems with this text. It is not the style of English or prose that
was known either to Richard or Henry VII. Rather, it is more in keeping with
that used in Nichols’s own time. The length of the reign is incorrect, as is
the dating: according to this, Richard reigned during the fourteenth century,
not the fifteenth; he died on 21 August instead of the 22nd.
Moreover, Richard was king of England and France and Lord of Ireland: Britain,
in other words, the union with Scotland, had not become an entity until the
time of King James VI and I, although it would not officially become Great
Britain until the Act of Union of 1707. This epitaph, therefore, is contemporary
to Nichols but not to Richard.
As king, Richard should have been buried in his coronation vestments,
or ones very much like them.[11] It is unknown whether or not this actually
happened. While we can be almost certain that the crown he had with him at
Bosworth was the coronation crown of St Edward the Confessor, it certainly
would not have gone to the grave with him. Whether or not he had any coronation
vestments with him cannot be known, although it is doubtful. Had this been the
case, he would probably have worn them during the procession prior to battle,
and no evidence exists to allow us to think that he had done so. They would
also have been found in his tent after the battle, but nothing allows us to
think that they were. While the entire collection of coronation vestments and
regalia represent kingship, only the crown could stand alone to the same
purpose. Richard had no needed for the rest. We can assume, then, that Richard
was not buried in his coronation robes. Moreover, since Henry VII spent only a
little over ten pounds on the tomb, we can speculate that he would have spent
no more than that on the funeral. The costly garments of a king would have far
exceeded the purse Henry laid aside for his predecessor. It can be accepted
that Richard was not buried in any way reflective of his royal status.
In 1536, King Henry VIII, the son of he who had crushed Richard,
ordered the dissolution of the monasteries. Grey Friars closed two years later.
Once again we turn to Nichols as we seek to unravel the subsequent fate of
Richard’s earthly remains.
Following the dissolution of the
Grey Friars monastery, the site upon which it had stood became part of a
private garden. The land was later purchased by a Mr Robert Hayrick, a former
mayor of Leicester, who erected a stone pillar of some three feet in height
over the spot where Richard lay. It was adorned by the inscription ‘Here lies
the body of Richard III, some time king of England.’ Christopher Wren, as he
walked in the garden in 1612, was shown this simple monument.
The story that
Richard had been turned out of his coffin and thrown into the River Soar
emerged seventy years after the dissolution of the monastery; that is to say in
about 1608, during the reign of King James. Quite why Richard should have been
treated in such a manner, and so long after his death, is a mystery. Graves and
tombs were not usually despoiled during the dismantling of the monasteries.
Moreover, the people of Leicester had held Richard in high regard. Even had
they not, surely they would have desecrated his grave far sooner than this legend
would allow if they were going to do it at all.
The fact that Richard crossed Bow
Bridge on his way meet Henry Tudor, and the prophecy connected with it, gave
rise to a local legend that was so strong that a Benjamin Broadbent, the
nineteenth-century founder of a building firm still flourishing in Leicester,
erected a plaque by the bridge that reads: ‘Near this spot lie the remains of
Richard III the last of the Plantagenets 1485’. Unfortunately, Mr Broadbent
relied entirely on tradition rather than historical fact, and the plaque,
well-meaning as its donor was, perpetuates a myth that has no historical basis
at all. A new plaque, erected by the Richard III Society in 2005 seeks to
correct the earlier one.
Can we at least accept that
Richard’s coffin went on to be used as a horse trough? Again, while it is clear
from the Nichols’s study that a coffin had indeed been used as a horse trough,
there is nothing to say that it had once been that of King Richard. Indeed, the
Reverend Samuel Carte, the vicar of the Church of St Martin’s in Leicester,
speaking in 1720, had this to say of it:
I know no other
evidence that the stone coffin formerly used for a horse-trough was king
Richard’s, but the constancy of the tradition. There is a little part of it
still preserved at the White Horse Inn, in which one may observe some
appearance of the hollow, fitted for retaining the head and shoulders.[12]
William Hutton, travelling to
Leicester in 1758 specifically to see the coffin, found that it had not withstood the ravages of time. The
best intelligence that I could obtain was, that it was destroyed about the
latter end of the reign of George the First, and some of the pieces placed as
steps in a cellar at the same inn where it had served as a trough.[13]
If
the story of Richard’s bones having been thrown into the Soar cannot be
trusted, and if the coffin said to have been Richard’s cannot rise above the
level of legend, then what really happened to Richard following the dissolution
of the monastery in which he had rested for so brief a time?
A plausible sequence of events can
be constructed from existing evidence, such as it is. Nichols notes that King
Henry ordered a tomb to be made for Richard ‘and set up over the place where he was buried.[14] This was in all probability
in the convent of the Grey Friars. Since Richard was clearly not within the
tomb, it can be accepted that he lay beneath the ground, with perhaps an
inscribed stone slab to mark the spot until Henry’s monument was put into
place.
Upon the dissolution of the
monastery, Richard’s tomb was desecrated but Richard was left beneath the earth
where he had always been. That his bones had been cast into the Soar was a
local myth with no basis in fact. The coffin-cum-horse trough could not have
been Richard’s because he was still lying in his coffin. Besides which, stone
coffins of this sort were rarely used in the period at which Richard died, so
the chances are even less that this particular one had been that in which
Richard rested.
The conclusion must be that Richard
remains beneath the earth at the spot where he had been transferred by Henry
and over which Henry had erected a tomb. The area has since been developed, but
King Richard remains. As such, it is highly probable that the last of the
Plantagenet kings, the last English king of England, the last English king to
die on the battlefield, now rests beneath a car park in the city of Leicester.
He is, then, the only king of England since 1066 not to rest in a tomb fitting
to his royal status. The commemorative plaque in the Chancel of Leicester
Cathedral was laid as recently as 1980.
As we saw with Richard’s desire to
transfer the remains of King Henry VI, it was
expected of kings to treat their predecessor’s remains with honour, to ensure
that they had a fitting burial and that they were laid to rest in an
appropriate resting place. Henry Tudor was clearly incapable, or uninterested,
in seeing that Richard’s body was treated with due dignity. For a long time he
was also unable to provide Richard with anything like a proper tomb. If he
could not bring himself to lay Richard to rest among the other kings of
England, either at Westminster or with Edward IV at Windsor, then his son Henry
VIII ought to have done so. Neither of them did. Indeed, upon the dissolution
of the monasteries, ordered by Henry VIII, Richard’s mean memorial was
desecrated just as his body had been at Bosworth.
It would be interesting, at this
point, to see how Richard’s simple tomb compared with those of his predecessor
and successor. The cost of Edward IV’s funeral was
£1,496 17s 2d. The King lies beside his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, in St
George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. Edward had rebuilt the chapel, which had been
founded by Edward III, with the intention that it should be his resting place.
However, the tomb was not completed upon his death, nor would it ever be. Work
was continued under Richard III, who issued a warrant to ‘Geoffry Franke,
receyvor of Middleham, to content the freres of Richmond with xii marks, vi s.
viii d for the saying of 1000 masses for K. Edward IV.’[15] Work, however,
ceased after Bosworth.
Edward’s will states that he had
intended his tomb to be adorned with two effigies, one of which was to depict
the king as an emaciated corpse - if his bloated body represented gluttony and
lust in life, an emaciated one would represent repentance in death. Seats were
to be provided for almsmen, who would pray for the soul of Edward. The chantry
was to be enclosed within a superb iron grill, which can still be seen,
complete with a wooden door furnished with a peep hole, a lock and a door
handle ringed with a garter.
As to Richard's conqueror and successor, Henry VII lies in a gilded tomb adorned with the effigies of himself and his queen, Elizabeth of York. Angels and saints watch over him as he rests, his sins expiated by the dedication of the chapel to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the prayers of his faithful subjects and loyal servants.
Henry VII had originally intended
his burial place to be St George’s Chapel, Windsor. This makes sense, since he
would have been close to Henry VI, whose remains and relics had been translated
there by King Richard III in 1484. Henry VII would have seen Henry VI as his
immediate, legal successor in much the same way as Richard III came to see
Richard II. However, Henry changed his mind about the location, if not his
proximity to Henry VI. Probably as the result of persuasion by the abbots and
monks of Westminster Abbey, he became convinced that Henry VI had selected the
abbey as his favoured burial place. Between 1502 and his death in 1509 he began
to spend enormous sums of money, a total of £14,860 13s 1d, on the creation of
a shrine to the late king, beside whom Henry, his queen, his mother Margaret
Beaufort and perhaps even his grandmother, Queen Katherine de Valois were to
lie. That he had intended the shrine to become a Tudor mausoleum should perhaps
be doubted, since Henry’s eldest son, Arthur, who died in 1502, was buried at
Worcester.
According to the terms of Henry
VII’s will, gates bearing the king’s arms, badges and emblems provided the
entrance to this great shrine, and they would be repeated throughout in the
sculptural decoration and the glazing. Priests wearing vestments adorned with
the king’s badges would offer divine service daily for the king. Weekly and
occasional sermons would mention the king by name, so that those who heard it
might offer prayers for his welfare in life and his soul after death. Moreover,
an image was to be made of Henry kneeling at the shrine of Saint Edward the
Confessor. This effigy was to be of
tymber, covered
and wrought accordingly with plate of fine gold, in maner of an armed man; and
upon the same armour, a coote armour of oure armes of England and Fraunce
enameled, with swerd and spurres accordinly. And the same ymage to knele upon a
table of silver and gilte, and holding betwixt his handes the crowne which it
pleased God to geve us, with the victorie of oure ennemye at our furst felde.[16]
Henry VII’s tomb is most certainly
fit for a king. He is prayed for by all who hear his name mentioned in sermons
and watched over by saints and angels. Significantly, the tomb in which he lies
was built and decorated in accordance with his own intentions. No one was left
to make such decisions as where King Henry VII should rest and in what
surroundings.
For Richard, things were much
different. Being laid to rest in a relatively cheap tomb in a church at Leicester,
far from his family and, more significantly, far from other kings, how does Richard III’s burial place compare
with what he might have chosen for himself?
Richard left no will that has yet been found. Anything said about where
he would have liked to have been buried can be only speculation. Perhaps the
most obvious choice would be Middleham, which Richard made his own.
Having established the Church of St Mary and St Alkelda as a collegiate church
in his own name, he dedicated the stalls to six of his favourite saints: George,
Katherine, Barbara, Anthony, Cuthbert and Ninian.
Another possibility is the Church of St Helen and the Holy Cross at Sheriff
Hutton, which might house the memorial to his son, Edward of Middleham,
although it is improbable that the boy is buried there. This church was once
the property of the Nevills, to which family Richard belonged on his mother’s
side, and which was also the family of his queen, Anne. Nevills also rested in
the abbeys at Jervaulx and Coverham and at Durham Cathedral, any of which might
have been suitable as resting places for Richard.
Durham is significant to Richard
for another reason: it houses the shrine of one of his favourite saints,
Cuthbert. The monks of St Cuthbert had received Richard into their
confraternity in 1474. On the other hand, Richard had intended to found a
chantry at Barnard Castle. He had established shrines to several of his
favourite saints there, in particular St Ninian.
A logical and highly appropriate,
resting place would have been Fotheringhay. Here lie Richard’s beloved father,
mother and brother, Edmund. Of course there was always the option of
Westminster Abbey, where Richard’s queen, Anne Nevill, rests. By the time of
Richard’s death the abbey had long been established as the burial place of
English kings, among them Edward the Confessor and Richard II, both of whom
were of great significance to Richard. Then there is St George’s Chapel,
Windsor, where Edward IV lies and which he might have intended as a shrine for
Yorkist kings.
Each of these locations is a
plausible candidate for the chosen burial place of King Richard III. However,
there was another church, or rather, cathedral, in which Richard had taken a
particular interest: York Minster. Richard had planned York Minster to be the setting for the largest and most
ambitious of his chantries. However, its intended one hundred priests were to
pray, not for the soul of the chantry’s founder, or those of his family as
might be expected, but were to sing instead for ‘the worship of god oure
lady seint George & seint Nynyan’.[17]
Nevertheless, the possibility that
Richard had intended York Minster as his mausoleum should not be dismissed when
certain factors are taken into consideration. First is the possibility that Richard’s son, Edward of Middleham,
Prince of Wales, lies in an unmarked tomb at York Minster. It is not such an
outlandish suggestion, nor would it be inappropriate for the young prince to be
buried here: he was created Prince of Wales nearby and his father had enjoyed a
long association with York.
This
began, as far as is known, with the investiture of his uncle George Nevill as
Archbishop of York, on 22 September 1465. Later, while still duke of Gloucester,
Richard visited York with Henry Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland. Here,
Richard was seen to be their ‘ful tender and especiall gude lord’, worthy of ‘a
singler confidence in your high and noble lordship a fore eny other’.[18]
The City
of York’s connection with Emperor Constantine should not be overlooked.
Constantine was proclaimed emperor at York in 25 July 306 and Richard would
almost certainly have known the church of St Helen-on-the-Walls in Aldwark,
which was dedicated to the mother of Constantine. He might also have been
acquainted with the tradition that this church was the final resting place of
the great emperor with whom Richard had much in common.[19]
Another
historical figure of significance to Richard was the legendary King Arthur. Richard
had books about this king, and he showed an interest in him that spanned his
short life. Arthur, like Richard, was fond of York, with which he had some
connection. Moreover, Arthur’s shield bore the image of the Virgin Mary, to
whom Richard had a special devotion. It was on the day of the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary that
Richard chose to invest his son as Prince of Wales.
Following
his marriage to Anne Nevill and his subsequent ownership of Middleham Castle
and other estates, Richard became the most important magnate in the north of
England. It would have been entirely natural had Richard considered York
Minster, the spiritual heart of his world, to be his mausoleum.
Then there is the chantry that Richard sought to
establish at York Minster. As noted, it provided for one hundred chantry
priests and was to be administered by several of Richard’s most intimate
friends and allies. Had it come to fruition, it would have been the largest and
most ambitious of all the chantries planned or established by the king.
Certainly, the chantry at York
Minster was a very important undertaking and might be indicative of the king’s
desire to be buried there. The possible presence of Prince Edward adds a dynastic
dimension to the foundation. Against this, however, is the fact that Richard’s
queen was not buried at York Minster, but at Westminster. Moreover, had the
young prince been buried at York Minster, he lies in an unmarked grave, his
presence remaining a secret that would have been difficult to preserve had a
chantry been established on behalf of the new but ultimately short-lived
Yorkist dynasty.
In the end it is not possible to
say where Richard would have preferred his final resting place to have been. Even
if he had left instructions, there is nothing to say that his wishes would have
been fulfilled. The insults Henry Tudor allowed to be heaped upon Richard’s
body at Bosworth showed the utter contempt in which he held the late king as
well as a blatant disregard for the respect due to the dead. Given that he was
capable of such a singular lack of humanity, it would have been highly
improbable that he would have taken into account Richard’s desires even as far
as concerning his resting place. As a result, King Richard III remains the only
monarch of England since 1066 not to lie in a tomb appropriate to his regal
status. It is both unjust and a tragedy that he who was so anxious to ensure
the care of souls, their passage eased through the darkness of the beyond as
they made their uncertain way towards the light by means of prayer and a worthy
grave, now lies in an unmarked spot in the damp, dark earth beneath a Leicester
car park.
Update:
Since this piece was written, archaeological excavation has revealed
that the Grey Friars car park did, in fact, conceal the tomb of Richard III.
This exciting discovery ends centuries of speculation regarding Richard’s
burial place, and quashes rumours that his bones had been dumped into the river
Soar. It now remains to reinter Richard, but where? Archaeological convention is
usually to rebury excavated remains in the nearest consecrated place. In
Richard’s case, it would be Leicester Cathedral, where there has been a
memorial to the king since 1980. However, a case can be made for burying him at
York Minster, since this appears to have been his wish. On the other hand, Anne
Nevill, his queen, lies in Westminster Abbey, while his brother, Edward IV is
buried in St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, either would make a suitable resting
place for Richard. If pressed, I would choose York Minster for Richard, which
meant so much to him in life, and which he endowed handsomely, perhaps with a
view to providing for his soul after death.
Sources:
1, Sutton, Anne, ‘The Making of a Minor London Chronicle in
the Household of Sir Thomas Frowyk (died 1485)’, The Ricardian, vol. X (1994), pp. 86-103.
2. Davies, R., Extracts
form the Municipal Records of the City of York (London: J.B. Nichols and
sons, 1843), p.221.
3. The Great Chronicle
of London cited in Dockray, K., Richard
III: a reader in history (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1988), p.128.
4, Molinet, Jean de, Chroniques
cited in Dockray, K., Richard III: a
reader in history (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1988), p.128.
5, Vergil, Polydore, Three
Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History (London: The Camden Society,
1844), p.226
6, TNA: C 1/206.
7, Bentley, S. (ed), Excerpta
Historica: or illustrations of English history (London: printed by and for
Samuel Bentley, and published by Richard Bentley, 1833), p.105.
8, Hoskins, W.G. (ed.) A
history of the county of Leicester Victoria History of the Counties of
England (London, 1969), vol. 2, p.35
9, Nichols, J., The
History and Antiquities of the City of Leicester (London: Printed for
Nichols, Son, and Bentley, 1815), p.298.
10, Nichols, J., The
History and Antiquities of the City of Leicester (London: Printed for
Nichols, Son, and Bentley, 1815), p.298.
11, Legg, L.G.W., English
Coronation Records (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co Ltd, 1901),
p.xliv.
12, Nichols, J., The
History and Antiquities of the City of Leicester (London, Printed for
Nichols, Son, and Bentley, 1815), p.298.
13, Hutton, William The
battle of Bosworth-field : between Richard the Third, and Henry Earl of
Richmond, August 22, 1485 (Birmingham: Printed by Pearson and Rollason,
sold R. Baldwin, 1788), p.143
14, Nichols, J., The
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15, Whitaker, T.D., An
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with those parts of the Everwicschire of Domesday which form the wapentakes of
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16, Condon, Margaret, ‘The last will of Henry VII: document
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17, British Library
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18, York Civic Records
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