information, disinformation and political knowledge under henry vii and early henry viii

Information, disinformation and political knowledgeunder Henry VII and early Henry VIII*

C. S. L. DaviesUniversity of Oxford

AbstractHenryVII is generally seen as the initiator of a vigorous campaign of ‘Tudor propaganda’ aboutthe events which led to his accession. This article argues that his policy was rather one ofselective obfuscation, even deliberate concealment. As late as 1512 the conscientious compilerof the London ‘Great Chronicle’ could provide only a confused account of Richard III’s reign,and very little on Henry’s own family background or on his time in exile. Only slightly lessvague were the poems and declamations produced in Henry’s court, and these had littlecirculation in the country at large. Even the alleged confession to the murder of the ‘princesin the Tower’ by Tyrell in 1502 was not publicized. A reasonably rounded account of Richard’sreign and of Henry’s own life before Bosworth was only established with the investigations byPolydore Vergil and Thomas More between 1512 and 1518; and even then their diffusion hadto await the first printing of Vergil in 1534 and Grafton’s plagiarizing of both authors in 1543.Until then silence was evidently thought to be the best policy. Historians too readily make theworking assumption that the people they study had access to an ordered view of the recent pastwithout establishing how far this was so in a particular case.

The existence of a powerful ‘Tudor propaganda machine’ is a historical cliché; notleast in relation to the events of Richard III’s reign and of Henry VII’s accession tothe throne. Indeed, a significant body of opinion holds that ‘Tudor propaganda’ isresponsible for the unfavourable image of King Richard which achieved its mostfamous manifestation in Shakespeare’s Richard III. This article takes issue with thistradition on two grounds. First, it contends that the word ‘Tudor’ itself was hardlyused at the time either by the ‘Tudor monarchs’ themselves or by their subjects.The term was used by Richard III to denigrate Henry VII by reference to hisgrandfather, ‘Owen Tydder . . . bastard born’, and later by Perkin Warbeck (‘OwenTydder of low birth in the country of Wales’).1 It was no doubt for that reason thatHenry and his supporters always referred to him before his accession not as ‘Tudor’but by his peerage title, ‘Richmond’. Thereafter the monarchs had no occasion touse or refer to a surname and did not promulgate the notion of a ‘Tudor dynasty’as such. The second, more immediate, point is that Henry VII, far from pushing a‘propaganda line’ on Richard’s reign or on his own background, did so only very

* Thanks are due to George Bernard, Paul Cavill, John Cooper, Ralph Griffiths, Steven Gunn,Thomas Penn,Colin Richmond, James Ross,Tim Thornton and the participants in the Late Medieval British History Seminarat the Institute of Historical Research for critical comment; also to the two anonymous referees for this journal.My indebtedness to the work of Sydney Anglo is apparent. Errors are, of course, my own.The sources quotedare all in print and I have therefore generally modernized spelling and punctuation.

1 The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, ed. A. F. Pollard (3 vols., 1913–14), i. 3–6, 150–5. For thenon-use of ‘Tudor’ by contemporaries, see C. S. L. Davies, ‘A rose by another name’, Times Literary Supplement,no. 5,489, 13 June 2008, pp. 14–15; and C. S. L. Davies, ‘Representation, repute, reality’, Eng. Hist. Rev., cxxiv(2009), 1432–47.

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Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2011.00576.x Historical Research, vol. 85, no. 228 (May 2012)Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

minimally. For any significant detail his tactic was one of obfuscation orconcealment rather than propaganda; or perhaps, of obfuscation or concealment asthe most effective means of propaganda. It was not until the early years of HenryVIII that there was an attempt to construct a more coherent narrative of theseevents, resulting in the well-known accounts by Polydore Vergil and by ThomasMore. But even so, there was no rush to publish the results. Vergil did not appearin print until an expensive Latin edition was published at Basel in 1534. More’swork was never completed. Both only became accessible to a wider public whenthey were plagiarized to form a continuation to The Chronicle of John Hardyng,printed by Richard Grafton in 1543 (Revised Short Title Catalogue (R.S.T.C.), no.12766.7). That in turn fed into Edward Halle’s The union of the two noble and illustrefamilies Lancastre & York, published in 1548 (R.S.T.C., no. 12721), and thence into themainstream of English historical writing. The term ‘Tudor’ is not merelyanachronistic but ambivalent. It is used both in a chronological sense, the ‘Tudorperiod’, and to refer to the ‘Tudor monarchs’. So the term ‘Tudor tradition’ appliedto the sequence of narrators from Vergil to Shakespeare incorrectly suggestssponsorship by the ‘Tudor monarchs’ including Henry VII himself.2 It will be arguedhere that neither Henry VII nor Henry VIII, at least in the first half of his reign,was keen to publicize a detailed narrative of the years 1483–5, either in relation toevents in England, or to Henry VII’s family antecedents and his activities in exilebefore his accession.

This is not to suggest that significant political information was only available inprint. Political news was eagerly sought and diffused in letters and by word of mouth.As Colin Richmond observes, ‘the fifteenth-century English community was a smallworld’; a ‘face-to-face’ society ‘in which everyone, or almost everyone who was anyone,was in the know’.3 Notable events – royal marriages, births and deaths, significantbattles – were publicly celebrated throughout the country by royal order, especially butnot exclusively in London, and incorporated in local chronicles, commonplace booksand so on.4 Manuscript chronicles had wide circulation, were copied and recopied, andcould apparently be consulted in municipal, guild or parochial buildings in cities,especially of course in London; for instance, in the ‘public library’ established by JohnCarpenter in the London Guildhall in 1423.5 Individual statutes and proclamationswere available in multiple manuscript copies, and, from 1484, to a certain extent in

2 A point made by C. D. Ross, Richard III (1981), p. xxi (‘it would be fallacious to see the Tudor tradition asbeing in the main a product of official Tudor propaganda’), but since largely overlooked.The confusion is veryevident, for instance, in P. M. Kendall, Richard the Third (1955), p. 7, and appendices I and II, pp. 393–434. AlistairFox praises Henry VII as ‘amongst the shrewdest of those monarchs who exploited the potential of the newhistoriography’, without discussing questions of diffusion or intention (Politics and Literature in the Reigns ofHenry VII and Henry VIII (Oxford, 1989), pp. 109–10). For an example of the way in which chronologicalforeshortening can create a totally false impression, see Robert Zaller’s comment that Henry VII ‘imported ayoung Continental humanist, Polydore Vergil . . . to tell his tale . . . Vergil’s Anglia Historia . . . inspired the nextgeneration of historians’ (The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England (Stanford, Calif., 2007), p. 38).

3 C. Richmond, ‘Hand and mouth: information gathering and use in England in the later middle ages’, Jour.Historical Sociology, i (1988), 233–52, at p. 243.

4 S. J. Gunn, ‘War, dynasty and public opinion in early Tudor England’, in Authority and Consent in TudorEngland, ed. G.W. Bernard and S. J. Gunn (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 131–49; C. D. Ross, ‘Rumour, propaganda andpopular opinion during the Wars of the Roses’, in Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Late Medieval England,ed. R. A. Griffiths (Stroud, 1981), pp. 15–32.

5 M.-R. McLaren, ‘Reading, writing and recording: literacy and the London chronicles in the 15th century’,in London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron, ed. M. P. Davies and A. Prescott (HarlaxtonMedieval Studies, xvi, 2008), pp. 346–65; and see also her London Chronicles of the 15th Century: a Revolution inEnglish Writing (Woodbridge, 2002).

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print. Copies were often publicly posted to supplement the (inevitably limited) effectof oral proclamation of legislation and government orders.6

Genealogical information was widely diffused among the nobility, for whom it wasa vital stock-in-trade, extensive oral tradition reinforced by pedigree rolls. Great nobles,thanks to the intricate net of marriages which bound them together, would have hadlittle difficulty in rehearsing Henry’s descent from John of Gaunt, including thecomplications of the initial bastardy of the Beauforts. Some of this information wouldhave filtered down the social scale, through household officials and so on. But again,I suspect, the genealogical basis of Henry’s claim must have remained mysterious to,say, politically interested Londoners, let alone the generality of his subjects.7

Many individuals had personal experience of historical events. Some 300–400gentlemen fled to Brittany after the failure of Buckingham’s rebellion in 1483,accepted Henry of Richmond as their candidate for the throne after Henry had swornpublicly to marry Edward IV’s eldest daughter Elizabeth, fled with him from Brittanyto royal France, and took part in his invasion in 1485. In the manor houses restored toor acquired by these men there must have been frequent talk of their experiences inexile, even though none of that apparently was to be put into writing.Yet how muchdid even Henry’s companions know about his background, about the cause of theirsudden flight from Brittany, about Henry’s complicated negotiations with factions atthe French court, or the extent and conditions of French aid?

There is, I would maintain, a crucial difference between bits and pieces of personalrecollection, or the odd piece of information derived from written records,newsletters, gossip or knowledge of some great national happening such as acoronation or the calling of a parliament, on the one hand, and the existence ofa reasonably ordered account of a series of events; what would now be called a‘narrative’, coherent enough to form the basis of an informed judgement on events.8

This is not to deny that written accounts may be misleading or even downright wrong.Nevertheless it is easier to compare written accounts with each other and come tosome sort of informed conclusion than it is to compare oral testimonies or to makesense of ‘factual’ written information such as lists of kings or battles.9

6 R. W. Heinze, The Proclamations of the Tudor Kings (Cambridge, 1976), p. 28; G. R. Elton, ‘The sessionalprinting of statutes, 1484–1547’, in Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government (4 vols., Cambridge,1974–92), iii. 92–109. Tim Thornton draws attention to how few printed proclamations appear to have beenprinted before 1529 (‘Propaganda, political communication and the problem of English responses to theintroduction of printing’, in Propaganda, Political Rhetoric and Identity 1300–2000, ed. B. Taithe and T. Thornton(Stroud, 1999), pp. 41–60). Heinze, p. 23, however, suggests that this may be a matter of printed copies notsurviving.

7 M. Hicks,‘Heirs and non-heirs: perceptions and realities among the English nobility, c.1300–1500’, in Makingand Breaking the Rules: Succession in Medieval Europe c.1000–c.1600, ed. F. Lachaud and M. A. Penman (Turnhout,2008), pp. 191–200.

8 One might instance jurors testifying to the age of heirs referring to a particular parliament, to a battle, toa royal marriage or death (see M. McGlyn, ‘Memory, orality and life records: proofs of age in Tudor England’,Sixteenth Century Jour., xl (2009), 679–97, at p. 683). For the diffusion of dates of accession or deaths of kings,see S. J. Gunn, ‘Early Tudor dates for the death of Edward V’, Northern Hist., xxviii (1992), 213–16. Richmond,‘Hand and mouth’, p. 239, claims that Sir John Fastolf ‘constructed a contemporary history archive’, but thatmust have been wholly exceptional.

9 A. Fox, ‘Custom, memory and the authority of writing’, in The Experience of Authority in Early ModernEngland, ed. P. Griffiths, A. Fox and S. Hindle (1996), pp. 89–116. On the common law giving greater credenceto written record, Fox appositely quotes John Evelyn, writing in the 1650s: ‘verbal reports we experimentallyfind so very inconsistent and apt to err and misrepresent things done even in our own time and veryneighbourhood’ (p. 91). For lists (kings, battles, provinces of the Roman church) in a Cheshire commonplacebook, see D.Youngs, Humphrey Newton (1466–1536): an Early Tudor Gentleman (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 162–76.

230 Information and disinformation under Henry VII and early Henry VIII

Copyright © 2011 Institute of Historical Research Historical Research, vol. 85, no. 228 (May 2012)

The modern citizen is, of course, bombarded with an indigestible mass ofinformation. But what is important here is that the media not only provideinformation about current matters, but also frequently recapitulate events, provide(and reformulate) a ‘grand narrative’ by which we can see particular occurrences inrelationship to each other; not only in proper sequence, but also laterally, the effect ofevents taking place in a particular context on developments elsewhere. An examplefrom recent history might be the interconnection of events in the Middle East,Afghanistan and Pakistan. The politically interested would be able to set in sequence‘9/11’, the invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. Without prompting bythe media, however, they might have trouble in giving dates, still less consider theimplications of these events for, say, the politics of Iran or for relations between theUnited States, Europe, Russia, India and China.The narratives provided by the mediamay well be misleading in various ways, but they do provide a framework by which wecan order our own reactions and try to think coherently about what has happened.10

Such a grand narrative of the events of 1483–5 must have remained, at best, extremelyelusive until the work of Vergil and More became available to forge the story whichwas to remain dominant before archival evidence began to become available in thenineteenth century.

The evidence for the events of 1483–5 in England and for Henry’s experiences beforeBosworth has been subject to minute study by historians.11 But this has been largelyfor the light it can throw on the question of ‘what actually happened’. Historians havebeen less concerned about the question of how far the information contained in anygiven source was available at the time. For this reason, excluded from detailedconsideration in this article are what would seem to historians to be the most usefulaccounts; namely the continuations of the Crowland Chronicle, with informationapparently derived from an insider in Richard’s government; and Dominic Mancini’scontemporary account of Richard’s usurpation. While it can be argued thatinformation derived from these sources leaked back in a minor way to chroniclers(as did perhaps also the works of John Rous, the chantry-priest of Guy’s Cliff atWarwick), their influence was marginal.This article will take as the test of what couldbe known about the years 1483–5 at the end of Henry VII’s reign informationincluded in what is now called the ‘Great Chronicle of London’, compiled in about1512, although not printed until 1938, and The Newe Cronycles of England and ofFraunce, printed in 1517.

The Crowland (or Croyland) Chronicle, or at least its second continuation, whichincludes the apparent insider memoir, is an extremely valuable source. Its worth has

10 Perhaps I might instance a personal experience which makes the point. I was involved in the moves whichresulted in my college being one of the first previously all-male colleges at Oxford to admit women as studentsand as fellows.This may now seem a trivial incident but at the time there was some controversy and it took upa good deal of time and energy. It was not, however, until, 30 years later, Jason Leech produced a thesis basedon the archival evidence (University of Oxford, Wadham College Archives, 2B, J. Leech, ‘First of the last:Wadham College and the decision for co-residence in 1974’ (unpublished University of Oxford B.A.dissertation)), that I acquired a clear idea of the chronology, the interplay of various factors, the sequence ofdifficulties and solutions which made the whole process so long drawn-out; in short, that I was able to see anevent in which I had been a participant in some sort of historical perspective.

11 Notably among a large number of works: A. Hanham, Richard III and his Early Historians, 1483–1535(Oxford, 1975); Ross, Richard III; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England (2 vols., 1974–82), ii; R. Horrox,Richard III: Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989); R.A. Griffiths and R. S.Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty(rev. edn., Stroud, 2005).



heightened the controversy about its composition.12 The main source was clearly acanon lawyer with experience in chancery, who had been used on diplomatic missionsby Edward IV. He was probably in the entourage of Bishop Russell of Lincoln,chancellor in 1483, who paid an extended visit to the abbey in April–May 1486;indeed, some have argued that Russell himself may have been the source. TheChronicle may also, as Alison Hanham has suggested, incorporate general informationbeing circulated orally at the time. Interestingly, in the light of later accounts, itdescribes Buckingham’s ‘being repentant’ as his motivation for rebellion (presumablyfor his part in Richard’s usurpation), mentions the rumour that ‘King Edward’ssons, by some unknown manner of violent destruction, had met their fate’, and hasBuckingham, on the advice of Bishop Morton, inviting Henry to head the rebellionand marry Elizabeth.13 The Chronicle itself (including the continuations) had evidentlydisappeared from Crowland abbey by 1506.The manuscript was in Sir Robert Cotton’slibrary by 1625. The original Chronicle was cited by John Caius in 1568 and byArchbishop Parker in 1572, was printed in 1596, and the continuations were used bySir George Buck for his The History of King Richard the Third (1619), the first serious‘revisionist’ account of the reign.14 As Alison Hanham has argued, it, or an ‘ur-text’,may have been used by Vergil.15 However, there is no evidence of its influencing theLondon chronicles.

Dominic Mancini was an Italian humanist resident in London in 1483, leaving in Julyshortly after Richard’s coronation. He knew John Argentine, physician to Edward Vas prince of Wales and as king.Mancini provided a detailed account of the events leadingto the coronation, and reported the suspicion that Edward and his brother weremurdered. He was also a friend of Angelo Cato, archbishop of Vienne, and his accountprobably influenced the accusation made by Guillaume de Rochefort, the Frenchchancellor, in January 1484 that Richard had murdered his nephews.However,Mancini’snarrative was unknown in England until John Armstrong discovered a manuscript inLille in 1934.16

John Rous’s work has attracted opprobrium for his opportunistic transformationof Richard from hero to villain after Bosworth and for his description of Richardas two years in the womb, born with teeth and long hair. Nevertheless his accountof the events of 1483 is full and reasonably accurate, presumably acquired by Rousfrom the king’s entourage during Richard’s stay at Warwick for a week in August1483. Although his manuscript ‘Historia de Regibus Anglie’ was acquired by Cotton,

12 The most accessible edition of the second and (brief) third continuations, though not without its faults oftranslation, is The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–86, ed. and trans. N. Pronay and J. Cox (1986) (hereafterCrowland Continuations). For recent bibliographies of the long-running controversy about authorship andcomposition, see references in M. Hicks, ‘The second anonymous continuation of the Crowland AbbeyChronicle 1459–86 revisited’, Eng. Hist. Rev, cxxiii (2007), 351–70; and A. Hanham, ‘The mysterious affair atCrowland abbey’, Ricardian, xviii (2008), 1–20.

13 Crowland Continuations, pp. 162–3. It is interesting that Morton’s role was known or suspected as early as1486 (see C. S. L. Davies, ‘Bishop John Morton, the Holy See, and the accession of Henry VII’, Eng. Hist. Rev.,cii (1987), 2–30, at pp. 4–5). A thorough investigation of the multiple plots involving Buckingham, Morton,Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort had to await Vergil and More.

14 Hicks, ‘Second continuation’, p. 353. See the modern annotated edition of Buck by A. N. Kincaid(Gloucester, 1982).

15 Hanham, Richard III, pp. 135–42.16 D. Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard III, ed. C. A. J. Armstrong (1st edn., Oxford, 1936; 2nd edn., 1969);

see Armstong’s detailed and wide-ranging introduction.



there is no indication that it entered the general historical consciousness in thesixteenth century.17

In addition, modern historians have been able to glean information from oralsources preserved in ballads and other vehicles of popular culture.18 Indeed, suchsources may represent the principal means by which most people came by anyknowledge they might have of the recent past and, as such, deserve more systematicstudy than they normally receive. Nevertheless, their function was plainly distinct fromthat of the chronicle or history; and they do little to create the ‘historical’ narrativewhich has been postulated above as essential to a serious and informed understandingof events. Their audience must have recognized that a good deal of romanticizationwent into their recital.

Of course, the great body of government archive material was largely inaccessibleto would-be historians before the nineteenth century; orations delivered at court, evenif subsequently put into the royal library, only slightly less so, as we shall see. In thisrespect the great addition to studies of the period represented by the Rolls Seriesvolumes and subsequent publication of records, indispensable as they are to historians,is a snare to the recovery of a sense of what fifteenth-century people could know.19

In principle one might have expected the London civic records or those of the liverycompanies to have been available to London chroniclers. But there seems littleevidence that this wealth of material, so strikingly employed by DeLloyd Guth foranalysing the capital’s reaction to politics in 1483–5, was so used at the time.20 We haveto make a conscious effort to remind ourselves that our knowledge of the period ismuch more extensive and much more systematically ordered than that of anycontemporary, even of Henry VII himself; even if, obviously, Henry and his ministersalso knew a great many things which we do not and cannot ever know.

The ‘Great Chronicle of London’ was compiled in about 1512. It represents what aconscientious and well-informed compiler could put together at the beginning ofHenry VIII’s reign from existing available written records and, no doubt, a degree oforal history or personal experience; the result, in Mary-Rose McLaren’s words,of ‘collaborative dialogue’. It remained unprinted until 1938 and there seems noindication of what readership it might have had in manuscript. The one extantmanuscript was owned by John Stow, and before him possibly by the martyrologistJohn Foxe. It is used here to illustrate what information was available to the chroniclerhimself, rather than for the information it made available to readers. To judge by itsextremely detailed treatment of events from about 1495, including a version of theverses used to welcome Katherine of Aragon in 1501 and of ‘a Ballad of Empson’ for

17 Hanham, Richard III, pp. 104–7, 118–24; Ross, Richard III, pp. xxi–xxii; Gransden, ii. 309–27; N. Orme,‘Rous, John (c.1420–1492)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24173> [accessed 19 July 2010].

18 See, for instance, Ross’s discussion of ‘The ballad of Bosworth Field’, in Richard III, pp. 235–7. See, too,‘Thesong of the Ladye Bessiye’, a romanticized account of the marriage of Henry and Elizabeth (Bishop Percy’s FolioManuscript, ed. J.W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall (3 vols., 1867–8), iii. 319–63). For ‘frailties’ in Ross’s list of Richard’ssupporters derived from the ballad, ‘alongside men certainly there and others possibly, even probably there, arethe impossible’, see C. Richmond,‘1485 and all that’, in Richard III, Loyalty, Lordship and Law, ed. P.W. Hammond(Richard III and Yorkist Historical Trust, 1986), pp. 172–208, at p. 172.

19 Memorials of King Henry the Seventh, ed. J. Gairdner (Rolls ser., x, 1858); Letters and Papers Illustrative of theReigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner (2 vols., Rolls ser., xxiva–b, 1861–3); Materials for a History ofthe Reign of Henry VII, ed.W. Campbell (2 vols., Rolls ser., lxa–b, 1873–7); British Library Harleian Manuscript 433,ed. R. Horrox and P. W. Hammond (4 vols., Richard III and Yorkist Historical Trust, 1979–83).

20 D. J. Guth, ‘Richard III, Henry VII and the City of London’, in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages:a Tribute to Charles Ross, ed. R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne (Stroud, 1986), pp. 185–204.



1509, the chronicler had no aversion to copiousness.The more startling, therefore, is thebrevity and inaccuracy of his account of the years 1483–5. This cannot be attributedto a wish to be succinct.Whether for reasons of self-censorship, caution in the face ofofficial disapproval or lack of information (possibly all three), the Chronicle’s approachis significant; and far from the ‘Tudor triumphalism’ so often ascribed to Henry VII.21

The Chronicle reports Edward IV’s death in 1483 at, allegedly, the age of forty-six –actually he was forty. Given the significance of Edward’s early death, resulting in thesuccession of an heir aged only twelve, this is an important error. Moreover Edward’sdate of birth must affect any historian’s assessment of his earlier history; notably hisacquisition of the throne (aged eighteen) and his impetuous marriage (aged twenty-one).This is a useful reminder of how difficult it might be to ascertain, before worksof reference became easily available, even the most elementary factual backgroundinformation.As we will see, the error was to be compounded byVergil and More, whomake Edward fifty and fifty-three respectively at his death. Perhaps equally surprising, inthe light of Perkin Warbeck’s later impersonation of Edward’s younger son Richard,duke of York, is the Chronicle’s statement that York was ‘about the age of seven years’in 1483, when he was in fact born on 17 April 1473. EdwardV, on the other hand, wascorrectly recorded as aged twelve in April 1483 (he was born on 2 November 1470).Another significant error is having Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, Edward V’shalf-brother, rather than his uncle Earl Rivers, in charge of the young king on hisjourney from Ludlow after Edward IV’s death; again an item difficult to reconcile withRivers’s later execution at Pontefract and Dorset’s escape from England (whether,according to the Chronicle, from Pontefract or Westminster is not clear).22

The Chronicle continues with a reasonably full account (although one of coursehotly debated, line by line, by historians) of the dramatic events leading to Gloucester’sbecoming protector and then successfully asserting a claim to be king, with a good dealof circumstantial detail, all in 1483.The deposed Edward V and his brother are notedas ‘shooting and playing in the garden of the Tower by sundry times’. Richmond ispersuaded ‘to claim the Crown as his right, considering the death of King Edward’schildren, of whom, as men feared not openly to say that they were rid out of thisworld’. Various theories about the deaths are listed – smothering by featherbeds,drowning in wine, or poison – ‘Of which cruel deed Sir James Tyrell was reported tobe the doer, but others put that weight upon an old servant of King Richard’s named[blank]’.23

21 The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H.Thomas and I. D.Thornley (1938; repr. Gloucester, 1983) (hereafterGreat Chronicle), with valuable introduction and notes. The relevant section is pp. 229–39. It is discussed inGransden, ii. 231–2 (she postulates as an important source a ‘lost chronicle, the so-called Main City Chronicle’,which originally went up to 1496 and was subsequently extended to 1503); in Hanham, Richard III, pp. 110–17;and in McLaren, ‘Reading, writing’, p. 357. Ross, Richard III, p. xxxviii, is misleading in asserting that ‘thenarrative up to 1496 was written before 1501–2, and perhaps earlier’, since insertions were made in this sectionafter the accession of HenryVIII (Great Chronicle, introduction, p. lxviii). It must be emphasized that the title wasnot a contemporary one but was given by C. L. Kingsford in 1913 (Great Chronicle, introduction, p. xv). For theincorporation of government newsletters on the 1492 invasion of France and on the 1497 Scottish campaign,see Great Chronicle, pp. 247, 278–81; reception of Katherine, pp. 297–316; Ballad of Empson, pp. 344–7.

22 Given Dorset’s ambivalent relations with Henry, in exile and subsequently, the chronicler may well beself-censoring when he states that ‘if I should tell all the circumstance it would make a long book, how well heescaped all and lived many years after’ (Great Chronicle, pp. 232–3). For Dorset, see T. B. Pugh, ‘Grey,Thomas, 1stmarquess of Dorset (c.1455–1501)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11560> [accessed 19July 2010]. As we shall see, the belief that Dorset accompanied Edward V from Ludlow also occurs in theLondon chronicle Vitellius A 16.

23 This obviously derives from Tyrell’s alleged ‘confession’ of 1502 (see below).



The account of ‘Buckingham’s rebellion’ is extremely muddled. As withcontemporary works generally (with the exception of Crowland) it emphasizesBuckingham’s attempted rising in Wales rather than, as in modern interpretations, awidespread rebellion in the south and west of England by gentlemen loyal to thememory of Edward IV.24 Bishop Morton’s arrest in June 1483 is recorded, but there isno mention of his being kept in custody at Buckingham’s castle at Brecon. Instead hewas ‘in a surety for a time’ then ‘got by licence or otherwise over the sea and by sundrytimes was again sent for, [but] hearing of the King’s cruel dealing, held him off by fairand wise excuses, till he had more experience of the sequel’. No mention is thereforemade of Morton’s plotting with Buckingham, of his passing valuable intelligence toRichmond, or of his subsequent journey to Rome; none of which, it seems, was madepublic in Henry VII’s lifetime, although, as we have seen, the Crowland continuatorand Richard’s government had known of Morton’s influence over Buckingham. TheChronicle’s obituary notice for Morton (died 1500) records his ‘many and great acts andespecially . . . his great wisdom’, even as an octogenarian; ‘indeed his many virtues[sur]passed all other Englishmen, albeit that he lived not without great obloquy andgrudge of the people, as well of great men and other’. There were, however, ‘somestrange sayings and reports after his burying’, unelaborated.25 While the silence about thegentry rebels (who were to provide the core of Henry’s forces) and about Morton’s roleis explicable in terms of Henry’s reluctance to discuss the background to his invasion,the account of the rebellion itself seems very odd. It took place in fact in October 1483.The Chronicle allocates it to the mayoral year of Robert Billesden (1483–4), whichbegan on 29 October 1483;26 Buckingham had risen by 11 October, and was deliveredas a prisoner to Richard at Salisbury on 1 November, having been captured some daysbeforehand.27The Chronicle compounds the error by pushing Billesden’s mayoralty into1484–5. That in turn may help to explain the most astonishing error of all; namelymaking the death of Richard’s queen, Anne, a factor in the rebellion.28

While the muddle over dates seems explicable, given that the mayoral year changedduring the course of the rebellion and the general difficulty of juggling calendar,regnal and mayoral years (which produced the ultimate absurdity of Bosworth beingfought in 1486), the mistake over the queen’s death does seem extraordinary.Anne diedin London on 16 March 1485. Her death was hardly a minor event. On 30 MarchRichard publicly denied, before the mayor and aldermen, that he intended to marryElizabeth of York.29 The Chronicle, however, goes on to assert that ‘after Easter [18April in 1484, 9 April in 1485] much whispering was among the people that the Kinghad put the children [the sons] of King Edward to death, and also that he had poisonedthe Queen his wife and intended with a licence purchased to have married the eldestdaughter of King Edward’. ‘But how so the Queen was dealt with, were it by his

24 Ross, Richard III, pp. 105–13.25 Great Chronicle, pp. 231, 237, 294–5. Morton’s conspiring with Buckingham had been the grounds of his

attainder in 1484, which suggests self-censorship rather than ignorance as the cause of the Chronicle’s reticencehere (The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England 1275–1504, ed. C. Given-Wilson (16 vols., 2005) (hereafterP.R.O.M.E.), xv, ed. R. Horrox, p. 107).

26 Great Chronicle, pp. 234 and (notes) 436.27 Ross, Richard III, pp. 116–17.28 Hanham, Richard III, p. 117.29 Hanham, Richard III, pp. 51–3. The event is recorded in Crowland Continuations, pp. 174–7, and, more

relevantly, in Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 1453–1527, ed. L. Lyell and F. D.Watney (1936), pp. 173–4. Onewould have thought that Richard’s startling public statement would have left a deep impression in the City.Again, the unreliability of oral history is evident.



means or by the visitation of God, she died shortly after, and was buried at Westminsterby the south door’.The combination of the rumours about the princes and the queenare held to be the cause of the Buckingham rebellion.30

This is much more than an understandable chronological confusion. It throws thewhole sequence of events into disarray, as well as putting the timing of the rebellionmuch too late. It makes it impossible to see Richard’s alleged plan to marry his niece(or perhaps, less scandalously, to marry her to some other man) as a defensive responseto Henry’s oath to marry her, in the immediate aftermath of the rebellion, onChristmas Day 1483.At the time of the rebellion Richard had an heir, his son Edward(died April 1484), and a queen (born 1456) still of child-bearing age. His situationwould have been radically different were he already a childless widower.

The Chronicle therefore provides a useful if flawed account of Richard’susurpation, but a very confused account of his actual reign. Nobody reliant on theChronicle could possibly make sense of the 1483 rebellion or reconstruct the basicsequence of events in England before Bosworth, let alone fit into it Richmond’sconcomitant activity in Brittany and France.

Inevitably for its date, the Chronicle is consistently hostile to Richard III. Itrecords the general belief that Richard had been implicated in, or indeed had beenthe instigator of, the death of Henry VI. (Although there is no mention of anyinvolvement by him in the execution of Clarence, which is dealt with very briefly.)31

The arrest and summary execution of Hastings in 1483 is described as murder, andRichard as a ‘tyrant’.The account of Dr. Shaa’s and Buckingham’s speeches in favourof Richard’s title are reported sarcastically.The rumour of the ‘death of the innocents’is held to have caused many to say they would prefer French domination to Richard’srule.32

Even more surprising is the Chronicle’s sketchy treatment of Henry VII’santecedents and experiences before his accession. Henry’s grandfather is mentioned for1437–8, hardly in flattering terms:

This same year one Oweyn no man of birth neither of livelihood broke out of Newgateagainst night after searching time through help of his priest and went his way hurting foul hiskeeper. But at the last blessed be God he was taken again. The which Oweyn had privilywedded Queen Katherine and had three or four children by her, unwitting the common peopletill that she were dead.

This entry, unsurprisingly, had been written well before Henry’s accession, in ‘a handof the middle of the fifteenth century’.A marginal annotation was added subsequently,but not before 1563, and even so it is still less than flattering: ‘Owinus Tiderius avusRegis henrici septimi ex stirpe infimo ortus’.33 The elevation of Owen’s sons Edmundand Jasper to the peerage in 1452 is recorded, now in the hand of the later part of theChronicle written about 1512, as an act of HenryVI’s in favour of his ‘brethren to himupon the mother’s side’. Shortly afterwards the death of Henry VII’s father Edmundis recorded, but there is no mention of Henry’s own subsequent birth, and noinvocation of the ‘Tudor’ surname.34

30 Great Chronicle, pp. 234 and (notes) 436.The editors of the Chronicle make the point that it seems to beunique in associating Anne’s death with the rebellion, which preceded it by some 18 months. Curiously it seemsto be the only source for her burial.

31 Great Chronicle, pp. 220 and (notes) 433; 226 (Clarence).32 Great Chronicle, pp. 231–2, 237.33 Great Chronicle, p. 173 (and see plate after p. 171), and pp. xxiii and 421–2 (introduction and notes).34 Great Chronicle, pp. 186, 189.



Henry himself is not mentioned until 1483, when ‘a gentleman being in the partsof Brittany named Henry and son unto the earl of Richmond’ was induced ‘to claimthe Crown as his right’ on hearing of the death of the princes. No more detailedaccount of Henry’s genealogy is provided, nor of the grounds for his claim, or of howhe came to be in Brittany.There is no mention of Henry’s removal in October 1484from Brittany into France proper. Sir James Blount, governor of Guisnes, and hisprisoner the earl of Oxford join him (allegedly in Brittany although it was actually inFrance).There is no mention of Henry’s activity in France in acquiring funds, soldiersand ships for his invasion. Indeed the whole French dimension of his career has beenwritten out (by design, rather than ignorance in this case, presumably). Henry lands atMilford Haven. He immediately entrusts his cause to God: ‘Judica me deus et discernecausam meam’.There is a description of Bosworth. Henry enters London as king. Heis crowned. Some time after (actually, January 1486) he marries Elizabeth, eldestdaughter of Edward IV. (There is no mention of his oath in exile in 1483 to marryElizabeth, or of the request by parliament in December 1485 that he should do so.)The chronicler is more intent on events in London, including the dramatic deaths oftwo lord mayors in quick succession in the autumn of 1485, taxation and mercantilepolitics.This is an extraordinarily brief and sketchy account of an important sequenceof events.35

No doubt readers of the Chronicle could sense that a good deal of importantmatter had been omitted, perhaps deliberately. Certainly those gentlemen who hadshared Henry’s exile must have been surprised at the minimal treatment of theirexperiences. As for Henry himself he appears to be a deus ex machina sent to remedytyranny, related to Henry VI in a way which could give him no right to the throne,with no mention of the Beaufort lineage which could furnish him with some sort ofclaim, and with no indication of his reliance either on the support of dissidentYorkists,or of the French crown. In the light of the (justified) emphasis by modern historianson the importance of Henry’s mother, Margaret, countess of Richmond (néeBeaufort), both in the events of 1483–5 and during Henry’s reign, it is startling to findno mention of her in part in the plotting, only infrequent mention of her presence atcourt occasions, and no indication of her death, shortly after Henry’s, in 1509. Again,it seems reasonable to suggest that all this reflects deliberate reticence on the part ofthe court, and ultimately of the recently dead king himself, about the politics of hisaccession. No doubt he preferred his image as the instrument raised by God againsttyranny.36

The Great Chronicle is typical, in its reticence, of the London chronicle traditionand many of its errors and omissions are replicated in other works, which may bementioned more briefly.The chronicle now British Library, Cotton MS. Vitellius A.xvi,which ends in 1516, is more definite on Richard’s being responsible for putting theprinces to death, and this being the cause of the Buckingham rebellion, correctly datedto October 1483. Richard, ‘as it was said’, was also responsible for the killing of HenryVI. Again Dorset (wrongly described as Edward’s uncle), not Rivers, accompaniesEdward V from Ludlow.Vitellius has no explanation of Henry’s antecedents (beyonda passing mention of Edmund and Jasper Tudor’s being created peers), has nothing on

35 Great Chronicle, pp. 236–40. The chronicler returns briefly and vaguely to Henry’s exile in his obituary(pp. 338–9): ‘his long being out of this land and what provision was made by princes to keep him from hisright, and how he lastly won it without great shedding of Christian blood.’

36 See M. K. Jones and M. G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort (Cambridge, 1992).



his time in Brittany and France, and makes no mention of the marriage oath or ofparliament’s request for the marriage, or indeed of the death of Richard’s queen.37

The Newe Cronycles of England and of Fraunce (printed in 1517; R.S.T.C., no. 10659)pays systematic attention throughout to French affairs in parallel to English ones,making use largely of Robert Gaguin’s Compendium super Francorum Gestis, printed inParis in 1497. It is also, in Antonia Gransden’s words, ‘the principal vehicle by whichthe historiographical tradition and factual content of the London chronicles wastransmitted to Tudor England’.38 ‘Of the death of [HenryVI] divers tales were told, butthe most common fame went, that he was sticked with a dagger, by the hands of theDuke of Gloucester’.39 On Richard’s usurpation, Edward V and his brother ‘were putunder sure keeping within the Tower, in such wise as they never came abroad after’.

Many and sundry gentlemen and divers sheriffs departed over the sea into France [sic] and thereallied themselves with that virtuous prince Henry, son unto the Earl of Richmond, descendedlineally from Henry IV [sic], lately king of this realm, and covenanted with him that if he wouldmarry Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV, they would with God’s help strengthen himto be king of England and aid him in such manner that he and also she might be possessed oftheir rightful inheritance.40

(The French government in 1484 tried to present Henry as the son of Henry VI, aclaim it knew to be false.41) Even so no mention was made of financial and militaryassistance from France, although the Newe Cronycles’ principal source, Robert Gaguin,had himself reproached Henry in 1489 for his ingratitude as ‘an exile [who] by our[i.e., the French king’s] help returned to your native fields a victor’, a justified claimwhich produced retaliation from Henry’s poets.42 When Henry ‘was come unto theland’ (locality not mentioned; no hint of Wales) he immediately prayed for divinejudgement. His victory however is ascribed to many of Richard’s party either joining

37 See Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1905), pp. 153–263, esp. pp. 163, 187, 189–92. For acomparison of the treatment of particular incidents with that in the Great Chronicle, as well as for areconsideration of Kingsford’s views on its composition, see Hanham, Richard III, pp. 110–17.

38 Reprinted in an edition by Henry Ellis as The New Chronicles of England and France by Robert Fabyan (1811)(hereafter New Chronicles) (see Gransden, ii. 245–6). The ascription by Stow of authorship to Fabyan, generallyaccepted hitherto, has recently been challenged in McLaren, London Chronicles, pp. 263–7. Fabyan is alsosometimes associated with the Great Chronicle (see Great Chronicle, pp. xxii–xxiii). Fortunately the question ofauthorship in either case is not strictly relevant to my argument.

39 New Chronicles, p. 662.40 New Chronicles, pp. 669, 672. Such a forthright declaration of Elizabeth’s rights would have been unlikely

before 1509. ‘Henry IV’ here is not, as I initially suspected, a misprint in the 1811 edition, but is also present inthe 1533 copy, entitled Fabyan’s cronycle.

41 M. K. Jones, ‘The myth of 1485; did France really put Henry Tudor on the throne?’, in The EnglishExperience in France, c.1450–1558: War, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange, ed. D. Grummitt (Aldershot, 2002),pp. 85–105, at pp. 92–3. Jones’s is the most detailed account of Henry in France, incorporating new material.He quotes the letter from Charles VIII to Toulon, from A. Spont, ‘La marine française sous le règne de CharlesVIII’, Revue des questions historiques, new ser., xi (1894), 387–454, at p. 393: ‘fils du feu roi Henri d’Angleterre’.

42 A.V. Antonovics, ‘Henry VII, king of England “By the Grace of Charles VIII of France”’, in Griffiths andSherborne, pp. 169–84, quotation at pp. 169–70. For the exchange with Gaguin, see D. R. Carlson, ‘PoliticizingTudor court literature: Gaguin’s embassy and HenryVII’s humanists’ response’, Studies in Philology, lxxxv (1988),279–304; and J. M. Currin, ‘Persuasions to peace, the Luxembourg-Marigny-Gaguin embassy and the state ofAnglo-French relations, 1489–90’, Eng. Hist. Rev., cxiii (1998), 882–904, for a more nuanced appreciation of theforeign policy context. For Gaguin’s accusation of ingratitude and Henry’s statement of his ‘rights’ and of hisduty to defend Brittany, see pp. 900–2. It seems extraordinary that Philibert de Chandée, commander of theFrench contingent in Henry’s force in 1485, created earl of Bath in 1486, is almost totally absent in Englishsources, except for passing mention by Bernard André (Gairdner, Materials, pp. 25, 29; Complete Peerage, comp.G. E. Cokayne and other (13 vols. in 14, new edn., 1910–59), ii. 15–16). He was on embassy to England in 1487,then took a prominent part in the Italian wars, and was killed in battle in 1503 (Griffiths and Thomas, pp. 144–5,194–5, 197–8).



Henry or holding themselves ‘afar off’.43 While providing rather more information thanthe Great Chronicle on Henry’s exile, and a hint that it was significant in the overallstory, the Newe Cronycles makes no mention of Owen Tudor, of Henry’s backgroundbefore 1483 or of the deaths of Richard’s son or of the queen. In short, no more thanthe Great Chronicle does it provide adequate material for a considered judgement ofevents, beyond a general impression of tyranny on Richard’s part and a seepage ofsupport to Richmond.

Another chronicle, in the College of Arms, MS. 2M6, apparently compiled about1512, provides additional information and a novel point of view. It assertsunequivocally that Edward’s sons ‘were put to death in the Tower of London by thevise [advice or device?] of the Duke of Buckingham’. It mentions that ‘many otherknights, squires or gentlemen from Kent to St Michael’s Mount were rebels’ in 1483.Henry, his uncle Jasper and the earl of Oxford ‘with many other divers gentles cameout of France and landed in Milford Haven’, without further explanation. But it is sobrief (two folios for the period 1483–5) it can do little more than tantalize.44

It is, then, remarkable how sketchy, as well as often blatantly erroneous, were theaccounts available even in the first years of Henry VIII of the circumstances of hisfather’s accession. It was only with Polydore Vergil and Thomas More that therebecame available much more detailed and sophisticated accounts, even if they weremore tendentious than those of the London chroniclers.

Vergil, an Italian humanist and already author of a substantial historical collection,the De inventoribus rerum, arrived in England in 1502 as sub-collector of Peter’s pence.By about 1506 he was encouraged by Henry VII in his determination to write afull-scale history of England. The original manuscript version (up to 1509) wascompleted by about 1513.45 For recent events Vergil supplemented written sourceswith oral evidence, notably from Christopher Urswick and Bishop Richard Fox, bothof whom had been with Henry in France.46 In spite of Henry’s encouragement, therecan be no presumption that the late king would have approvedVergil’s treatment of hisown career. Far from being, as is often asserted, a ‘propagandist’ for the ‘Tudor’ cause,Vergil showed considerable independence. He favoured, for instance, the Yorkist ratherthan the Lancastrian interpretation of the right of succession (although also blamingRichard of York and Edward IV for particular ‘crimes’, and emphasizing the personalholiness of HenryVI); a line perhaps more acceptable to HenryVIII than to his father.His attack on the authenticity of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the whole Arthurian‘British history’ tradition was hardly consonant with Henry VII’s exploitation of theCadwaladr story.47 He strengthened the accusation that Gloucester murdered HenryVI,

43 New Chronicles, pp. 672–3.44 R. F. Green, ‘Historical notes of a London citizen, 1483–8’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xcvi (1981), 585–90.45 D. Hay, Polydore Vergil: Renaissance Historian and Man of Letters (Oxford, 1952), pp. 9, 79; The Anglia Historia

of Polydore Vergil A.D. 1485–1537, ed. D. Hay (Camden, 3rd ser., lxxiv, 1950), introduction, pp. xiii–xiv, xix–xx;Three Books of Polydore Vergil’s English History [1422–85], ed. H. Ellis (Camden, 1st ser., xxix, 1844) (hereafter ThreeBooks). Note, this last is a mid 16th-century English translation. Although it is here, as by the generality ofmodern scholars, used for convenience, it is, in its editor’s words, ‘free and of a thoroughly English character’(p. xxxii), and gives an odd impression of Vergil’s cosmopolitan Latinity, especially when historians pedanticallyreproduce the English spelling. In this article, therefore, spellings have been modernized, quotations checkedagainst its original, the printed Basel edition of 1534, Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, and the Latin inserted whereappropriate.

46 Hay, p. 93, gives John Morton, Reginald Bray and Urswick as principal sources. However, Morton died in1500 and Bray in 1503, so that any contributions on their part are indirect, certainly in Morton’s case. Urswickand Fox, frequently mentioned in the work, died in 1522 and 1528 respectively.

47 H. A. Kelly, Divine Providence in the England of Shakespeare’s Histories (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 87–101.



citing the ‘continual report’ that he ‘killed him with a sword’ (‘Hunc, ut fama constansest, Ricardus Glocestriae dux gladio percussit’), although then, characteristically,qualifying the accusation (‘but whosoever were the killer of that holy man’; ‘quisquissantissimi viri percussor fuerit’).There are surprising errors; Edward IV was ‘about fiftyyears old’ at the time of his death; Buckingham’s rebellion is dated a year late, toOctober 1484.48 He states unequivocally that the princes were murdered, ascribing thedeed to Tyrell, acting unwillingly on Richard’s orders, although stating that ‘what kindof death’ they suffered ‘is not certainly known’ (‘Quo genere mortis . . . non planeconstat’). He also alleged that Richard ‘permitted the rumour of their death to goabroad’, so as to strengthen his own case by making clear that no ‘issue male’ ofEdward IV remained alive to challenge him (‘Rumorem mortis puerorum in ulgusexire permisit’, so that ‘nullam iam ex Eduardo superstitem esse uirilem prolem’).49

Vergil was also the first historian to discuss in any detail the motives for and theplotting behind the Buckingham rebellion; the alleged refusal by Richard ofBuckingham’s claim to the Lancastrian portion of the Bohun inheritance; Bishop JohnMorton’s establishment of contacts between Margaret Beaufort and Buckingham;Margaret’s contact with Elizabeth Woodville; her spinning of the web which linkedHenry’s activities with events in England; and her suggestion of a marriage betweenher son and Edward IV’s daughter.50

Parallel to the narrative of the events in England, Vergil, again for the first time,provided a reasonably full account of the early life of Henry VII. He was the firsthistorian to bring together into a single passage Owen Tudor’s marriage to QueenCatherine, his alleged descent from Cadwaladr, the creation of his sons as earls ofRichmond and Pembroke, and Henry’s birth. He treats Owen more respectfully than hispredecessors:‘hominiVuallo nobili genere, ac multibus uirtutibus mirabilis, qui genus fuitad Cadoualladrum ultimum Brittanorum regem referebat’.51 There is a brief account ofHenry’s time as a ward of theYorkist Herbert family in Wales during Edward IV’s firstreign, his recovery, in 1470–1, by his uncle Jasper (although he is said to be ‘scarcely (vix)ten years old’, whereas he was in fact thirteen or fourteen), HenryVI’s prophecy that hewould one day inherit the throne, his subsequent flight for France but arrival in Brittany,and his fraught career at the court of Duke Francis II while Edward IV sought to havehim returned to England. Dr. Shaa’s sermon is said to have ignited the hopes ofLancastrians that Henry, as ‘King Henry’s nephew by his brother’ (‘ex fratre nepotem’),might soon become king.52 Henry’s aborted invasion to join the Buckingham rebellionin 1483 (with 5,000 Breton soldiers and fifteen ships, a bigger force than the French wereto provide in 1485) is described, although misdated to 10 October 1484.Vergil makes agood deal of the flight abroad of those involved in the rebellion, of the marriagecontract (allegedly at Rennes), of Richard’s attempts to secure Henry, of Henry’s flightto France and his experiences there, of his being joined by Blount and Oxford, of theequivocal behaviour of Dorset, of his success in getting (slender) financial assistancefrom Charles VIII, and of the need to borrow more money on security. There is no

48 Three Books, pp. 156, 171, 187, 201; Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, pp. 525, 532, 539, 546. Richard’s coronation,dated 6 July 1484 in the English version, is correctly dated 6 July 1483 in the Latin.

49 Three Books, pp. 188–9; Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, p. 540.50 Three Books, pp. 194–8; Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, pp. 542–3.51 Three Books, p. 62; Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, p. 481.52 Three Books, pp. 134–5, 154–5, 164–6, 186–7; Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, pp. 515, 524, 526, 528, 539. On

Henry’s age in 1470–1, the English version incorrectly renders ‘vix’ as ‘not fully’ ten years.



reference to direct French military aid.53 Perhaps significantly there is explicit mentionof the future Bishop Fox,‘a man of an excellent wit’, joining Henry and being ‘receivedimmediately to be of his privy counsel’ (‘summo ingenio . . . [Henricus] statim insecretiorem familiaritatem recepit’).54

AlthoughVergil’s manuscript was completed by 1513, it was not to be printed (withmodifications) until 1534.The reasons for delay may be surmised. EvidentlyVergil tookthe completed manuscript with him to Rome in 1514 and then deposited it with theducal librarian at Urbino.The librarian was Federico Veterani, a celebrated copyist, andit is likely that Vergil wished to have a copy made for presentation to Henry VIII.Evidently the copy was never made, and Vergil reclaimed the manuscript on his nextvisit in 1516. He revised the history, apparently most assiduously between 1521 and1529, but he was also engaged on other literary work. Life was complicated by badrelations with Cardinal Wolsey, due initially to their connection to rival factions at thepapal court.Vergil was imprisoned for a time in 1515. For the rest of Wolsey’s ministryhe kept out of harm’s way, as indeed he did during the period of religious upheavalfrom 1529. (Vergil toed the official English religious line until 1547.) He revisitedUrbino in 1533 and probably left the revised manuscript at Basel to be printed. It waspublished in 1534.Vergil possibly preferred the higher standards of printing in Basel,but it may be that political sensitivities made him cautious about publishing inEngland. Even so the first printed edition omitted the final chapter, dealing with theevents of Henry VIII’s reign, as did the second, printed in Basel in 1546. Not until1555 was Vergil prepared to commit this to print. There seems no evidence ofcirculation of manuscript copies, except possibly to More, in spite of Vergil’s widecircle of humanist patrons and writers. Not until 1534, then, was a reasonably full andcoherent account of Richard’s reign and of Henry’s activities in exile available toreaders, and then only to those able to access an expensive, high-quality work infashionable humanist Latin.55

Probably a little afterVergil,Thomas More, a Londoner who also moved in humanistcircles, was at work on his ‘Richard III’.The compositional history is complicated, butit seems likely that he was completing his manuscripts in the years 1514–18, so that hewas probably able to compare notes with Vergil.56 More’s aim was very different fromVergil’s; not a general history, but a short, sharp account of Richard’s taking thethrone, composed independently in English and Latin (the one is not a directtranslation of the other). Moreover, More provided a continuation to the Englishversion, encompassing a dramatic account of the murder of the princes, as we willdiscuss below. It concluded with a detailed and vivid description of Morton’s plotting

53 Three Books, pp. 201–9, 212–16; Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, pp. 546–9, 551–2.Vergil seems to have been thefirst historian to situate the marriage contract at Rennes (‘Reynes’, ‘Rhedones’), which has been generallyfollowed by both 16th-century and modern English historians. Breton and French historians more plausiblylocate the event at Vannes (see A. Bouchart, Grandes Croniques de Bretagne, ed. M.-L. Auger and G. Jeanneau(3 vols., Paris, 1986–98), ii. 459, iii. 21, 137). The last entry in this chronicle is for 1488. It was first printed in1514. The description of the ceremony is detailed and circumstantial. It is more likely to be correct on thismatter than is Vergil. Jones, pp. 91–2, accuses Vergil of a ‘totally false’ statement that Henry visited the Frenchcourt after his attempt to take part in the Buckingham rebellion;Vergil, Three Books, p. 202 (Anglicae Historiae librixxvi, p. 546), merely has him sending an embassy however.

54 Three Books, p. 209; Anglicae Historiae libri xxvi, p. 549.55 Hay, pp. 9–10, 14–16, 77–83. The O.D.N.B. article on Vergil by William J. Connell accepts Hay’s

reconstruction (W. J. Connell, ‘Vergil, Polydore (c.1470–1555)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28224> [accessed 20 July 2010].

56 Fox, Politics and Literature, pp. 116–19.



with Buckingham, again replete with long sections of reported speech.57 Paul MurrayKendall’s later dissection of More’s account remains a classic of historical forensics andis supplemented by a host of serious works, of which Hanham and Ross need only becited here. There is a general consensus that More’s account is primarily a literarywork, in a way which contrasts with Vergil, who was clearly trying to establish theliteral truth in so far as he could, weighing evidence and probabilities, and qualifyinghis account where he felt uncertain. More was probably concerned to report the truthas he saw it, but not in any literalistic way. He either derives from Rous, or, more likely,from the same oral tradition, the story of Richard’s monstrous birth. His penchant forirony, for humour, for satire, for multi-layered meaning and for ‘sending-up’ establishedliterary conventions and even his own composition is a further complication. AsA. F. Pollard ironically asked: ‘is there any evidence that More ever suffered from themodern disorder of historical research?’58

It wasVergil, then, who established the master narrative of Richard III’s reign and ofHenry’s antecedents. In spite of such ‘revisionists’ as Sir George Buck and HoraceWalpole, his account was to hold the field until the exploitation of archival sources inthe nineteenth century, and in some respects (for example on Henry’s life in exile) it stilldoes. More added vivid detail for an important part of the story, but did not change themain thrust. He breaks off very suddenly, in the middle of Morton’s conversation withBuckingham, and the work was never resumed. One can only speculate about thereason.The success of Utopia (published in 1516), and More’s increasing involvement ingovernment may be relevant; but so too, surely, was the continued sensitivity (as will bediscussed below) of many of the issues of 1485. Manuscript copies of More, at least,appear to have circulated.59 However, More’s brother-in-law (and printer of his Dialogueconcernynge heresyes in 1529) John Rastell ignored More’s narrative when he published hisepitome of the chronicles as The pastyme of people (R.S.T.C., no. 20724), also in 1529;it is largely an abridgement of the 1517 Newe Cronycles. We can only speculateabout the reason; perhaps More himself was still reluctant to reopen a potentiallydangerous subject.60 Vergil and More did, however, enter the main historical tradition,anonymously, in 1543 in Grafton’s continuation of Hardyng, and even more widely inGrafton’s 1548 edition of Halle.61 More’s account was not printed under his own name

57 Richard III is available in two volumes of the Yale University The Complete Works of St. Thomas More(15 vols., New Haven, Conn., 1963–97): ii, ed. R. S. Sylvester (1963); and xv, ed. D. Kinney (1986).The formercontains the Latin and English versions of the text taken from the 1563 Opera Omnia (Louvain) and from the1557 The workes of Sir Thomas More . . . in the Englysh tonge (R.S.T.C., no. 18076), and a Latin version from the‘Arundel Manuscript’ at the College of Arms. The Latin texts end with Richard’s coronation, the Englishcontinues to the murder of the princes and the plotting around Buckingham, where it suddenly breaks off.Vol. xv contains a Latin edition from a MS. in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. For the complicated textualhistory and suggested relationships between texts, see now the introduction to vol. xv.

58 Kendall, pp. 393–418; Ross, Richard III, pp. 96–104; Hanham, Richard III, pp. 152–90. See Fox, Literature andPolitics, pp. 120–5, for More’s systematic undercutting of his own narrative. A. F. Pollard, ‘The making of SirThomas More’s Richard III’, in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. J. G. Edwards,V. H. Galbraith andE. F. Jacob (Manchester, 1933), pp. 223–38, at p. 230.

59 Sir Geoffrey Pole had lent George Crofts a copy by 1538 (Complete Works of St.Thomas More, ii, p. xxvii).60 John Rastell, The Pastyme of People and A New Boke of Purgatory, ed. A. J. Geritz (‘The Renaissance

Imagination’, xiv, NewYork, 1955), pp. 195–6, 398–9. In contrast to More, Rastell does not discuss Buckingham’smotives other than ‘the intent to clear himself and to win the favour of the people’. He does mention Henry’spromise to marry, which was beyond the scope of More’s narrative (pp. 198, 400–1).

61 R.S.T.C., nos. 12766.7 and 12721. Grafton and Halle may have had access to a copy of More’s MS. inThomas Cromwell’s office, either one confiscated from More himself or, e.g., Pole’s copy (Complete Works of St.Thomas More, ii. 276–80; xv, pp. cl–cli).



until it was published by his nephew William Rastell in the collected edition of hisEnglish works, The workes of sir Thomas More, in 1557 (R.S.T.C., no. 18076).

So far we have identified four aspects in which, at the end of Henry VII’s reign,historical knowledge, in the sense of either printed works or readily availablemanuscripts, about the events of Richard III’s reign and about Henry VII’s ownbackground was seriously deficient.Two of these – mistakes about the age of leadingparticipants and confusion about the sequence of events, sometimes of a ratherstartling sort – are readily explicable in terms of the difficulties facing would-behistorians, such as the absence of works of reference, and the confusions caused by thejuxtaposition of calendar, regnal and mayoral years.Two others are more significant: thefailure to explore the pre-1485 experiences of HenryVII, his ancestry and the groundsfor his claim to the throne; and the failure to establish what had happened to the sonsof Edward IV, beyond their disappearance as captives and presumed death, probably byfoul means. These last are surely the result of deliberate policy on the part of thegovernment of HenryVII, perhaps by intentionally not providing information, perhapsalso by discouraging investigation or publication by others.

Henry and his advisers were well aware of the value of publicizing his case when itsuited their interest. In this they were following recent precedent. A set of documentsabout diplomatic relations with France since 1475, The promisse of matrimonie (R.S.T.C.,no. 9176), was printed for use in Edward IV’s last parliament, summoned for January1483.The statutes passed in the parliament of 1484 were also printed and this becamethe accepted practice. From 1490 they were in English rather than Law-French.62 In June1486 a royal proclamation publicized the bull issued by Pope Innocent VIII on theprevious 27 March, rehearsing papal approval of the marriage between Henry andElizabeth as a means of ending the ‘long and grievous variance’ between ‘the house ofthe Duchy of Lancaster’ and ‘the house of the Duchy of York’. It confirms Henry’s ‘rightand title’ to the crown, and that of the heirs of his body, without specifying the details(carefully refraining from making that right dependent on the marriage, clarifying thatHenry’s rights or those of an heir by a subsequent marriage were untouched if Elizabethdied without issue); that right confirmed by victory in battle, by ‘the election of the lordsspiritual and temporal and other nobles of his realm and by the ordinance and authorityof Parliament made by the three estates of this land’.The pope proceeded to curse andanathematize all would-be rebels, and also any clergy who did not publicly denouncesubjects as rebels when the king required it of them.The proclamation was printed in1486, and was reprinted in 1494 and 1498.63 After the battle of Stoke in1487, Henry denounced to Innocent those Irish prelates, including the archbishops ofboth Dublin and Armagh, who had endorsed the claims of Lambert Simnel.The poperesponded by excommunicating (although not by name) the guilty.64 Similarly the‘Confession’ extracted from Perkin Warbeck in 1497 was printed and distributed,although no contemporary printed copy is known to survive.65The value to governmentof appropriate use of the printing-press was appreciated.

62 P. Neville-Singleton, ‘Press, politics and religion’, in Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, iii, ed.L. Hellinga and J. B.Trapp (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 576–607, at p. 577; L. Hellinga, ‘Prologue: the first years of theTudor monarchy and the printing press’, in Tudor Books and Readers, ed. J. N. King (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 15–22,at pp. 17, 19.

63 Neville-Singleton, p. 577; Hellinga, p. 16. For the text, see Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P. L. Hughes andJ. F. Larkin (3 vols., New Haven, Conn., 1964–9), i, no. 5, pp. 6–7.

64 Pollard, Henry VII, iii. 156–64; Neville-Singleton, p. 577.65 Pollard, Henry VII, i. 183–6; Neville-Singleton, p. 577.



We may therefore conclude that, by contrast, Henry’s reticence about his ownexperiences and about the details of Richard’s reign was deliberate. Famously the 1485statute (acknowledging Henry’s claim) merely declared ‘that the inheritance of thecrowns of England and France abide in the most royal person of our Sovereign LordKing Henry VII and in the heirs of his body’, giving no rationale for the declaration;in marked contrast to the elaborate claims set out by Henry IV in 1399, by Richardof York in 1460, by Edward IV in 1461 and by Richard III in 1483–4.66 As we haveseen, the papal bull of 1486 was no more explicit about Henry’s alleged hereditaryright, although adding victory in battle and recognition by nobles and parliament assupporting arguments.67 On the princes, nothing was published, beyond the vagueallegation in 1485 that Richard III was guilty of ‘treasons, homicides and murders inshedding of infants’ blood’.68 More generally, any detailed narrative of Richard’s reignwas in itself dangerous, opening as it might the question of the legitimacy of EdwardIV’s children, including Henry’s own queen, and even of Edward himself. It is notablethat Henry’s first parliament ordered the destruction of the act, titulus regius, settingout Richard’s claim on the basis of the nullity of Edward IV’s marriage and theillegitimacy of his children.69

It may be objected here that ‘publication’, in the sense of making informationavailable to interested Londoners, was not the only outlet for literary production. Agood deal of relevant material was produced at court, to be declaimed orally and thenentrusted to the royal library. Since the publication of the Rolls Series Memorials of theReign of Henry VII in 1857 this material has become very familiar to historians. Itsmodern accessibility is, however, misleading. It did not enter the public domain, and itsimpact must have been limited. It does, though, provide a clue as to how Henry wishedhimself to be considered and it is somewhat less reticent than is the ‘out-of-court’chronicle material.

A notable example is the Italian Pietro Carmeliano’s ‘Suasoria Laeticiae’ on the birthof Prince Arthur. It begins with a meeting between God and his saints on how to endthe dispute between York and Lancaster. The debate takes place after the accession ofRichard III, who had destroyed his nephews, as he had previously killed Henry VI.Henry VI advises God to solve the problem by bringing about the marriage ofRichmond and Elizabeth of York. He asserts, again avoiding genealogical detail, thatRichmond had been ‘the heir to the kingdom of our blood’ (‘heres regni restat desanguine nostro’) since the death of his own son Edward, prince of Wales, in 1471.There is no mention of Henry’s 1483 oath to marry Elizabeth. Richmond sails for

66 1 Hen.VII, c. 1 (P.R.O.M.E., xv. 97). Henry also set out his claim in his speech to parliament on 9 Nov.1485, indicating its justice and its vindication by victory, but it is not clear how specific he was. The wholeprocess was guided by the advice of the judges (see P. R. Cavill, The English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485–1504(Oxford, 2009), pp. 29–30). Cf. Crowland Continuations, p. 195, where the third continuator’s interpretation wasthat ‘in this Parliament the King’s royal authority was confirmed as due to him not by one but by many titles,so that he may be considered to rule rightfully over the English people not only by right of blood but of victoryin battle and of conquest’. (Elizabeth I notably followed her grandfather’s example by declaring rather thanjustifying her title (statute 1 Eliz., c. 3).) For Edward IV’s detailed publicizing of his genealogical case inaccessible format, see M. A. Hicks, ‘Edward IV’s Brief Treatise and the treaty of Picquigny’, Hist. Research, lxxxiii(2010), 253–65.

67 Tudor Royal Proclamations, i, no. 5, p. 6.68 P.R.O.M.E., xv. 107.69 P.R.O.M.E., xv. 133–4. The act stipulated that the 1484 act was to be removed from the parliament roll

(which did not happen) and that any copies were to be ‘utterly destroyed’ or handed in to the chancellor byEaster 1486 under pain of imprisonment and fine (cf. Cavill, Parliaments, pp. 30–1). I am grateful to Dr. Cavillfor his advice on these issues.



Milford Haven, with substantial assistance from Charles VIII (the poem predatesHenry’s quarrel with the French over Brittany), conquers and, at parliament’s request,marries Elizabeth. Their son Arthur will revive the glories of his great namesake.70

The poems of Carmeliano’s fellow Italian Giovanni Giglis are very similar. In his‘Epithalamium’ of 1486, HenryVII, the ‘successor’ of HenryVI, liberates England fromtyranny after the murder of the princes. He is, through his grandfather Owen Tudor(significantly not named), descended from Brutus. He marries Elizabeth on the petitionof parliament.A subsequent poem on the birth of Prince Arthur prophesies the prince’sfuture greatness as the successor to King Arthur.The cult of King Arthur, however, fadedrapidly, featuring minimally even in the 1501 pageants to celebrate the prince’s marriage.King Arthur makes only occasional appearances under Henry VIII. Although famouslyinvoked by the duke of Norfolk in 1531 to justify claims of England’s imperial status,he did not, in fact, feature prominently in arguments about the royal supremacy.71

Indeed, in his later years Henry VII, now more secure on the throne, played down the‘union of the houses’ angle and avoided mentioning French help in 1485. The fullestexposition of Henry’s ‘official line’ is provided in the various works of Bernard André,the blind friar from Toulouse who had accompanied Henry in 1485, and was employedas a resident court humanist, including a spell as tutor to Prince Arthur. Andrémay have been the author, in about 1497, of ‘Les Douze Triomphes de Henry VII’.72

The first three triumphs relate to the period before 1485 and are extremelyunspecific. God shapes the career of Henry (Hercules) against the machinations of‘Juno’ (Edward IV’s sister, Margaret, duchess of Burgundy). Edward tries at varioustimes to entrap him. England suffers noble quarrels. King Richard, so named, is theepitome of evil; among his sins is that ‘de deffaire ses deux propres nepueux’.

Later, in his ‘Vita Henrici VII’ (begun in 1500) André presents a curious account ofHenry’s ancestry. Priority goes to his father, Edmund, earl of Richmond (his ‘Tudor’surname is not mentioned). The first point noted is Edmund as son of QueenCatherine. Through her Edmund transmits to Henry kinship to all the great royalhouses of Europe. Second, through Edmund’s Welsh ancestry, Henry is connected toCadwaladr, the alleged seventh-century last ‘king of Britain’. This, however, is againdone without specific mention of Owen Tudor, Edmund’s father and second husbandto Queen Catherine.Third, André mentions Henry’s descent through his mother andthe Beaufort family from John of Gaunt without entering into the sensitive matter oftheir bastard origin; in fact, the only hereditary claim Henry could mount to thethrone, although a heavily flawed one. Henry’s marriage is noted but, as before,without mention of the 1483 oath; rather it follows from the parliamentary petition of1485. André significantly plays down any Yorkist contribution to Henry’s victory.Themarquess of Dorset counsels Henry not to join the Buckingham rebellion, presumablyto avoid André having to mention Henry’s attempted landing in England and returnto Brittany in 1483. Dorset is the only Yorkist exile to be named, and his contribution

70 Printed in Kelly, pp. 317–24. For Carmeliano, see D. R. Carlson, English Humanist Books:Writers and Patrons,Manuscripts and Print, 1475–1525 (Toronto, 1993), pp. 37–59; and J. B. Trapp, ‘Carmeliano, Pietro (c.1451–1527)’,O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4699> [accessed 20 July 2010]. Carmeliano had previouslydedicated work in fulsome terms to Richard III.

71 Gairdner, Memorials, pp. lviii–lix; S. Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (1992), pp. 51–6; on Giglis (Gigli), seeJ. B. Trapp, ‘Gigli, Giovanni (1434–98)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10670> [accessed20 July 2010].

72 Gairdner, Memorials, pp. 133–53 (translation at pp. 307–27). The work may have had some circulation inmanuscript (Gairdner, Memorials, pp xxi–xxii).The poems are anonymous. For André as possible but not definiteauthor, see D. R. Carlson, ‘The writings of Bernard André’, Renaissance Studies, xii (1998), 229–50, at p. 246.



is negated by mention of his attempted rapprochement with Richard III in 1485.André also produces a mass of misleading information about Henry’s early years, witha muddled and unspecific account of his childhood. (André professed lack of personalknowledge of that period, but presumably Henry himself could easily have filled thegaps.) André’s narrative seems likely to have been the authorized account of his reignwhich Henry wished to propagate about 1500. His compositions were evidentlydeclaimed at court.The scripts were then apparently consigned to the royal library, butin unfinished state; for instance, leaving blank key dates to be inserted later. If Henrythought of eventual publication, he either changed his mind or accorded it lowpriority. Perhaps on second thoughts a decent obscurity was still preferable.73

Court productions were, then, a little more informative than were chronicles,although not very much so. How much of their content any individual mightremember having heard recited, usually in Latin, is, of course, a moot point; as is thatof access to the works in the library.

Writing and declamation were not the only means of communicating politicalmessages. This was, as is often argued, a visual age, and people were affected bybuildings, decoration, symbols of all sorts. Visual images could obviously convey animpression of the crown’s wealth, magnificence and so on, as well as its firmconnection with the historical past.This was plainly important. But they could do littleto create a narrative, a coherent sense about the course of events; or, except perhaps toheralds, sufficiently detailed genealogical information to sustain a claim to inheritancerather than a general sense of honourable ancestry.A profusion of badges and arms wasdisplayed on such buildings as King’s College chapel in Cambridge and the Henry VIIchapel at Westminster. Among them were the red rose of Lancaster, and the so-called‘Tudor rose’, combining red and white petals; ‘so-called’ by historians, but not bycontemporaries. The bi-coloured rose was associated with the ruling family, but itssignificance was obviously the union of Lancaster andYork, not Henry’s paternal Welshancestry. ‘Union rose’ might be a better designation, celebrating the reuniting of thehistorical royal line, not the arrival of a ‘new dynasty’. Henry’s own reluctance to placetoo much emphasis on his marriage is reflected by the fact that the combined rose isvery much outnumbered by the red rose in the windows of King’s chapel. Prominentamong Henry’s symbols were the portcullis and the greyhound, both Beaufort badges;a connection further stressed with the burial of Henry’s mother, Lady Margaret, in theHenryVII chapel.74 The red rose seems to have been more prominent under HenryVIIthan it had ever been under the Lancastrian kings.75

The Red Dragon, adopted by Henry for his march through Wales in 1485 andprominently displayed at his subsequent triumph in St. Paul’s, along with the moremysterious Dun Cow and the uncontroversial arms of St. George, does refer back to

73 Gairdner, Memorials, pp. 7–130; D. R. Carlson, ‘André, Bernard (c.1450–1522)’, Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography (Oxford, 2004) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/513> [accessed 23 Sept. 2010].

74 C. Hicks, The King’s Glass: a Story of Tudor Power and Secret Art (2007), pp. 25, 35. She counts 13 examplesof the Union rose against 94 of the red ones, even though the windows were made in Henry VIII’s reign.Themost numerous badges were the red rose, the green hawthorn-bush, representing Bosworth, and the Beaufortportcullis (cf. also pp. 56, 59, 86–7, for the predominance of the red rose). Compare R. Marks, ‘The glazing ofHenryVII’s chapel,Westminster abbey’, in The Reign of HenryVII, ed. B.Thompson (Harlaxton Medieval Studies,v, Stamford, 1995), pp. 157–94, at pp. 160–1.

75 Anglo, pp. 74–97. The Union rose may have originated in the first issue of Henry VII’s coinage in Nov.1485 or in the spectacles devised at York for Henry’s reception in Apr. 1486 (Anglo, pp. 82–5). P. Nightingale,A Medieval Mercantile Community: the Grocers Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485 (1995),pp. 519, 535, shows the company planting red roses during Henry VI’s readeption, having planted white ones in1461. I owe this reference to Colin Richmond.



Henry’sWelsh ancestry and through that presumably to Cadwaladr and ‘British History’.The dragon was obviously a powerful symbol, and famously shines forth above thecrucifixion in the great east window at King’s. On the other hand, an emphasis onCadwaladr had its dangers in an English context, since Geoffrey of Monmouth’s accountof the re-establishment of Britain by Cadwaladr’s descendant involved the expulsion ofthe Saxons. Once again, as Anglo has notably shown, the Cadwaladr image was verymuch more prominent at the beginning of Henry VII’s reign than it was to be later.76

The dragon and the greyhound were used as supporters of the royal arms underHenryVII.The arms themselves were unchanged between HenryV’s reign and 1603.77

This again is an indication of a claim to continuity, rather than an indication of a new‘Tudor dynasty’ as such. In short, symbolic images could create an impression ofmultiple royal ancestries without arguing a specific case. A claim to inheritance couldonly be based on a close examination of genealogies, with detailed attention topriorities, birth and death dates and so on. Any landowner used to litigation on suchmatters would appreciate the point. The display of a plethora of badges may haveserved to confuse or dazzle rather than to illuminate Henry’s claim, and perhaps tocounter Richard III’s claim that Henry was low-born.78 It could show that he wasnobly and royally born, not prove that he was the rightful heir.

About his ancestry and background Henry’s policy was, then, one of consistentevasion. At the beginning of his reign he claimed by hereditary right, carefullyunspecified, by conquest and by victory as the judgement of God.79 He acknowledgedthat the marriage to Elizabeth might be a further buttress to his position, but impliedthat he had graciously acceded to parliament’s request and avoided mention of hisearlier promise to marry her, or that the overwhelming body of his support in Brittanyand France came from anti-Ricardian Yorkists. The postponement of Elizabeth’scoronation until November 1487 has been rightly designated as ‘insulting andunprecedented’ by Anne Crawford.80 Henry also avoided acknowledging French

76 Anglo, pp. 40–9, 56–60, 100–1.Anglo queries the closeness of a connection between the dragon badge andCadwaladr. See Kelly, p. 61, for its being alleged by chroniclers up to the 1516 Newe Cronycles that the Welsh stillclung to the hope of expulsion of the Saxons. See Youngs, p. 162, for the prophecy in Cheshire, where it canhardly have been welcome. I suggest prophecies may often have been copied for curiosity rather than takenseriously. For the Dun Cow, see Guth.

77 B. Burke, The General Armory (1884), pp. lvii–lviii.78 I suggest that the commission apparently established by Henry VII in about 1490 to investigate his Welsh

ancestry was intended to provide ammunition against allegations of low birth, a pre-emptive precaution ratherthan an indication of pride; the results were not publicized. See also Griffiths and Thomas, pp. 217–18 (whosuggest ‘natural curiosity’ and ‘to combat hostile propaganda’ as Henry’s motives); and Anglo, pp. 46–7. Foranother form of visual imagery, funerary monuments, less assertive than might have been expected, see Davies,‘Representation’, pp. 1441–2.

79 Jones, pp. 93–7, argues that Henry, before Bosworth, was anxious not to stress his ‘lineal descent’ becauseit might alienate his ‘Yorkist’ supporters, and only did so under French pressure. This is surely unrealistic. Thewhole notion of an ‘alliance’ between the houses only made sense if Henry was seen as the ‘Lancastrian’claimant.

80 There is evidence that immediately after Bosworth Henry contemplated an early marriage and a jointcoronation, and that this was prevented by the late arrival of the papal legate and the need to have the necessarypapal dispensations issued without haste and in due form (see Davies, ‘Bishop Morton’, p. 28, n. 1). However,Henry was probably relieved that he had not married so hastily, given that he was uncomfortable with thesuggestion that he owed the throne to ‘Yorkist’ loyalty to Elizabeth. He had in fact been granted a papaldispensation for the marriage as early as March 1484; whether the new dispensation of January 1486 was becauseHenry preferred to have the process done with more solemnity, or whether to disguise his earlier promise tomarry, is a moot point (see P. D. Clarke, ‘English royal marriages and the papal penitentiary in the 15th century’,Eng. Hist. Rev., cxx (2005), 1014–29, at pp. 1024–6; A. Crawford, ‘The king’s burden; the consequence of royalmarriage’, in Griffiths, Patronage, pp. 33–56, at p. 40).



financial and military support which could have evoked memories of Richard’saccusation that he had sold out on English claims in France.81 There is no indicationin his reign of the fevered plotting which had preceded the Buckingham rebellion, orof Henry’s attempts to prepare the ground for his 1485 invasion by establishing contactwith such men as Walter Herbert and the earl of Northumberland. Presumably anysuch admission might be thought to weaken the ‘providential’ explanation of hisvictory. The account of Henry’s ancestry is partial and, on crucial issues, vague. Hemade little of the activities of his mother on his behalf. Perhaps that would havecompromised her image as a pious and majestic great lady. Indeed, it is surprising thatthere seems to have been no literary or visual allusion to the military and politicalachievements of the Beauforts, beyond the tombs of Lady Margaret’s parents inWimborne Minster.82

All this is the image presented in the ambience of the court; what was more widelypublicized was, as we have seen, even sparser.What little was specified at the beginningof the reign, for instance in the allusion to Cadwaladr made when Henry visitedWorcester in 1486, seems to have dried up, certainly from 1487, when the birth of ason (19 September 1486) and the defeat of a strong armed challenge at Stoke (16 June,1487) made his position stronger.83 Certainly little of this background information onHenry leaked out to inform the compiler of the Great Chronicle. In respect of hispersonal history, Henry remained an enigma to his subjects, and was far from gloryingin his origins, other than in his descent from French kings and his fortuitous andirrelevant connection to Henry VI. It is difficult to see in this anything other thandeliberate decision on Henry’s part.

The other major case of disinformation concerns the disappearance of Edward Vand of his brother. There was general agreement, at least in the written sources,that they had ‘disappeared’ in 1483 and that rumours of their deaths fuelled theBuckingham rebellion. As we have seen, Richard was accused in Henry’s firstparliament of ‘shedding of infant’s blood’. How far these allegations were generallyaccepted is hard to gauge. The case of Perkin Warbeck illustrates the problem.Should we deduce from a lack of significant support for Warbeck’s cause in Englandthat the general belief was that both boys had died by 1485? Or rather, can wepostulate a widespread suspicion that one of the boys had been smuggled to safety,as no less a figure than Henry’s lord chamberlain, Sir William Stanley, professed tobelieve in response to Warbeck’s claim?84 Either view assumes that Edward V haddied.

Henry failed to carry out any investigation into the disappearances, or at least nonethat was made known, at the beginning of his reign, although as John Armstrong longago pointed out, he had in his service potentially important witnesses: James Tyrell,

81 Pollard, Henry VII, i. 3–6,82 Davies, ‘Representation’, p. 1442. Nigel Saul suggests (private communication) ‘on the evidence of the

armour’ that the image of Henry’s maternal grandfather John, duke of Somerset in Wimborne minster waserected about the time of his death (1444) and not in Henry VII’s reign.

83 Anglo, pp. 40, 51–3.84 Warbeck accepted that there had been a design against the boys in Richard III’s reign, and, by implication,

that Edward had died, when he claimed that, as Richard of York, he had ‘in our tender age escaped by God’sgreat might out of the Tower of London, and were secretly conveyed over the sea’ before Henry invaded fromFrance (Pollard, Henry VII, i. 150). Warbeck’s letter to Queen Isabella of Castile, 9 Sept. 1493, declared thatEdward had been killed over eight years before, while the younger brother had been saved by the designatedkiller, a ‘certain lord’ (Pollard, Henry VII, i. 95–6).



Thomas Howard and John Argentine, physician to both EdwardV and Prince Arthur.85

In 1502 Tyrell, after a career in which he had served both Richard III and Henry VIIin responsible military office, was arrested for allegedly plotting with Edmund de laPole, earl of Suffolk (the ‘White Rose’). Between his trial and conviction on 2 Mayand his execution on 6 May, he may, with John Dighton, have confessed toresponsibility for the murders.86 The Great Chronicle reports the trial and executionbut makes no mention of a confession, although as we have seen earlier in its narrativeit had stated that Tyrell or another ‘was reported to be the doer’.87 So, somethingplainly leaked out after 1502, but nothing sufficiently definite or detailed to settle theissue. Unlike the case of Warbeck, Henry evidently chose not to publicize Tyrell’sconfession. It remained forVergil and above all More to make use of its detail, and evenso not always consistently between them.88

More’s is in fact the only unequivocal citation of the confession. He writes thatbetween Tyrell’s trial and execution he and Dighton ‘were examined and confessed themurder in manner above written, but whither the bodies were removed they couldnothing tell’. He claims to have checked the account ‘not after every way I have heardbut after that way I have heard by such men and by such means, as me thinketh it werehard but it should be true’. Tyrell, showing no reluctance to do Richard’s bidding,‘devised that they should be murdered in their beds’. The actual deed (smotheringby featherbed and pillows) was carried out by Dighton and one Miles Forest.Extraordinarily in the circumstances More claimed that Dighton ‘walketh on alive ingood possibility to be hanged ere he die’. The account is full of reported speech(including the deposed Edward V’s premonition that he would be killed) andcircumstantial detail designed to indicate that the account was trustworthy, but whichhas quite the opposite effect on the modern sceptical reader. Miles Forest, for instance,was reported to have ‘piecemeal rotted away’ at St. Martin’s sanctuary. More’s dramatic,highly detailed and circumstantial account is therefore allegedly based on theconfession, tested or augmented by other, largely London-based, information. How thecontents of the confession were transmitted to More is not spelled out; whether he hadaccess to a written version (but if he had he would surely have claimed as much) orwhether he depended on an oral report is unclear. Historians have long drawnattention to inconsistencies and embellishments in More’s accounts. Whether thewhole story is invented or merely adapted to the requirements of classical history-writing is an ongoing controversy. But what is apparent is that neither Henry VIInor the early Henry VIII tried to publicize Tyrell’s confession or even, if it existed inwritten form, to preserve it.89

85 C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘An Italian astrologer at the court of Henry VII’, in C. A. J. Armstrong, England, Franceand Burgundy in the 15th Century (1983), pp. 157–78. The article was originally published in Italian RenaissanceStudies: a Tribute to the late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E. F. Jacob (1960), pp. 443–54.The point is also forcefully made byKendall, p. 409.

86 R. Horrox, ‘Tyrell, Sir James (c.1455–1502)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27952>[accessed 23 Sept. 2010].

87 Great Chronicle, pp. 237, 318–19.88 The inconsistencies militate against any suggestion that the confession was printed and is now lost.Vergil,

for instance, asserts that the manner of the princes’ death was unknown; More, that they were smothered (ThreeBooks, p. 188; More, Complete Works, ii. 85).

89 More, Complete Works, ii. 82–7. I.Arthurson, ‘Perkin Warbeck and the murders of the princes in the Tower’,in Much Heaving and Shoving: Late-Medieval Gentry and their Concerns: Essays for Colin Richmond, ed. M.Aston andR. Horrox (Chipping, 2005), pp. 158–69, at pp. 162–3, makes a good case for the historicity of those named byMore, against the scepticism of Kendall, p. 400, and Hanham, Richard III, p. 86.



On any interpretation, the treatment of the supposed murders by Henry VII wasextraordinary, not least the failure to mount an immediate investigation. One difficultymay be the implausibility of any account given the failure to discover bodily remains.Tyrell’s confession, if indeed he made one, may have provided harder evidence, but hetoo was unable to throw light on where the boys were buried. By 1502 it might in anycase have been better to let dead princes lie. Reopening public discussion might onlyhave led to further embarrassment.Why, for instance, had Tyrell remained in commandof the key fortress of Guisnes, in the Calais pale, for the entire period since hisappointment, by Richard, in 1485?

With the accession of Henry VIII it evidently seemed possible to reopen this andother sensitive issues. Yet the slowness of Vergil in getting his history ready forpublication and the abandonment by More of his work suggest that official hesitationmay have resurfaced. Richard’s reign still raised too many awkward points; thestigmatization of Edward IV himself and of his children as bastards, a challenge toHenry VIII’s pride in his Yorkist ancestry; the depiction of Buckingham both as thewilling accomplice of Richard and as an instigator of the marriage alliance betweenHenry and Elizabeth, given the prominence of his son at Henry VIII’s court; the evengreater prominence of Thomas Howard, the son of Richard’s loyal ally John Howard,duke of Norfolk, himself active in Richard’s reign, by 1514 the victor of Flodden andrestored to the dukedom; the continued existence of a ‘White Rose’ candidate,Richard de la Pole, at the French court until 1525; the whole uncertainty about thesuccession in the absence of a son to Henry VIII; the question of the legitimacy ofrebellion against ‘tyranny’; and the denunciation of Edward IV’s ‘tyranny’ in the formof over-taxation, benevolences and injustice, embarrassingly by Richard himself.90Anyone of these might have given grounds for continuing hesitation about publishing adetailed account of the events of 1483–5.

Denys Hay’s meticulous investigation of the differences between Vergil’s originalmanuscript and the printed editions is revealing here. In general the 1534 edition showsthe sort of minor augmentation, greater precision, addition of names and so on whichmight have been expected over a twenty-year composition period.91 However, thereare significant deletions indicating perhaps that even in 1534 Vergil had qualms aboutsome of what he had originally committed to paper. He omitted Henry VII’scommission to his son to continue the campaign for the canonization of HenryVI. Heremoved the names of Richard’s accomplices in the killing of Lord Hastings,ThomasHoward among them. He gave less detail about Dorset’s attempted desertion ofHenry’s cause in 1485 (it may be significant that Dorset had been Wolsey’s firstpatron).92 He censored embarrassing details about Henry’s reaction to the news in 1485that Richard might marry Elizabeth, the earl of Oxford’s opinion that the supposedadvantages of Henry’s marrying Elizabeth were exaggerated, and the information that

90 See Morgan’s discussion of Thomas Howard’s memoir, broken off in 1471, and only intended to reach thedeath of Edward IV (D. A. L. Morgan, ‘Hearne’s “Fragment” and the long prehistory of English memoirs’, Eng.Hist. Rev., cxxiv (2009), 813–32, at p. 824). For embarrassment about Richard’s statute against benevolences, seeWolsey’s confrontation with the London aldermen in 1525, when, against the cardinal’s insistence that Richardwas a murderer and usurper, the Londoners asserted that the acts of his parliament were nonetheless valid(G. W. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion in Early Tudor England: Henry VIII, Wolsey and the Amicable Grant(Brighton, 1986), p. 151).

91 Hay, Vergil, app. ii, pp. 187–98, nos. 228, 246, 271; cf. app. iii, items I, K, L (pp. 204–7), for the deletedmaterial.

92 S. M. Jack, ‘Wolsey, Thomas (1470/1–1530)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29854>[accessed 23 Sept. 2010].



since his youth Henry had loved Walter Herbert’s sister, the new object of hiscourtship.This would not have been welcome news to Henry VIII, given his pride inhis maternal ancestry. A good deal that was sensitive in 1513–14 remained so even in1534.93

By the time Grafton published in 1543 Richard’s reign may have come to seemdecently remote. Grafton was imprisoned immediately after the first printing,apparently in connection with the work, but the account of Richard’s reign andHenry’s background was allowed to stand in the second issue. Since More was notnamed as a source, embarrassment about quoting the works of a convicted traitor wasavoided.94 Grafton’s initiative, soon followed by his friend Edward Halle, introduced awider reading public to what was to become the dominant narrative.

To summarize, HenryVII’s reluctance to expose two key issues, his own claim to thethrone and his antecedents before 1485 (including the importance of Yorkist support),and the fates of the princes in the Tower, impeded the production of any reasonablycomprehensive account of the events of 1483–5 during his lifetime. Accounts ignoredthe contributions to Henry’s victory of such stalwarts of the regime as his uncle JasperTudor, Reginald Bray, John Morton, Richard Fox and even, except for passingmention, John de Vere, earl of Oxford. In contrast Henry seemed adept at passing onto his ministers the blame for unpopular policies during his reign, before his deathbedrepentance.95 The situation persisted into the first years of his son’s reign, only tochange with the initiatives of Vergil and More from about 1512. Even so the newdevelopments had little impact for another twenty years (the 1534 Basel edition ofVergil), or, for a wider public, thirty years (Grafton’s plagiarism in 1543). Until thattime there were only available in reasonably accessible form various chronicles whichwere too brief as well as too inaccurate to provide the basis for an informed view ofthe earlier period.96

Historians are well aware of the hazard of assuming that those they study had aknowledge of the future (although much less good at observing this in practice thanin theory). They are, however, inclined to assume, without examining the evidence,that at least the politically active classes of the period they are studying (and I

93 Tim Thornton similarly notes a burst of printed propaganda in 1512–13, followed by greater reticenceunder Wolsey (Thornton, pp. 48–9).

94 See A. Hanham, ‘The two editions of Grafton’s Chronicle of John Hardyng’, Bulletin of the BibliographicalSociety of Australia and New Zealand, iv (1979), 17–22. Hanham reversed the accepted view of which edition wasthe earlier, and her revision is accepted in R.S.T.C. (nos. 12766.7 and 12767; previously S.T.C., nos. 12768 and12767 respectively). This vitiates the discussion in More, Complete Works, ii. 273–6. Both editions are dated‘January 1543’. But it seems that Grafton dated the New Year from January, not from March, and that the earlieredition therefore is properly dated January 1543 (new style) before Grafton’s imprisonment in April 1543, notfrom January 1544.The second edition, notwithstanding the date on the title page, follows at an indeterminatedate Grafton’s release in May 1543. Fortunately it is not relevant to my purpose to explore the complicatedrelationship between the texts of Grafton, Halle, and Rastell’s edition of More in 1557. For Grafton himself, seeM. G. Ferguson, ‘Grafton, Richard (c.1511–1573)’, O.D.N.B. <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11186>[accessed 23 Sept. 2010].

95 See, for instance, the obituaries of Morton and Bray in Great Chronicle, pp. 294–5 and 325, in which thechronicler, writing after 1509, can hint that their unpopularity was because they acted as a cover for Henry’s ownactions. It is clear that I cannot accept Denys Hay’s contention (Vergil, pp. 94–5) of ‘the availability in early Tudortimes of a wide range of source material – virtually all the basic texts which are used today, the administrativerecords of the Crown excepted’; at least not for the period in which Vergil himself was carrying out his oralhistory enquiries.

96 Michael Bennett is unusual in recognizing this point (see M. Bennett, ‘Table tittle-tattle and the Tudor viewof history’, in People, Places and Perspectives: Essays on Later Medieval and Early Tudor England in Honour of RalphA. Griffiths, ed. K. Dockray and P. Fleming (Stroud, 2005), pp. 155–66).



would include in that category the more prominent Londoners and the elites ofother major towns, as well as the general body of gentlemen and lawyers) actedwith a reasonably informed and coherent knowledge of recent political history.Noblemen, prelates and many leading gentry had their own vivid memories of eventsin which they had participated. No doubt they compared notes (presumably somewhatcautiously) and constructed their own ‘narrative’ of events; and presumablyomnipresent servants diffused scraps of information more widely. But given that littleof this autobiographical experience was apparently written down (the CrowlandContinuation in so far as it is a memoir, and Thomas Howard’s memoir, breakingoff in 1471, seem wholly exceptional, in itself a point worth pondering) there wouldhave been little basis on which to proceed to an agreed interpretation of events. Nodoubt London aldermen could have testified to the pressures exerted on the city’sgovernment in 1483; again, they seem to have chosen not to do so. To judge by theGreat Chronicle a London citizen could have put together a patchy outline of events:the stages leading up to Richard’s usurpation, in some detail; the belief that Edward Vand his brother had disappeared in suspicious circumstances; an awareness ofBuckingham’s rebellion and fate, but with little knowledge of the widespread‘Edwardian’ rebellion in the southern counties, or of how that rebellion fed into the1485 invasion.Above all, he would have no explanation of where Henry of Richmondhad come from in 1485, for the basis of his claim to the throne or of his activities inBrittany and France. It is salutary to be reminded how little we can take for grantedabout perceptions of politics in more distant periods.

There has been a good deal of discussion in recent years, in belated recognition ofJürgen Habermas’s Public Sphere, of the general availability of political knowledge indifferent periods of English history, and of the degree to which there could be criticaldiscussion of government policy.97 Even before the rise of a newsletter culture in theseventeenth century, religious issues, in particular, stimulated a considerable amount ofpublic discussion of royal policy in Elizabeth’s reign, as Peter Lake and Stephen Pincushave emphasized. So, too, Ethan Shagan has illustrated how the northern rebels of1536–7 expressed a strong concept of the ‘common weal’ against which they judgedthe government of Henry VIII; and how they also established a quasi-parliamentariansystem of representation of the three estates.98 I am almost persuaded by ColinRichmond’s concept of a ‘public sphere’ around gentry dinner tables infifteenth-century East Anglia.99 Of course, some concept of the common weal, of ademand for a responsible government which could deliver security and justice at areasonable cost, is perennial. Taxation in particular would always have excited criticaldiscussion. Such considerations lay behind the west-country rebellion of 1497. Butin general we must conclude that informed knowledge and critical discussion ofgovernment policy was at a particularly low ebb in the period 1485 to 1520, possiblymore so than in the earlier fifteenth century; that would-be historians of politicsdepended largely on government-sponsored material or at least encouragement fromthe top for their efforts; and that such material was not, for the most part, forthcoming.The arcana imperii were well guarded.

97 J. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans.T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge,Mass., 1989), from the German original of 1962.

98 The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. P. Lake and S. Pincus (Manchester, 2007); seeP. Lake and S. Pincus, ‘Rethinking the public sphere’, pp. 1–30, and E. H. Shagan, ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace andthe public sphere?’, pp. 31–58.

99 Richmond, pp. 238–40.



Does this matter? Would more information, more discussion, have significantlyaffected the course of events? Perhaps not. Neither Henry VII nor Henry VIII in hisfirst decade faced a widespread cohesive challenge to his authority. Opinion in Londonin particular seems to have had little scope for action, except perhaps in the supply ofloans to the crown or protest at the commercial implications of royal diplomacy;in contrast, perhaps, to the importance of London in national politics in thethirteen-nineties or the years from 1449 to 1461. But mention of 1497, of rebelsmarching from Cornwall to London before being crushed in a full-scale battle atBlackheath, might give pause for thought. Discouraging the spread of informationmight have been successful in choking off speculation, and with it the formulationof a critical ‘public opinion’. More critical discussion might have produced moreextensive opposition in 1497, or even in the ‘Simnel rebellion’ of 1487, which bears inmany ways an uncanny resemblance to the events of 1485. ‘Discretion’, in thecircumstances, might well have been a wiser tactic than the more commonly touted‘propaganda’.



information, disinformation and political knowledge under henry vii and early henry viii

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