In 1483, when RICHARD III’s usurpation of his nephew’s throne revived dynastic conflict and political instability, William Catesby served as one of Richard’s closest advisors and confidants.

 

One of the few southern members of the king’s inner circle, Catesby was born into an obscure Northamptonshire GENTRY family and trained as a lawyer. A councilor of William HASTINGS, Lord Hastings, who later acquired some of Hastings’s offices, Catesby’s rapid rise to power and influence under Richard III led to later charges that he had connived at Hastings’s death in 1483. In his HISTORY OF KING RICHARD III, Sir Thomas More suggested that Catesby sounded out Hastings about Richard’s decision to claim the throne, and that his unfavorable report of Hastings’s response led to Hastings’s summary execution.

 

After Richard’s accession, Catesby was appointed chancellor of the Exchequer and chancellor of the earldom of March. He was also made a squire of the body (i.e., a close personal servant of the king) and was given lands worth more than £300 a year, an income that made Catesby wealthier than many knights and brought him much unpopularity as an undeserving parvenu. He was sent on embassy to SCOTLAND in September 1484 and to BRITTANY in February 1485. Catesby served as Speaker of the PARLIAMENT of 1484, in which he sat as member for Northamptonshire. His speakership indicated the position of trust he held with the king, for it was unusual for a member to be Speaker in his first Parliament.

 

Along with Sir Richard RATCLIFFE and Francis LOVELL, Lord Lovell, Catesby became widely known as a member of Richard’s inner circle of advisors. A popular satirical couplet of the time declared that “The cat [Catesby], the rat [Ratcliffe], and Lovell our dog [Lovell’s emblem], / Rule all England under a hog [referring to Richard III’s white boar emblem].” In March 1485, Catesby and Ratcliffe were said to have opposed Richard’s plan to wed his niece, ELIZABETH OF YORK. Catesby was taken prisoner at the Battle of BOSWORTH FIELD on 22 August 1485 and executed three days later at Leicester.

 

Further Reading: Horrox, Rosemary, Richard III:A Study in Service (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Roskell, John S., William Catesby, Counselor to Richard III (Manchester: John Rylands Library, 1959) [reprinted from the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 42, no. 1, September, 1959]; Ross, Charles, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); “William Catesby,” in Michael Hicks, Who’s Who in Late Medieval England (London: Shepheard- Walwyn, 1991), pp. 366–369.

The letters and papers of the Cely (or Sely) family, a series of documents describing the lives and business activities of a family of LONDON wool merchants in the 1470s and 1480s, are primary sources of information on English society and the English economy at the end of the WARS OF THE ROSES.

 

The letters, accounts, and memoranda in the collection concern the family of Richard Cely (d. 1482), who, with his wife Agnes (d. 1483), raised three sons—Robert (d. 1485), Richard (d. 1493), and George (d. 1489). The senior Richard Cely was a prominent member of the London merchant community in the 1460s, and in 1481 ran unsuccessfully for the office of sheriff of London. The Celys were wool traders, buying wool in England and shipping it to CALAIS for sale to cloth makers in BURGUNDY. Until his death, the elder Richard handled the London end of the operation— the purchase, inspection, sorting, and shipping of wool—while his sons Richard and George (mainly the latter in the 1480s) handled the Calais end of the business—the negotiation of terms for sale of the wool. After their father’s death, Richard and George continued the business as a true partnership, with Richard conducting operations in London. Besides wool, the brothers also occasionally traded in other commodities and purchased ships to engage in the carrying trade, that is, to transport the goods of other merchants. The eldest brother, Robert, seems to have been a rather unstable character who had a poor relationship with his father; he apparently dropped out of the family business and largely disappears from the correspondence after 1479.

 

Now found in the Public Record Office, the Cely papers survived because they were submitted to the Court of Chancery in 1489 as evidence in a court case involving a dispute over debts between Richard Cely and the widow of his brother George. The collection comprises 247 letters and over 200 other documents that cover the period from 1472 to 1488, although the bulk of the correspondence begins in 1474 and no letters have survived for 1475 and the greater part of the years 1483, 1485, and 1486. The letters shed little direct light on the politics of the period, but they are full of concerns about how political and military events might affect trade. This urban merchant perspective distinguishes the Cely collection from the other surviving family archives from the fifteenth century; the PASTON, PLUMPTON, and STONOR letters were all written from the perspective of rural, landholding GENTRY. The Celys and their correspondents had some landed interests, but their main concerns focused on London and on trade, an outlook that makes the Cely documents an important source for the social and economic history of England in the later years of the civil wars.

 

Further Reading: Hanham, Alison, ed.,The Cely Letters 1472–1488 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975); Hanham, Alison, The Celys and Their World:An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); selections of the Cely letters are available online through the Richard III Society Web site at <http://www.r3.org/bookcase/cely/>.

The crisis entered a new phase when King Edward himself died in June 1377. He was succeeded by the Black Prince’s only surviving son and heir, Richard II (1377–99), who was ten years of age. England was faced with the prospect of only the second royal minority since 1066 and the first since 1216. On the latter occasion there had followed a period of political turbulence centring on the young Henry III; a similar situation developed after 1377 and played its part in precipitating the Peasants’ Revolt (1381) in eastern and south-eastern England. A series of poll taxes was imposed during 1377–80 to finance the war. These taxes were at a rate higher than was usual and the tax of 1379 was popularly known as ‘the evil subsidy’. They sparked off violence in East Anglia against the tax-collectors and the justices who tried to force compliance on the population. But what turned these irritations into widespread rebellion was the prolonged dislocation of unsuccessful war, the impact of recurrent plagues, and the anticlerical temper of the times. Hopes of remedy placed by the rebels in the young King Richard proved to be vain, though he showed considerable courage in facing the rebels in London during the summer of 1381.

The Battle of Radcot Bridge

Richard was still only 14, and the aristocratic rivalries in the ruling circle continued, not least among the king’s uncles. This and the lack of further military success in France damaged the reputation of the council that governed England in Richard’s name and even affected the king’s own standing in the eyes of his subjects. Richard, too, was proving a self-willed monarch whose sense of insecurity led him to depend on unworthy favourites reminiscent of Edward II’s confidants. As he grew older, he naturally wanted to expand his entourage and his household beyond what had been appropriate for a child. Among his friends and associates were some who were new to the ranks of the aristocracy, and all were generously patronized by the king at the expense of those (including his uncle Gloucester) who did not attract Richard’s favour. In 1386 Parliament and a number of magnates attacked Richard’s closest associates and even threatened the king himself. With all the stubbornness of the Plantagenets, Richard refused to yield. This led to further indictments or appeals of his advisers by five leading ‘appellant’ lords (the duke of Gloucester, and the earls of Warwick, Arundel, Nottingham, and Derby, the king’s cousin), and a skirmish took place at Radcot Bridge in December 1387 when the king’s closest friend, the earl of Oxford, was routed. At the momentous ‘Merciless Parliament’ (1388), the king was forced to submit to aristocratic correction which, if it had been sustained, would have significantly altered the character of the English monarchy. Once again, the pressures of war, the tensions of personal rule, and the ambitions of England’s magnates had produced a most serious political and constitutional crisis. The institution of hereditary monarchy emerged largely unscathed after a century and more of such crises, but criticism of the king’s advisers had reached a new level of effectiveness and broader sections of opinion had exerted a significant influence on events. These were the political and personal dimensions of more deep-seated changes that were transforming England’s social and economic life in the later Middle Ages.

The people were tired of having no rights and being forced to pay high taxes. On Thursday 30th May the men of Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford attacked JPs in session at Brentwood. They were led by Thomas Baker of Fobbing. Similar events occurred in Kent.

John Ball, the priestly demagogue who inspired the rebellious peasants in 1381, preaching to the rebel host led by Wat Tyler (left foreground); banners proclaim the rebels’ loyalty to King Richard II.

The Kent rebels led by Wat Tyler and the Essex rebels led by John Ball and Jack Straw rose 100,000 strong to invade London. Their demand of the king was “We will be free forever, our heirs and our lands.” Richard II agreed but then in a face to face meeting, the king had Wat Tyler stabbed through the throat and he died.

The peasants’ final stand was the Battle of Billericay on 28 June, 1381. Some five hundred peasants fled to Norsey Wood where they were slaughtered by royal troops.

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The cumulative effect of economic, social, political, and military strains in fourteenth-century England is seen most graphically in the Peasants’ Revolt (1381). It was exceptional in its intensity, length, and broad appeal, but not in its fundamental character, which was revealed in other conspiracies and insurrections in the years that followed. Widespread violence was sparked off in 1381 by yet another poll tax, this one at 1s. a head, three times the rate of 1377 and 1379. People responded with evasion, violence towards the collectors and the justices who investigated, and, ultimately, in June 1381, with rebellion. Agricultural workers from eastern and south-eastern England were joined by townsmen and Londoners; the grain and wool-growing countryside of East Anglia had felt the full impact of the contraction and dislocation of the economy and the social contradictions of an increasingly outmoded feudal society. Moreover, the rebels were disillusioned by the political mismanagement of the 1370s and the recent dismal record in France, and they feared enemy raids on the coast. Although heretics played no major role in the rebellion, radical criticism of the doctrines and organization of the English Church predisposed many to denounce an establishment that seemed to be failing in its duty.

Pressure on the government and an appeal to the new king (‘With King Richard and the true-hearted commons’ was the rebels’ watch-word) held out the best hope for remedy of grievances, and the populace of London offered a pool of potential sympathizers. The rebels accordingly converged on London from Essex and Kent (where Wat Tyler and a clerical demagogue, John Ball, emerged as leaders). They threw prisons open, sacked the homes of the king’s ministers, ransacked the Tower, and tried to frighten Richard II into making far-reaching concessions which, if implemented, would have broken the remaining bonds of serfdom and revolutionized landholding in Church and State. But the rebellion was poorly planned and organized and more in the nature of a spontaneous outburst of frustration. By 15 June the rebels had dispersed to their homes.

Chancellor of England under EDWARD IV, and a political client of Queen Elizabeth WOODVILLE, Thomas Rotherham, archbishop of York, supported the house of YORK until he fell into disfavor with RICHARD III in 1483.

 

Born into a Yorkshire gentry family and educated at a local grammar school, Rotherham was elected a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, in 1444. He held various ecclesiastical livings in the 1450s and 1460s and took a degree at Oxford in 1463. In the late 1450s, he became chaplain to John de VERE, the future Lancastrian earl of Oxford, who may have introduced Rotherham to the COURT of HENRY VI. Here he may have met Elizabeth Woodville, then the wife of Sir John Grey and a lady-in-waiting to Queen MARGARET OF ANJOU. After her marriage to Edward IV in 1464, Elizabeth became Rotherham’s patron, and she was likely responsible for his appointment as keeper of the royal privy seal in 1467. Rapidly gaining the king’s confidence, Rotherham was named to diplomatic missions to FRANCE and BURGUNDY and became bishop of Rochester in 1468. He did not support the READEPTION government of Henry VI, and in the spring of 1471 warned Edward IV, who was then returning from exile to reclaim his Crown, not to attempt a landing on the closely watched coast of East Anglia.

 

In March 1472, Edward promoted Rotherham to the bishopric of Lincoln, and in 1474 the king appointed him chancellor of England. Like many of Edward IV’s bishops, Rotherham was a man of humble origins who was promoted to high church office because of his loyalty to the king and his usefulness in secular government. Rotherham accompanied Edward on the French expedition of 1475 and was one of the English lords who received a large pension from LOUIS XI of France. Said to be skilled in managing PARLIAMENT, Rotherham opened the tense 1478 session that condemned the king’s brother, George PLANTAGENET, duke of Clarence. In 1480, Rotherham became archbishop of York.

 

On Edward’s death in April 1483, Rotherham’s connections with the queen made him suspect in the eyes of Richard, duke of Gloucester, the late king’s only surviving brother, who believed the WOODVILLE FAMILY was seeking to deprive him of the regency. Rotherham intensified the duke’s mistrust by surrendering the Great Seal of England, the seal entrusted to the chancellor for the authentication of official documents, to the queen after fear of Gloucester drove her to SANCATUARY at Westminster in early May 1483. Thinking better of this act, Rotherham quickly recovered the Great Seal, but on 10 May Gloucester, now acting as protector for EDWARD V, replaced the archbishop as chancellor with Bishop John RUSSELL. On 13 June, Gloucester arrested Rotherham, along with William HASTINGS, Lord Hastings, and other likely opponents, at a COUNCIL meeting held in the TOWER OF LONDON. Although released shortly thereafter through an appeal from Cambridge University, which he served as chancellor, Rotherham took little further part in government, either during Richard III’s reign or during the reign of HENRYVII. Noted in later life as a prominent benefactor of the English universities, Rotherham died in 1500.

 

Further Reading: Ross Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Ross, Charles, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

Bishop John Russell of Lincoln was an important clerical servant of EDWARD IV and chancellor of England under RICHARD III.

 

Born in Winchester, Russell was educated at Oxford, where he taught until about 1462. In the mid-1460s, he entered the service of Edward IV, who employed Russell on various diplomatic missions, including the negotiations surrounding the marriage of the king’s sister, MARGARET OF YORK, to Duke CHARLES of BURGUNDY in 1468. In February 1471, Russell also acted as a diplomat for the READEPTION government of HENRY VI, but he was readily taken back into Yorkist service after Edward IV’s restoration in April. In 1472, Edward again sent Russell to Burgundy, and in 1474, the king appointed him keeper of the privy seal and dispatched him to SCOTLAND to negotiate a marriage between Edward’s daughter Cecily and the son of JAMES III. Russell became bishop of Rochester in 1476 and bishop of Lincoln in 1480. One of the executors of Edward IV’s will, Russell helped officiate at the king’s funeral in April 1483.

 

On 10 May 1483, Richard, duke of Gloucester, having assumed the protectorship of his nephew EDWARD V, dismissed Archbishop Thomas ROTHERHAM of York from the chancellorship, replacing him with Russell. According to some sources, the bishop, who was experienced and learned and a natural choice for the post, accepted office with reluctance. Although Russell served Gloucester loyally when he became king as Richard III, there seems to have been no close bond between Richard and his chancellor, who may have felt betrayed when Richard took his nephew’s crown in June 1483. In any event, as chancellor, Russell handled negotiations with both Scotland and BRITTANY, and he may have assisted Archbishop Thomas BOURCHIER in persuading Queen Elizabeth WOODVILLE to release her younger son, Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, into Gloucester’s custody. Having perhaps grown uncertain of his chancellor’s loyalty, Richard dismissed Russell from office on 29 July 1485, less than a month before the Battle of BOSWORTH FIELD. After Richard’s death, Russell was taken readily into favor by HENRYVII, who, like his Yorkist predecessors, employed the bishop as a diplomat. After spending his last years mainly in his diocese, Russell died in December 1494.

 

Because Russell closely fit the author profile that emerges from the work itself—an educated cleric who was familiar with the workings of Richard’s government and who was an eyewitness to at least some of the events being described—some modern historians identified Russell as the author of the CROYLAND CHRONICLE, a useful source for the last decade of Edward IV and for the reign of Richard III. However, most scholars today dismiss that claim, arguing that the Chronicle is much different in style from any of Russell’s known writings.

Further Reading: Ross, Charles, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).

Altar with St George and the dragon presented to Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI by the Earl of Shrewsbury made Rouen 1445.

 

Lawrence Booth (or Bothe) was the only bishop appointed under the house of LANCASTER to later secure ecclesiastical advancement and high political office under the house of YORK.

 

Educated at Cambridge, Booth obtained his first political office in March 1451, succeeding his half-brother William Booth as MARGARET OF ANJOU’s chancellor. In September 1456, he became keeper of the privy seal, his appointment signaling a general purge of Yorkist sympathizers from the government. In January 1457, the queen’s influence won Booth appointment to the COUNCIL of Prince EDWARD OF LANCASTER, a body used by Margaret to encourage Lancastrian loyalty throughout the prince’s lordships in Wales and Chester. In 1457, when the king nominated his confessor to be bishop of Durham, the queen instead promoted Booth for the office, which he duly obtained in September. At Durham, Booth supported the Lancastrian branch of the NEVILLE FAMILY, favoring its members over their Yorkist cousins for offices in his gift.

 

In October 1459, Booth swore loyalty to HENRY VI at the COVENTRY PARLIAMENT, where Queen Margaret attainted Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, and his allies; as a result of the ATTAINDER of Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, Booth seized Barnard Castle, possession of which bishops of Durham had disputed with earls of Warwick since the thirteenth century. In 1460, Booth left the royal army before the Battle of NORTHAMPTON, and was shortly thereafter replaced as keeper of the privy seal by a Yorkist appointee, Bishop Robert STILLINGTON. In 1461, EDWARD IV tried to conciliate Booth by appointing him to a royal chaplaincy. The bishop responded in June by defeating a Lancastrian invasion force led out of SCOTLAND by Thomas ROOS, Lord Roos. However, Booth lost favor in December 1462, when he was suspended from office, perhaps for suspected dealings with Queen Margaret. Restored in April 1464, Booth spent the rest of the 1460s quietly administering his diocese.

 

Little is known of Booth’s activities during the READEPTION in 1470–1471, but his rapid reemployment by Edward IV after the king’s restoration in 1471 argues against any strong support for the Lancastrian regime. In 1473, Booth led an embassy to Scotland to conclude a treaty with JAMES III, whereby the future JAMES IV was to marry Edward’s daughter Cecily. From July 1473 to May 1474, Booth served as chancellor of England, and in 1476 Edward nominated him for the archbishopric of York, the office earlier held by his half-brother. Booth’s elevation may have been partially due to Richard, duke of Gloucester, who found the bishop an obstacle to his assumption of the influence once exercised across the north by Warwick. Booth died in May 1480.

 

Further Reading: Davies, Richard G.,“The Church and the Wars of the Roses,” in A. J. Pollard, ed., The Wars of the Roses (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 143–161; Griffiths, Ralph A., The Reign of King Henry VI (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Reeves, A. Compton,“Lawrence Booth: Bishop of Durham (1457–76), Archbishop of York (1476–80),” in Sharon D. Michalove and A. Compton Reeves, eds., Estrangement, Enterprise and Education in Fifteenth-Century England (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1998), pp. 63–88.

Henry VI and His Queen, Margaret of Anjou

Through his quarrel with Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, Edmund Beaufort, second duke of Somerset, helped initiate the political conflicts that eventually escalated into the WARS OF THE ROSES.

 

Edmund Beaufort was a younger son of John Beaufort, earl of Somerset (d. 1409), eldest of the legitimated children of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster (1340–1399), by his mistress Katherine Swynford (d. 1403). As a branch of the house of LANCASTER, the BEAUFORT FAMILY held a claim to the Crown that could possibly rival the claim of the house of YORK. Beaufort succeeded his elder brother John as earl of Somerset in 1444 and as duke of Somerset in 1448. He served in FRANCE from the 1420s, recapturing Harfleur in 1440 and relieving CALAIS in 1442. In 1446, he succeeded York as lieutenant of France, but his failure to hold Normandy against French assaults, though not entirely his fault, earned him great unpopularity.

 

In 1450, anger over the defeats in France sparked JACK CADE’S REBELLION, which in turn led to the overthrow and murder of HENRYVI’s chief minister, William de la POLE, duke of Suffolk. Despite his unpopularity and his military failures, Somerset enjoyed Henry’s confidence and assumed leadership of the royal government. York, angered by Somerset’s appointment to the French governorship and believing him to be ambitious for the throne, attacked the duke as an obstacle to needed reforms and as a traitor responsible for the loss of France.

 

Holding few lands of his own, Somerset was staunchly loyal to Henry VI, upon whom he depended for favor and office. The king frustrated all York’s attempts to remove Somerset from power until 1453, when the onset of Henry’s mental illness initiated York’s FIRST PROTECTORATE and allowed the duke to commit Somerset to the TOWER OF LONDON. Released immediately upon Henry’s recovery in early 1455, Somerset was acquitted of all charges and restored to office. Fearing perhaps that Somerset meant to destroy him, York and his noble allies, Richard NEVILLE, earl of Salisbury, and his son Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, took arms against the COURT. After failing to achieve Somerset’s surrender, York and his allies attacked a royal party at the Battle of ST.ALBANS in May 1455. The battle ended when York’s forces slew Somerset. Considering his father’s death a murder, Henry BEAUFORT, third duke of Somerset, intensified his family’s rivalry with the house of York, thereby ensuring the continuance of civil strife.

 

Further Reading: Allmand,C.T., Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983);“Edmund Beaufort,” in Michael Hicks, Who’s Who in Late Medieval England (London: Shepheard- Walwyn, 1991), pp. 285–287; Griffiths, Ralph A., The Reign of King Henry VI (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Storey,R. L., The End of the House of Lancaster, 2d ed. (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1999);Wolffe, Bertram, Henry VI (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981).

 

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The son and heir of Edmund BEAUFORT, second duke of Somerset, Henry Beaufort, third duke of Somerset, was one of the chief military leaders of the Lancastrian cause during the first phase (1459–1461) of the WARS OF THE ROSES.

 

In May 1455, Beaufort was severely wounded at the Battle of ST. ALBANS, where he witnessed his father’s death at the hands of troops commanded by his father’s rival, Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York. Both dynastic and personal considerations made the new duke a staunch supporter of HENRY VI—the BEAUFORT FAMILY was a branch of the house of LANCASTER, and Somerset considered York guilty of his father’s murder. In early 1458, Somerset and the sons of the other noblemen slain at St. Albans brought large retinues to LONDON, where they demanded revenge against York and his chief allies, Richard NEVILLE, earl of Salisbury, and his son Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick. After attempting to ambush York and Salisbury, Somerset and his allies agreed to a reconciliation brokered by Henry VI and sealed by the LOVE-DAY of March 1458.

 

When that settlement collapsed in civil war in 1459, Henry VI appointed Somerset captain of CALAIS. But being unable to dislodge Warwick from the town, Somerset returned to England in October 1460. In December, the duke led the army that defeated and killed York and Salisbury at the Battle of WAKEFIELD, and in February 1461 he commanded the victorious Lancastrians at the Battle of ST. ALBANS. Somerset commanded again at the Battle of TOWTON in late March, but fled into SCOTLAND with the Lancastrian royal family when EDWARD IV won the day. In March 1462, after failing to win help from FRANCE, Somerset returned to England where Queen MARGARET OF ANJOU entrusted him with the Lancastrian-held castle of BAMBURGH, which he surrendered in December. Edward IV pardoned Somerset in March 1463, and later reversed his ATTAINDER and restored him to his lands and titles. In late 1463, the duke reverted to his old allegiance, fleeing to the Lancastrian-held castles of Bamburgh and ALNWICK, from which he conducted a spring campaign that wrested much of northeastern England from Yorkist control. Defeated at the Battle of HEDGELEY MOOR in April 1464, Somerset regrouped and, placing Henry VI at the head of his army, marched south, encountering the forces of John NEVILLE, Lord Montagu, on 15 May. Defeated and captured at the subsequent Battle of HEXHAM, Somerset was executed shortly thereafter. Because Somerset was unmarried, the Lancastrians conferred his title on his younger brother, Edmund BEAUFORT.

 

Further Reading: Haigh, Philip A., The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1995); “Henry Beaufort,” in Michael Hicks, Who’s Who in Late Medieval England (London: Shepheard- Walwyn, 1991), pp. 313–315; Pollard, A. J., North- Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Ross, Charles, Edward IV (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1998).