Sun in Splendour by Chris Collingwood. (P)

 

Although history has closely identified the house of YORK with the white rose emblem, the favorite personal badge of EDWARD IV was the Sun in Splendor or the bright golden sunburst.

 

The badge apparently derived from a meteorological phenomenon that appeared in the sky to Edward, then earl of March, before the Battle of MORTIMER’S CROSS in February 1461. On the morning of the battle, which was fought only a month after the death of his father, Richard PLANTAGENET, duke of York, Edward saw three suns shining “in the firmament . . . full clear” (Ross, p. 53). Taking this sight to be an omen of victory, Edward went on to win the first battle fought under his leadership. Edward’s sunburst badge was soon closely associated with the king and his family. It appeared frequently on buildings constructed or refurbished by Edward, such as St. George’s Chapel at Windsor and Tewkesbury Abbey near the site of the 1471 Yorkist victory at the Battle of TEWKESBURY. The emblem also found its way into manuscripts written under Yorkist auspices and onto tapestries or apparel created for the Yorkist COURT.

 

The streaming sunburst badge also played an important role in the Battle of BARNET in April 1471. As the positions of the two struggling armies shifted on the fog-shrouded field, the men of John de VERE, earl of Oxford, one of the Lancastrian commanders, came up unexpectedly behind some of their own men as they tried to reengage after driving part of the Yorkist army from the fight. Because they were wearing Oxford’s badge of a star with streams, they were mistaken in the mist for Yorkist troops wearing the well-known sunburst badge, the sun with streams, of Edward IV. When Lancastrian ARCHERS opened fire on them, Oxford’s surprised and confused men thought themselves betrayed and fled the field crying “treason!” The incident severely demoralized the Lancastrian line, which soon after broke, allowing Edward’s men to surge forward, killing the fleeing Richard NEVILLE, earl of Warwick, and winning the battle.

 

Further Reading: Ross, Charles, The Wars of the Roses (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987).

The book in question is 'The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy 1491 - 1499' by Ian Arthurson, published by Sutton in 1994 [paperback 1997] ISBN 0-7509-1610-9.

 

This is Arthurson's PhD thesis written up for more general consumption, though it doesn't say where he studied, only that he's now teaching at Nottingham High School for Girls and is 'completing a major study of the crisis of 1497'.

 

The book covers the entirety of Perkin Warbeck's career as a professional impersonator of Richard Duke of York [younger Prince in the Tower]. Arthurson does this in great detail, naming an awesome number of individuals involved and covering Warbeck's adventures in Burgundy, Portugal, Ireland, France, Scotland and his several fiascos in England.

 

Warbeck is an interesting figure and right from the first Arthurson does a good job of explaining how Warbeck, the son of a boatman, was able to pass as a jobbing prince for nearly a decade in front of many people of princely status, some of whom knew the object of his impersonation.

 

Arthurson's very plausible explanation is that firstly Warbeck wasn't exactly a tradesman's son but in fact was born into the ruling elite of Tournais' mercantile class. Secondly, his early career and training as a future international merchant gave him access to the nobility of several countries, he spent a year as a courtier in Portugal, for example.

 

Lastly, Warbeck seems to have been a 'Billy Liar' personality, eventually coming to believe in his own falsehoods. His eventual prison confession might be considered suspect save that the details of his youth are readily verifiable in primary sources in Tournai and Portugal and that he publicly denounced his own actions from the scaffold with the rope round his neck [Arthurson musing that in the last few months of his life, he was trying to reclaim his own identity].

 

Arthurson paints a believable portrait of Warbeck and does so with a very fine brush. Unfortunately, IMO, his brush technique could be improved. The man's writing style is poor: he uses unnecessarily long sentences with complex internal clauses made even more difficult to understand by his anomalous [and often downright wrong] use of punctuation.

 

I don't know of any comparable work on Warbeck and so this book definitely fills a niche. It's packed with information and I learned some very interesting things about life at the time and about how the nucleus of Warbeck's supporters grew out of dissident long-term supporters of Edward IV, Richard III and the old Mowbray affinity; how Margaret of Burgundy was primed by the experiences of a lifetime to fall for his impersonation hook, line and sinker; and how Warbeck became the most widely handled pawn in the political machinations of half of Europe across an entire decade. Because of this niche, I must recommend it but I can't do so without a warning regarding the hard work a reader has to do in following the text.

 

Fought on 17 July 1453 near the town of Castillon in eastern GASCONY, the Battle of Castillon ended the HUNDRED YEARS WAR and stripped the English of all French holdings except the town of CALAIS.

 

After the French conquest of NORMANDY in 1450, CHARLES VII focused his military resources on Gascony, the last English-held province in France. As an army of seven thousand entered the province, other French forces besieged the fortresses protecting BORDEAUX, the Gascon capital, while a joint French, Spanish, and Breton fleet blockaded the mouth of the Gironde to prevent the English from relieving the city. Isolated and outnumbered, the English garrison in Bordeaux surrendered on 30 June 1451. A severe blow to English national pride, the loss of Bordeaux was reversed in 1452, thanks to the English sympathies of the Gascon people and the military skill of John TALBOT, earl of Shrewsbury, who led an army of three thousand ashore on 17 October. Within months of reentering Bordeaux on 23 October, Shrewsbury had largely restored Gascony to English control.

 

Respected and feared in France, Shrewsbury was the most famous English commander of the war’s last decades. By the summer of 1453, three French armies were converging on Gascony. Although reinforcements brought by his son raised his strength to over five thousand, Shrewsbury was still heavily outnumbered by the combined French forces, and his only option was to wait in Bordeaux until an opportunity arose to fall upon one army before the others could support it. However, when a French force of nine thousand laid siege to Castillon about thirty miles east of Bordeaux, Shrewsbury, against his better judgment, yielded to the pleas of representatives from both Castillon and Bordeaux and marched to the relief of the town on 16 July.

 

Early next morning, Shrewsbury arrived at Castillon with his mounted contingents, and led an immediate and successful assault on the French ARCHERS holding the Priory of St. Laurent. The surviving archers fled to the fortified French camp east of the priory, thereby alerting the main army of Shrewsbury’s arrival. Although the French army was commanded by committee, the camp and been laid out by Charles VII’s ordinance officer, Jean BUREAU. Designed to maximize the opportunity for oblique and enfilading fire from the French ARTILLERY, which may have numbered almost three hundred guns of all sizes, Bureau’s camp was protected on three sides by a ditch and palisaded rampart and on the fourth side by the steep bank of the River Lidoire.

 

Upon receiving reports that the enemy was retreating, Shrewsbury reversed an earlier decision to wait for the rest of his army to arrive and attacked immediately with the twelve hundred men he had at hand. The reports proved inaccurate, and when the French guns opened fire, the dismounted English suffered severe casualties. Shrewsbury, who wore no ARMOR to honor the pledge he had made when last released from French custody, pressed the attack, believing the arrival of his remaining troops would secure victory. However, as reinforcements came up, they suffered the same fate as the initial attackers, and the eventual arrival of French reserves broke the English attack and sent the survivors streaming back to Bordeaux.

 

With both Shrewsbury and his son dead on the field, the English position in Gascony quickly collapsed and the French entered Bordeaux to stay on 19 October 1453. After three hundred years, English rule in Gascony, like the Hundred Years War itself, was over. In England, news of the battle may have triggered HENRY VI’s mental collapse, for the king’s illness descended upon him in early August, about the time he would have learned of the disaster.

Further Reading: Pollard, A. J. John Talbot and the War in France, 1427–1453. London: Royal Historical Society, 1983.

 

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Lincoln Cathedral, arms of Bishop John Russell on enamelled brass escutcheon on his tomb in Russell Chantry.

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).

The Wars of the Roses were a series of civil wars fought in medieval England from 1455 to 1487 between the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The name Wars of the Roses is based on the badges used by the two sides, the red rose for the Lancastrians and the white rose for the Yorkists. Major causes of the conflict include: 1) both houses were direct descendents of king Edward III; 2) the ruling Lancastrian king, Henry VI, surrounded himself with unpopular nobles; 3) the civil unrest of much of the population; 4) the availability of many powerful lords with their own private armies; and 5) the untimely episodes of mental illness by king Henry VI. Please see the origins page for more information on the start of the wars.

This site presents a clear and easy-to-follow survey of the Wars of the Roses including major players and important battles. We hope this site will pique your interest in a very fascinating and rich period of history -- welcome to the Wars of the Roses.

via WarsOfTheRoses.com - Wars of the Roses.

Anne, Duchess of Brittany (25 January 1477 – 9 January 1514), also known as Anna of Brittany (French: Anne de Bretagne; Breton: Anna Vreizh), was a Breton ruler, who was to become queen to two successive French kings. She was born in Nantes, Brittany, and was the daughter of Francis II, Duke of Brittany and Margaret of Foix. Her maternal grandparents were Queen Eleanor of Navarre and Gaston IV, Count of Foix. Upon her father's death, she became sovereign Duchess of Brittany, Countess of Nantes, Montfort and Richmont and Viscountess of Limoges. In her time, she was the richest European woman.

Brittany being an attractive prize, Anne had no shortage of suitors. She was officially promised in marriage to Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Edward IV of England in 1483; however, the boy disappeared, and was presumed dead, soon after the death of Edward IV.

 

As a potential ally with naval resources, and, after 1471, as the place of exile for Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, the last royal claimant of the house of LANCASTER, the French Duchy of Brittany played an important role in the WARS OF THE ROSES.

 

Although FRANCIS II, duke of Brittany from 1458 to 1488, held his title of the king of FRANCE, the duchy in the fifteenth century was an independent state, with its own administrative and ecclesiastical structure and its own legislative and judicial bodies. Breton dukes had achieved political autonomy by playing off the French against the English during the HUNDRED YEARS WAR. Breton independence served English interests, for a French Brittany threatened English security. Lying across the Channel from England, the Breton peninsula had a long coastline, and the duchy was strong in ships and experienced seamen; in French hands, Brittany was a potential base for invading England. Alternatively, England could employ an autonomous Brittany to trouble France in the same way France encouraged SCOTLAND to threaten England, while the Breton fleet was a useful addition to any anti-French alliance.

 

To maintain Breton independence from France, Francis sought to establish close relations with England and BURGUNDY without unnecessarily alienating the French. Thus, in the early 1460s, Francis, following his own inclinations and the lead of LOUIS XI, provided assistance to Lancastrian exiles within his borders, such as Jasper TUDOR, earl of Pembroke. However, in 1465, Francis took Brittany into the League of the Public Weal, a coalition of French princes led by CHARLES of Burgundy that forced Louis to concede privileges and territories. By 1468, growing threats of French invasion and a thriving trade with England persuaded Francis to conclude formal treaties of commerce and alliance with EDWARD IV. In 1471, Channel storms drove Pembroke and his nephew Richmond, the last Lancastrian claimant of consequence, onto the Breton coast. This literal windfall provided Francis with the means for pressuring Edward IV, now secure on his throne, into maintaining English support for Brittany.

 

In 1472, Edward sent English ARCHERS under Anthony WOODVILLE, Earl Rivers, to help the Bretons repel a French invasion; in 1480, Edward betrothed his son, to Francis’s only child, Anne. In 1483, after RICHARD III destabilized English politics by usurping his nephew’s throne, Richmond, who was kept in increasingly rigorous confinement, became a serious threat to the house of YORK. Because Richard was too insecure to materially assist Brittany, Francis provided Richmond with men and ships and allowed him to join BUCKINGHAM’S REBELLION in October 1483. After the failure of that uprising, a band of English exiles formed around Richmond in Brittany, and the pro-English faction at the Breton court, led by Pierre LANDAIS, the treasurer, used the duke’s illness to secretly negotiate with Richard for Richmond’s surrender. Warned of the plot by Bishop John MORTON, Richmond and his followers fled into France, from where they launched a successful invasion of England in 1485.

 

Francis II died in 1488 in the midst of a French invasion that only ended in 1491 with the conclusion of a marriage treaty between Duchess Anne and CHARLES VIII. Because the settlement laid out terms for Brittany’s incorporation into France, Henry VII led an English army to Anne’s assistance in 1492. However, the invasion ended in the Treaty of Etaples, whereby Henry acquiesced in the takeover of Brittany in return for a French pension and an agreement to expel Perkin WARBECK and other Yorkist pretenders from France. Although the Breton Estates (a legislative assembly) did not formally vote for perpetual union with France until 1532, the duchy was effectively under French control after 1491.

 

Further Reading: Davies,C. S. L.,“The Wars of the Roses in European Context” in A. J. Pollard, ed., The Wars of the Roses (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 162–185; Galliou, Patrick, and Michael Jones, The Bretons (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991); Jones, Michael, The Creation of Brittany:A Late Medieval State (London: Hambledon, 1988).

The Calais garrison of over 1,000 men was England's only standing army. The town was a vital Yorkist base in the winter of 1459-60, and Calais troops formed the core of the Yorkist army which invaded in June 1460. However, Andrew Trollope, a Calais commander and renowned soldier, refused to fight Henry VI (October 1459) and became a leading Lancastrian captain until his death at Towton. The government also paid the wardens of the northern marches (usually from the rival Neville and Percy families) to retain a few hundred soldiers, but their private forces were more important. French and Burgundian rulers supplied mercenaries to back invasion in 1470-71 and 1485-87. Their importance grew as noble participation in the wars declined after 1461. The major source of soldiers was noblemen's retainers and tenants. The Percys and Nevilles could field up to 10,000 men each for short periods, many of whom were experienced in border warfare. The Yorkist lord Hastings raised 3,000 men in 1471, and the Stanleys fielded large contingents between 1485 and 1487. The reluctance of tenants to serve far from home, and the nobles' ability to pay them were the main limitations.

 

At Towton (1461), seventy-five per cent of lords and much of the gentry fought on the Lancastrian side. The Yorkists had fewer lords, but they were the wealthier. Armies became smaller in later wars. At Bosworth, twenty-eight of thirty-five lords failed to turn out for Richard III. Experience taught them it was safer to wait and accept the victor, who could then summon soldiers from towns and counties: in 1455, Coventry equipped 100 archers for Henry VI, and sent the same number with Warwick to Towton. However, by 1470-71, their daily wages had to be raised by fifty per cent to attract recruits.

 

The largest armies fought at Towton, over 20,000 men on each side; Edward may have had 9,000 at Barnet (1471), Warwick more; at Bosworth, Richard heavily outnumbered Henry Tudor's 5,000 men, although Sir William Stanley's army redressed the balance, and not all of Richard's army was engaged. Archers predominated, outnumbering "men-at-arms by seven or more to one. English archers were highly rated in Europe. In the civil war battles both sides had them and they were less influential than in the Hundred Years' War, their main function being to cover the men-at-arms and to break up defensive formations. However, their absence compromised the Yorkists at Edgecote. Other footmen were armed with bills (poleaxes). The elite men-at-arms, all landowners, were encased in expensive armour. Nearly all battles of the civil wars became slogging matches in which the men-at-arms on foot played the dominant role, though cavalry were also used, as at Towton, Tewkesbury, and Bosworth. Most armies had field artillery, although this was used only at the start of battles because its rate of fire was relatively slow; mounting it in field defences went out of fashion after 1460. There were few sieges in the civil wars, although Edward IV possessed an impressive siege train. The English made little use of handguns, and the mercenary gunners from the Continent made little impact in the wars.

 

The main goal in the civil wars was political power rather than control of territory, so the campaigns of the Wars of the Roses were brief and ended in battles. This was not due to lack of military skill; many of the nobles who commanded in the 1450s had experience in the French wars, and younger captains like Somerset, Warwick, and Edward IV, who learned from experience, were capable soldiers. It was desirable to limit campaigns to avoid causing damage by foraging, and to reach a conclusion before the levies dispersed. Analysis of the campaigns of 147071, for which there is detailed evidence, shows that both sides manoeuvred skilfully. York (in 1459) and Warwick (in 1461) paid dearly for failure to reconnoitre. Edward IV's handling of his men before Barnet and at Tewkesbury also shows some tactical skill and, in contrast to the English experience in the French wars, it was often the attackers who won battles.

 

Sources rarely refer to the crucial role of logistics. To invade Scotland in 1481, 500 carts were requisitioned to carry supplies, and more would ferry provisions from Newcastle. In civil wars such preparations were impossible, and the mobility of armies suggests that there were no large wagon trains. Armies carried a few days' provisions and equipment in wagons. In 1459, the Yorkists used wagons for protection at Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge. In 1460, London furnished Yorkist transport. Supplies were purchased or seized from towns, depending on their lord (Stamford, Wakefield, and Ludlow were York's towns) and the state of discipline. The best sources were the largest towns like London (1461), York (1470), and Bristol (1471). Requisitioning and looting were often indistinguishable, but living off the country meant dangerous dispersal (as the Yorkists found in December 1460), while plundering alienated the population. Margaret kept her northerners, who had a bad reputation, out of London in February 1461 in deference to fears of pillaging, thus leaving the city open to Edward.

 

An army on the march was preceded by light horse called 'scourers', harbingers, or aforeriders whose tasks included arranging billets and victuals, and scouting. Accurate reconnaissance gave Edward a crucial advantage in 1470 and 1471, whereas the failure of York's and Warwick's scouts (December 1460 and February 1461) resulted in defeat. Contact between opposing harbingers provided knowledge of the enemy's location, and thus sending aforeriders in one direction, and the main body in another was used to deceive the enemy by Warwick in March 1470, and by Margaret in April 1471.