The Kingdom and its people
Posted July 22nd, 2012 at 12:12 PM by Crystal Rainbow
King Richard III
XII
Richard was determined to celebrate Christmas, despite yeomen of the crown were riding in all directions from London to issue martial proclamations against the rebels. Defences were checked in towns and lookouts where installed along the coasts. The Kings Council, were very busy. So much so they could not spare one of its clerks, John Harrington to York, where he was also clerk of York until early in the next year.
It had appeared that there were a network of spies around the country that were working for Tudor and they turned up in one of the unlikely places in York, a city which the people who had well loved their king. A man called John Stafford and his son Richard was arrested on the 17th of December, by order of the Mayor, Thomas Wrangwysh. Someone had noticed there was a strange activity in Stafford household and a search was made and found one hundred counterfeit French crowns and other coins of laton, a soft alloy. ‘Which he thought to have gilt and uttered within the city and other places, in the great deceit and hurt of the King’s people’. The money was destined to France to finance Henry Tudor for his invasion. Stafford had protested that his boy Richard had nothing to do with the counterfeiting, but both of them were taken to prison. The next day the Mayor and Thomas Aske the city attorney, and a few aldermen had cross-examined Stafford. As he had been caught in the act, he had made a full confession. He was hoping that they would save his son and hopefully saving his son as he provided evidence as to where the counterfeit money was going to and who else was involved. The matter was serious, false coining, by statute of Edward III, was a matter for high treason and the punishment was death by hung, drawn and quartered. The heir to the throne, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln was the head of the Council of the North and was staying at Sandal Castle. Wrangwysh had written to him, relaying Stafford’s confession and requested his presence at the Council at York. ‘to show your commandment by our servant this bearer how I shall deal with the said John and his son. News travelled fast even in those days, as the message was received at Sandal on the same day, the Earl had answered promptly and was received a reply the next morning. ‘You have not only done unto me a right singular pleasure but for the same have deserved of the King’s grace a great and special thank not be unremembered; nevertheless I pray you for sundry considerations on Monday next to do the said Stafford to be sent hither unto me, keeping with you his son’. The Earl had added that he would be sending letters to the king in concerning this matter. ‘Amongst which your faithful diligence and acquittal in this behalf no shall be forgotten…’
The Earl of Lincoln’s response was read out in front of the city council on 20th of December and after some debate, Wrangwysh had written to the Earl ‘after your high pleasure and wisdom, to be punished after his demerits, according to the rights of the said city’. John Nicholson and John Sponer took John Stafford to face the Earl of Lincoln for further questioning, while his son was left in prison in York. The source of this incident stops very abruptly from the York records.
John Stafford had confessed that he had been staying at the manor of the late Earl of Shrewsbury’s manor at Wynfeld in Derbyshire. While he was working for the late Earl of Shrewsbury who had died in June 1473 he had come across some coining irons. The heir of Shrewsbury was only 5 years old when he had his peerage. Stafford had taken the opportunity to move the equipment and put it to some use.
‘One bearing the print and coin of the French King called the crown, and the other bearing the print of the Dutch coin called St Andrew, with which irons he hath coined and set the prints of the said irons upon laton gilt, by the space of a year or more, and thought to have uttered them to such as he might’.
Stafford had been told the Earl of Lincoln that the late Earl of Shrewsbury was the King’s Lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine, and was granted the power to coin French money gold and silver as often as he had thought fit. This happened in 1452 when Henry VI was on the throne. This seems tie in with the reason how he managed to be in possession of the coinage irons.
Richard had tried to put a brave face on things and he arranged for Anne to be at Westminster to celebrate Christmas with the entire family. He was hoping to it was going help her to rally round as her health had deteriorated since the time during Richard and Anne’s only child, Edward. She had tuberculosis and she had lost all interest in life since had taken the death of her son very badly. At this stage the doctor’s had advised Richard not to share the marriage bed and Richard had known that Anne was fast failing and all hope for recovery was quickly disappearing. Richard had prayed for miracles to happen, but he knew that his prayers were not answered. He looked for new remedies, trying herbal and seeking the advice of the best doctors that he had trusted. Anne was just wasting away before his very eyes.
Outside the walls of the court the people had went about their everyday lives getting ready for the festive period and the merchants were selling wares from Italian necklaces, silver wear, fine work from the goldsmiths and Flemish tapestries. People were on the streets busy shopping and watching the street entertainment, singing and music. Not that far away from the Abbey ground, William Caxton was now into his sixties. He was still very active and had been very busy with his printing press and had been printing the Canterbury Tales and the Troilus and Cressida, by the poet that he had admired above all the other poets, Master Geoffrey Chaucer.
Christmas had arrived, on Epiphany, Richard and Anne were wearing their crowns and true to his word he had seen to it that the daughters of his late brother, Edward were worthily entertained and dressed. The eldest daughter Elizabeth had blossomed into a beautiful young lady, with long golden hair and was attired in robes as magnificent as the Queen’s. Poor Anne had looked pale in comparison even that she had worn magnificent jewels, nothing could hide how poorly see looked. During the Christmas festivities Richard had received an urgent message as the Croyland Chronicler had recorded.
‘News was brought him… from his spies beyond the sea, that, notwithstanding the potency and splendour of his royal state, his adversaries would, without question, invade the kingdom during the following summer…Than this, there was nothing that could befall him more desirable…’. Such news that was brought to him when he was trying to boost people’s confidence for the future. He took the news seriously enough as he had heard that Henry Tudor and his followers had been persuading gentry and noble families that had past grieves in past battles. He had also had started to hear strange stories about himself as in regards to his personality.
The true Richard III, was less than average height, tawny shoulder length hair, and a dimple on his chin, lively eyes and found it hard to keep still as he was known to fidget. He was quick-witted, and had a quick and lively sense of humour and love to learn about new places and loved to learn and understand about other people’s culture. He was very knowledgeable about using different languages, other leaders that had met him during the course of his lifetime had known he was a born diplomat. He would walk into a room full of strangers and would make very good friends very soon. He was very approachable King; he went out of his way to make someone feel comfortable even the most humble servant was allowed to call him as Dickon. ‘Your Grace’ and ‘Your Majesty’ addresses were only used on formal occasions. He could not stand ceremony and being formal and preferred that people to be at ease with him. He had little time for people with hidden agendas and was honest and direct and others knew were they stood with him. Richard was a fair and just King, it was well known in his day that he punished the ringleaders and allowed the rest to go free. It would be fair to say he was too lenient on some of his enemies, as they lived to help Henry Tudor on the throne. During a proclamation, which he published in Kent, just after Buckingham’s rebellion. Richard was anxious to persuade the citizens to be just to one another than to seek out concealed rebels and to demand public order. During local grievances in York during September 1484, Richard’s main concern was not with punishing the rioters, but to lecture them on how to behave towards each other and look to other means of finding solutions rather than resorting to violence. He had felt it was very important to look after his people and he gave Sir Marmaduke Constable the job of managing and rooting out anyone who had been practising oppressions and extortions on the common people of the land. He felt that the common people deserved protection from people that abused their power. Richard had seen a lot during abuse of power in his life, and he had made sweeping changes in how the gentry treated the serfs. He had also concerned himself, with health and hygiene matters. In his day the plague could wipe out communities and villages. He had taken an interest in keeping human waste free and running and not to be left in stagnate midden pits on near by living quarters, or streets. He was very particular about his personal hygiene and that of his living quarters; it seems strange that someone in his day had such views on such matters. He had linked clean sanitation to less likelihood of getting the plague. Some of the castles in where he was in residence there was drainage from the toilets. In later years it his ideas did not catch on until much later in history. Ideas such like stop throwing waste out onto the streets were still happening in Charles II reign. The idea of personal hygiene did not catch on until much later to after his death. It was said that Queen Elizabeth I, herself only had taken a bath once a month.
There was a situation, when Richard had heard that a Vicar-general had defrauded a parson of his living, Richard had seen to it personally himself to quickly send a warrant demanding his arrest. There was another time during after the Buckingham Rebellion and one of the under-clerks in the office of the Privy Seal had given markedly good service and he had been over looked in the promotion list. He had sent a warrant to John Gunthorpe, Keeper of the Privy Seal ‘to discharge Richard Bele from his place in the office of the said Privy Seal, to which he had been admitted contrary to the old rule and due order, by means of giving of great gifts and other sinister and ungodly ways in great discouraging of the under-clerks, which have long continued therein, to have the experience of the same, to see a stranger, never brought up in the said office, to put them by of their promotion’.
In Bele’s place, Richard had gave the place to the under clerk, Robert Bolman, for his ‘good and diligent service’. Bolman was granted the clerkship and annuity of £100 ‘in the said office, and specially in this the King’s great journey and for his experience and long continuance in the same’.
King Richard made his short reign as personal, accessible, and paternal one much as possible. It was impossible for him to establish a close bond with the entire kingdom; he did chose to use his lords powers during his reign to be an overseer of parts of the country. When he first came to the throne he had given land and powers to the Duke of Buckingham in the West. The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey, East Anglia, The Stanley’s in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales. The Earl of Northumberland had the power in the North and on the Marches. They were granted commissions of array, of the peace, and they were responsible for defending from invasion and maintaining order and enforcing the law of the land. The idea that some of these lords had other agenda’s and it had made Richard reign rather difficult to maintain peace. He did try to give the lord’s responsibilities but the laws he made were not being enforced. The landed gentry had been used to ruling their people by little or no regard for their people for centuries. Due this happening Richard had installed his agents for keeping the law and peace, this was sensitive to local issues and grievances, as they became national in its final authority. The laws that Richard had installed were alienating some of the lords as the middle classes such as the merchants were rising in power. When Richard was the Duke of Gloucester he had given the people of York great respect for the importance of its people. During the first eighteen months of his reign he had granted governing privileges, presents of money and partial remission of royal fees to no less than eighteen towns in all quarters of the kingdom. A new breed of people had started to prosper. The middle classes had more freedom and the towns people had become more important and sobriety, industry, trade and piety had become more to the fore. These people refused to be drawn into the quarrels of the nobles and abided the laws of peace and laid down their weapons.
XII
Richard was determined to celebrate Christmas, despite yeomen of the crown were riding in all directions from London to issue martial proclamations against the rebels. Defences were checked in towns and lookouts where installed along the coasts. The Kings Council, were very busy. So much so they could not spare one of its clerks, John Harrington to York, where he was also clerk of York until early in the next year.
It had appeared that there were a network of spies around the country that were working for Tudor and they turned up in one of the unlikely places in York, a city which the people who had well loved their king. A man called John Stafford and his son Richard was arrested on the 17th of December, by order of the Mayor, Thomas Wrangwysh. Someone had noticed there was a strange activity in Stafford household and a search was made and found one hundred counterfeit French crowns and other coins of laton, a soft alloy. ‘Which he thought to have gilt and uttered within the city and other places, in the great deceit and hurt of the King’s people’. The money was destined to France to finance Henry Tudor for his invasion. Stafford had protested that his boy Richard had nothing to do with the counterfeiting, but both of them were taken to prison. The next day the Mayor and Thomas Aske the city attorney, and a few aldermen had cross-examined Stafford. As he had been caught in the act, he had made a full confession. He was hoping that they would save his son and hopefully saving his son as he provided evidence as to where the counterfeit money was going to and who else was involved. The matter was serious, false coining, by statute of Edward III, was a matter for high treason and the punishment was death by hung, drawn and quartered. The heir to the throne, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln was the head of the Council of the North and was staying at Sandal Castle. Wrangwysh had written to him, relaying Stafford’s confession and requested his presence at the Council at York. ‘to show your commandment by our servant this bearer how I shall deal with the said John and his son. News travelled fast even in those days, as the message was received at Sandal on the same day, the Earl had answered promptly and was received a reply the next morning. ‘You have not only done unto me a right singular pleasure but for the same have deserved of the King’s grace a great and special thank not be unremembered; nevertheless I pray you for sundry considerations on Monday next to do the said Stafford to be sent hither unto me, keeping with you his son’. The Earl had added that he would be sending letters to the king in concerning this matter. ‘Amongst which your faithful diligence and acquittal in this behalf no shall be forgotten…’
The Earl of Lincoln’s response was read out in front of the city council on 20th of December and after some debate, Wrangwysh had written to the Earl ‘after your high pleasure and wisdom, to be punished after his demerits, according to the rights of the said city’. John Nicholson and John Sponer took John Stafford to face the Earl of Lincoln for further questioning, while his son was left in prison in York. The source of this incident stops very abruptly from the York records.
John Stafford had confessed that he had been staying at the manor of the late Earl of Shrewsbury’s manor at Wynfeld in Derbyshire. While he was working for the late Earl of Shrewsbury who had died in June 1473 he had come across some coining irons. The heir of Shrewsbury was only 5 years old when he had his peerage. Stafford had taken the opportunity to move the equipment and put it to some use.
‘One bearing the print and coin of the French King called the crown, and the other bearing the print of the Dutch coin called St Andrew, with which irons he hath coined and set the prints of the said irons upon laton gilt, by the space of a year or more, and thought to have uttered them to such as he might’.
Stafford had been told the Earl of Lincoln that the late Earl of Shrewsbury was the King’s Lieutenant of the Duchy of Aquitaine, and was granted the power to coin French money gold and silver as often as he had thought fit. This happened in 1452 when Henry VI was on the throne. This seems tie in with the reason how he managed to be in possession of the coinage irons.
Richard had tried to put a brave face on things and he arranged for Anne to be at Westminster to celebrate Christmas with the entire family. He was hoping to it was going help her to rally round as her health had deteriorated since the time during Richard and Anne’s only child, Edward. She had tuberculosis and she had lost all interest in life since had taken the death of her son very badly. At this stage the doctor’s had advised Richard not to share the marriage bed and Richard had known that Anne was fast failing and all hope for recovery was quickly disappearing. Richard had prayed for miracles to happen, but he knew that his prayers were not answered. He looked for new remedies, trying herbal and seeking the advice of the best doctors that he had trusted. Anne was just wasting away before his very eyes.
Outside the walls of the court the people had went about their everyday lives getting ready for the festive period and the merchants were selling wares from Italian necklaces, silver wear, fine work from the goldsmiths and Flemish tapestries. People were on the streets busy shopping and watching the street entertainment, singing and music. Not that far away from the Abbey ground, William Caxton was now into his sixties. He was still very active and had been very busy with his printing press and had been printing the Canterbury Tales and the Troilus and Cressida, by the poet that he had admired above all the other poets, Master Geoffrey Chaucer.
Christmas had arrived, on Epiphany, Richard and Anne were wearing their crowns and true to his word he had seen to it that the daughters of his late brother, Edward were worthily entertained and dressed. The eldest daughter Elizabeth had blossomed into a beautiful young lady, with long golden hair and was attired in robes as magnificent as the Queen’s. Poor Anne had looked pale in comparison even that she had worn magnificent jewels, nothing could hide how poorly see looked. During the Christmas festivities Richard had received an urgent message as the Croyland Chronicler had recorded.
‘News was brought him… from his spies beyond the sea, that, notwithstanding the potency and splendour of his royal state, his adversaries would, without question, invade the kingdom during the following summer…Than this, there was nothing that could befall him more desirable…’. Such news that was brought to him when he was trying to boost people’s confidence for the future. He took the news seriously enough as he had heard that Henry Tudor and his followers had been persuading gentry and noble families that had past grieves in past battles. He had also had started to hear strange stories about himself as in regards to his personality.
The true Richard III, was less than average height, tawny shoulder length hair, and a dimple on his chin, lively eyes and found it hard to keep still as he was known to fidget. He was quick-witted, and had a quick and lively sense of humour and love to learn about new places and loved to learn and understand about other people’s culture. He was very knowledgeable about using different languages, other leaders that had met him during the course of his lifetime had known he was a born diplomat. He would walk into a room full of strangers and would make very good friends very soon. He was very approachable King; he went out of his way to make someone feel comfortable even the most humble servant was allowed to call him as Dickon. ‘Your Grace’ and ‘Your Majesty’ addresses were only used on formal occasions. He could not stand ceremony and being formal and preferred that people to be at ease with him. He had little time for people with hidden agendas and was honest and direct and others knew were they stood with him. Richard was a fair and just King, it was well known in his day that he punished the ringleaders and allowed the rest to go free. It would be fair to say he was too lenient on some of his enemies, as they lived to help Henry Tudor on the throne. During a proclamation, which he published in Kent, just after Buckingham’s rebellion. Richard was anxious to persuade the citizens to be just to one another than to seek out concealed rebels and to demand public order. During local grievances in York during September 1484, Richard’s main concern was not with punishing the rioters, but to lecture them on how to behave towards each other and look to other means of finding solutions rather than resorting to violence. He had felt it was very important to look after his people and he gave Sir Marmaduke Constable the job of managing and rooting out anyone who had been practising oppressions and extortions on the common people of the land. He felt that the common people deserved protection from people that abused their power. Richard had seen a lot during abuse of power in his life, and he had made sweeping changes in how the gentry treated the serfs. He had also concerned himself, with health and hygiene matters. In his day the plague could wipe out communities and villages. He had taken an interest in keeping human waste free and running and not to be left in stagnate midden pits on near by living quarters, or streets. He was very particular about his personal hygiene and that of his living quarters; it seems strange that someone in his day had such views on such matters. He had linked clean sanitation to less likelihood of getting the plague. Some of the castles in where he was in residence there was drainage from the toilets. In later years it his ideas did not catch on until much later in history. Ideas such like stop throwing waste out onto the streets were still happening in Charles II reign. The idea of personal hygiene did not catch on until much later to after his death. It was said that Queen Elizabeth I, herself only had taken a bath once a month.
There was a situation, when Richard had heard that a Vicar-general had defrauded a parson of his living, Richard had seen to it personally himself to quickly send a warrant demanding his arrest. There was another time during after the Buckingham Rebellion and one of the under-clerks in the office of the Privy Seal had given markedly good service and he had been over looked in the promotion list. He had sent a warrant to John Gunthorpe, Keeper of the Privy Seal ‘to discharge Richard Bele from his place in the office of the said Privy Seal, to which he had been admitted contrary to the old rule and due order, by means of giving of great gifts and other sinister and ungodly ways in great discouraging of the under-clerks, which have long continued therein, to have the experience of the same, to see a stranger, never brought up in the said office, to put them by of their promotion’.
In Bele’s place, Richard had gave the place to the under clerk, Robert Bolman, for his ‘good and diligent service’. Bolman was granted the clerkship and annuity of £100 ‘in the said office, and specially in this the King’s great journey and for his experience and long continuance in the same’.
King Richard made his short reign as personal, accessible, and paternal one much as possible. It was impossible for him to establish a close bond with the entire kingdom; he did chose to use his lords powers during his reign to be an overseer of parts of the country. When he first came to the throne he had given land and powers to the Duke of Buckingham in the West. The Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey, East Anglia, The Stanley’s in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales. The Earl of Northumberland had the power in the North and on the Marches. They were granted commissions of array, of the peace, and they were responsible for defending from invasion and maintaining order and enforcing the law of the land. The idea that some of these lords had other agenda’s and it had made Richard reign rather difficult to maintain peace. He did try to give the lord’s responsibilities but the laws he made were not being enforced. The landed gentry had been used to ruling their people by little or no regard for their people for centuries. Due this happening Richard had installed his agents for keeping the law and peace, this was sensitive to local issues and grievances, as they became national in its final authority. The laws that Richard had installed were alienating some of the lords as the middle classes such as the merchants were rising in power. When Richard was the Duke of Gloucester he had given the people of York great respect for the importance of its people. During the first eighteen months of his reign he had granted governing privileges, presents of money and partial remission of royal fees to no less than eighteen towns in all quarters of the kingdom. A new breed of people had started to prosper. The middle classes had more freedom and the towns people had become more important and sobriety, industry, trade and piety had become more to the fore. These people refused to be drawn into the quarrels of the nobles and abided the laws of peace and laid down their weapons.
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