Privy letters

 

23 May 1265. On this day a safe-conduct was issued for Roger Clifford and Roger Leyburn, along with 'three or four' other knights coming with them, to Lord Edward at Hereford. The conduct was at Edward's request, made to his father the king: it was really a plea to Simon de Montfort, the de facto ruler of England. Perhaps surprisingly, Simon waved it on through.

Edward was still in custody, guarded by Simon's son Henry and a troop of Montfortian knights. England hovered on the verge of another civil war. The safe-conduct was issued just thirteen days after Simon was informed of the landing of William de Valence and Earl Warenne, Edward's friends, on the Pembroke coast. In recent days Simon had attempted to sweeten Edward by re-granting certain of lands, such as Stamford and Hungerford. By allowing Clifford and Leyburn to meet with the prince, Simon was possibly trying to win Edward's friendship.

This was unlikely to happen. The chronicle of Melrose describes the form of Edward's captivity after the battle of Lewes, in which he and his father were taken prisoner. Queen Margaret of Scotland, Edward's sister (pictured), sent the abbot of Driburgh with a message for her brother. When Simon was informed of the abbot's arrival, he escorted him into Edward's presence in an upstairs chamber.

While Edward and his visitor talked, Simon remained standing before them:

'...and as he stood, he never once withdrew his eyes from them, but watched them most attentively; for he was apprehensive that some letter would be delivered to Edward, or some dangerous communication made to him on the part of those by whom the messenger had been dispatched'.

When the conversation was over, the abbot rose to leave. Simon insisted on following him outside, in case he 'privily dropped some letter, the import of which might have been dangerous'.

Simon might have done better to watch the Marchers than visiting Scottish clergymen. Clifford and Leyburn, whom he permitted to visit Edward, were almost certainly in on the plan to spring the prince from captivity.

'...sholde have dystrussyd hym'

In May 1473 John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, attempted to land a small invasion force at St Osyth in Essex. After the Lancastrian defeat at Barnet he had fled to France, by way of Scotland according to one account, and wound up at Dieppe in Normandy. Here he collected a squadron variously estimated at 80-397 men, presumably local mercenaries. Accompanied by his brothers, George and Thomas, and by Lord Beaumont, he set sail to try and revive a spark of Lancastrian resistance in England.

We know of Oxford's attempt at St Osyth thanks to a reference in one of the famous Paston Letters. In a letter dated 3 June 1473, Sir John Paston wrote to his brother, another John, reporting on local affairs. Near the end of the letter he remarks that the Earl of Oxford had tried to land at St Osyth on 28 May, only to be driven off by the Earl of Essex. If Oxford had not beaten a hasty retreat, Paston wrote, Essex:

'...by lyklyod sholde have dystrussyd him' (would have likely destroyed him)

The Earl of Essex was Henry Bourchier, a veteran of the French wars in his late 60s, who had been created earl by Edward IV after the Battle of Towton in 1461. Paston adds that Essex was reinforced by the lords Denham and Durasse, so Oxford must have been severely outnumbered: in the face of superior Yorkist forces, he wisely chose 'not to tarry long', as Paston put it.

Oxford's strategy is obvious. St Osyth, on the coast of north-east Essex, lay only a few miles from his favourite residence of Wivenhoe, in an area where he and his mother had been by far the greatest landowners. He probably hoped to whip up local support, but if so the fugitive earl was sorely disappointed. It seems that Essex was keeping a careful watch on the coast, and hot-footed to crush the invasion before it could gain any momentum.

However, John de Vere shared certain qualities with Robert de Bruce's pet spider: regardless of defeats, he would try, try, and try again. A few days later his little fleet was spotted off the Isle of Thanet, and shortly afterwards descended upon St Michael's Mount in Cornwall. 

Dodgy digs

 

In 1929 an archaeologist, Leslie Armstrong, oversaw an investigation of the remains of Sheffield castle. The results were published in a paper the following year. Armstrong concluded there were three layers of habitation: an Anglo-Saxon hall of 'aula', probably belonging to Earl Waltheof (executed 1076); a motte and bailey built on top of the earlier site by William de Lovetot; a stone castle built by the Furnivals c.1270.

In a section of his report, titled BURNT LAYER: REMAINS OF DE LOVETOT CASTLE, Armstrong claimed to have discovered evidence of the burning of Sheffield castle in 1266. In that year Sir John de Eyvill, a Montfortian knight, 'cum equiis et armis', destroyed 'Saffield' during the Barons' War. Armstong highlighted a 'destruction layer' 4-8 inches thick, comprising charcoal and wood ash combined with calcined rubble and fragments of dressed masonry displaying damage by fire, found 'at various points' on the site. Beneath the courtyard buildings he recorded a layer, 9 to 12 inches thick, of ashes and burnt stone. In a further report he described these layers vividly as 'crackled and burnt to a deep red tint by the action of fire'.

A licence to crenellate

The tale grew in the telling. However, a more recent survey in 2008 shot Armstrong's paper full of holes. First, the burnt layer lay below the remains of what he had assumed was the castle built by Thomas de Furnival. Armstrong had only a text-based assumption that it dated to the destruction of 1266. Nor did he have any independent means of dating the layer to the mid-13th century, never mind to a precise year. Outside of brief chronicle accounts, the actual damage committed by John de Eyvill is unknowable.

Certainly, in 1270 Furnival received a licence to 'build a stone castle and fortify and crenellate it' at Sheffield. However the extent to which the earlier castle was damaged is unknown, and the licence to crenellate in 1270 proves nothing: many of these licences were acquired long after the actual work had been completed, or even prior to work that was never undertaken.

Modern analysis failed to recover any dating evidence from the burnt layer. However, the Pipe Roll accounts for 1188 record a large payment of £66 spent on rebuilding Sheffield castle after a fire. Thus the 'Ashes 1266' layer that Armstrong identified in all likelihood refers to damage almost eighty years earlier.

Special guest post by Gemma Lawrence, author of Seer of Apollo

 

Tell us about your latest book

My latest book is Seer of Apollo, book three of The Armillary Sphere, story of Lady Jane Rochford. Jane was the wife of George Boleyn, and sister-in-law of Anne and Mary Boleyn. She was sent to court at a young age to serve Queen Katherine, and afterwards served Anne, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard. Jane has long been suspected, on the basis of very flimsy evidence, of being one of the people who betrayed Anne Boleyn and George, leading to their downfall. I have many doubts about this, and believe that even if she did add to evidence against them anything she said may have been manipulated, transforming quite innocent comments into incriminating evidence, like much of the ‘evidence’ brought up against Queen Anne and her supposed lovers. Jane did, however, manage to return to court and quite possibly worked as a court spy for Thomas Cromwell. This, I would argue, is not necessarily evidence of guilt, but that she found a way to survive after the downfall of the powerful family into which she married. Jane went on to serve many queens, but ended up on the block herself when she was accused of aiding Queen Katherine Howard to meet in secret with a young man. Jane seems to have suffered a mental collapse when she was arrested, which some believed was false, but King Henry VIII altered the law of the times which said a person of unbalanced mind could not be executed, to allow Jane to die for her “crimes”. Jane died with the last Queen she served, in the same manner as her own husband and sister-in-law had years before.

I always felt sorry for Jane, and decided to write her version of the events of her life. She is a shadowy character, often maligned, and I thought she deserved a more balanced version of the events of her life and that of her family.

What is your preferred writing routine?

Writing is my job, so I come to my computer at 9am, and I work. I take breaks, but usually I work from 9-4 or 5, when I take a walk. I don’t wait for inspiration, that comes when I start typing, or often when I’m out walking!

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Read, and write! You cannot be a writer unless you read a lot, and you also can’t be a writer unless you write. Don’t put off writing, worrying that you aren’t going to get the perfect idea in your head out in the way you want, write it. A great deal of writing is re-writing, editing, tinkering, and you can only do that once you have a draft in front of you. The first draft is always poor, but you can make it shine the more you work on it. Read everything you can, and in genres you wouldn’t usually go for, and the words will come easier. So read, and write, if you want to be a writer!

What have you found to be the best way to raise awareness of your books?

I do most of my promotion on twitter, but reviews are also an excellent way to be seen. I have had the good fortune of having other authors such as Terry Tyler review my books, of getting to know some great review groups, such as Rosie’s Book Review Team, and of having many readers willing to leave reviews too, which help my books to be seen amongst the millions of titles on Amazon and Goodreads. I include an email address at the end of my books so people can contact me, and whilst we chat about Tudor conspiracy theories and facts, I also ask if they can leave a review. There’s always no pressure. I don’t want to try to force people, but I always ask if they are willing to, it would be most appreciated, and many, being kind people willing to give their time, do.

Tell us something unexpected that you discovered during your research

I come across all kinds of odd facts in my research. I love old recipes and their methods, such as “take a goodly pinch of saffron”. I love looking at the old ingredients and things used that we might well cringe at today. Medicine is also fascinating to me, all the old treatments some of which worked and some which probably the patient was lucky to survive. And I like bizarre stories, such as when the Welsh archers who all but won Agincourt for Henry V marched to battle, they did so apparently with no trousers on! They were suffering from terrible dysentery at the time, so I read, and decided it was simpler to just march there without breeches on. So, if this is true, they were sick, had marched a long way, and bare-bottomed no less, and still won the battle!

What was the hardest scene you remember writing?

Most of the last book in my series on Anne Boleyn, Judge the Best, was hard. Anne was my first historical heroine, and so writing about her fall was tough. I didn’t expect it to touch me as much as it did, but the last few chapters were the worst. It felt as though I was the one sending her to her death, and killing a heroine of your childhood, indeed life, isn’t an easy thing. I had to work hard too, in order to hopefully make the end touching without it becoming corny. I wanted to do justice to Anne. I hope I succeeded.

What are you planning to write next?

I have another book on Jane Boleyn coming, Captive of the King, dealing with the time of Anne Boleyn’s downfall, as well as the fourth book in my series The Heirs of Anarchy, called Sons of Violence, which deals with the end of the English civil war known as the Anarchy, where Empress Matilda fought her cousin King Stephen for possession of the English throne. There will be more books in this series next year, although Eleanor of Aquitaine is due to take up the story from this point, carrying on into the reigns of Henry II, and his sons. I also have a ghost story I am working on, on the side as it were, something that has been rattling about in my head for years and is now demanding to be written.

Links to the author's works:

Author page Amazon

Amazon.co.uk: G. Lawrence: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle

Seer of Apollo, UK and US links

Seer of Apollo (The Armillary Sphere, Story of Lady Jane Rochford Book 3) eBook : Lawrence, G. , Dean, Donna : Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Seer of Apollo (The Armillary Sphere, Story of Lady Jane Rochford Book 3) - Kindle edition by Lawrence, G. , Dean, Donna . Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

The leaves are greenest

In August 1265 Earl Simon de Montfort and his exhausted, dysentery-riddled army were wiped out by the forces of Lord Edward and Gilbert de Clare at Evesham. The 'murder of Evesham', as one chronicler termed it, was supposed to put an end to the civil war. In fact, despite the unusually high number of noble casualties, it was merely a staging-point.

A few weeks afterwards, the restored Henry III ordered the seizure of all lands belonging to surviving Montfortians. These would be parcelled out among his own followers, who wanted some reward for their loyalty. The king's policy left Simon's followers - hence known as the Disinherited - with no option except to take up arms again. England was plunged into a fresh round of civil war.

The rebels found a new leader in the shape of Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby. Ferrers was a wild card: he had initially supported Earl Simon, only to break away after the Montfortians bungled the siege of Gloucester in 1264. He was then lured to London on trumped-up charges of treason and thrown in the Tower. 

In the wake of Evesham, King Henry and his heir, Edward, tried to reconcile Ferrers. The wayward earl was released, forgiven all trespasses and presented with a gift of a golden cup and additional sweetener of 1500 marks. Ferrers' response was to throw the royal pardon in Henry's face and gallop off north to join the Montfortians.

Ferrers took command of a rebel army that concentrated at Chesterfield near Derbyshire. The occupation of this manor was probably a jab at Edward: it had once belonged to Ferrers, but had since been re-granted to the prince's consort, Eleanor of Castile. Here the rebellious earl was joined by the likes of Baldwin Wake, Henry Hastings and Sir John de Eyvill, an aggressive northerner who had served as Simon's viceroy at York. The chronicler Thomas Wykes describes the rebel muster:

'At the time of year when the leaves are greenest in the forest, the barons, along with their great retinues, were furiously impatient and refused to be quiet'.

From their camp at Chesterfield, the rebels rode out to pillage and depopulate the north country, burning and looting and putting hundreds of innocents to the sword. Afterwards, sated with plunder, they withdrew to the great forest of Duffield. 

Unknown to them, a royal army was racing north under the command of the king's nephew, Henry of Almaine. His troops arrived at Chesterfield on the Vigil of Pentecost (15th May). They found the rebels totally unprepared. Ferrers, who suffered from gout, was in his tent having his blood let. His ally, John de Eyvill, had gone off hunting in the greenwood. Neither had apparently thought to post guards.

Almaine, who must have thought it was Christmas, launched an immediate assault on the rebel camp. After a short, sharp fight, Ferrers' men scattered in all directions. Some were chased into the woods, others fled into the town. Among the latter was Ferrers himself: trailing blood and bandages, he took refuge under a pile of woolsacks in a church. Not very heroic.

John de Eyvill and his men then came rushing back from the forest. They put up a fight, but it was no use. De Eyvill himself was knocked off his horse by a royalist knight, Sir Gilbert Haunsard. He managed to scramble aboard a spare and escape back into the forest, from where he made his way to the Isle of Axholme, a waterlogged refuge in the Lincolnshire fens.

As for Ferrers, his hiding place was betrayed by a local woman whose lover he had hanged on a tree outside Chesterfield. Henry of Almaine had the distressed earl put into a cage on the back of a wagon, and then trundled off to prison at Windsor, where he stayed at His Majesty's Pleasure for the next three years.  

Baldwin Wake and Henry Hastings also escaped the disaster, although other rebel barons were not so lucky. Robert Wollerton, described as 'a valiant rider', was taken and hanged. Henry Ireton, a direct ancestor of the famous Parliamentary general, was slain in the fighting.

Otherwise the names of the dead are not recorded. From a royalist perspective, the most important outcome was the capture of Ferrers, which deprived the rebels of their most important leader. However, plenty of Montfortians remained on the loose, and the bitter war would continue.

Raleigh - Tudor Adventurer Book three of the Elizabethan Series

New from Tony Riches, Author of the best-selling Tudor Trilogy!

Based on extensive research, original letters and records of the Elizabethan Court, this new account explores the life of Tudor adventurer, courtier, explorer and poet, Sir Walter Raleigh, who has been called the last true Elizabethan. 

He didn’t dance or joust, didn’t come from a noble family, or marry into one. So how did an impoverished law student become a favourite of the queen, and Captain of the Guard? The story which began with the Tudor trilogy follows Walter Raleigh from his first days at the Elizabethan Court to the end of the Tudor dynasty. 

Links:

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Z98J183
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09Z98J183
Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09Z98J183
Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B09Z98J183 

Author Bio Tony Riches is a full-time UK author of Tudor historical fiction. He lives with his wife in Pembrokeshire, West Wales and is a specialist in the lives of the early Tudors. As well as his new Elizabethan series, Tony’s historical fiction novels include the best-selling Tudor trilogy and his Brandon trilogy, (about Charles Brandon and his wives). 

For more information about Tony’s books please visit his website tonyriches.com and his blog, The Writing Desk and find him on Facebook and Twitter @tonyriches

Comes Pontivi (3)

On 19 June 1279, after a couple of weeks touring their new lordship of Ponthieu, Edward I and Eleanor of Castile sailed for England. They left a seneschal to govern the county in their absence, also called a 'custos' or 'locum tenens'.

The administration of Ponthieu was quite conventional. Below the seneschal was a receiver in charge of finances, and then lesser officials such as bailiffs, foresters, serjeants and so forth. As the representative of his absent lord, the seneschal's job was to maintain the count's justice inside Ponthieu, and jealously guard his rights outside it. Among his many duties was to lead the men of Ponthieu when Edward's overlord, the king of France, demanded military service.

Since Ponthieu was a small county, the seneschal was on a salary of just £2-300 of Paris a year, as opposed to the £5-600 paid to the seneschal of Gascony. The receiver was on a wage of £1-200 of Paris, while the bailiffs were on £40 per annum, lesser officials £30. The first English seneschal of Ponthieu was Thomas of Sandwich, who held the office from 1279-88. He had started out as a Montfortian, only to be pardoned at Edward's insistence in November 1265. Afterwards he entered royal service as a clerk, was made a knight, and became keeper, bailiff and chamberlain of Sandwich. This rising star was then appointed Sheriff of Essex, accompanied Edward on crusade, and employed on diplomatic missions to Aragon and Brabant.

Thomas was capable in many ways, but his career was dogged by controversy. He provoked complaints and disagreements in all his terms of office, although this can be viewed two ways: either he was unusually corrupt or annoyingly efficient. The lack of evidence of corruption would imply he was rather too good at his job, and perhaps tactless into the bargain. In 1289 Thomas was appointed mayor of Bordeaux in Gascony, at the other end of the Plantagenet dominions, where (true to form), he provoked a riot.

Crucially, Thomas was very good at serving his master's will. Edward's first priority as count was to secure his grip on the county and expand its borders. The seneschal did these things with alacrity: from 1279 he arranged the purchase and exchange of lands, buying out tenants and shortening the links of the feudal chain. For instance, one Gerard de Abbeville wished to grant 100 librates of land to his sister Agnes. This he was allowed to do, but only if Agnes agreed to hold the land 'en plein hommage' from the count. On another occasion, in May 1283, the Count of Guelders was induced to sell all his land in Ponthieu to Edward for £1000 of Paris. To complete the deal, Thomas had to go to Brabant to meet the count, since he dared not come any nearer to his estranged uncle, the Bishop of Liege.