The Parentage of Edward of Lancaster

No historical novel set during the Wars of the Roses is quite complete unless it contains a passage where the parentage of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou's son, Edward of Lancaster, is called into question. Philippa Gregory's latest effort duly follows this rule by having Jacquetta Woodville tell her daughter that Henry was "struck deaf and dumb nearly for the whole year that the child was conceived and born" and that Margaret took a lover during this time. (In fact, Henry did not go mad until early August 1453, just a couple of months before his son was born on October 13, 1453.) Another recent novel set during the same period has a rustic propose William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, as one of several possible fathers for the child--quite a feat on the duke's part, considering that he was murdered in 1450 and Edward was born in 1453.

While there's no doubt that rumors circulated about the parentage of young Edward, especially in the late 1450's as Yorkist propaganda heated up, there is no evidence, other than gossip, that Edward of Lancaster was the son of anyone other than Henry VI. As both R.A. Griffiths and Helen Maurer have pointed out, the Parliament Rolls for 1455 indicate that Richard Tunstall, an esquire of the body, had previously received a handsome annuity for bringing the king the news of the queen's pregnancy:

Provided also that this petition and act of resumption shall not extend or be prejudicial to our letters patent and grant made by us to Richard Tunstall, knight, by the name of Richard Tunstall, esquire for our body, of 50 marks a year for term of his life, part of an annuity of £40 a year, granted by us for term of his life, to be taken from the issues, profits and revenues of our manors, lands and tenements, and from our other possessions within our county of Lancaster, by the hands of our receivers there at the time: because, among other things, the said Richard gave us the first comforting report and news that our most entirely beloved wife the queen was with child, to our most singular consolation, and a great joy and comfort to all our true liege people.

Maurer also notes that Henry bought a jewel called a "demy ceynt" for Margaret while she was pregnant and that Margaret received generous grants in July 1453, which she suggests were made by Henry as a reward for her pregnancy. It certainly seems unlikely that they would have been made had the king suspected that Margaret was carrying another man's child.

Once Henry recovered from his first episode of mental illness, his reaction to his son was one of pleasure. As the Paston Letters indicate:

Edmund Clere to John Paston.

January 9, 1455.

Right welbeloved cosyn,—I recomaund me to you, latyng you wite such tidings as we have.

Blessed be God, the King is wel amended, and hath ben syn Cristemesday, and on Seint Jones day comaunded his awmener to ride to Caunterbury with his offryng, and comaunded the secretarie to offre at Seint Edwards.

And on the Moneday after noon the Queen came to him, and brought my Lord Prynce with her. And then he askid what the Princes name was, and the Queen told him Edward; and then he hild up his hands and thankid God therof. And he seid he never knew til that tyme, nor wist not what was seid to him, nor wist not where he had be, whils he hath be seke til now. And he askid who was godfaders, and the Queen told him, and he was well apaid.

. . .

And my Lord of Wynchestr and my Lord of Seint Jones were with him on the morrow after Tweltheday, and he speke to hem as well as ever he did; and when thei come out thei wept for joye. And he seith he is in charitee with all the world, and so he wold all tho Lords were. And now he seith matyns of Our Lady and evesong, and herith his Masse devoutly . . .

But what of the old story, that crops up in many historical novels and even in some nonfiction, that Henry VI, unable to comprehend how he could have been the father of Margaret's child, declared that it must be the work of the Holy Spirit? This story comes from a dispatch on March 27, 1461, from Prospero di Camulio, Milanese Ambassador in France, to Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan. Writing from Brussels about the latest English news, Camulio reported that it was being "said that the King of England had resigned his crown in favour of his son, although they say his Majesty remarked at another time, that he must be the son of the Holy Spirit, etc." What writers who latch onto this tasty morsel of a statement almost never quote is the rest of Camulio's sentence: "but these may only be the words of common fanatics, such as they have at present in that island." Certainly the timing of this gossip, current just a few weeks after Edward IV had taken the throne, should make us suspicious, as it did Camulio.

Those who maintain that Henry VI was not Edward's father often point to the eight-year delay between the couple's marriage in 1445 and the birth of Edward in 1453; they suggest that a desperate or simply wanton Margaret, having given up on Henry's capabilities, recruited another man to beget a child upon her. But the gap between marriage and pregnancy could be explained by other factors, such as subfertility, and is hardly indicative in itself that Margaret resorted to adultery to produce a child. Notably, Cecily of York, who seems to have married her husband no later than 1429 when she was 14 and he was 18, did not have her first child, Anne, until 1439. Despite this lengthy delay, no one has suggested that Anne was anyone other than the Duke of York's child. It seems only fair to give the Red Rose the same benefit of the doubt as the White Rose.

Isn't It Pretty?

Got the cover art for The Stolen Crown today:



It's from Monna Pomona by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Dumb Stuff I Am Looking Forward To This Week

Yesterday being a beautiful, sunny August day, I went to my library of choice. To my delight, a book I wasn't expecting to be there (it was supposed to be at another branch, which was closed) was on the shelf! I consider this to be a harbinger of the week to come, which promises to be full of all sorts of dumb stuff to look forward to, as follows:

Monday: CiCi's Pizza opens its local branch! I love CiCi's Pizza. It's tasty, and it's cheap. With the new branch, instead of having to drive 30 minutes to satisfy my pizza lust, I will have only a ten-minute drive. So for dinner Monday, I will be treating myself to a medium sausage. The Son and maybe the Husband will probably also have some. The Daughter does not appreciate CiCi's Pizza. (A demon seed?)

Tuesday: Philippa Gregory's The White Queen goes on sale! If what I've heard and read from various sources is true, this will not be a model of historical accuracy, but as a diehard Woodvillian, I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. For one thing, Elizabeth Woodville seems to be portrayed reasonably sympathetically, which is a plus, though I could do without what appears to be her ability to influence the weather.

Wednesday: "Top Chef" starts its new season. (For those who aren't familiar with it, this is a show where chefs compete for a prize, with one being eliminated from competition each week.) I hate to cook, and everyone on this show would probably be appalled by my fast-food tastes. I nonetheless thoroughly enjoy "Top Chef." Go figure.

Thursday: "Project Runway" starts its new season. (This is a show where fashion designers compete for a prize, with one being eliminated from competition each week.) I can't sew, but I do like to wear clothes, though the very stylish host, Tim Gunn, would probably have a coronary if he saw the bathrobe that I am wearing as I type this blog post.

Friday: Finishing up The White Queen while munching on my second CiCi's Pizza of the week. Or maybe my third. It's important to help the local economy, you know.

Saturday: Birthday dinner for my grown niece. I am expected to bring dinner for the kiddies. Guess what I'll be bringing?

Sunday: Probably a trip to the gym to work out all of that CiCi's Pizza.

Blog Award, Squidoo Lens, and a Question About Characters

First, the lovely Anne Whitfield has nominated me for the One Lovely Blog Award! Thanks, Anne! I'll soon be nominating some blogs myself (if I don't soon, give me a virtual conk on the head). This leads me naturally to:

Second, for a while I've had a Squidoo Lens on Reading Historical Fiction, which I've just got around to updating. My question is, do you know of any historical fiction blogs that I've missed? I'm not looking for blogs dedicated to a particular author, or author blogs where the author focuses mainly on his or her own writing, or writing-oriented blogs, or blogs that only occasionally discuss historical fiction, but blogs that review primarily historical fiction or post interviews with a variety of historical novelists. If you have one that I've left out, just let me know!

Third, Sharon Penman has been answering reader questions over at Library Thing, and she made a comment that intrigued me, "I don't feel comfortable reading how another writer has treated historical figures I think of as 'mine.'" Now, I know many other authors feel the same way as Penman, but I'm the polar opposite: I love seeing how other authors treat historical people I'm writing about or have written about. This is just sheer compulsiveness on my part: once I become interested in a historical figure, I want to read everything about him or her, and I haven't the strength of character to resist simply because he or she's a person I happen to be writing about.

Many novelists, of course, avoid reading other fictional treatments of their characters because they don't want to risk unconsciously plagiarizing someone else's work. That's the most compelling argument to me in favor of abstinence, though in my completed novels, this wasn't a great risk for me because my main characters figured into other novels only as supporting characters or as villains. With my novel in progress this is more of a concern, because my heroine is the heroine of other published novels. It's not a great concern, because the authors of the books in question differ from me greatly in style, and I will be taking a different slant on some events and giving prominent roles to certain supporting characters who play more background roles in the other novels I've seen.

I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this, though: if you're a writer, do you avoid reading other fictional treatments of your characters? And if you're a reader, once you've read and liked a fictional portrayal of a historical character, do you prefer to keep that picture unsullied by other portrayals? Or are you a character junkie like me, who will keep on reading everything you can about that character?

Elizabeth le Despenser, Daughter of Hugh and Eleanor

Elizabeth le Despenser (who appears a couple of times in Hugh and Bess) was the youngest surviving daughter born to Hugh le Despenser and Eleanor de Clare. Her birth date is unknown, but either she or her brother John might have been the child born to Eleanor in December 1325, as all of the other Despenser children can be accounted for before that date. It is also possible, in light of the fact that she was not forcibly veiled as a nun like the three middle Despenser daughters, that she was Hugh the younger’s posthumous child, though this is pure conjecture.

Nothing is heard out of Elizabeth until August 1338, when the prioress of Wix sent her to the care of her aunt, Eleanor’s younger sister Elizabeth de Burgh. Eleanor had died the previous year, and Elizabeth’s oldest brother, Hugh, had probably sent his young sister to board at Wix in Essex following their mother’s death. (The manor of Wix had been part of the inheritance of Elizabeth's grandfather, Hugh le Despenser the elder, though it was no longer in Despenser hands in the 1330's.) That same year, Elizabeth was married to young Maurice Berkeley, born in 1330. The marriage was probably an effort by Maurice’s father, Thomas Berkeley, and the Despenser family to mend old grudges: Thomas Berkeley had fought against the Despensers in the 1320’s and had been the keeper of the imprisoned Edward II at Berkeley Castle in 1327. Maurice’s mother, Margaret, was a daughter of the Roger Mortimer who had ordered the death of Elizabeth’s father and grandfather, Hugh the elder Despenser and Hugh the younger Despenser. Elizabeth never got to exchange pleasantries with Margaret about this, though, because Margaret died in 1337, before Elizabeth joined the Berkeley family.

Elizabeth’s brother Hugh gave his sister a marriage portion of 1,000 marks, 200 marks of which were payable each half year. Meanwhile, Thomas Berkeley settled the manor of Hurst in jointure on the young couple.

Elizabeth de Burgh sent little Elizabeth to Tewkesbury around 1340; Frances Underhill suggests that she was sent at this time to join the Berkeleys. Elizabeth again visited her aunt in the summer of 1348, in company with some of her relations. Meanwhile, according to Smyth, Maurice went to Granada in 1344 and stayed there two years; Smyth theorizes that he was sent there to prevent cohabitation with Elizabeth. (Was the girl such a siren?) When the couple finally did get together, though, it was with the usual effect: On January 5, 1353, Elizabeth gave birth to their first son, Thomas. The couple eventually had three more boys, James, John, and Maurice, and three girls, Catherine, Agnes, and Elizabeth. It’s notable that there is not a “Hugh” in the bunch; Maurice and his father must have been the ones picking the children’s names.

Maurice fought at Poitiers in 1356. Unfortunately, he was wounded there and taken captive; he was not released until 1360, when he was ransomed. His wounds had apparently left him an invalid, for he took little part in national affairs even after his father died in 1361. Because of his inability to travel, he was unable to attend his son’s wedding in 1368, but he had himself made a suit of cloth of gold for the occasion.

The abstracts of the Berkeley accounts contain few glimpses of Elizabeth’s married life. She received 20 shillings each quarter for expenses in her chamber, and she is recorded as having a new gown furred with coney skins from the kitchen “during the year of her husband’s sickness,” whatever year that might be. One suspects that Elizabeth’s father might have turned up his nose at the coney skins.

Maurice died at Berkeley Castle on June 8, 1368, aged only about 37, and was buried with his mother at St. Augustine’s in Bristol. As her dower, Elizabeth was granted Wenden in Essex, two-thirds of Portbury and Portishead and Uphill in Somersetshire, the small holding at Chicklade in Wiltshire, and the manors of Coaley, Upton and Awre, and the small holding at St. Chloe in Gloucestershire. Her jointure and dower was worth about £335 a year. She was at least 41 at the time, having been born no later than 1327.

By 1372, Elizabeth had married Sir Maurice Wyth, a knight in Somerset. In that year, the Earl of Pembroke wrote to the abbesses at Romsey and Wherwell requesting them to allow Elizabeth to stay in their houses while Wyth was away in the earl's service. As Elizabeth had no shortage of places to stay, perhaps she simply preferred the atmosphere of a nunnery to her own manors during her husband’s absence. In 1378, Maurice and Elizabeth dated a grant of land from Portbury.

Maurice Wyth made his will on July 11, 1383; it was proven on August 6, 1383. After requesting to be buried at St. Botolph without Aldersgate in London, he left Elizabeth “all my husbandry from the present date until the feast of Saint Michael to come, now growing in Portbury and Portishead with all necessaries pertaining to my chamber, wardrobe, hall and also to buttery and kitchen. To my said wife all my silver vessels of the better sort to the value of £40.” He ended his will with the request, “And it is my last wish that my said wife hold herself contented with all bequeathed to her.” Whether this was a boilerplate clause or whether he was genuinely worried that Elizabeth might covet the rest of his goods is anyone’s guess, but when Elizabeth herself died on July 13, 1389, aged at least sixty-two, she chose to be buried not with the Berkeleys, but at St. Botolph with her second husband.

(Wars of the Roses aficionados may be interested to know that Eleanor Talbot, claimed by Richard III to be the wife of Edward IV, is a descendant of Elizabeth and Maurice Berkeley. Now you know who to blame.)

Sources:

The Complete Peerage.

Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, Abstracts and Extracts of Smyth’s Lives of the Berkeleys.

Roy Martin Haines, King Edward II.

National Archives, Berkeley Castle Muniments.

Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries.

Frances Underhill, For Her Good Estate: The Life of Elizabeth de Burgh.

F.W. Weaver, Somerset Medieval Wills.

Jacquetta Woodville and Witchcraft

As most people who have not been in a coma for the last few months know, Philippa Gregory is coming out with a new novel about Elizabeth Woodville, The White Queen. This morning, I noticed that the publisher has posted several videos to Youtube in which Gregory talks about her upcoming novel.

In this video, Gregory chats to an interviewer about witchcraft. About midway through, she states that Jacquetta Woodville was actually tried and found guilty of witchcraft, and would have been executed were it not for the intervention of someone (it appears to me that Gregory is saying "Margaret Bourchier," but I'm not sure). [Edit: As Trish has pointed out, Gregory claims that Margaret of Anjou" intervened.] At that point in the interview, only my enduring love for my flat-screen monitor prevented an encounter between said monitor and human fist.

Where in the world Gregory got this information from, I don't know, for the historical record indicates that Jacquetta was cleared of the charges against her. As for Margaret of Anjou intervening, she was in exile in France at the time! The document showing that Jacquetta was acquitted can be found on Google Books in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1467-77, pg. 190. Because I'm an obliging geek, I'll post the entry here (forgive the occasional typo; Google Books loses something in converting PDF to plain text for cut-and-pasting purposes):

Feb. 21. Exemplification, at the supplication of Jaquetta, duchess of Bedford, late the wife of Richard, earl of Rivers, of the tenour of an act in the great council, remaining in the office of the privy seal in the chamber of the great council called ' le Parlment chambre ' within the palace of Westminster, made on 10 February, 9 Edward IV. In the presence of the king and the cardinal archbishop of Canterbury, the archbishop of York, the bishops of Bath, chancellor, Ely, treasurer, Rochester, keeper of the privy seal, London, Durham and Carlisle, the earls of Warwick, Kssex, Northumberland, Shrewsbury and Kent, and the lords Hastinges, Mountjoye, Lyle, Cromwell, Scrope of Bollón, Saye and others a supplication addressed to the king on behalf of the said duchess and two schedules in paper annexed were openly read, and afterwards his highness by the advice of the said lords of the council accepting the declaration of the said lady commanded the same to be enacted of record and letters of exemplification to be made. The tenours of the supplication and schedules above mentioned ensue in this wise. The duchess complains that Thomas Wake, esquire, in the time of the late trouble caused her to be brought in a common noise and slander of witchcraft throughout a great part of the realm, insomuch as he caused to be brought to Warwick to divers of the lords present when the king was last there an image of lead made like a man of arms of the length of a man's finger broken in the middle and made fast with a wire, saying that it was made by her to use with witchcraft and sorcery, and for the performing of his malicious intent entreated one John Daunger, parish clerk of Stoke Brewerne, со. Northampton, to say that there weru two other images made by her, one for the king and one for the queen, whereunto the said John Daunger neither could nor would be entreated, and the king commanded the said Wake and John Daunger to attend upon the bishop of Carlisle, the earl of Northumberland, the lords Hastynges and Mountjoye and Master Roger Radcliff to be examined, and their examination is here annexed, and in the great council on 19 January last she was cleared of the said slander, wherefore she prays that the same may be enacted of record. Thomas Wake says that this image was shown and left in Stoke with an honest person who delivered it to the clerk of the church and so showed it to divers neighbours after to the parson in the church openly to men both oí Schytlanger and Stoîte and after it was shown in Scwriiley, a nunnery, and to many other persons, and of all this he heard or wist nothing till after it was sent him by Thomas Kymbell from the said clerk. John Daunger of Shctyllanger said that Thomas Wake sent to him one Thomas Kymbell, then his bailiff, and bad the said John send him the image of lead that he had and so he sent it, at which time he heard no witchcraft of the lady of Bedford, and that the image was delivered to him by one Harry Kyngeston of Stoke, who found it in his house after the departing of soldiers, and that the said Thomas Wake after he came from London from the king sent for him and said that he had excused himself and laid all the blame on John and bad him say that he durst not keep the image and for that cause sent it to Thomas and also bad him say that there were two other images, one for the king and one for the queen, but he refused to say so. English. [Rolls of Parliament, VI. ¡132.] By p.s. [3033.] 1470. Membranes 4 and 3.

Blog Tour and July Search Terms

Hugh and Bess is officially out today, so I'm going on another blog tour! Look at these sites for reviews, interviews, and a guest post:

Musings of a Bibliophile (7/28)

Passages to the Past (8/1)

My Friend Amy (8/1)

Reading Adventures (8/2)

Jennifer's Random Musings (8/2)

Peeking Between the Pages (8/3)

Historical Novels.info (8/3)

Grace's Book Blog (8/4)

Historical Tapestry (8/5)

Mrs. Magoo Reads (8/5)

Historical Fiction (8/6)

Jenn's Bookshelf (8/6)

The Tome Traveller's Weblog (8/7)

Beatrice (8/8)

Book Addiction (8/9)

Steven Till (8/10)

Medieval Bookworm (8/11)

Carla Nayland (8/11)

The Literate Housewife Review (8/12)

Diary of an Eccentric (8/13)

Bookfoolery and Babble (8/14)

OK, we're done with the self-promotion! Now for what you've been waiting for--search terms!

what does a countess do

Countess stuff. maybe?

david starkey what do you think about jean plaidy?


Feel free to stop by, Dr. Starkey, and tell us!

is jean plaidy explicit

I'll let Dr. Starkey answer that one.

jean plaidy list of reissues

C'mon, Dr. Starkey, get cracking! Don't let us down.

george duke the ghost executed secretly

It's never a good idea to execute a ghost in public. Might get the wrong people upset.

relationship between edward ii and edward ii?


I'm no genealogist, but I'll hazard that it was a pretty close one.

well written steamy historical romance

"Give it to me!" she begged, trembling and tingling with lust. "Now! It is what I have always dreamed of."

"Woman," he whispered in the way that always turned her knees to jelly. "What have I told you? In our language, 'it' must have an antecedent, and you must never end a sentence with a preposition."

"Right," Margaret of Anjou moaned, her body arching madly. "Give yourself, your all, your everything to me. It is what I have always dreamed of, my darling King Henry."

Well, I tried.

Mailing List!

I've been fiddling with my website, and one of the changes I made was to add a mailing list where readers (or anyone else) can be notified about my upcoming releases, giveaways, interviews, book signings, etc. If you'd like to be added, sign up here (the same address is also given in the sidebar). Don't worry, I won't share your information with third parties or send a mailing out every time Boswell sneezes!

Review: The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James

I admit that I was a little reluctant to pick up The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, mainly because of the title, because with the exception of Sandra Gulland's Josephine Bonaparte trilogy, I haven't been terribly impressed by most novels that take the form of diaries, secret or otherwise. But pick it up I did, because I wanted a paperback to take to the beach, and I was very pleasantly surprised.

The title of this book is actually somewhat misleading, in fact, because although the narrator (Charlotte, of course) occasionally refers to her writing as a diary, the story is not in the usual day-to-day journal format. "Secret Memoirs" would be a more apt title. So if you're not keen on the diary format, there's no need to avoid this novel.

The event that prompts Charlotte to write about her life is the unexpected proposal she receives from her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. As Charlotte wrestles with the question of whether to accept, she reflects about her evolving relationship with Nicholls, her infatuation with a married professor in Brussels, her career as an author, and her life with her siblings, all now deceased.

James has researched her subject thoroughly, and it shows without appearing pedantic. Her portrayals of Charlotte's friends and family are true to life and three-dimensional, and where the author fills in gaps and creates dramatic tension between Charlotte and her suitor, it seems plausible. Having read more than my fair share of feminist critics who treat Charlotte's marriage to Nicholls as a tragic example of a gifted female succumbing to male domination, I was pleased to see that James treats the marriage positively, and even romantically.

Though one might enjoy this book better if one has read Charlotte Bronte's novels (and those of her sisters), it's not necessary. James' book also contains a number of extras: besides the usual afterword, there's a question-and-answer section for the author, excerpts from some of Charlotte's letters, and some poems by the Bronte siblings.

As I liked this book so much, I'll be picking up James' first novel, The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen.

The Kingmaker's Sisters by David Baldwin

The Kingmaker's Sisters: Six Powerful Women in the Wars of the Roses, a new book by David Baldwin, traces the lives of Joan Neville, married to William Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel; Cecily, married to the short-lived Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, and the notorious John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester; Eleanor, married to Thomas, Lord Stanley; Alice, married to Henry, Lord Fitzhugh; Katherine, married to William, Lord Harrington, and William, Lord Hastings; and Margaret, married to John de Vere, the long-imprisoned Earl of Oxford. Through their husbands, the sisters often found themselves on opposing sides during the Wars of the Roses, and several experienced individual tragedies because of this.

As is typical of medieval women, little is known about the sisters' personalities and day-to-day lives, but Baldwin has unearthed what traces do exist through examining the sisters' letters, their dealings with others, and in one case (Katherine's) a will. There are nice color illustrations and a handy chronology. Baldwin also transcribes three previously unpublished letters from Eleanor and Katherine.

Baldwin makes note of a rather unsavory episode involving Richard III's ally Francis, Viscount Lovel, whose loyalty to Richard III means that he's generally portrayed by Ricardians as being only a shade or two less saintly than the king. Though Lovel had quitclaimed his interest in the Hastings manor of Ashby, Lovel's father had sold his manor of Bagworth to the Hastings family, and Francis's uncle William Beaumont had been attainted, Lovell nonetheless claimed that the Beaumont properties and those of Ashby and Bagworth, left in the hands of Katherine after the execution of her husband, belonged to him. In order to settle matters with the acquisitive Lovel, Katherine was forced during Richard III's reign to give him 200 marks in cash and to grant him lands totaling a maximum of 200 marks per annum. In return, she was granted the peaceful enjoyment of Ashby, Bagworth, and the rest of the Beaumont inheritance. Richard III, who's often praised by Ricardians for his chivalry toward women, seems to have done nothing to protect Katherine against Lovel, though he had specifically sworn to uphold the interests of Katherine and her children in their lands and goods. Ominously, Francis in his settlement with Katherine indicated that the matter could not "finally be appeased" during the minority of Katherine's son Edward, which suggests, as Baldwin states, that Francis might have driven even a harder bargain once Edward did come of age. Fortunately, the Battle of Bosworth meant that Francis never got the chance. Edward Hastings went on to fight for Henry VII against Lovel at the Battle of Stoke.

I saw one error that made me growl: Richard Woodville is described as "the fifth and last of Queen Elizabeth's brothers." This is not the case; had Richard been the youngest Woodville, his brother Edward, rather than Richard, would have succeeded Anthony as Earl Rivers in 1485. Moreover, although this book is about the sisters, I would have liked a bit more about their husbands' lives in order to better put the sisters' lives in context. Aside from this, though, I found this a very useful and informative book, one that puts a human face on the ever-revolving wheel of fortune during the Wars of the Roses.

Margaret Woodville, Daughter of Anthony Woodville

Of Elizabeth Woodville’s five brothers who lived to adulthood, none left legitimate children. Indeed, only one brother is known to have left an out-of-wedlock child—and that brother was Anthony Woodville, usually thought of as the most straitlaced member of the family. He left a daughter, named Margaret.

Margaret’s mother has been identified as Gwenllian, daughter of William Stradling. Nothing more is known about Gwenllian or her relationship with Anthony, but Margaret’s name suggests that the child might have been born before the battle of Towton, after which Anthony changed his allegiance from the Lancastrian cause to the Yorkist one. Of course, Margaret need not have been named after Margaret of Anjou; she might have been named for one of her mother’s relatives, for a saint, for her godmother, or after Anthony’s sister Margaret. Nonetheless, on New Year’s Day of 1465, John Howard, who was at Edward IV’s Christmas court at Eltham with Anthony and his wife, gave “to my lord Scales child 12d.” Anthony was married to Elizabeth Scales at the time, so the entry could possibly refer to a legitimate child who died young, but it seems more likely that the child is Margaret, since Anthony’s will makes no mention of deceased children.

Nothing else is heard of Margaret until her marriage to Robert Poyntz of Iron Acton in Gloucestershire. According to E. L. Barnwell, who doesn’t cite a source, on September 12, 1479 (19 Edward IV), Anthony settled 800 marks on Margaret, with 200 to be paid on the sealing of the deed; he also settled on her lands worth 100 marks a year. Poyntz was probably born in the late 1440’s and thus was probably about thirty or so. Their first son, Anthony, was born around 1480. Like her paternal grandmother Jacquetta, Margaret was fertile: she gave Robert five sons and four daughters.

Anthony Woodville was executed by order of the future Richard III on June 25, 1483. He made his will on June 23, 1483. Lynda Pidgeon makes much of his failure to name Margaret in his will, of which she writes, “It showed awareness of some of the wrongs he had committed but it displayed no affection. Perhaps he simply did not have feelings for anyone else.” Anthony’s feelings, or lack thereof, cannot be determined by a single document, especially one written when he was under the extreme emotional stress of his impending execution for a crime he most likely had not committed. Much of his will is taken up with directions to pay his debts (for which all of his goods were to “goo to the paying”), to right any wrongs he had done, and to arrange for the welfare of his soul and those of his deceased family members. Knowing that his property would be seized by the crown, he may have thought it futile to leave any bequests to his daughter. Notably, Anthony named Margaret’s husband one of his executors. Lacking more complete records of Anthony’s, we have no way of knowing whether he was generous to his daughter during his life or whether he held her in his affection.

During Edward IV’s reign, Robert Poyntz had been made constable of Carisbroke Castle and of St. Briavel’s (holding the latter office along with his father-in-law) and sheriff of Hampshire. Soon after Anthony’s arrest, the future Richard III stripped Poyntz of these offices. Later, he was replaced as steward of Sodbury. Not surprisingly, Poyntz was among those who rebelled against Richard III in the fall of 1483. He ended up in sanctuary at Beaulieu, where Anthony’s younger brother Lionel, Bishop of Salisbury, had also taken shelter. Poyntz was later pardoned, but in 1485 he fought for Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field. Following the battle, he was knighted on the field. It was the beginning of a long career in Tudor service for Poyntz, who was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, where he appeared as a member of Katharine of Aragon’s household. King Francis gave him a gift of plate.

Margaret predeceased Robert, who died on November 5, 1520. In his will, made in October 1520, he asked that a black gown of Margaret’s be made into vestments for the Chapel of Jesus at the “church of the Gaunts beside Bristol,” where he asked to be buried. The vestments were to contain Robert’s arms and those of his wife. Barker, writing in 1892, described the chapel thusly:

The Chapel is entered by a panelled doorway, the sides of which are splayed. The fan-traceried roof is arranged in two main divisions, and in the centre of each is a boss in the form of a carved shield of arms. That to the East contains the arms of Henry VIII. and Catharine of Arragon, and that to the West, those of Sir Robert Poyntz and his wife Margaret Woodville, daughter of Anthony, Earl Rivers.

The “church of the Gaunts” is now known as St. Mark’s or the Lord Mayor’s Chapel. Evidently Robert's and Margaret’s arms can still be seen there in the Poyntz Chapel today. The remains of the couple’s home in Iron Acton—mainly a wing built by their grandson to impress the visiting Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn—are open to tourists (leave your high heels at home). On the premises is a sundial designed for Robert in 1520 by Nicholas Kratzer.

Sources:

William Robert Barker, St. Mark’s, or the Mayor’s Chapel, Bristol (Formerly Called the Church of the Gaunts) (available on Google Books).

E. L. Barnwell, “Notes on the Perrot Family.” Archaeologia Cambrensis (January 1865), p. 32 (available on Google Books).

Anne Crawford, ed., Howard Household Books. Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1992.

Frederick Arthur Crisp, Abstracts of Somerset Wills, 1890 (available on Google Books).

Louise Gill, Richard III and Buckingham’s Rebellion. Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2000 (paperback edition).

Alasdair Hawkyard, ‘Poyntz, Sir Robert (b. late 1440s, d. 1520)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/70796, accessed 20 July 2009]

Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study in Service. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 (paperback edition).

John Maclean, ed., The Visitation of the County of Gloucester, Taken in the Year 1623 (available on Google Books).

Luke MacMahon, ‘Poyntz, Sir Anthony (c.1480–1532/3)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22689, accessed 20 July 2009]

Lynda Pidgeon, “Antony Wydevile, Lord Scales and Earl Rivers: Family, Friends and Affinity. Part 2,” The Ricardian, 2006.

Again, Katherine Woodville Was Not a Cradle Robber!

As the research librarian for the American branch of the Richard III Society (yes, this is rather an anomalous position for a non-Ricardian to be in, sort of like a liberal in the Republican party), I just bought a shiny new book by Peter Hancock entitled Richard III and the Murder in the Tower. After inhaling that nice new book smell, I flipped to the parts about Henry Buckingham, and the first thing I saw was, "Buckingham most probably resented the Woodvilles because at the age of twelve in 1466, he had been forced to mary the queen's sister, Catherine Woodville, who was twice his age. Obviously, Buckingham had bided his time, and now saw the present situation as an opportunity to revenge himself upon his erstwhile oppressors."

People! First, Buckingham was born on September 4, 1455, so he was not 12 in 1466. Second, the description of Elizabeth Woodville's May 1465 coronation names Katherine as the younger Duchess of Buckingham, so Buckingham was most likely married to Katherine before May 1465, not in 1466. Third--and this is a big third--Katherine Woodville was not twice Buckingham's age! She was in fact probably only about seven when she married the nine-year-old Buckingham in 1465.

Hancock, like every other Ricardian who claims that poor little Buckingham was forced by the Evil, Nasty Woodvilles to marry a grown woman twice his age, doesn't cite a source for his claim, which is contradicted by every bit of primary source evidence available--a postmortem inquisition for Katherine's brother Richard, which puts Katherine's birthdate at around 1458; the description of Elizabeth Woodville's coronation, where Buckingham and Katherine are described as being toted around on squires' shoulders; and Elizabeth Woodville's household records, which show that Katherine was being raised in the queen's household. A birthdate of 1458 is also consistent with an old pedigree which states that Katherine was the youngest of the Woodville siblings and with the birthdate of Katherine's eldest son, who was born on February 3, 1478.

Is it really too much, she asked forlornly, to ask nonfiction writers to do a little research before writing about the Woodvilles?

Hugh and Bess Now Available!

I'm working on another post, but I did want to stop by and mention not at all subtly that Hugh and Bess is now showing up as "In Stock" on Amazon. It also seems to be on the shelves in some Barnes and Noble stores, though I haven't had the chance to stop by my local one yet to check. No doubt I might find myself stopping in there today and accidentally wandering by the H's--just to check on Georgette Heyer's books, of course.

My box of author's copies came in while I was out of town, and the new edition is lovely! Incidentally, it has some scenes, including the ending scene, that weren't present in the original self-published version. Hugh, the hero, is one of my favorite characters, so I hope you'll read his story!

"Further Reading" Sections in Historical Novels?

I'm going out of town for a couple of days (work, not pleasure, but with pretty scenery, I hope). While I concentrate on lofty, airplane-encouraging thoughts, here's a question for you: Do you like it when historical novelists include a "Further Reading" section in their books? Or do you find it pretentious and/or unnecessary? Do you look at it, or pass it by?

Personally, I like it when an author provides a "Further Reading" section, and I've put one in The Stolen Crown. If I'm not familiar with a period or a historical figure, it's useful to have a list of resources so I can read further, and if I am familiar with the period or person in question, I can get a good idea of the slant an author's going to take simply by looking at the books he or she thinks are worthy of being included in the section. I can also get a sense of how much research an author's done: if a historical figure's been the subject of recent, well-thought-of biographies but the "Further Reading" section in a new novel doesn't include any of them, it's a red flag, though not always an infallible one.

Some authors, however, don't include a separate "Further Reading" section, but do take the opportunity in their author's note to mention some of the works they've relied upon. Some novels, particularly older ones such as some of Jean Plaidy's, contain a "Works Consulted" section but usually no author's note. Some compile a suggested reading list for their websites, but leave it out of their novels.

If an author does include a "Further Reading" section, how extensive should it be? Books only? Books and articles? Books that can easily be obtained at a local library or a bookstore, or books that a reader might have to utilize a university library or inter-library loan to obtain? Most authors seem to confine themselves to books, as I did, because listing articles would have made for a very long list, more suited for an academic book than a novel.

So what do you prefer?

Katherine Vaux and Her Children: From the Lancastrians to the Tudors

In researching Margaret of Anjou, I came across something that I hadn't expected--a happy ending of sorts. Not to Margaret's own story, but to that of her faithful lady-in-waiting, Katherine Vaux.

When Margaret of Anjou was taken into custody after the Battle of Tewkesbury, Katherine Vaux, along with the Countess of Devon and Margaret's daughter-in-law Anne Neville (future queen to Richard III), were with her. The death of Edward of Lancaster at the battle meant that Margaret had lost her only son and Anne her first husband. Katherine too was widowed: her husband, William Vaux, fell at Tewkesbury.

Born in Provence as Katherine Peniston, Katherine was the daughter of Gregory Peniston of Piedmont, said by some to have been an English exile. Katherine may have accompanied Margaret when she came to England in 1445 as its new queen. Under her maiden name, she is listed as one of the queen's damsels in the 1452-53 household records, which also list as one of Margaret's ladies a certain "Dame Isabel Grey," who depending on which historian one reads might or might not be Elizabeth Woodville. Margaret's jewel accounts for the same period show that Katherine received a gift of a "chopin," a drinking vessel.

On December 22, 1456, Katherine and three other people were granted letters of denization, a process that made them English subjects but that did not give them all of the rights of an English citizen. By this time, Katherine had married William Vaux, who was born in 1437. Vaux owned the manor of Great Harrowden in Northamptonshire. A loyal Lancastrian, he was attainted in 1461 and shared Queen Margaret's exile abroad before returning to England to meet his death at Tewkesbury.

Despite their political difficulties, William and Katherine had found time to start a family: they had two children, Nicholas (born in around 1460) and Joan (also called Jane). Nicholas is said to have been raised in Margaret Beaufort's household, and Joan might have been there as well.

Following the defeat at Tewkesbury, the widowed Katherine appears to have shared Margaret's imprisonment and to have accompanied her back to France in 1476 when she was returned to that country as part of the Treaty of Picquigny. In 1478, Edward IV granted her a life interest in the manors of Stanton in Buckinghamshire and Markham (Marcham) in Berkshire, which she had held jointly with her husband and should have received upon his death.

Margaret of Anjou died in 1482. Katherine was one of the witnesses to her will, made on August 2, 1482. She returned to England, where Richard III later granted her an annuity of 20 marks. Perhaps this kind gift was made at the request of Queen Anne, who would have known Katherine from Anne's days as Margaret of Anjou's daughter-in-law.

It was the defeat of Richard III, however, that signaled a new life for Katherine and her two children. Henry VII's 1485 Parliament reversed the attainder of William Vaux, allowing Nicholas to inherit his father's lands. Nicholas was also given the stewardships of Olney and Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire. It was the beginning of a long career in Tudor service for Nicholas.

Katherine Vaux was present at Prince Arthur's christening in 1486, and Nicholas was knighted the following year after the Battle of Stoke, where he fought for Henry VII. Katherine attended Elizabeth of York's coronation ceremonies in 1487, where Nicholas was one of the men who bore a canopy over the queen's litter as she proceeded to Westminster. A "Dame Johanna Gilforde" was also present at the coronation: this was probably Katherine's daughter Joan, who had married Richard Guildford by 1489. Guildford had participated in the October 1483 rebellion against Richard III and had fled abroad to join Henry Tudor in exile.

According to the Complete Peerage, which lists a source I haven't been yet able to check, Katherine Vaux was still alive on June 28, 1509, when the new king, Henry VIII, granted her an annuity of 20 marks. She had lived to see six kings on the throne of England: Henry VI, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III, Henry VII, and Henry VIII. Meanwhile, her son Nicholas had a distinguished career. He was made Baron Vaux of Harrowden in 1523, but did not have much time to enjoy his new status, for he died about three weeks later on May 14, 1523, having married twice and had a number of children. His heir, Thomas Vaux, was painted by Hans Holbein. Thomas Vaux was a poet as well as a courtier: George Puttenham in The Arte of English Poesie wrote that "his commendation lyeth chiefly in the facillitie of his meetre, and the aptnesse of his descriptions such as he taketh upon him to make, namely in sundry of his Songs, wherein he sheweth the counterfait action very lively & pleasantly."

Like her mother, Joan Guildford served in a queen's household, in this case Elizabeth of York's. There she became particularly close to Elizabeth's daughter Mary. Joan accompanied Mary to her marriage to Louis XII in 1514. Unfortunately, Louis XII found the influx of English ladies, and the overbearing Joan in particular, too much to bear, and sent most of them home. Mary sent off indignant letters to her brother Henry VIII and to Thomas Wolsey begging for the recall of her "Mother Guildford," but to no avail; later, Louis XII informed an English ambassasor that he did not want "when he would be merry with his wife to have any strange woman with her." Joan returned to England and was given an annuity of twenty pounds by Henry VIII, who later raised the sum to sixty pounds.

Joan married twice. Her first husband, Richard Guildford, was prominent in Henry VII's administration, although he eventually had to leave office, perhaps at the instigation of Henry's unpopular ministers, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley. He died in Jerusalem in 1506. Joan's son with Richard, Henry Guildford, was a favorite of Henry VIII and remained in favor despite the mutual dislike between him and Anne Boleyn; he died in 1532. Joan's second husband was Anthony Poyntz, whose mother, Margaret, was the illegitimate daughter of Anthony Woodville. Poyntz died in 1533; Joan outlived him. She died in 1538. Though in a letter dated 1535, she had described herself dolefully as a "poor widow," this should not be taken literally: at the time of her death, her money, plate, and jewels totalled 12,000 marks.

Joan made a rather better impression on Erasmus than she had on Louis XII: on May 15, 1519, the humanist wrote a letter to Joan's son Henry Guildford in which he sent his compliments to Joan, with whom Erasmus had conversed on "one or two occasions."


Sources:

Calendar of Patent Rolls.

The Complete Peerage.

Sean Cunningham, ‘Guildford, Sir Richard (c.1450–1506)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11723, accessed 12 July 2009]

Keith Dockray, ‘Guildford, Sir Henry (1489–1532)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11721, accessed 12 July 2009]

Diana E. S. Dunn, ‘Margaret (1430–1482)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18049, accessed 12 July 2009]

Kathy Lynn Emerson, Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth Century England.

L. L. Ford, ‘Vaux, Nicholas, first Baron Vaux (c.1460–1523)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28162, accessed 12 July 2009]

Mary Anne Everett Green, Lives of the Princesses of England.

Barbara J. Harris, English Arisstocratic Women: 1450-1550.

Michael Jones and Malcolm Underwood, The King's Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby
.

John Leland, De rebus Britannicis collectanea.

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII.

A. R. Myers, "The Household of Queen Margaret of Anjou, 1452-3," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.

A. R. Myers, "The Jewels of Queen Margaret of Anjou." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.

Maria Perry, The Sisters of Henry VIII.

'Parishes: Great Harrowden', A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 4 (1937), pp. 178-185. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66344 Date accessed: 12 July 2009.

Mary Anne Everett Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain.

H. R. Woudhuysen, ‘Vaux, Thomas, second Baron Vaux (1509–1556)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28163, accessed 12 July 2009]

Ten of My Favorite Opening Lines

I'm in the midst of edits for The Stolen Crown, so I've been a bad blogger lately. Anyway, because some time ago, I mentioned some of my favorite closing lines from novels, I thought I'd do the same for opening lines I like. As was the case then, my favorite writers are overrepresented, but I at least did find one historical novel to round off the bunch:

Jane Austen, Persuasion:

Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.

Charles Dickens: Bleak House:

London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.

[Yes, I cheated with two lines there.]

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son:

Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great armchair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations:

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre:

There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.

Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings:

I suppose it must have been the shock of hearing the telephone ring, apparently in the church, that made me turn my head and see Piers Longridge in one of the side aisles behind me.

Anne Tyler, Searching for Caleb:

The fortune teller and her grandfather went to New York City on an Amtrak train, racketing along with their identical, peaky white faces set due north.

P. D. James, Unnatural Causes:

The corpse without hands lay in the bottom of a small sailing dinghy drifting just within sight of the Suffolk coast.

Reay Tannahill, The Seventh Son:

"Sapphires for my bride-to-be and a severed head for the king my brother," said Duke Richard cheerfully.

Just a few: I'm sure I'll think of some more later that I wish I had included. Got some you want to add?

June Search Terms

Per the fine folks at Tiger Technologies, who show me what search terms people have used to reach my website:

susan higginbotham bio

"The Childhood Years" has some interesting stuff in it, but "The Teen Years" is a bit of a drag. Skip forward to "The College Years."

susan higginbothams epidemiology

Only my epidemiologist knows for sure.

brief story of edward ii

He was king. Some people didn't like that. Including his wife.

did edward ii kill the ladies

No. (What are you trying to do, complicate my story?)

katherine wingfield or katherine wingfield or wingfield katherine

This is a person who's taking no chances.

jacquetta de luxembourg or jacquetta de luxembourg or de luxembourg jacquetta

If I were a matchmaker, I'd get this searcher together with the last one.

biography and ontributions of king edward 2

Evidently, the letter "c" wasn't one of them

are there still dukes and duchesses

Yes. Thanks to:

medieval duke and duchess sex

Resulting in:

son of duke and duchess

can isabella of france make you have money

She's certainly free to try. Just send it to my PayPal account.

Historical Tweets, Medieval- and Tudor-Style

As some of you might know, there's a website called Historical Tweets. Here are a few of my own contributions to this worthy endeavor. Have you got some? (Messages have to be 140 characters or less.)

Edward II:
Found someone to fill the void in my heart. Hugh’s OK with the rowing too. Wonder if anyone would fuss if I gave him some land in Wales.

Isabella:
Going to France to spend some time with the family and make a few business contacts. Sweet!

Edward IV:
Waiting for Hastings to show up with yet another widow wanting me to help her with her dower rights. Yawn. Will get rid of her quickly.

Richard III:
Those pesky bastards are out of the way, the northerners just can’t get enough of me, and Anne and the kid are fine. Yeah! I’m the man!

Henry Tudor:
Getting ready to go to England. Love Mum but wish she wouldn’t keep nagging me to bring lots of warm clothes and raingear. It's August!

Thomas More:
Really getting fed up with the Richard III book; think I’ll start another project. Agent says there’s not that much interest in him anyway.

Thomas Vaughan, Executed June 25, 1483

On June 25, 1483, three men died at the command of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who would become Richard III the next day. All three were intimately associated with Edward V: Anthony Woodville, his maternal uncle; Richard Grey, his half-brother; and Thomas Vaughan, his chamberlain. You can read about their execution here and about Richard Grey here.

All three men's deaths were tragic and most likely amounted to nothing less than judicial murder, but Thomas Vaughan's fate is particularly sad. A Welshman who was granted denizenship in 1443, he entered royal service as early as 1446, long before Richard III was even born. Though Vaughan had initially served Henry VI, he joined the Yorkists in 1459 and from then on was unshakably faithful to the House of York and to Edward IV.

In 1471, Edward IV, having been restored to power, made Vaughan the chamberlain of his infant son, Edward. It was a position that Vaughan would hold for the rest of his life, and one that would prove fatal to him. Vaughan carried his charge in his arms on state occasions, such as the welcoming of Louis of Gruuthuse to England, and was knighted alongside young Edward in 1475.

Vaughan was not only an administrator but an experienced soldier, who had fought in several battles and who had been captured by French pirates in 1461. Had Vaughan been involved in a plot to ambush Gloucester, as Richard and his present-day admirers have claimed, he and the troops who formed Edward V's escort would have surely been on guard as they waited at Stony Stratford for Richard and the rest of the party from Northampton to arrive. Instead, Vaughan's arrest on April 30, 1483, seems to have been accomplished by Gloucester almost effortlessly.

Vaughan, who must have been in his sixties--he is described by the Crowland Chronicler as "an aged knight"--was probably a grandfather figure to young Edward. Now this relationship was brutally severed by Gloucester. One hopes that at least the twelve-year-old king was spared the sight of the man who had served him since infancy being hauled off in chains.

Richard sent Vaughan to Pontefract Castle. As Mancini reports, Gloucester wanted Vaughan, Richard Grey, and Anthony Woodville to be executed straightaway, but the council refused "because there appeared no certain case as regards the ambushes, and even had the crime been manifest, it would not have been treason, for at the time of the alleged ambushes he was neither regent nor did he hold any other public office." Soon, however, Gloucester would be able to dispense with the council, having made himself king. With the crown safely within Richard's grasp, Vaughan and the rest were executed at Pontefract after either no trial at all or a mockery of one.

Hall's Chronicle gives a scaffold speech to Vaughan in which he speaks of a prophecy that "G" would destroy Edward IV's children. Vaughan then adds, "I appeal to the high tribunal of God for this wrongful murder and our true innocence," and advises Sir Richard Ratcliffe (who died at the Battle of Bosworth), "I die in the right, beware you die not in the wrong." How authentic this speech is cannot be determined, but one hopes that this faithful old Yorkist died proudly. He was buried in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist at Westminster Abbey, where part of his memorial brass survives. Whether the burial took place in 1483 or after Richard's own death is unknown.

Vaughan had a grown stepson, George Brown, who joined the rebellion of October 1483 against Richard III. Sadly, he was captured and executed, but Brown's own stepson, Edward Poynings, fled abroad and survived to have a successful career under Henry VII and Henry VIII. Poynings also had a busy private life: he had seven illegitimate children when he died in 1521.

Sources:

C. A. J. Armstrong, ed., The Usurpation of Richard III. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969 (2d. ed.).

Calendar of Patent Rolls.

Steven G. Ellis, ‘Poynings, Sir Edward (1459–1521)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22683, accessed 25 June 2009].

Louise Gill, Richard III and Buckingham's Rebellion. Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2000.

R. A. Griffiths, ‘Vaughan, Sir Thomas (d. 1483)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28147, accessed 25 June 2009].

Hall's Chronicle.

Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study in Service. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Nicholas Pronay and John Cox, eds., The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486. London: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust: 1986.

An Interview With Me, and Playing with Bookshelves

I was pleased to see that Heather Domin has posted an interview she did with me as part of a write-up for the Historical Novels Review. Thanks, Heather! You can enjoy Heather's online serial novel, Valerian's Legion: The Soldier of Raetia, here.

My novel about Margaret of Anjou is beginning to take more of a shape. I've almost decided where I want to start it and where I want to end it, and I'm getting a sense of which historical characters will play major roles. And I found more useful sources today with a quick trip to the Duke University library!

The Duke University library, by the way, has recently been renovated, and it's quite a sight to see. It has sliding bookshelves which one operates with the push of a button, and I love pushing the buttons and watching the shelves slide apart (or together, as the case may be). Seriously cool. I should have taken a video.

Words, Words, Words!

There's been an interesting discussion on Nan Hawthorne's blog about historical accuracy in which the question of word usage has come up. Should writers of historical fiction try to "write forsoothly"? Or simply to avoid using any words that weren't current during the period in question? Or should they stick to modern language and usage? Or should they just say to heck with it and have a medieval English heroine speaking like a 1980's American teenager, as I've seen in some romance novels?

I won't get into the whole debate here, but I'll say that in my own novels, I've stuck to modern language and usage, though I try my best to avoid anachronisms (such as "sidetracked" or "railroaded") and modern slang. (I'm sure I haven't always succeeded, though.) Part of this is purely personal preference: Certes, I feel rather silly writing "certes." But I've also a nobler reason: reader sanity.

Take, for instance, a letter by the imprisoned Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, to Henry VIII in 1546 when the duke, desperate to save his head by reminding the king of his past services, asked, "Who showed His Majesty of the words of my mother-in-law, for which she was attainted of misprision but only I?" Now, when the duke refers to his "mother-in-law," he is referring to Agnes, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, whom we would call his stepmother. So if I were writing a novel about the duke, I would be following contemporary usage if I had him refer to Agnes as his mother-in-law, but I would also be puzzling most readers. I could add a footnote or include a glossary, I suppose, but do I really want to take the readers out of the story by having them check a reference or flip back to the glossary? In my opinion, in a novel, it's easier for all concerned to simply let Norfolk refer to the old duchess as his stepmother and be done with it. (Probably after being incriminated by the duke, the duchess had her own way of referring to him, but medieval cursing is beyond the scope of this post.)

With regard to family relationships, one sees other contemporary usages that can confuse. In her 1480 will, for instance, Anne Neville, the Duchess of Buckingham, refers to her "daughter Richmond" and to her "sonne of Buckingham." The reader unversed in contemporary usage might well assume that the duchess is referring to her daughter and to her son; in fact, she is referring to her daughter-in-law Margaret Beaufort, the Countess of Richmond, and to her grandson Harry, Duke of Buckingham. Having the duchess stick to contemporary usage might well result in reader loss of hair, and I have no financial interest in the wig industry. Therefore, in my novel, I let the duchess use modern terms: "daughter-in-law" for Margaret and "grandson" for Harry. Just thank me when your beautician admires your full crop of hair.

Other differences in usage can lead to rather more amusing consequences. It's safe to say that when Jean Plaidy titled a novel Gay Lord Robert, she didn't anticipate the modern snickers that would ensue. I myself remember reading a novel by Betty Smith, set, I think, back in the 1940's, when the heroine boasted about "making love" to her husband in public. Now, the heroine was an extrovert, but not that much of an extrovert, so naturally this made my seventeen-year-old self perk up with excitement. Quickly, though, I discovered that what the heroine meant by "making love" was no more than what my high school principal termed "a display of affection." Still, though, the modern association the term has with "sexual intercourse" might make it risky to use in a historical novel.

Which brings me to yet another Duke of Norfolk, John Howard. In 1485, while preparing to resist the invasion of Henry Tudor, he wrote a letter to John Paston urging him to bring "seche company of tall men" to meet him. He signed the letter, "Yower lover." Now, no one would seriously suggest, I think, that John Howard and John Paston were "lovers" in the sense in which we would use the word; such fulsome language was not unusual in the fifteenth century, especially when one had a favor to ask. But in a novel, would I have a man use this language when addressing another man? Only if I did intend the reader to believe that they were lovers in the modern sense or only if I were prepared to add a great deal of explanatory context.

Did John Howard's appeal succeed, by the way? Nope. When the Battle of Bosworth was fought, John Paston was not there.

Love Me, Love My Author?

I have a confession to make: I've never read a novel by Dorothy Dunnett. I've never even tried. I do, however, have a copy of King Hereafter in my book annex, otherwise known as my garage. But that's the closest I've come to reading her.

One reason I suspect I've let King Hereafter sit forlornly in the garage is the overzealousness of some of Dunnett's readers, who take the decided opinion that if you don't care for Dunnett's works, you must be simply too dense to grasp her wit and subtlety. I saw this phenomenon recently on a Yahoo group where an avid fan declared loftily that those who like historical romance will not like Dunnett, whereas those who like historical fiction will. In other words, if you don't like Dunnett, it must be because you're an intellectual lightweight who should stick to reading novels with lead characters named "Vixen" and "Blade." Or maybe just to coloring books.

Now, it's natural, I suppose, when one is wildly enthusiastic about an author, to try to win as many converts as possible. But deriding the tastes of those who don't share yours doesn't have the desired effect. In fact, it can even backfire on the hapless author: if a writer's fans are jerks, it's too easy to suppose that her books appeal to jerks, and to pass them by accordingly.

This sort of zealotry is by no means confined to Dunnett admirers, of course, and it's by no means confined to fans of authors either: readers who dislike an author can be just as intolerant of differing opinions. In this case, a unsuspecting reader will offer the name of an author for discussion, only to be greeted with a curt "Ooh! How can you like her? She's awful."

But it's getting late and Boswell is getting tired, so let's get back to Dunnett. Tell me what your favorite Dunnett novel is. Tell me who your favorite Dunnett character is. Tell me what you like about her novels. Tell me why I might like her novels. Quote some good bits to me. But don't tell me that if I read her and don't like her, it means my brain is full of mush. Because stubborn cuss that I am, all that does is make me reach for a novel by someone else--and goodness knows, there's no shortage of alternatives.

Monday Update

Last week was a pretty miserable one for me, between spending one night in the emergency room with a relative, having to replace the water heater for the second time in two years, and not having the fun of attending the Historical Novel Society conference, so I sorely needed some cheering up yesterday with a productive trip to the library. And it was productive! Not only did I find almost everything on Margaret of Anjou that I came for, the library staff very kindly intercepted one journal for me just before it went into processing to go into storage. God only knows how long it would have taken to retrieve from the black hole of processing it if I'd come a day later.

As you might have gathered, I've pretty much honed in for Margaret of Anjou for my next novel. She's gotten a lot of bad press, much of it undeserved (for instance, contrary to accounts by Shakespeare and by some recent historical novelists, the latter of whom should certainly know better, she wasn't even at the Battle of Wakefield, where the Duke of York was killed). So now it's just a matter of getting started.

On a historical fiction note, if you're a Jean Plaidy fan or want to know more about her novels, do check out Historical Tapestry, which is in the midst of a "Jean Plaidy Season." There's been some great posts there lately, including a priceless one by Daphne about some cover art. Check out the one for The Goldsmith's Wife (Jane Shore) in particular! I'll be doing a guest post there next week sometime.

Oh, and I'd like to welcome Joan Szechtman to blogdom with Random Thoughts of an Accidental Author! Joan is a fellow member of the Richard III Society. It can get lonely blogging about the fifteenth century, so I'm glad to have another fellow traveler (albeit one who likes Richard III rather better than I do) out here!

A Despenser at Dunstable, 1334

One of the fun things about using a lesser-known historical figure as a subject of a novel is that when you run into something about him--anything--you're absolutely delighted. So a while back when I saw in Collectanea topographica & genealogica, Vol. IV (on Google Books) that the hero of my soon-to-be-reissued second novel, Hugh and Bess, was recorded as being at a tournament at Dunstable in 1334, I was thrilled, even though the tidbit never made it into the novel.

After resisting the forces of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer at Caerphilly Castle until the spring of 1327, Hugh le Despenser had been imprisoned and had only emerged in July 1331, when he was about 23. Hugh was granted permission in April 1332 to go on pilgrimage to Santiago. In July 1333, he was among the English troops who won a great victory over the Scots at Halidon Hill. Hugh's performance there had evidently pleased Edward III, who as a reward for his services extended some grants of land from an indefinite duration to him to hold until he inherited his mother’s lands.

Nonetheless, as the son and grandson of two of the most hated men in England, both of who had been gruesomely executed in 1326, Hugh must have still been somewhat of a social outcast. For him, then, being allowed to participate in the Dunstable tournament, held in January 1334, must have meant a great deal. It might have even been his first tournament: Edward II had discouraged them, and when Isabella and Mortimer held them in the early years of Edward III's reign, Hugh was a prisoner. The fact that Hugh's father had tourneyed at Dunstable in 1309, when the present Hugh was just a baby, must have also made the occasion a poignant one.

Besides Hugh, the Dunstable tournament included about 135 knights, including a mysterious chap named "Sir Lionel," who turned out to be Edward III himself. Another knight who was present, William de Montacute, would have a special connection with Hugh a few years later: Hugh would marry his daughter Elizabeth in 1341.

Richard Grey, Elizabeth Woodville's Second Son

Richard Grey was the younger of Elizabeth Woodville’s two sons by her first husband, Sir John Grey, who died at the second battle of St. Albans on February 17, 1461. Richard’s birth date is unknown, although his older brother, Thomas Grey, was probably born around 1455, according to the inquisition postmortem of his uncle Richard Woodville.

On May 14, 1475, Richard was made a Knight of the Bath, alongside his older brother and his royal half-brothers as well as his uncle Edward Woodville. Another new Knight of the Bath was Thomas Vaughan, chamberlain to Edward, Prince of Wales. Not only would Richard Grey and Thomas Vaughan be knighted together, they would also be executed together just eight years later.

In the same year of his knighting, Richard began to take on responsibilities. He was named to commissions of the peace in Herefordshire on July 4, 1475, November 10, 1475, and June 7, 1476. Rosemary Horrox suggests that he became associated with the Prince of Wales’ household at Ludlow during this period. Also in 1476, Richard was nominated as a Knight of the Garter (interestingly, by Lord William Hastings), but lost out to his older brother, Thomas.

Richard was prominent at the tournament that followed the marriage of his young half-brother, the Duke of York, to Anne Mowbray in 1478. He and his retinue were garbed in blue and tawny; his three horses sported crimson cloth of gold and tissue.

Grey was made constable of Chester Castle on February 10, 1479. Sometime in 1479, Richard was appointed to a commission of oyer and terminer in Wales to investigate crimes committed by John Herbert. In the 1480’s Richard continued to serve on commissions for the king. He was appointed to commissions of oyer and terminer on July 24, 1482, August 24, 1482, and on March 18, 1483, and to commissions of the peace in Berkshire (February 13, 1483), Buckinghamshire (February 13, 1483), Essex (February 12, 1483), Herefordshire (November 28, 1481), Northamptonshire (February 13, 1483), and Oxfordshire (February 18, 1483). On December 7, 1481, he was appointed to inquire into escapes of felons within the county of Southampton. Grey was made the constable and steward of Wallingford on September 3, 1482.

Grey acquired a number of lands during the last year or so of his life. On April 24, 1482, he was granted Kidwelly in tail male. Edward IV expanded his stepson’s landholdings at the Parliament of 1483, where he and his male heirs were granted the manors of Rochford, Leigh, Paglesham and Foulness in Essex; the manors of Thorpe Waterville, Aldwinkle, Achurch, Chelveston and Caldecote in Northampton; the manor of Ardington in Berkshire; and the manor of Barford St Martin in Wiltshire. Elizabeth Woodville paid the king 2,000 marks for this grant, which was part of a larger transaction involving the lands of the Lancastrian Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter. Exeter and his former wife Anne, sister of Edward IV, were dead, as was their only daughter, but Anne by her second husband, Thomas St. Leger, had another daughter, who had been made the Exeter heiress and who was intended to marry a son of Thomas Grey, though the arrangement was canceled when Richard III came to the throne. The lands Richard Grey acquired were valued at 500 marks a year.

As in the case of his uncles Richard and Edward, there is no trace of a marriage being sought for Richard Grey. Perhaps the granting of the lands to him in 1483 would have been followed in due course by a bride being found for him; after all, Grey was probably still only in his twenties.

In 1473, Edward IV had issued a series of ordinances for the Prince of Wales’ household in which he minutely prescribed the day-to-day details of the prince’s upbringing. On February 25, 1483, the king amended these ordinances, evidently, as Nicholas Orme points out, because the twelve-year-old prince was proving to have a will of his own. Edward was ordered by his father to “observe and kepe theis articles before written touching his person” and to “ne take upon him to give, write, sende or commande any thinge without thavise of the said bishop [John Alcock, then the Bishop of Worcester], lord Richard [Grey] and Erle Rivieres [Anthony Woodville].” Alcock, Grey, and Rivers were instructed that if Edward engaged in any “unprincely demeaning” or behaved contrary to the ordinances, they were to “forthwith shewe it in good manner unto him selfe to bee refourmed, and if he will not amend therby then the said bishop, lord Richard and Erle Rivieres, or one of them, shewe it unto us and to our moost dere wief the quene or unto one of us in all goodlie haste, as they will aunsuere it at theire peril and avoid our grievous displeasour.” Plainly, Richard Grey had acquired increasing importance in his half-brother’s household.

Richard Grey’s reputation has suffered much from Mancini’s comment, likely based on propaganda being put forth by Richard, Duke of Gloucester in 1483, that “although [Edward IV] had many promoters and companions of his vices, the more important and especial were three of the . . . relatives of the queen, her two sons and one of her brothers.” Richard Grey, however, could have hardly been a promoter and companion of Edward IV’s vices in the early years of his reign, when Grey was just a child. From the late 1470’s on, Grey appears to have spent much of his time in the household of the Prince of Wales at Ludlow, again not affording him much opportunity to promote Edward IV’s vices--assuming that Edward needed encouragement, which seems most unlikely. It is also notable that Edward IV, who in his ordinances proscribed unsuitable persons from coming into his heir’s presence, deemed Richard Grey morally fit to participate in the prince’s upbringing. Crowland, in contrast to Mancini, calls Grey “a very honourable knight.”

For Richard Grey, the future must have looked bright in the spring of 1483: he had been appointed to several commissions, he had a leading role in the household of his half-brother, and he had become prosperous through the acquisition of his new manors. Sadly, great changes were coming. Edward IV died on April 9, 1483. Just three weeks later, on April 30, 1483, Richard Grey, his uncle Anthony Woodville, and Thomas Vaughan, Edward V’s elderly chamberlain, were taken prisoner by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who claimed that the men were conspiring to murder him. If Gloucester offered any proof of his allegations, it has not survived, and as we shall see, contemporaries doubted the men’s guilt.

Grey’s movements in the days before he was imprisoned are unclear. He is not named among those attending Edward IV’s funeral, but Mancini claims that he had been in London shortly before rejoining Edward V. According to Crowland, as their parties traveled toward London, Grey and Anthony Woodville met Gloucester and the Duke of Buckingham at Northampton and, after a night of pleasant conversation, journeyed to Stony Stratford where Edward V was lodged. Just outside the latter town, Grey and Woodville were arrested by Gloucester’s men. Mancini, however, has only Anthony meeting Gloucester, and has him being arrested before setting out to meet the king at his lodgings; in this version, Gloucester and Buckingham arrive at the town where Edward V is staying and then arrest Grey. Notably, none of the men arrested seems to have taken any precautions whatsoever against being captured by Gloucester, as surely they would have had they been plotting against him.

The captive Grey was taken to Middleham Castle, one of Gloucester’s strongholds, where he arrived on May 3, along with some servants and horses, and remained until Midsummer Day, when he was moved to Pontefract Castle. Gloucester’s young son, Edward, was also at Middleham at the time, but it seems unlikely that Richard Grey had more than superficial contact with the boy.

Soon after he arrived in London with Edward V, Mancini reports, Gloucester attempted to have the council agree to the execution of the three prisoners. “But this he was quite unable to achieve, because there appeared no certain case as regards the ambushes, and even had the crime been manifest, it would not have been treason, for at the time of the alleged ambushes he was neither regent nor did he hold any other public office.” This gained the men a reprieve, but only a short one. Meanwhile, Gloucester began granting out various Woodville estates, including Grey’s manor of Thorpe Waterville, which went to Francis Lovell before May 21, 1483, when the tenants were notified of the transfer.

On June 25, 1483, Grey, Rivers, and Vaughan were executed at Pontefract Castle on orders of Gloucester, who had the crown well within his grasp and thus no longer needed to bother with the council’s approval. The next day, Gloucester became King Richard III.

Crowland, who refers to the deaths of Grey and the others as “the second shedding of innocent blood” (William Hastings having been the first victim), writes that the men “were beheaded without any form of trial,” although John Rous claims that the Earl of Northumberland acted as their judge. If the men did indeed receive a trial, its outcome must have been a foregone conclusion, for on June 23, Anthony Woodville, who was being held at Sheriff Hutton, made his will. The only thing in doubt seems to have been where he was to be executed, since at the beginning of the will he asked to be buried at St. Stephens College at Westminster if he died “beyond Trent,” while in a postscript he asked to be buried with Richard Grey at Pontefract before an image of the Virgin Mary. Whether this request was honored is unknown, but in September, Richard III was presented with an expense account indicating that 46 shillings and 4 pence had been spent for Grey’s burial.

Sources:

C. A. J. Armstrong, ed., The Usurpation of Richard III. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969 (2d. ed.).

David Baldwin, Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower. Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2004.

Calendar of Patent Rolls.

Letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine, pp. 377-79, October 1844.

Rosemary Horrox, ‘Grey, Sir Richard (d. 1483)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11557, accessed 6 June 2009]

Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study in Service. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

D.E. Lowe, “The Council of the Prince of Wales and the Decline of the Herbert Family during the Second Reign of Edward IV (1471-1483).” Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, vol. 27, 1976-78, pp.278-297.

D. E. Lowe, “Patronage and Politics: Edward IV, the Wydevilles, and the Council of the Prince of Wales, 1471–83.” Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 1977.

W. C. Metcalfe, A Book of Knights Banneret, Knights of the Bath and Knights Bachelor (1885).

Arlene Okerlund, Elizabeth: England’s Slandered Queen. Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2006.

Nicholas Orme, “The Education of Edward V,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 1984.

Lynda Pidgeon, “Antony Wydeville, Lord Scales and Rivers: Family, Friends and Affinity. Part 2.” The Ricardian (2006).

A. J. Pollard, The Worlds of Richard III. Stroud: Tempus, 2001.

Nicholas Pronay and John Cox, eds., The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486. London: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust: 1986.

T. B. Pugh, ‘Grey, Thomas, first marquess of Dorset (c.1455–1501)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11560, accessed 6 June 2009]

Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, “The Royal Burials of the House of York at Windsor,” The Ricardian (December 1998).

The Stolen Crown, and a Handy Website

Last night at about 1:00 a.m., I put the finishing touches to my Buckingham novel, now called The Stolen Crown. If all goes well, look for it in 2010 sometime!

I'm now pondering what to write about next. I think it's going to be about a Margaret: either Margaret of Anjou, Margaret Beaufort, or Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. The first and third Margarets are the ones who appeal to me most as subjects. Doing a novel about Margaret of Anjou would let me write about the early period of the Wars of the Roses from a Lancastrian standpoint, which isn't done all that often and would allow me to work in some people who particularly intrigue me, such as Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter and the Beaufort clan. Margaret Pole also has a fascinating and tragic story, and would let me work in five of Henry VIII's wives plus the portly man himself. The nice thing about all three women is that their lives are well documented and that I already have a lot of the research material at hand.

Speaking of research, I've gone gaga today for this site that someone on the Historical Novel Society Yahoo group pointed out. It's from the British Library, and allows free downloads of a number of doctoral theses. The ones I've really been longing to read aren't available yet, but there's always hope! In the meantime, I managed to console myself with about a dozen others. Have fun browsing!

Grave Matters

Here are a couple of more pictures from my trip to Pere Lachaise Cemetery this April. Good medievalist that I am, I took a picture of Abelard and Heloise's tomb, but unfortunately, it was surrounded by scaffolding. (You can see a better picture here.)



I'm afraid I didn't catch the name of this gentleman, but he certainly looks like a morning person:



And here is the grave of Victor Noir, a French journalist who was shot by Pierre Bonaparte while trying to arrange the terms of a duel. (Some guys will do anything to avoid sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper.) Yes, a certain area is rather prominent, and it's been made more so by women who rub it for fertility.

Search Terms

It's June, and that means that it's time for May search terms!

what would happen if a divorce happened in the elizabethan era

Quite possibly, a divorce.

wife in shorts

Just ask her nicely, and I'm sure she'll oblige.

historical fiction with explicit sex

Let's get down to business, shall we?

english kings fake pregnancy

So that's where Henry VIII got that 54-inch waistline from!

take the veil convent -tibet

Nothing like getting away from it all.

edward ii anus latin
isabella from latin adultery

That's one way of making high school Latin more interesting.

search

And you shall find, but it'll take you a heck of a long time to do it that way.

snippets what do you call things with no words

There's an advanced seminar in philosophy waiting to answer this one, I'm sure.

what if a duke and duchess marries

They have little duchies.

edward ii who did the packing when he moved

Actually, it's a little-known fact that Edward II made Isabella do all of the packing when he moved. Gaveston, and later Hugh le Despenser the younger, just sat and twiddled their thumbs while poor Isabella did all of the work. So here you have it, folks--the real reason Edward II was deposed. If only he'd hired professional movers.