Elizabeth, Lady Scales:

The First Wife of Anthony Woodville

Susan Higginbotham

Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, married twice: the first time to Elizabeth Scales, the second time to Mary FitzLewis. This article discusses Anthony’s first marriage—a match that owed nothing to the royal alliance Anthony’s sister Elizabeth made.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Thomas, Lord Scales, and his wife Ismania, whose name is also spelled variously as Imania, Ismanie, and Esmania. Ismania was a daughter of a Cornishman by the name of Whalesburgh. [1] Described in Anthony’s inquisitions postmortem as 24 or older at her father’s death in 1460, [2] Elizabeth Scales was born around 1436. Besides Elizabeth, Lord Scales and his wife had a son, Thomas, who predeceased his father. [3]

Elizabeth Scales’s mother was among those ladies sent to escort Henry VI’s new bride, Margaret of Anjou, to England in 1445, and was one of her principal attendants, receiving forty pounds per annum in 1452-53. [4]

Lord Scales, born around 1399, had a long record of military service in France, where he remained almost continually from 1424 to 1449. He was made lieutenant-general of western Normandy in 1435; it is possible that Elizabeth was born there. [5] One source estimates his wealth in 1436 as 376 pounds per year. [6] At Rouen in 1442, Lord Scales had served as a godfather at the christening of the future Edward IV. [7]

During Christmas of 1445, Lord Scales was at his principal manor at Middleton when the mayor and council presented a nativity play there, with a cast that included a John Clerk as the Virgin Mary and a person with the surname of Gilbert as the angel Gabriel. [8] Nine-year-old Elizabeth would have been at an age to enjoy this thoroughly.

Elizabeth’s father had strong ties with the Woodville family from early on. Created a Knight of the Garter in 1425, Lord Scales successfully nominated Anthony’s father, Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, as a Garter knight in 1450. [9] That same year, King Henry VI appointed Lord Scales, Lord Rivers and other men to put down Jack Cade’s rebellion. [10] Interestingly, when Richard, Duke of York placed his grievances before the king that autumn, Lord Scales and Lord Rivers were said to have accompanied him. [11]

However, Lord Scales remained loyal to Henry VI during the upheavals of the 1450’s. In the summer of 1460, when the exiled Earls of March, Warwick, and Salisbury returned to England with the intention of seizing power, Lord Scales and Robert, Lord Hungerford, held the Tower for the king. Besieged by the Yorkists, the forces inside the Tower shot guns and cast wild fire into the city, to the injury of “men and women and children in the streets,” as reported by the English Chronicle. [12] When the Yorkists, having defeated the Lancastrians at Northampton, returned to London with Henry VI in their power, Scales and Hungerford surrendered on July 19. [13]

Uncertain how he would fare at the hands of the Londoners, Scales, accompanied by three others, found a boat late that evening and rowed toward Westminster, with the intention of taking sanctuary there. Tipped off by a woman who recognized Lord Scales, a group of boatmen surrounded him, murdered him, and dumped his naked body at St. Mary Overy at Southwark. He lay there for several hours before his godson the Earl of March (later Edward IV) came upon the scene and arranged a proper burial for him. It was, as the English Chronicle noted, a “great pity” that “so noble and worshipful a knight,” who had served so valiantly in France, should meet such an ignominious death. [14]

Chroniclers seldom bothered to record the reactions of the wives and daughters of those slain during the Wars of the Roses, and they made no exception in the case of Elizabeth Scales. By the time of her father’s death, Elizabeth had likely already suffered the loss of her first husband, Henry Bouchier, the second son of the Earl of Essex by the same name. An August 27 letter in the Paston collection announcing his sudden death at Ludlow from an unspecified cause probably dates to 1458. [15] If any children were born to the couple, they did not survive.

Exactly when Elizabeth married Anthony Woodville is unknown, but contrary to what is sometimes claimed, it is beyond dispute that the marriage took place well before Anthony’s sister became the queen of England. The couple had certainly married before April 4, 1461, when William Paston reported mistakenly that Anthony, Lord Scales—the title that Anthony took in right of Elizabeth—had been killed at the battle of Towton. [16] Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, writing three days later, also reported that the dead included “Anthony, son of Lord le Ryver, who was recently made Lord le Scales.” [17]

Earlier, following the Lancastrian victory at the second battle of St. Albans on February 17, 1461, the Londoners had included Jacquetta Woodville, Duchess of Bedford, Anne Stafford, Duchess of Buckingham, and Lady Scales in a delegation sent to Margaret of Anjou to beg for mercy for the city. [18] Does “Lady Scales“ refer to Elizabeth or to her mother? Ismania had been prominent among Margaret’s ladies and would thus be a natural candidate for the task of negotiating with the queen, but it is not certain that she was still alive at this date; there is no indication that she held any lands in dower or jointure, as she would have if she had survived her husband. It may be, then, that “Lady Scales” refers to Elizabeth and that she had joined the Duchess of Bedford, Anthony’s mother, in the negotiations. This, of course, would push Elizabeth’s marriage to Anthony back to at least February 1461.

Whether Anthony and Elizabeth’s families helped bring the couple together, or whether the couple themselves initiated their marriage, is unknown. Elizabeth’s inheritance as Scales’s only surviving child was of obvious interest to Anthony, and his own status as the eldest son was of obvious interest to Elizabeth, but there is nothing to indicate whether personal attraction played a role in the marriage as well. Their age difference is not certain. Anthony was listed in his mother’s 1472 postmortem inquisition as being “of the age of thirty years and more,” which would put his birth date at around 1442 (to Elizabeth Scales’s probable birth date of 1436), but “the more” allows plenty of hedge room and leaves open the possibility that he was born earlier in his parents’ marriage, which took place by March 23, 1537. [19]

Elizabeth’s inheritance included lands in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, and Suffolk. [20] The heart of the Scales estate was Middleton, near Bishop’s Lynn (later King’s Lynn). The town of Lynn often sent gifts of wine or fish to Lord and Lady Scales, whose minstrels also appear in the records. [21]

Lady Scales features in the household books of John Howard, who later became the Duke of Norfolk. In September 1464, Howard rewarded her messenger in the amount of six shillings and eight pence for bringing him a letter from Elizabeth. When with the king at Reading in November, Howard lent Elizabeth, who was also there with her husband, eight shillings and four pence to play at cards. The party moved on to spend Christmas at Eltham with the king; there, on January 1, 1465, Howard gave twelve pence to “my lord Scales chyld.” Anne Crawford has pointed out that the “child” was probably a page who was bringing a New Year’s gift to Howard from Anthony and Elizabeth, as opposed to the offspring of either Lord or Lady Scales, although Anthony did have an illegitimate daughter. [22]

Meanwhile, of course, Elizabeth Woodville, Anthony’s sister, had married Edward IV, the godson of Thomas, Lord Scales. Lady Scales was prominent among the attendants of her sister-in-law the queen. In 1466-67, like the queen’s sister Anne, who was married to William, Viscount Bouchier, Lady Scales received forty pounds per annum for her services (the same rate that her mother had received when serving Margaret of Anjou). She and Anne were the highest paid of the queen’s attendants; the next tier of ladies received only twenty pounds a year. [23]

In 1466, Anthony and Elizabeth engaged in a series of complex legal maneuvers, detailed in his inquisitions postmortem, to ensure that if Elizabeth predeceased Anthony without having borne him a child, the Scales estates would stay in Anthony’s hands instead of going to Elizabeth’s heirs. While this did have the effect of subverting the normal laws of inheritance, there is no reason to assume that Elizabeth was forced into the transaction by her husband or that she would have preferred that the land go to her rather distant cousins instead of to Anthony. [24]

When Edward IV’s sister Margaret traveled to Burgundy to marry its duke, Charles, in July 1468, Anthony Woodville served as her presenter. [25] Prominent among the English ladies accompanying Margaret to her wedding was Lady Scales. The marriage took place with all the ceremonial splendor one could expect of the Burgundian court. It certainly overawed John Paston, who wrote in a letter home, “And as for the duke’s court, as of lords, ladies and gentlewomen, knights, squires and gentlemen, I have never of none like to it, save King Arthur’s court. And by my troth, I have no wit nor remembrance to write to you, half the worship that is here.” The festivities featured jousting, in which Elizabeth would have seen her husband take a leading role. [26]

Anthony and Elizabeth’s return to England was soon followed by tragedy: in August 1469, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, having rebelled against Edward IV and taken the king temporarily into his custody, ordered the executions of Anthony’s father, Earl Rivers, and of his younger brother John—executions that were entirely illegal, as both Earl Rivers and John had been supporting the king that Warwick himself still recognized as his ruler. Anthony and Elizabeth now had  each suffered the murder of a father.

The continuing political upheaval led to Edward IV fleeing England in October 1470. A number of loyal supporters went into exile with him, including Anthony (now Earl Rivers). Where Elizabeth Scales spent the next few months is unknown. She may have joined her mother-in-law, Jacquetta, and Queen Elizabeth in sanctuary at Westminster, but I know of no source placing her there.

After Edward scored a Yorkist victory at Barnet, he returned to London briefly before marching out to encounter Margaret of Anjou’s forces. Anthony Woodville and the Earl of Essex, Elizabeth Scales’s father-in-law from her first marriage, were left to defend London from an attack by the Bastard of Fauconberg. Queen Elizabeth and her children were lodged in the Tower for their safety; perhaps Elizabeth Scales was with them.

Edward IV was back on his throne in May 1471, but Elizabeth Scales had little time to enjoy the peace that followed. According to Anthony’s inquisitions post mortem, she died on September 2, 1473. [27] She did live long enough to join in the festivities that took place when Louis de Bruges, Lord of la Gruthuyse, who had assisted Edward IV and Anthony while they were in exile, visited Edward’s court in September 1472. At a banquet in the queen’s chamber, Lady Rivers “sat at one mess” with the king and the queen, their daughter Elizabeth, the Duchess of Exeter, and Louis de Bruges himself. [28]

Anthony married Mary FitzLewis around 1480. He was executed on orders of the future Richard III at Pontefract on June 25, 1483.

In his will, written at Sheriff Hutton two days before his death, Anthony, having left the Scales lands to his brother Edward, asked that 500 marks be used for prayers for the souls of Elizabeth Scales, her brother Thomas, and the souls of all of the Scales family. [29] This provision has been interpreted as a slight by Lynda Pidgeon, who wrote that in his will, Anthony “makes no affectionate mention of [Elizabeth] or desire to be buried beside her” and that he appeared to do only the bare minimum to provide for her soul and those of others. Pidgeon concluded, “The will was business like: it met the requirements of his soul and those of his family and little else.... Perhaps he simply did not have feelings for anyone else.” [30]

Pidgeon’s judgment overlooks the fact that many wills of the period are businesslike documents, without sentimental effusions; it also fails to consider that Anthony, unlike testators expecting to meet a natural death or preparing for the eventuality of dying honorably in battle, was under the enormous stress of facing execution for a crime he most likely did not commit. Moreover, as he was about to be executed, he could expect his lands to be forfeit to the crown and would have to hope that arrangements would be made to pay his debts and honor his bequests. He was hardly in a position to make extravagant provisions for the dead. As it was, it does not appear that his will was ever admitted to probate during Richard III’s reign.

Anthony, possibly anticipating that he would be brought to London for the trial before his peers that was his right as an earl, initially asked in his will that if he died beyond the River Trent, he be buried in the chapel of St. Mary the Virgin besides St. Stephen’s College at Westminster, known familiarly as the Lady of Pewe. The Pope himself had recognized Anthony’s “singular devotion” to this chapel in 1476. [31] Contrary to Pidgeon’s surmise, Anthony’s failure to request burial beside Elizabeth Scales (whose burial place is not known) need not show lack of affection for her; it may simply indicate a strong devotion to the Virgin or to the chapel that took precedence over earthly attachments. Moreover, as a condemned man Anthony could not expect that the crown would go to the expense and trouble of bringing his body to lie beside that of Elizabeth, unless she had been buried at a convenient place for her husband’s burial. He had, in fact, little choice in where he would be buried, as he implicitly acknowledged at the end of his will, when having learned that he would be executed at Pontefract, Anthony asked to be buried there with his nephew Richard Grey, who was also facing execution, before an image of the Virgin Mary. [32] We can only guess at how close Anthony and Elizabeth Scales were to each other, but it is hardly fair to infer based only on this will that he was an indifferent husband.

In her thirty-seven years on earth, Elizabeth Scales lived through the violent deaths of her father, her father-in-law, and political upheaval; yet as with so many other women of her day, she left little behind to give us a clue about the woman behind her title. At the very least, it would have been nice to know what was in the letter her servant brought Lord Howard.

Endnotes:

1.  Myers, p. 182 n.1.

2.  TNA: C 142/1/36 (Cambridge); C 142/1/37 (Hertford); C 142/1/38 (Norfolk); C 142/1/39 (Suffolk).

3.  He is named in Anthony’s will, PROB 11/8. Printed in Pidgeon, p. 43.

4.  Griffiths, p. 486; Myers, p. 182.

5.  Castor.

6.  Wilkins, p. 194 n.17.

7.  Scofield, vol. I, p. 1.

8.  Lancashire, p. 227; Report on the Deeds and Records of the Borough of King’s Lynn, p. 88.

9.  Castor; Smith, p. 46.

10. Harvey, p. 81.

11. Griffiths, p. 707, n.108.

12. Davies, p. 96.

13. Scofield, vol. I, p. 92.

14. Scofield, vol. I, p. 92; Davies, p. 98.

15. Castor; Paston Letters, no. 574, part II, p. 175.

16. Paston Letters, no. 90, part I, p. 165.

17. Milan, no. 80, April 7, 1461,.

18. Kingsford, p. 173; Milan, no. 65, February 22, 1461.

19. C 140/42/49; Calendar of Patent Rolls 1436–1441, p. 53. A handwritten note by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald on a late fifteenth-century visitation suggests that Anthony may have been the Woodvilles’ oldest child. Visitations of the North, part 3, p. 58.

20. See n. 2; Pidgeon, pp. 30, 35.

21. Manuscripts of the Corporations of Southampton and Kings Lynn, pp. 224–25.

22. Crawford, Household Books, pt. I, pp. 281, 480–82; Crawford, Yorkist Lord, pp. 41–42, 156.

23. Myers, p. 288.

24. See note 2; Pidgeon, p. 35. The heirs in 1485 were John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, returned home after a long exile and imprisonment, and William Tyndale. Ross, p. 91.

25. Phillips, pp. 327, 329.

26. Paston Letters, no. 330, part I, p. 539. I have modernized the spelling.

27. See note 2.

28. Madden, p. 278.

29. PROB 11/8; Pidgeon, p. 43.

30. Pidgeon, p. 41.

31. Calendar of Papal Registers. 1476. 5 Kal. May. (27 April.) St. Peter's, Rome. (f. 99v.).

32. TNA PROB 11/8; Pidgeon, pp. 43, 45.

Sources:

Calendar of Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, Volume 13—1471–1484. Available online through British History Online.

Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts in the Archives and Collections of Milan—1385–1618. Available online through British History Online.

Helen Castor, “Scales, Thomas, seventh Baron Scales (1399?–1460),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/24776, accessed 11 Oct 2012.

Anne Crawford, intro., The Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1992.

Anne Crawford, Yorkist Lord: John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, c. 1425–1485. London: Continuum, 2010.

John Silvester Davies, ed., An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI written before the year 1471. Camden Society, 1856.

Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, pts. I and II Oxford: Early English Text Society, 2004.

R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2004.

Henry Harrod, Report on the Deeds and Records of the Borough of King’s Lynn. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1874.

I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the Corporations of Southampton and King’s Lynn. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1887.

Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, Chronicles of London. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.

Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558. Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Frederic Madden, “Narratives of the Arrival of Louis de Bruges, Seigneur de la Gruthuyse, in England, and of His Creation as Earl of Winchester, in 1472.” Archaeologia, 1836.

A. R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parliament in Fifteenth Century England. London: Hambleton Press, 1985.

The National Archives (TNA)

Thomas Phillips, “Account of the Ceremonial of the Marriage of the Princess Margaret, Sister of King Edward the Fourth, to Charles, Duke of Burgundy, in 1468.” Archaeologia, 1846.

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

James Ross, John de Vere: Thirteenth Earl of Oxford 1442–1513. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011.

Cora Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward IV. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1923 (2 volumes).

George Smith, ed., The Coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville. Gloucester: Gloucester Reprints, 1975 (originally printed 1935).

Surtees Society, Visitations of the North: A Visitation of the North of England Circa 1480–1500. Vol. III. Durham and London, 1930.

Christopher Wilkins, The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville and the Age of Chivalry. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.

Margaret Pole

This article first appeared in the March 2012 Ricardian Register Vol. 43 No. 1

Margaret Pole: Countess of Salisbury, Edward IV and Richard III’s Niece
by Elizabeth Dorsey Hatle

Lady Margaret Plantagenet was born into a turbulent century on August 14, 1473 at Farleigh Castle in Somerset. Margaret was only a few months younger than her first cousin, Richard III and Anne Neville’s only child, Edward of Middleham. Margaret’s mother, Isabella Neville, died when she was three, and her father, George, 1st Duke of Clarence, was executed when she was four. Margaret’s father was put to death on the orders of her uncle, King Edward IV, in 1478. “He was arrested in June 1477 and privately executed at the Tower of London on 18 February 1478. In just over a year Margaret’s parents had both died, and from the security and honour of being the daughter of the ‘right noble Prince my Lord of Clarence,’ she was now the daughter of an executed traitor.”[1] After Clarence’s death, Edward IV made his orphaned niece and nephew his wards. He created Clarence’s son Edward the Earl of Warwick and Margaret’s name is seen in Edward IV’s household accounts as our “dear and well-beloved niece, Margaret, daughter unto our late brother, the late Duke of Clarence.”,

Even at a young age, Margaret was able to survive politically in what must have been trying circumstances. “In September 1486 ‘my lady Margaret of Clarence’ headed the list of ladies attending the christening of the Henry’s first-born son, Prince Arthur, and in November 1487 she viewed the coronation of Elizabeth of York on a specially erected stage between the pulpit and the high altar of Westminster Abby in the company of Henry VII and his mother.”[2] Margaret is referred to as ‘my Lady Margaret Pole’ at the christening, indicating that her marriage to Sir Richard Pole had already taken place. King Henry had given Margaret in marriage to Sir Richard Pole, whose mother was the half-sister of the King’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Margaret Pole earned some criticism for marrying a man considered beneath her station, but she was most likely relieved to be out from under Henry VII and his mother’s direct control. “At the time of her marriage Margaret was only fourteen, but Richard was twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. Intelligent, prudent and reliable, he provided his wife with the safe haven not only which Henry VII required, but which she herself must have desired after a somewhat tumultuous childhood. After 1488 when Richard’s royal duties in Wales increased, Margaret eschewed her place at court in order to remain close to him, and Henry VII granted them the use of Stourton Castle in Staffordshire.”[3]

Margaret’s was ten years old when her uncle Richard succeeded to the throne. Richard III kept his brother Clarence’s children protected and safe during his reign. Upon Henry VII’s accession to the throne in 1485, Margaret was brought to court where her first cousin Elizabeth reigned as Henry’s wife and queen. “With this in mind, Henry ordered Warwick and his sister should be conducted to the household of his mother, Margaret Beaufort. Fellow ‘guests’ of the king’s mother included Elizabeth of York and her sisters.”[4] Henry VII put her brother into the Tower. Her brother Edward had been allowed by his uncle Edward IV to succeed as 17th Earl of Warwick and 7th Earl of Salisbury, but as the last male representative of the Yorkist line, was seen as a danger to the new Tudor dynasty. Her brother Warwick’s execution for treason shattered Margaret’s new found stability. In September 1497, a man named Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be Margaret’s missing first cousin, Richard, Duke of York, son of Edward IV, rebelled against Henry VII. The uprising was quelled but it allowed Henry VII an excuse to eliminate Margaret’s brother.

Within days of the Perkin Warbeck rebellion, “the court of the lord high steward (John de Vere, earl of Oxford, for the occasion) in Westminster Hall considered the findings of a grand jury returned against Edward, Earl of Warwick, found him guilty of treason, which he admitted. A week later he was beheaded on Tower Hill. The most innocent sprig of the white rose was thus lopped off. Tudor reason of State had claimed the first of its many victims.”[5] On the coming of his age in 1496, Edward was legally entitled to inherit a rich manor called Ware through his mother Isabella Neville’s estate. The king’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, “had shown an immediate interest in Ware, on 22 September 1485 securing the right to appoint a steward there.”[6] With his execution, Warwick succeeding to his property or to the throne were no longer possibilities. At the time of her brother’s execution Margaret was three months pregnant with Reginald and “her feelings must have been a mixture of grief and fear. Grief for a brother who should have been one of the great magnates in England but also loss at his losing his liberty at the age of eleven and his life at the age of twenty-four simply because he was Clarence’s son, and fear for the fate of Clarence’s grandsons, her own children.”[7]

After her husband’s death in 1505, Margaret was left with five children, of whom the fourth, Reginald Pole, was to become a Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury. Her chief residence was Warblington Castle in Hampshire. Her husband’s death was a huge loss to Margaret. “If Margaret was to ensure that her children received the best start in life through their connections at court, there was only one man to whom she could look,”[8] but he was Henry VIII, who still considered her and members of her family an inconvenient liability, as they had been to his father in 1485. Margaret managed again to survive in a new regime, and in 1513, four years into his reign, King Henry VIII reversed her brother’s attainder, allowing Margaret to succeed as 8th Countess of Salisbury. An Act of Restitution was also passed by which she came into possession of her ancestral domains. Margaret Pole and Catherine of Aragon were close and possibly at his wife’s request, Henry VIII granted Margaret her petition for the restoration of the earldom of Salisbury, becoming a countess in her own right. Her estates covered seventeen counties and it has been estimated that this placed her among the top five wealthiest nobles in early 16th century England. She had four main residences in the south of England, and her London home stood on the site of what is now Cannon Street station. As the disgraced Duke of Clarence’s daughter, Margaret had grown up in perilous times, seeing terrible things happen to her family. With her family background, and as Edward IV and Richard III’s niece, Margaret had made some ambitious moves to improve her family’s status. She was now one of the most important women in the country.

Margaret had given birth to five children who survived into adulthood: Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu, John Bourchier, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Sir Geoffrey Pole, Sir Arthur Pole and Ursula Pole who married the 1st Baron Stafford. Not unlike her grandmother, Cecily Neville, Margaret had as many of her children escape the typical dangers of childhood and survive into adulthood. At the age of forty-seven, her children grown and married, Margret became governess to Mary, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s only child. When the countess of Salisbury entered into Mary’s life she was, “Tall, thin and elegant, she boasted the auburn hair of the Plantagenets, and the pale skin which accompanied such colouring. No stain attached to her person or behavior and she had the considerable advantage of knowing the court and its etiquette inside and out. A better choice for Mary’s welfare or role as a princess could not have been made.”[9] Considering that Margaret was the niece of kings, Mary Tudor’s grandmother’s first cousin and cousin of royal Plantagenet princesses and princes, Margaret's bloodline was impeccable, and it was a significant tribute to her to be Mary Tudor’s governess.

Margaret’s influence was strong upon Mary, and the princess quickly became attached to her. The Countess and Queen Catherine were confidantes. Margaret’s son Reginald, the future Cardinal Pole, had committed his life to the church. Katherine knew that her daughter’s spiritual health would be in good hands with the Countess of Salisbury. “The countess of Salisbury, a devout woman herself, did not need to be told her duty. The princess' spiritual development might be guided by her chaplains but behind them was Margaret Pole, the epitome of a Christian woman.”[10] Margaret requested a translation of Erasmus’ De Immensa Misericordia Dei from Gentian Hervet for Mary. When Henry and Catherine were in France to attend what is now known as the Field of Cloth of Gold between Henry and France’s king Francis I, Henry’s counselors wrote to him that Mary was “daily exercising herself in virtuous pastimes and occupation.”[11] But life at court was changing, and Margaret, who must have felt for the first time in her life that she had some security for her family, was about to lose everything once again.

When Anne Boleyn came between Henry and Catherine, the Boleyn family most likely felt that Mary should be separated from the Countess of Salisbury, as she was a close friend of Catherine’s. Margaret was temporarily removed from Mary’s presence, but for other reason. First, as lady governess because Margaret’s daughter’s father-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham, had crossed Wolsey, who had been accused of conspiring against Henry and had been executed. Margaret had “found herself, not for the first time, mistrusted,”[12] by association. In 1525 she was once again Mary’s governess. With no more children from Henry and Catherine’s union, King Henry decided it was time for Mary to do what generations of princes of Wales had done before, gain some practical experience of government. Margaret could be counted upon with Mary Tudor to “keep quiet about the real reasons for her absence. Failure to do otherwise would have put her in great peril.”[13] Margaret knew from first hand experience how to keep quiet, having survived her Uncle King Richard III’s overthrow by Henry VII and survivied in a Tudor court afterwards. Living under suspicious kings was a way of life for Margaret. Keeping Mary Tudor away from court was necessary, as the conflict between Henry VIII and Catherine over Anne Boleyn heated up.

Margaret knew which way the wind was blowing at court and kept Mary’s life as stable as she could in Wales when Mary’s parents separated. Mary at that time was still allowed to correspond with her mother, which most likely meant Catherine was still in communication with Margaret as well. When Mary turned seventeen, her household was dismantled and the countess of Salisbury was dismissed. “Her offers to continue with Mary at her own expense were rebuffed. The king believed that the countess and others of those around Mary were responsible for encouraging her stance and he wanted her separated from them.”[14] Margaret’s fall from grace over being Queen Catherine’s friend affected her financial circumstances. Her oldest son was not welcomed at court. “The precariousness of the succession, compounded by Henry VIII’s unpopularity, meant that he did not wish to make too much of Henry Pole; he did not want him to come to court, where he might make strategic alliances and possibly offer an alternative to those disenchanted with the Tudor regime.”[15] Margaret was a substantial landowner, with a respectable claim to the throne and four politically active adult sons. It was inevitable that Margaret’s family would be drawn into Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine.

Reginald Pole had once been Henry VIII’s favored choice for the archbishopric of York. Reginald, now living in exile, had betrayed Henry, happy to encourage a foreign-led invasion to restore traditional Catholicism to England. Reginald’s family paid the price for being within Henry VIII’s easy reach. The Cardinal’s brothers were arrested, brought to the Tower, and stood trial for treason. Margaret returned to Court after the fall of Anne, but in 1530 Reginald Pole sent King Henry a copy of his published treatise Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, in answer to questions put to him on the King’s behalf by Thomas Cromwell, Cuthbert Tunstall, Thomas Starkey and others. Besides being a theological reply to the questions, the book was a denunciation of the King’s policies. King Henry was enraged, and though lady Salisbury and her eldest son had written to Reginald in reproof of his attitude and action, Reginald Pole did not retract what he had said about Henry publicly. That left his family in England to pay for the insult done to the king.

In November, 1538, Margaret’s eldest son, the 1st Baron Montagu, another son, and other relatives were arrested on a charge of treason, though Thomas Cromwell had previously written that they had ‘little offended save that he (the Cardinal) is of their kin,’ they were committed to the Tower, and in January, with the exception of her son Geoffrey Pole, they were executed. Ten days after the arrest of her sons, lady Salisbury, despite her age, was arrested and examined by the Earl of Southampton and Thomas Goodrick, the Bishop of Ely. They reported to Cromwell that although they had interrogated her for many hours she would utter nothing, and they were forced to conclude that her sons had not made her a sharer in their treason. The brutal coming end of Margaret’s life brought with it the execution of one of her sons, the attempted suicide and nervous breakdown of another son and permanent exile of a third son.

The following May, Cromwell introduced a Bill of Attainder against her, which was hurriedly read. At the third reading Cromwell produced a white silk tunic found in one of her coffers, embroidered on the back with the Five Wounds. This connected her with the Northern Uprising. She was ‘attainted to die by Act of Parliament’ and also lost her titles. The other charges against her, to which she was never permitted to reply, had to do with the escape from England of her chaplain and the conveying of messages abroad. Margaret’s only chance of survival was utter submission to Henry’s will. “In addition, her dogged determination in the face of Henry’s growing disapproval might have been a manifestation of the resentment she felt, but never openly expressed,over the fate of her brother and her own impecunious circumstances following the death of her husband. Naturally, when she found herself in a position to regain her family’s lands, she felt justified, even duty-bound, to try and retain everything to which she believed was entitled.”[16] As she had done all her life before, putting common sense before emotional reasoning, this time she didn’t. Margaret had also underestimated the king. A bond of kinship meant nothing to a Tudor. After the passage of the Act of Attainder, the elderly Margaret was removed to the Tower, and for nearly two years was tormented by the severity of the weather and insufficient clothing. She remained stanch in the defense of herself and her sons, declaring, “that if ever it be found and proved, that she is culpable in any of those things, that she hath denied, that she is content to be blasmed in the rest of all the articles laid against her.”[17] Margaret’s long battle, was now lost and the earldom of Salisbury, was forfeited to the crown. Everything she had worked so hard to achieve was destroyed. In April, 1541, there was another insurrection in Yorkshire, and it was then determined to enforce without any further procedure the Act of Attainder passed in1539. In some sense her 1541 execution was the continuation by King Henry of his father’s program of eliminating possible contenders to the throne. Her son, Reginald Cardinal Pole, said that he would “…never fear to call himself the son of a martyr”. Margaret was the last victim of the Wars of the Roses to be executed at the command of a Tudor, by King Henry VIII, her first cousin’s son.

Endnotes:
[1] Piece, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 6
[2] Piece, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 13
[3] Piece, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 17
[4] Piece, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 12
[5] Chrimes, S. B., Henry VII, University of California Press, Berkeley and Lost Angeles, 1972, pg. 92
[6] Jones, Michael K. and Underwood, Malcolm G. The King’s Mother-Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, Cambridge University Press, New York, New York, 1992, Pg. 102-103
[7] Pierce, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 25
[8] Pierce, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 27
[9] Porter, Linda, The First Queen of England, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 2007, pg. 17
[10] Porter, Linda, The First Queen of England, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 2007, pg. 41
[11] Porter, Linda, The First Queen of England, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 2007, pg. 18
[12] Porter, Linda, The First Queen of England, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 2007, pg. 25
[13] Porter, Linda, The First Queen of England, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 2007, pg. 26
[14] Porter, Linda, The First Queen of England, St. Martin’s Press, New York, New York, 2007, pg. 92
[15] Pierce, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, Pg. 31
[16] Pierce, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 97
[17] Pierce, Hazel, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, Great Britain, 2003, pg. 137-138

THE QUESTIONABLE LEGEND OF HENRY WYATT

© Annette Carson 2011

From time to time the exploits of Sir Henry Wyatt (c.1460–1537) crop up in books, both fiction and non-fiction, for he was a fascinating character whose career encompassed espionage as well as military action and high office under the Tudors. Most writers, however, concern themselves mainly with grisly tales of imprisonment and torture in the cause of Henry VII, which grew to become Wyatt family legend. In recent years a flurry of interest was created by Hilary Mantel’s characterization of Wyatt in her novel Wolf Hall, and a biography by Nicola Schulman of his son, the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, has again rehearsed the same old legends. The true facts of Henry Wyatt’s capture and incarceration may never be known, having been buried under an accretion of myths over the years, but this article addresses some versions of the story that we can certainly clarify, and some we can probably debunk.* Valuable background for all this can be found in Agnes Conway’s Henry VII’s Relations with Scotland and Ireland, 1485–1498.[1]

The different versions of Henry’s story are too numerous to catalogue in all their glorious variety, but the most popular tales may be summarized thus:
1. He was imprisoned and tortured in the Tower of London for two years during the reign of Richard III, on account of his support for Henry Tudor. A particularly good story claims the two Henrys attended Eton College together! Languishing in his cell, he was saved from starvation by the generosity of a cat who brought him pigeons to eat.
2. His torture is usually described as one or more of the following: being racked; having horse-barnacles applied to his mouth; and being force-fed mustard and vinegar. Sometimes heated knives are mentioned. The barnacles were a hinged and toothed metal pinching instrument which seem to have been the equivalent of the modern twitch, a device used by farriers to curb a restive horse by gripping and squeezing its sensitive upper lip area.
3. He was supposedly interrogated by none other than Richard III, who personally oversaw his torture – a point which is of particular interest to this writer.

Some of these gaudy tales can actually be found in respectable books, even in a recent publication from The Royal Armouries.[2] There is no surviving account by Henry Wyatt himself, and – perhaps I should emphasize this – there are only two versions that are authentically derived from the Wyatt family’s own traditions, and they occur in the family’s letters and papers. This has been verified by reference to their descendants, the Earl and Countess of Romney, who confirmed that the entire collection of Wyatt family manuscripts known to them is held in the British Library. The MSS in which Henry’s story occurs comprise a substantial assembly of miscellaneous documents and although several extracts have been separately published, there exists no complete transcription or publication of the collection as a whole.[3] Therefore, in relation to the Henry Wyatt legend, this article now publishes the most extensive transcription of the relevant sections that can be found anywhere today.

The most useful document, thanks to its impeccable provenance, is actually not found in the Wyatt family papers. This is a letter written in April 1538 [4] by Henry Wyatt’s son, Thomas the Elder, addressed to his own son Thomas the Younger who had recently married. It contains advice to the young bridegroom, in support of which the laudable example of the boy’s grandfather, Henry, is extolled as a God-fearing man who earned the grace of God which ‘preseruid him in prison from the handes of the tirant that could find in his hart to see him rakkid, from two yeres and more prisonment in Scotland in Irons and Stoks, from the danger of sodeyn changes and commotions diuers, till that ... he went to him that louid him …’ etc.

The words here are ambiguous, and having been unable to inspect the letter itself, I cannot be certain whether this is the punctuation that appears in the original. That given here is taken from the two copies in later hands which are lodged in the British Library’s collections,[5] although some published versions add an extra comma.[6] What the letter makes perfectly clear, as supported by other evidence, is that Henry’s lengthy incarceration was not in the Tower of London but in Scotland. No suggestion of the Tower of London occurs in any Wyatt tradition until as late as 1702, and enquiries of the present Tower authorities have revealed no documentary record that he was ever there.[7] One would have expected to find some mention of a man who became such a celebrated Tudor figure, a leading courtier of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and one who was immortalized in old age by Hans Holbein the younger.

Less clear is the letter’s opening phrase about preservation ‘from the hands of the tyrant that could find in his heart to see him racked’, which can be read in more than one way. Was he saved by God from being subjected to the rack at the hands of this unnamed tyrant, whose heart was sufficiently hard to have contemplated applying such extreme measures? Or was he racked and God permitted him to survive the ordeal? If the latter – which is what seems generally assumed – several questions must be answered. Most importantly, why is it that, among all the family records of torture by barnacles, vinegar, mustard, etc., no document but this letter ever mentions the rack, that most feared and potentially lethal instrument?

Additionally, how many 15th-century places of incarceration were actually equipped with a rack? The device was unknown in these islands until the 1440s when it was introduced to the Tower of London, and indeed torture was illegal under common law in England unless performed by royal prerogative. We know of several persons who were imprisoned under Richard III, in the Tower and elsewhere, but I have yet to find any confirmed record of torture sanctioned by him.

While making no particular claims of expertise in Tudor English, I have always found the OED on Historical Principles enlightening on archaic usage. Looking under the verb ‘rack’, one can find instances in the 1570s–80s where it referred not only to literal racking (a practice freely used under the Tudors), but had also passed into general use as a term for being otherwise afflicted by physical pain or even mental stress. We still speak of being ‘racked’ in this way. Might Thomas have been using the word in its metaphorical sense?

With reference to the ‘tyrant’ – and the assumption that it refers to Richard III – even more questions are raised by the fact that this king never set foot in Scotland during his reign. We know Wyatt was ransomed and released from his Scottish prison only upon Henry VII’s accession in the autumn of 1485 (his earliest recorded grant of office was on 11 October);[8] so if he had been held there ‘two years and more’, when and where could he have fallen into the hands of Richard III? Can it have happened prior to his capture in Scotland in 1483?

Let us imagine that Wyatt was apprehended by the crown on a secret mission before that which took him to Scotland. Richard III assumed the throne on 26 June 1483, at which time Henry Tudor was in self-imposed exile in the custody of Duke Francis II of Brittany. Nothing is known of Wyatt’s early career – he was at this time in his early twenties, and came from an undistinguished Yorkshire background – but something must have drawn him into Tudor’s service. Perhaps he fell in with the faction that supported Edward V, the boy-king who was adjudged to be illegitimate and deposed, in place of whom Richard, as Protector, was petitioned to take the throne.

In the month of July, soon after his coronation, Richard began moving around the country on progress. Meanwhile Edward’s family were doing their best to whip up support for his restoration. A letter has survived from Richard III to his chancellor, written from Oxfordshire on 29 July, ordering a case to be tried in London which seems likely to have been an attempt to abduct Edward V and his brother from their royal lodgings in the Tower of London.[9] The perpetrators, who were executed, were said to have corresponded with the Tudor camp in Brittany – the first whiff of Henry Tudor’s opposition to Richard III. It is possible, therefore, that Wyatt might have been involved in this or something similar, perhaps bearing messages, but was he important enough to be racked? And if so, why did they set him free to carry out more intrigues? At any rate it is on record that Richard III was nowhere near at the time.

Henry Wyatt was fond of a good story, and his dashing exploits must have provided plenty of them. If he did have a brush with the authorities in the summer of 1483, my guess is he was apprehended on suspicion and warned by Richard III’s men, to frighten him off, that they would not hesitate to rack him if they thought he was fomenting rebellion. A lucky escape from the hands of the tyrant – and one that perhaps grew in the retelling – was a better tale than years spent rotting in a Scottish dungeon.

There seems no reason not to believe, however, that Henry was tortured with the barnacles, and the Wyatts made much of it in their family records and iconography. Possibly the instrument was employed to immobilize the poor man’s mouth while noxious substances were forced down his throat.

Moving on to the Wyatt papers, of which the relevant parts were compiled in 1727-31, we already find overlays of assumption and embellishment acquired through years of retelling. Our main source for Henry’s adventures lies in an individual document: ‘Passages taken out of a Manuscript wrote by Thomas Scott of Egreston in Godmersham Esquire concerning the family of Wyatt of Alington’. These ‘Passages’ were copied by Richard Wyatt in 1731, as he notes in his own hand.[10]

Richard Wyatt was a great-great-great-great-grandson of the famous Henry, so he was in no position to judge whether the tales he was copying were true. The document’s author, Thomas Scott, was Henry’s great-great-grandson, and although nothing is known of its provenance, we may guess at its date of writing from an anecdote it contains which derives from a publication of 1655.[11] It therefore appears that a gap of some 170 years has elapsed by the time it is committed to paper. Within the story of the cat and pigeons is interjected the comment ‘it was his own relation unto them from whom I had it’, and it has been surmised, probably from this and from two later references to ‘my grandfather’ within the narration (see below), that the stories were recounted to Thomas Scott by his grandmother, Mrs George Wyatt. But even this is open to question: Thomas’s grandmother should have referred to Henry as her (or her husband’s) great-grandfather, not grandfather. It may seem a small point, but if people of that time were not in the habit of stipulating the requisite number of ‘greats’, it would be rash to assign any particular identity to the narrator. Certainly Henry was dead by the time George, and probably his wife, were born.

In the intervening 170 years the Wyatts had experienced the best and worst of fortunes. Henry himself, from what appears to have been a modest family in a Yorkshire village, had risen high and grown rich in the service of Henry VII, being a councillor and entrusted with many commissions including military work, diplomacy, and acting as the king’s agent/spy throughout his reign, mainly in Scotland (he was also active in Ireland). Moving his home from Yorkshire to Kent, Wyatt purchased Allington Castle in 1492, where among his later visitors were Henry VII, Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII.

Under Henry VIII he enjoyed even higher office, was created Knight of the Bath at the coronation and knight-banneret at the Battle of the Spurs. In 1503 his son Thomas was born, and it was this Thomas, the poet, usually identified as Thomas the Elder, who first brought the king’s displeasure upon the family. Allington was a mere twenty miles from the home of the Boleyn family, and in 1536, at the time of Anne Boleyn’s downfall, Thomas was thrown into the Tower of London prior to being called as a witness in the case against her. This (presumed) association with the luckless Anne continues to fire the pens of writers, among them Hilary Mantel.

Not only did Thomas endure another brief sojourn in the Tower in 1561, but his son, Thomas the Younger, in his turn landed there with more serious consequences, having rashly followed in his grandfather’s footsteps by rebelling against his sovereign.[12] He was executed in 1554, and his attainder plunged the family into disgrace and poverty. This lasted until 1570 when they were restored in blood by Act of Parliament. His son George, obsessed with rebuilding the family’s status, wrote copiously and was almost certainly responsible for commissioning several famous portraits of the Wyatts.

By now it will be clear that by the mid 17th century, when Thomas Scott set down the tales of his forebears, a tone of vindication and rehabilitation prevailed. Here are the relevant extracts (with occasional slight modernization of punctuation and spelling).

The account starts by relating Henry’s virtues and Yorkshire ancestors, then continues: ‘Of this Yorkshire house Sir Henry Wyatt was a younger brother, and in his young years did put himself into the service of Henry the Earl of Richmond, afterwards King Henry the 7th. Never any servant in this world was more faithful and constant to his master, or did or suffered more for him. The wit of Morton the Archbishop and others did that King, and the whole Kingdom, and the whole Island, and the whole Christian and Western World, it now appears, and it will appear, I doubt not, the whole World of Man inestimable service. But neither was Sir Henry Wyatt’s council, nor his pains, adventures, courage and sufferance equalled by any.

‘He was imprisoned often, once in a cold and narrow Tower, where he had neither bed to lye on, nor cloathes sufficient to warm him, nor meat for his mouth. He had starved there, had not God, who sent a crow to feed his prophet, sent this and his Country’s martyr a cat both to feed and warm him. It was his own relation unto them from whom I had it. A cat came one day down into the dungeon unto him, and as it were offered herself unto him. He was glad of her, laid her in his bosom to warm him, and by making much of her won her love. After this she would come every day unto him divers times and, when she could get one, bring him a pigeon. He complained to his keeper of his cold and short fare. The answer was he durst not better it. But, said Sir Henry, if I can provide any, will you promise to dress it for me? I may well enough said he, you are safe for that matter; and being urged again, promised him and kept his promise, dressed for him from time to time such pigeons as his accator the cat provided for him. Sir Henry Wyatt in his prosperity for this would ever make much of cats, as other men will of their spaniels or hounds; and perhaps you shall not find his picture any where but, like Sir Christopher Hatton with his dog, with a cat beside him.’

There ensues a digression into the fidelity and service we receive from our animal friends, followed by examples of Henry’s prowess as a raconteur with more family anecdotes, one of which concerns a heart-stopping encounter with a lion which is said to have delighted Henry VIII. Further interpolated matter refers to the family’s heraldry, in which barnacles were introduced to replace the previous three boars’ heads, then the manuscript continues with Henry’s experiences as a prisoner. ‘Besides his imprisonments he was divers times put into divers kinds of tortures, among others with an instrument made like the smith’s barnacles. I know not what wrong they did unto him, that they might powre vinegar and mustard into his nostrils and head. In witness of this torment of Sir Henry Wyat in certain carpets of his which I have seen caused his arms there the image of the barnacles to be wrought, and ever afterwards … the true arms of the Wyats was laid aside and the three barnacles chosen.

‘One time after his torment, the Tyrant himself examined him, and joining flattery to furie, told him, saying Wyat why are thou such a foole? Thou servest for moonshine in the water. Thy master is a beggarly fugitive. Forsake him and become mine who can reward thee and, I swear unto thee, will. My grandfather’s [sic] answer was, Sir, if I had first chosen you for my master, thus faithful would I have been to you if you should have needed it; but the earl, poor and unhappy though he be, is my master, and no discouragement or allurement shall ever drive or draw me from him, by God’s grace. At this the Tyrant stood amazed, and turning to the Lords that stood about him, brake out into these words. Oh, how much more happy is that runaway Rogue in his extreme calamity than I in my greatest seeming prosperity. He hath a friend whom he may trust in his misery. I in this appearing happiness am unhappy only through the want of this happiness. Is there any one of you all, who will thus stick unto me, that is not already ready to leave me?

‘The Earl of Richmond anon after he was crowned king entertained my grandfather [sic] then coming out of imprisonment and affliction in Scotland, first with most gracious words unto himself, and then with this speech unto the Lords. Both I and you must bid this gentleman heartily welcome, had not he above human strength or example also shewed himself our constant friend, neither had I enjoyed now the crown nor you that peace and prosperity and honour which you now possess.’

A list of Wyatt’s outstanding qualities follows, and more anecdotes, all redounding to the credit of Henry and his family. Mistakenly, the writer assumes that Henry VII made him a knight-banneret (recte Henry VIII), ‘which is a higher title honour,’ he sniffs, ‘than that of our new baronets’.[13]

A further interesting reference to Sir Henry occurs later in the papers. ‘The most I can find relating to him,’ writes Richard Wyatt, ‘is on the monument in Boxley Church set up by my father.’ So we now know who was responsible for that misleading stone tablet, dated 1702, which contains the earliest known statement to the effect that Henry Wyatt was imprisoned in the Tower of London, something never suggested in the Wyatt papers.[14] Evidently Richard’s father, Edwin Wyatt, was less punctilious than his son in accurately preserving the family’s early history. Of the story of the cat, Richard Wyatt says he can find ‘no remains but his [Henry’s] picture and another of a cat, seemingly in the same hand-painting, with a pigeon in her claws delivering it at the grates of the dungeon with certain words relating the story. The painting seems old, though we have no account by whose hand done’.

The pictures to which Richard Wyatt refers are probably those which eventually came into the possession of the Earls of Romney, Wyatt’s descendants.[15] The picture of Henry (which is a copy of the Holbein portrait presently in the Louvre) was probably one of those family portraits estimated to have been commissioned by George Wyatt around 1600-1603.[16] The picture of the cat and pigeon was very likely painted about the same time. There is in existence, however, a third painting which Richard Wyatt does not mention and almost certainly never saw, although it has become rather well known. A combination of the two earlier pictures, it shows Henry in affluent old age, his elder-statesman figure as depicted by Holbein sitting incongruously against a background of dungeon and barred window while the caterer cat delivers his next meal. Underneath are the words relating the story, also reproduced in this third picture, which consist of two couplets, one in Latin and one in English.[17] The reason Richard Wyatt would not have seen this picture is because in the opinion of Sir Roy Strong it was not executed until the eighteenth century – and probably late in that century.[18]

The role of the cat need not long detain us: it would be nice to think it was true. A curious parallel exists with another cat bringing comfort to another prisoner, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In a portrait commissioned on his release in 1603 she is depicted with him in the Tower of London. It is tempting to think the George Wyatt painting may have been influenced by this, as they are roughly contemporaneous – but on the other hand, how safe was it to emulate Wriothesley, only recently emerging from prison at the start of a new and unpredictable reign?

Coincidence or not, it was then only a short step to assume that Henry Wyatt’s ‘cold and narrow tower’ was actually the Tower of London. Add the fact that Wyatt’s son and grandson were imprisoned there – and that Wyatt himself committed treason by supporting a rebel against his king – then the association with England’s most dread place of incarceration for traitors is complete. It had by now, of course, acquired its thoroughly horrid reputation under the Tudors.

The internet, as usual these days, has played a major part in disseminating the full gamut of Wyatt myths, in which connection it is disappointing to have to blame the Dictionary of National Biography whose 19th-century edition, currently available online, has him imprisoned in the Tower of London for two years by Richard III and ‘racked in Richard’s presence’.[19]

This much-quoted entry has been modified in the Oxford DNB of 2004, although too late to redress its widespread repetition which has reached, for example, the Wikipedia page for Henry Wyatt. This 2004 edition now interpolates a new element, stating that in 1483 ‘he probably participated in Buckingham’s unsuccessful revolt against Richard III’. There is no corroboration for this. One can only regret that the writer failed to consult Agnes Conway, who has shed considerable light on Wyatt’s activities on behalf of Henry VII in Scotland, and reveals a fascinating tale of espionage and intrigue which is well worth reading. She cites plenty of evidence relating to Wyatt’s activities as Henry’s agent, both before and after Bosworth. ‘In later years,’ she adds, ‘Wyatt, as a trusted royal official, frequented the Border in times of danger and kept Henry VII informed of what was going on.’

As for his incarceration, ‘It is possible,’ she writes, ‘that Wyatt, engaged on the Earl of Richmond’s business, had fallen into the hands of some Scottish baron with Yorkist sympathies, only to be released when Henry VII was securely on the throne, after a period of cruel imprisonment, and on the promise of a huge ransom.’ It is certainly true that a large ransom was paid: ‘Thirty years later Henry VIII renewed his father’s grant of £20 a year towards Wyatt’s ransom from the cruel hands of the Scots, because he was convinced that he had not yet been able to pay off the sum.’[20]

The above makes perfect sense. But the dramatic scene with Richard III must, I am sure, be apocryphal. Given Richard’s evil reputation, it is perhaps unsurprising that Henry Wyatt should have built a confrontation with ‘the tyrant’ into his exploits. Such a meeting was hardly likely in 1483, as we have seen, nor thereafter as Richard was never in Scotland. There is one last possibility – was Wyatt brought purposely from Scotland into his presence? The context, with Richard lamenting the infidelity of his supporters, belongs to the moralistic tradition, cultivated for dramatic effect by Shakespeare, that his dastardly deeds left him bereft, at the last, of friends and followers. But at the end of Richard’s reign, a derelict Wyatt after two years in a Scottish dungeon would scarcely have possessed intelligence meriting examination by a king, let alone torture on the rack.

Still, who can blame Henry Wyatt, after enduring all those travails, for adding embroidery to the tale – simultaneously boosting his own heroic role, and favourably contrasting the loyalty of Tudor’s followers with the perfidy of Richard’s?


FOOTNOTES
* Considerable appreciation must be expressed to Geoffrey Wheeler for supplying much of the material that made this article possible.
[1] Cambridge, 1932.
[2] B A Harrison, The Tower of London prisoner book: a complete chronology of the persons known to be detained at their majesties' pleasure, 1100-1941 (Leeds, 2004).
[3] The longest extracts previously published, although abridged and redacted, were printed by John Bruce in The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, June and September 1850.
[4] The year is given as 1537 in some sources, but this seems unlikely since Thomas’s letter contains two references to the death of his father, Henry, who died in November 1537.
[5] BL Add 32379 and BL Egerton 2711.
[6] Kenneth Muir, Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt, (Liverpool, 1963) pp. 38-41 – this publication adds a comma after the word ‘Scotland’ (acknowledgements to Dr Jason Powell, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, for locating this letter and other material).
[7] Ex informatio Dr S Dixon-Smith, Curator (Collections), Tower of London & Banqueting House, and B Clifford, Keeper of Collections (South) & Tower History.
[8] CPR HVII vol 1, 1485-94, p. 74 (thanks to Marie Barnfield for this reference).
[9] Annette Carson, Richard III: The Maligned King. (Stroud, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011), pp. 130-1.
[10] BL Add MSS 62135-62138. Relevant sections are in 62135 (2 vols), vol 2, ff. 359-369 and 456.
[11] David Loades, ed., The Papers of George Wyatt, Esquire (London, 1968), p. 4.
[12] Queen Mary Tudor and her Spanish marriage.
[13] A baronetcy (with origins dating back to the 14th century) is the only hereditary honour which is not a peerage. It ranks above all knighthoods except for the Garter and the Thistle. However, this comment undoubtedly refers to the revival of the Order of Baronets in 1611 which James I erected primarily as a money-raising exercise.
[14] The tablet, with the following inscription, appears on the north wall of the choir of Boxley church:
To the Memory of Sr HENRY WIAT of ALINGTON CASTLE
Knight Banneret descended of that Ancient family who was imprisoned and tortured in the TOWER in the reign of KING RICHARD the third kept in the Dungeon where fed and preserved by a Cat. He married ANN daughter of THOMAS SKINNER of SURREY Esqe was of the Privy Council to KING HENRY the Seventh and KING HENRY the Eighth and left one Son Sr THOMAS WIAT of ALINGTON CASTLE who was Esquire of the body to KING HENRY the Eighth and married ELIZABETH Daughter of THOMAS BROOKE Lord COBHAM and well known for Learning and Embasys in the reign of that KING Sr THOMAS WIAT of ALINGTON CASTLE his only Son married JANE younger Daughter of Sr WILLIAM HAWT of this COUNTY and was beheaded in the reign of QUEEN MARY Leaving GEORGE WIAT his only Son that Lived to Age who married JANE Daughter of Sr THOMAS FINCH of EASTWELL and KATHERINE his wife Restored in blood by act of Parliament of the 13th of QUEEN ELIZABETH
[15] Sir Sidney Lee, ed., Dictionary of National Biography (1885-1900), vol. 63, s.v. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1973 reprint p. 1098).
[16] Sir Roy Strong, ‘In search of Holbein’s Thomas Wyatt the Younger’, Apollo (March, 2006), p. 54.
[17] Hunc macrum, rigidum, maestum, fame, frigore, cura / Pavi, fovi, acui, carne, calorie, ioco 'This knight with hunger, cold and care, neere starv’d, parchid, pytid / Jollie Beast did feede, heale, cheere, with dyett, warmth and playe’.
[18] Personal correspondence with Sir Roy Strong, 20 July 2011.
[19] DNB (1885-1900, see note 15) and ODNB (2004), s.v. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder.
[20] Letters & Papers, Henry VIII, vol 2, 1515-18 (1864) pp. 227-388 (again thanks to Marie Barnfield).