Richard, Duke of Gloucester and the North

Michael Hicks

Richard III and the North (1986)

Richard III is the only northerner among our late medieval kings. It was because he was a northerner that he became king in the first place – because of the power-base that his northern retainers represented. His brother Edward IV died on 9 April 1483. No doubt it was predominantly men of the north who accompanied Richard from York to Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, where on 30 April he arrested the boy king Edward V, his uncle Earl Rivers, and his half-brother Richard Grey. Certainly it was to safe-custody in the north that Rivers and Grey were sent when Richard went on to London. Again, it was to northerners that he looked for help, summoning support from the city of York and Lord Neville on 10/11 June 1483.1 It was the northern leaders of this northern army who eliminated Rivers and Grey before marching south, and it was the threat of this northern army to London that permitted the peaceful usurpation of the throne on 26 June and coronation on 6 July following. Only after power was transferred and the military threat had receded could hostile southerners rebel and enlist the foreign support that made Richard’s rule so insecure. The loss of his original power-base – the desertion of key northern supporters – resulted in his defeat and death at Bosworth, scarcely two years after his accession. Finally, it was because he was a northerner, hated in the south, that he features so unfavourably in the history books, written after the event by southerners, and northern regret and nostalgia – if noticed at all – has merited only a footnote.2 I am not concerned here with Richard’s posthumous reputation or with the reasons for his defeat, but with the northern power-base which made his reign possible and which he created during the years 1471-83, between the ages of 19 and 31.

[smartads]

I started off by saying that Richard was a “northern” king, but what did I mean? He was not qualified by birth for Yorkshire, nor indeed Lancashire or Minor Counties North, though he had a birth qualification for Northants. Admittedly his father was duke of York, lord of Wakefield, Sandal and Conisbrough, but he was also earl of March in Wales, earl of Ulster in Ireland, lord of Clare in East Anglia, Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire and many other places besides. His mother Cecily – the “Rose of Raby” – came of a good northern family but was married as a child and never – as far as we know – revisited her parental home. York’s death at Wakefield was almost his only visit to the north in the last twenty years of his life. The young Richard, born at Fotheringhay, resided with his mother, probably mainly at Ludlow in the Welsh borders, until 1459. Following the accession of his eldest brother Edward IV in 1461, he was established in a tower at Greenwich palace, emerging occasionally on forays as far afield as Canterbury and Leicester, but not to the north. From 1465 he was in the household of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, a great northern magnate, but great also in Wales and the West Midlands. It is at Warwick and Stratford that his presence is recorded, not at Middleham or Sheriff Hutton, though he may have accompanied the earl there too: certainly he was at or near York in 1468-9.3 Declared of age, though only 17, Richard was among those who met Edward in the north on his release by Warwick in 1469 and missed the Lincolnshire campaign next spring only because he was at Hornby Castle in Lancashire. In July 1470 he apparently helped suppress Lord Fitzhugh’s Richmondshire rebellion.4 Such northern affiliations may explain the presence in 1471 in his retinue (and perhaps in his household) of Thomas Parr and Thomas Huddleston, two cadets of prominent Cumbrian families.5 Even so, Richard was not a fully fledged northerner in 1471: he was not normally resident in the north and probably spoke not a northern dialect, but with a southern or even Welsh intonation. Although two northern saints, St Ninian and St Cuthbert, attracted his particular devotions, he still preferred the Use of Salisbury current in the south to the Use of York.6 His status as a northerner came fortuitously: only later, it seems, did the north become the place where Richard felt most at home and where he stayed, so Mancini states, in preference to life at court.7

Richard’s title, duke of Gloucester, does not reveal his true inclinations. It had been borne by two earlier royal dukes and was thus suitable for a royal prince. The alternative titles were duke of Clarence, given to an elder brother, and duke of Bedford. The title of Gloucester was simply allotted to the king’s brother, then a boy of 9, and he never owned much in Gloucestershire to back it up or to induce him to visit the place. Richard was a younger son without hereditary expectations, dependent from 1461 on what his brother king Edward IV would give him. Since he was a mere boy, he could not actually hold lands himself. Much of what he was theoretically given was speedily taken away, as political priorities dictated: lands confiscated from the duke of Somerset, Lord Hungerford, the earl of Oxford and others flowed in and out of his hands and then back in again.8 Only in 1469, out of Warwick’s custody, did the king assign him worthwhile property and a role in Wales, in lieu of powerful permanent interests, but nothing substantial came of that.9

Back from exile in 1471, then aged 19, Richard had almost nothing of his own and the time had clearly come for him to have a fresh start. He was now old enough to be useful to his royal brother. His former responsibilities had been in Wales and Cheshire, but Edward now had other plans for these. An obvious gap, however, had been created in the north, as Richard’s erstwhile guardian Warwick had suffered defeat, death and the forfeiture of his possessions. The earl had been warden of the West March towards Scotland, responsible for the defence of Carlisle and the Cumbrian borders, and Richard was appointed as his successor in 1470.10 The office of warden carried with it a substantial salary, but all previous wardens had needed to supplement this from their own pockets. To enable Gloucester to do so too, the king also gave him the late earl’s northern lands, which provided the necessary resources to support his military role as well, of course, as for his later usurpation of the crown. In 1471, however, all was uncertain. Other outsiders had been wardens for a while and had then gone away. It must have been far from obvious that Richard had come to stay, that he could make a go of it, still less that he would be as successful as he ultimately proved to be.

From these small beginnings, the build-up of Gloucester’s power was continuous and rapid. Already warden of the West Marches, he became keeper of the northern forests, chief steward of the duchy of Lancaster in northern England, constable of Bewcastle, sheriff of Cumberland for life, justice of the peace in all the northern counties, in 1482 lieutenant of the north and commander-in-chief against the Scots and in 1483 hereditary warden of the West March.11 As far as his lands were concerned, he started off in 1471 with Warwick’s lordships of Middleham in Wensleydale, Sheriff Hutton north of York, Penrith in Cumberland, and the numerous manors that were their appurtenances. These cannot be valued precisely, but Middleham alone was worth about £1,000, which was more than the minimum income for an earl and more certainly than the income of any other northern lord except the earl of Northumberland. To these he added the castles and lordships of Barnard Castle in County Durham in 1474; Scarborough, also in 1474; Skipton-in-Craven in 1475; and Richmond and Helmsley in 1478. His crowning glory came in 14831 when the king gave him the whole of Cumberland as a county palatine for himself and his heirs.12 Add to this the favours obtained from other sources, notably the stewardship of the archbishop of York’s lordship of Ripon, and one can see how it was that Richard rose so rapidly to dominance.13 Every tidbit, office or property, that became available was added to his store. There is a certain inevitability to the process – an inevitability that suggests that it was part of a plan that was steadily put into effect – and that the planner was the king, whose co-operation was required at every stage. Perhaps it was planned, but if so the planner was Richard himself, not his brother king Edward IV.

In 1471 Richard still held his Beaufort and Hungerford lands in the south, which he supplemented, and the king added almost all the property accrued by the forfeiture of his opponents defeated in 1471. Richard received not only Warwick’s northern lands, but those of the earl of Oxford and others in East Anglia and eastern England – almost all, in fact, of what the king had available to give.14 Gloucester’s lands, like those of other magnates, were scattered all over England, in fifteen or more counties, and his landed interests were by no means concentrated in the north. We do not know what income Edward thought appropriate for his younger brother – £1,000 had been the endowment given to Richard II’s uncles when they were made dukes 15 – and certainly, Gloucester had been given more than that, even before he supplemented his brother’s gifts with the inheritance of his wife. From 1471, it seems, Edward felt he had fulfilled his responsibilities to his brother, had given him enough, and there were no more unconditional gifts of land. Gloucester’s concentration of resources in the north occurred because he wanted it and was prepared to pay for it, not because he could count on the sustained and open-handed support of his royal brother.

Our starting point must be with the grant of 29 June 1471 of Warwick’s lordships of Middleham, Sheriff Hutton and Penrith and their members, which were not identified in the patent. At first sight there is little difference between this patent and the one that superseded it a fortnight later, on 14 July following. Apart from the three lordships, the king included, somewhat vaguely, “all other lordships, manors and lands in those counties which were entailed to Richard Neville, late earl of Warwick and the heirs male of his body or any ancestor whose heir male he was.”16 The patent appears only to add entailed lands yet to be inherited by Warwick from his Neville ancestors, of which there were surely none, and maybe this was how Edward understood it. Perhaps Edward thought he was conceding only shadowy reversionary rights that might never materialise anyway. Was Gloucester therefore being unduly optimistic or was he ignorant of what might reasonably accrue? I don’t think he was. This change in the patent gave him not just possession of Warwick’s hereditary lordships, but titles to all other properties that Warwick had held in tail male in these counties. These included the possessions of forfeited Lancastrians. His second grant gave Gloucester claims which, in the right circumstances, might have been turned into outright possession.

Similarly by marrying Warwick’s younger daughter Anne, he was able to secure more of the late earl’s property than his brother the king had originally intended conceding. It included Barnard Castle itself and several Yorkshire manors, including Cottingham on the outskirts of Hull.17 On 20 June 1472 Richard secured the custody of almost all the king’s miscellaneous rights in Cumberland: the subsidies and duties, except woolfells, wools and hides in Cumberland and Carlisle, the royal sturgeon in Cumberland, rights of pasture of oxen in Brademeadow, various other pastures, the fishery of the River Eden, all demesne lands in Carlisle, the sheriff’s net in the fishery of Eden, and various enclosures in Inglewood, all for a farm of £46 17s.8d. On 18 February 1475 he added the shrievalty of Cumberland for life at a farm of £100, but on 20 July following he was granted all issues from the sheriff’s farm, the demesnes of Carlisle, the fisheries and ‘all the other rents and farms rendered to the king within the county for f100 a year, except the enclosures in Inglewood which he rented separately. That he hoped to make more of these too is suggested by the presence in his commonplace book of an inquisition and perambulation of the forest dating from the reign of Edward III.18 Was Richard responsible in part for the state of Inglewood in 1487, when the trees and game had disappeared and it had come to consist entirely of enclosures?

Similarly Scarborough was not a free gift, but was bought by Richard in exchange for Chesterfield, Bushey and Ware, which were coveted by the king. Skipton was not obtained free of charge, but was exchanged for the lordship of Chirk in Wales. Richmond, Helmsley and Harome were not obtained unconditionally, but were exchanged for the outlying castles of Corfe in Dorset, Farleigh Hungerford in Somerset, and Sudeley in Gloucestershire.19 Gloucester wanted these properties, perhaps for strategic as much as other reasons, but he had to pay for them, had to offer in exchange properties which the other party wanted, and it is by no means obvious that the balance of value was always to his advantage. Even the Cumberland palatinate is ambiguous, since the king gave up his rights and property, most of which Gloucester already enjoyed, in return for the duke taking on responsibilities for defence, which were likely to have been more expensive.20 Add to this the fact that in 1473 Edward and his council intervened to ensure the independence of the earl of Northumberland from Gloucester and to place limits on the duke’s influence and it appears that Gloucester’s dominance in the north resulted from his own efforts, not from any prior plan by the king. Admittedly, once Gloucester was “Lord of the North”, Edward found him a convenient agent and confirmed his power. He did not see him as a threat – Gloucester had been loyal, as we are too often told – and it was not the duke that Edward on his death bed saw as a potential source of division and strife.

During Edward IV’s second reign, 1471-83, politics was unusually decentralised and certain regions became distinct spheres of influence for powerful interests, each enjoying at least tacit support from the court. In Wales the queen’s family, the Wydevilles, took control; in the North Midlands perhaps Lord Hastings, the king’s chamberlain; and in Lancashire and Cheshire the Stanleys, including Thomas lord Stanley, the king’s steward. The north that Gloucester dominated was thus the border counties – conventionally Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland and County Durham – and Yorkshire, by far the largest, most prosperous, most populous and most important of the northern shires. Within this area, Gloucester held no land at all in Northumberland or Westmorland, precious little in Durham, and even in Yorkshire and Cumberland he held only a fraction of the total. In Northumberland and Cumberland he took second place as landowner to the earl of Northumberland, in Durham he came second to the bishop, the cathedral priory, and the earl of Westmorland; in Yorkshire he had less land than the duke of Lancaster – his brother the king – the archbishop, and doubtless others as well. Where his lands were concentrated, he was the greatest landlord, but he could claim to be the principal landholder in no single shire. Yet dominate he did: his power extended far beyond the boundaries of his estates to take in the whole region. This was only possible because of:

1 ) his large retinue – the men of the north;

2) the traditional loyalties that sanctified his tenure;

3) his military authority as royal representative in the north.

With such assets, he was more than a substantial landholder and established a genuinely regional hegemony.

The power of the nobility in 15th-century England is to be measured in terms of men – the men whose support they could command in peacetime and ultimately in war. At the core of the retinue was the nobleman’s household or family, as it was seen. The nobleman was head of this family and members of the family – his household servants – were bound to him by particularly intimate ties. Their fidelity was expected to be all the greater. To kill one’s master was not murder, but treason. The second element of the retinue was the lord’s tenants, the anonymous rank and file of his private army, and his estate officers, generally gently born. Thirdly, a retinue contained what historians have called extraordinary retainers – aristocrats of standing and independent means, who had entered the service of the lord and would bring their household and tenants with them in time of war. Without surviving accounts, we know little about the composition of Gloucester’s household (probably a hundred strong) beyond the names of his secretary John Kendall, his treasurer and a few others and we know little about his lordships of Penrith, Barnard Castle or Sheriff Hutton. For Middleham, however, we have accounts for 1473-4 supplemented by evidence from Richard’s reign, which have been exploited successively by Gladys Coles and by Tony Pollard, whose book on the north is eagerly expected.21 The lordship made Gloucester the dominant figure in north-west Yorkshire, the natural lord of all the gentry. His estates offered niches – posts of honour, profit and authority – for gentry great and small, ranging from Sir John Conyers, the steward, down to the numerous members of the Metcalfe family, who acted as bailiffs, foresters and in other menial capacities. Much of the income from the estate went in fees to other local gentry, who were bound in his service, – Burghs, Markenfields, Pudseys and Clervaux, for example – and these were bound together not just by common service to a common lord, as Dr. Pollard has shown, but also by marriage, neighbourhood and common interest.22 Everyone who mattered in Richmondshire was bound to the duke, directly or indirectly, and could scarcely escape being so. Middleham, we believe, was exceptional in geographical extent, in revenues, and hence in the size of the retinue it supported, but we may assume that other retainers were attached in the same way to other estates, such as John Hutton of Hutton John and Richard Ratcliffe to those in Cumberland.

On paper, therefore, Gloucester could call on the services of a large and concentrated affinity. But could he count on it in practice? We need to remember here that many retainers served several lords (did Richard have priority?); that they had their own private interests, perhaps conflicting with their lord’s; and that loyal service depends to a considerable extent on trust, which can only be built up over time. To have many retainers is of little value if they cannot be counted upon. There can be no easy answer to these questions, both because we cannot know precisely how most of them acted and because we cannot know in detail all their other loyalties. But some tentative answers are possible.

Gloucester was an outsider and lord in the north for only twelve years. Moreover, many of his retainers – at Middleham, for example – had supported Warwick’s rebellions in 1469-71 and had been defeated by armies in which Gloucester had featured prominently. Many fellow retainers had been killed. Here, surely, were grounds for resentment not trust. But Gloucester let bygones be bygones – did not let former rebellions stand in the way of service to himself and may well have saved such retainers from attainder in 1472-5. Moreover, he married Warwick’s daughter Anne, and thus converted himself from an interloper into lord by inheritance, the natural lord by direct descent from Warwick and the long line of earlier Nevilles back into the 12th century. Gloucester, like his brother Clarence at Warwick, consciously fostered Neville tradition, drawing on the fund of loyalty and service built-up among his tenants and retainers over many generations.23 Following in the footsteps of other great families, such as the earls of Westmorland at Staindrop and the dukes of York at Fotheringhay, he planned to found colleges at Middleham and Barnard Castle, to act as a mausoleum for his family, as sources of spiritual support, and to reinforce the identification of himself and his family with his lordships as the natural lords. He fostered the economic development of Middleham by securing from the crown the right to hold two fairs there each year.24 Apparently all this worked. He came to be seen as heir, so that in 1484 his retainers could assert – and Richard accept – that his power as king depended on his marriage to Anne Neville.25 Richmondshire retainers were so enmeshed with their lords over many generations and so involved in their lord’s designs that the separation of their interests was not ordinarily practicable.

Richard’s concentration of power made him dominant not just on his estates and their immediate environs; it made him a weighty figure throughout the West Riding, where his retainers dominated the commission of the peace, and at county level too, where they were frequently sheriffs. It may well be, as Miss Arnold has argued, that Gloucester did not put them there – that they became JPs and sheriffs as leaders of their local communities – but it tells us something of Gloucester’s importance that men of this standing should have entered his service.26 Service was honourable and Gloucester – a royal prince and head of a great northern house – was a man whom people wanted to serve. Not just those around Middleham, but those further afield, like Gerard Salvan in County Durham,27 and even those with their own patron, the retainers of the Percies.28 And greater men even than this – the lesser nobility of the north. Not just the two Lords Scrope, near neighbours to Middleham, not just Lord Dacre in the West March, Lord Greystoke and Lord Lumley’s heir, but also the earls, Northumberland and Westmorland.29 Surely there could be no conflict of interest between different loyalties, if everyone served Gloucester.

Yet the quality of service depends on the quality of lordship. Gloucester could reward his servants, could intercede on their behalf with the king, and features frequently as arbiter among all conditions of men. The duties involved in service for domestics and gentry were clearly defined, whether or not the contract was spelt out in an indenture. Contracts between the great were vaguer: as Professor Dunham once remarked, such agreements could mean everything or nothing. Noblemen took service with Richard in preference to the alternatives – because it offered better opportunities for advancement, because it was preferable to rivalry. Because Lord Dacre served Richard, he was given income and military responsibilities otherwise denied him;30 because Northumberland indented with Gloucester, he was relieved of the expensive necessity of competing for retainers, the need to defend his essential interests as he must, and he could rebuild Percy power and exercise his authority without interference in the traditional Percy strongholds of Northumberland and the East Riding.31 Northumberland based himself at Leconfield, just north of Beverley, and at Wressle, near Selby. One can readily understand his concern when Richard established himself at Cottingham and the city of York showed itself prepared to accept his rule. Agreement with the duke reduced tension for Northumberland, just as it did for the earl of Westmorland, whose longstanding hereditary quarrel with the duchess of Gloucester’s family was finally patched up.32 As property-holders, lords had much to lose from any quarrel and their interests were better served by peaceful coexistence. Gloucester was more powerful with the lords as retainers, as his agents in their own country, than as rivals, and they in turn drew on his patronage. There were frictions, of course, which could have boiled up into conflict, but these were apparently contained. Gloucester and Northumberland, for example, acted together, arbitrating disputes, and avoided being drawn as partisans into the quarrels of their tenants.33

Retinues, we are often told, existed mainly for peacetime use, but we cannot tell what they did on a day-to-day basis, as only wartime normally generates adequate records. Gloucester, however, was responsible also for the West March, undertaking diplomacy, administering martial law, and seeing to the defences. He supplied and garrisoned the Marches at royal expense, offering the opportunities for service and promotion to his retainers. Lord Dacre and Sir William Parr, for example, were his lieutenant wardens, John Huddleston his undersheriff.34 The military aspects of service obviously featured more prominently in the north than elsewhere and indeed there were more extraordinary retainers in the north precisely for this reason. The period of preparation from 1471-80 was followed in 1480-3 by war with the Scots, which culminated in the successful invasion of 1482, when Edinburgh was occupied and Berwick captured. Richard was then king’s lieutenant, commander-in-chief of the whole north, Stanley and Northumberland were his divisional commanders, and the other northern magnates and gentry were in his army. Twice, in 1481 and 1482, their companionship in arms was celebrated by the creation of knights. Gloucester dubbed many of his own men knights bachelor, but it was as commander-in-chief, with overriding authority, that he promoted retainers of others as well as of himself to be knights banneret.35 It was an impressive display of unity against a common foe – the traditional enemy of the northcountryman – and it confirms how successfully Gloucester had overcome the rifts existing ten years earlier. It also reveals how triumphantly he had overcome the personal obstacles that apparently faced him in 1471.

Thus in 1483 Gloucester could command the committed support of the whole of the north. To what end? Certainly for local politics. Certainly against the Scots. But to usurp the throne? At first sight this may appear a silly question, because they did. The northerners did dispose of Rivers and Grey, march south, overawe London, and thus permit Richard’s peaceful accession. Because Richard’s enemies in London were frightened into quiescence, the northern army did not have to do anything. Yet the army assembled before Richard moved to the throne and the city of York believed its contingent was to support the duke of Gloucester as Protector of Edward V against Wydeville plotters.36 Before going south, Richard had presided over the ceremonial pledging of allegiance to the new king Edward V.37 When he summoned the army, he was head of the government. Some may have known his ultimate intentions, but the rank and file did not expect to share in a revolution. The misappropriation of loyal armies was nothing new in the Wars of the Roses. Rebel leaders had to overcome a strong reluctance among all classes to break the bonds of allegiance. They found that recruiting was easier if they posed as loyal subjects or (still better) could produce royal commissions as authority. In 1469 Warwick and in 1471 Edward IV recruited loyal subjects whom they turned against the government of the day; a similar attempt in 1470 failed because potential recruits doubted the commanders’ loyalty. Because the northern army involuntarily contributed to the usurpation, it does not necessarily mean that the army approved of Richard’s usurpation or fought for him from choice. The unity of the north under his command against the Scots in 1482 was consistent with its prior duty of allegiance and was quite different from the usurpation of the following year. We should not assume that in twelve short years Richard had supplanted the king’s claim to northerners’ allegiance. For Professor Kendall, Gloucester was “Lord of the North”, but was he ever in practice more than the king’s lieutenant?38

In the last thirty years Ricardian apologists have earned our gratitude by forcing us to scrutinize the chronicles more closely. We have become aware of, and cautious of, biases in the sources that our predecessors did not recognise, we have become conscious of Tudor propagandists and hostile southerners, and our understanding of the period has been immeasurably enriched. But the polarization of north and south, presented so convincingly by Dr Pollard,39 has caused us to suppose that Richard enjoyed the support of all northerners, that all felt as enthusiastic about him as Bishop Langton and the York city council.40 We casually assume that those who continued resistance to Henry VII after Richard’s death were representative of northern opinion at large. However, not all northerners did support him. As Professor Palliser shows, there were differences of opinion even within York.41 Among the four devoted supporters of Edward V whom Richard neutralised on 13 June 1483, three – the Yorkshiremen Lord Hastings and Archbishop Rotherham and the Lancastrian Lord Stanley – were northerners. Stanley never supported Richard politically, in 1483 or 1485, and his hostility marks a major crack in the unity among the companions of arms of 1482. As in the 1460s,42 those who fought on after 1485 were a minority of extremists, bound by ties of personal friendship and loyalty to the dead king. Such men were always few in number, were fewer still after Bosworth, and only among such men could Richard ever have inspired the considerable loyalty that treasonable conspiracy requires. For most northerners there was life after Richard. Had any northerner troubled to write a history, we should not presume that Richard would have featured as the hero, as the creator of a fleeting unity for the north, or, indeed, that he would have featured as a northerner at all.

End Notes

1. York Civic Records (YCR) I ed A. Raine, Yorkshire Archaeological Soc. record series 98 (1938) pp.73-4; The Paston Letters AD 1422-1509 ed J. Gairdner (6 vols, 1904) VI pp.71-2.

2. But no more: see David Palliser, “Richard III and York”, Richard III and the North, ed. Rosemary Horrox (Hull, 1986) p.51-51.

3. M.A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence (Gloucester, 1980) pp.14-15, 21-6; Palliser, “Richard III and York”. As no returns survive of the York commission of February 1467 cited by Professor Palliser, we cannot tell whether Gloucester was present in person or not.

4. P.M. Kendall, Richard the Third (1955) p.77; ‘Grant from Richard, Duke of Gloucester to Reginald Vaughan. 10 Edw.IV’, Archaeologia Cambrensis 3rd ser.9 (1863) p.55; C.D. Ross, Richard III (1981) p.18.

5. C.D. Ross, ‘Some “Servants and Lovers” of Richard in his Youth’, The Ricardian 4 (1976) pp.3-4.

6. Palliser, “Richard III and York”; J. Raine, ‘Statutes ordained by Richard Duke of Gloucester for the College of Middleham’, Archaeological Journal 14 (1857) pp.161-70, espec.161, 164.

7. D. Mancini, Usurpation of Richard III ed C.A.J. Armstrong (Oxford, 1969) p.63. In fifteen recorded Garter Chapters in 1477-82, Richard was present only five times, in 1472, 1473, 1474, 1476 and 1481: J. Anstis, Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (2 vols, 1724) II pp.186-212.

8. For the Somerset lands see M.K. Jones, ‘Edward IV and the Beaufort Family: conciliation in early Yorkist politics’, The Ricardian 6 (1983) pp.258-65, espec. 258, 261; for the Hungerford lands, see my forthcoming paper, ‘Piety and Lineage in the Wars of the Roses: the Hungerford experience’.

9. Kendall pp.78-9 and note; Hicks, Clarence pp.55-6; Ross, Richard III pp.15-17.

10. He was first appointed in August 1470: Ross, Richard III p.18.

11. R. Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster I (1953) p.493; CPR 1467-77 pp.338, 556, 610, 624, 635-8; ibid 1476-85 p.205; Rot Parl VI p.204.

12. Hicks, Clarence pp.113, 151, 213; CPR 1467-77 pp.260, 507, 549; Rot Parl VI pp.204-5; A.J. Pollard, The Middleham Connection (Middleham, 1983) p.1.

13. CPR 1467-77 p.346.

14. Ibid p.297.

15. J.E. Powell and K. Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (1968) p. 395.

16. CPR 1467-77 pp.260, 266.

17. Hicks, Clarence p.213.

18. CFR 1471-85 no 116; CPR 1467-77 pp.485, 556; BL Cotton Julius BXII ff.211-17v, 222v-4.

19. CPR 1467-77 pp.505, 549; ibid 1476-85 p.90; Rot Part VI p.101.

20. Apart from the items discussed below, Gloucester already held the lands of the duchy of Lancaster, see above; BL Cotton Julius BXII ff.119v-120; Rot Parl VI pp.204-5. For what follows see Hicks, ‘Dynastic Change and Northern Society: the career of the fourth earl of Northumberland’, Northern History 14 (1978) pp. 83-4.

21. G.M. Coles, ‘The Lordship of Middleham’ (unpublished Liverpool MA thesis, 1961 ) appendix B; Pollard, Middleham Connection passim.

22. Pollard, Middleham Connection pp.5-16; ‘The Richmondshire Community of Gentry during the Wars of the Roses’ in Patronage, Pedigree and Power ed C.D. Ross (Gloucester, 1979) pp.37-59.

23. Hicks, Clarence p.196.

24. CPR 1476-85 pp.67, 154

25. Hicks, ‘Descent, Partition and Extinction: the “Warwick Inheritance”‘, BIHR 52 (1979) p.125.

26. C. Arnold, ‘The Commission of the Peace for the West Riding of Yorkshire’ in Property and Politics in the Later Middle Ages ed A.J. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984) pp.116-38, espec.126. One also wonders who put them into the offices that qualified them for places on the commission.

27. R. Surtees, History and Antiquities of the County of Durham (4 vols, 1816-40) IV pp.114-5.

28. Notably John Widdrington: Hicks, ‘Dynastic Change’ p.83.

29. Ibid p.89; L. Attreed, ‘An Indenture between Richard Duke of Gloucester and the Scrope Family of Masham and Upsall’, Speculum 58 (1983) pp.1018-21.

30. He was Richard’s lieutenant warden of the West March: Hicks, ‘Dynastic Change’ p.85.

31. Ibid pp.84-9.

32. Hicks, ‘Warwick Inheritance’ p.124.

33. Hicks, ‘Dynastic Change’ p.88.

34. List of Sheriffs (PRO Lists and Indexes 9, repr. 1963) p.27; PRO E 404/75/3/63; Hicks, ‘Dynastic Change’ p.85.

35. Hicks, ‘Dynastic Change’ pp.103-4.

36. YCR I pp.73-4; but the city council may not have been altogether convinced, as Professor Palliser suggests in “Richard III and York”.

37. Ross, Richard III pp.70-1.

38. ‘The Lord of the North’ is the title of Kendall’s third chapter.

39. A.J. Pollard, ‘North, South and Richard III’, The Ricardian 5 (1981) pp.384-9.

40. Christchurch Letters, ed. J.B. Sheppard, Camden Society new series, 19 (1877) p.46. For York, see Palliser, “Richard III and York”.

41. Palliser, “Richard III and York”.

42. See e.g. my “Edward IV, the Duke of Somerset, and Lancastrian Loyalism in the North”, Northern History 20 (1984) pp.23-36.