Henry VII and the Tower of London: the context of the ‘confession’ of Sir James Tyrell in 1502* (2024)

Abstract

The circ*mstances of the alleged confession by Sir James Tyrell to the murder of the ‘princes in the Tower’ have been thrown into sharp focus by recent publications. The account of Tyrell’s admission given in Thomas More’s History of King Richard III (which bases an account of the murder of the princes, by Miles Forest and John Dighton at Tyrell’s instance, on the latter’s alleged confession while he was imprisoned for treason in 1502) has previously been viewed with varying degrees of scepticism. Written about three decades after the events of 1483, More’s History has been analysed as a powerful piece of literature and political philosophy, but its reliability as a historical source for the events it apparently describes has been extensively questioned. Recently, however, these judgements have been reconsidered in the light of the discovery that More was in close touch with the sons of one of the men he alleged had carried out the murder for Tyrell.1

It has long been recognized that there is no direct evidence for the confession, or even for the presence in the Tower of one of those accused and said by More to have confessed with Tyrell, John Dighton.2 The surviving records of the process against Tyrell refer only to charges of treason in relation to Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, and there is, for example, no record for a process relating to the allegations about the princes in the Baga de Secretis record, which offers insight into other high-profile treason cases.3 It is therefore particularly important to consider the circ*mstances around the time, location and occasion of the alleged confession. This is prompted in part by the suggestions of some of those most sceptical of the confession that Henry’s presence in the Tower of London at the time was not unusual and cannot be read as implying anything about his possible interest and involvement in events there. Such views have the authority of Polydore Vergil to rely upon, since he indicated of Henry’s visit in 1494–5 that the Tower was one of his ‘frequent residences’.4 The general view of the role of the Tower as, among other things, a royal palace and fortress (as well as a mint, storehouse, armoury and prison) has tended to see Henry’s reign as one of continued active use, before a decline in activity there and certainly of immediate royal residence and interest in development over the ‘Tudor’ century.5 This is in some ways a further approach to the significance of royal itineraries, which has been increasingly well recognized in recent decades. Evidence that survives from the time of King John and later has allowed for the compilation of itineraries, and there have been several important publications of itineraries with analysis, especially for the kings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.6 As well as evidence for the road and river networks themselves, the itineraries have been drawn into, for example, discussion of King John’s exercise of piety and Richard II’s relationship with the city of York.7 Here the focus is not so much on the wider realm, but rather on Henry’s choices of residence in and around London itself, and their implications.8

We are now fortunate in having extensive studies of Henry’s itinerary and its context.9 These use sources such as household account books, John Heron’s chamber accounts, exchequer warrants and some of the signet warrants found in subsidiary files for the business of the chamber. With the help of itineraries constructed from these raw materials, it is possible to consider the suggestion that Henry was a frequent visitor to the Tower, and in particular whether this was the case in 1502 and in immediately preceding and succeeding years. These studies demonstrate that it was extremely unusual for Henry to spend time in the Tower in the first fifteen years of his reign. When he did so, it was generally associated with a particular ceremonial occasion, or with action against a high-profile traitor or rebellion. Lisa Ford, in her St. Andrews Ph.D. dissertation of 2001, observed on the basis of a detailed reconstruction of the king’s itinerary that Henry was usually outside London in the months from July to October each year, although he might be as close as Greenwich or Richmond – which, along with Westminster, were his favourite choices of residence – or further afield at Woodstock, Windsor or Kenilworth.10 Henry developed a pattern of meeting his ‘plenary’ council during law terms, and specifically mainly at All Hallows or All Saints, for a meeting of the Great Council at Westminster.11 Outside the months spent further afield, Henry operated in and around the capital. While it must be acknowledged that the full pattern of royal business transacted at particular locations remains incomplete, it is nonetheless clear that, in spite of Henry’s tendency to spend time in and around London, the Tower did not feature heavily in this regular pattern of activity.

Henry’s first visit to the Tower of London as king occurred in 1485, on 28–30 October, coinciding with his coronation (30 October). He is not then recorded as visiting again until 23–7 November 1487, a period that again closely coincided with a coronation, this time that of his queen, Elizabeth of York (25 November).12 And that visit is followed by a still longer absence, until May 1494.13 In the first nine years of his reign, therefore, Henry spent very few days at the Tower, and across only three separate visits.

When Henry returned to the Tower later that year, in December 1494, it was as part of the sequence of events that led up to the arrest and execution of Sir William Stanley, his chamberlain. The man who informed on Sir William, Robert Clifford, had his pardon recorded on 22 December 1494. It is on 15 December that Henry is evidenced as present at the Tower, and he seems to have been there until about 23 December, and then to have spent Christmas at Greenwich. He returned to the Tower on 7 January 1495, remaining there until 27 or 28 January; Stanley was tried on 6–7 February and executed on 16 February. Polydore Vergil explained that the king moved to the Tower to allow for Stanley’s arrest in secure surroundings while not arousing suspicions, and this suggestion has been picked up particularly by Ian Arthurson and Ann Wroe in their accounts of Stanley’s treason and Perkin Warbeck. Arthurson is very sceptical of Vergil’s suggestion, based on his view that Henry had been aware of Stanley’s treason for many months. But that awareness in itself does not remove the need for a stratagem like this in the face of an unsuspecting but personally very powerful chamberlain.14 This episode also provides direct evidence of Henry’s willingness to question his enemies personally: some of Warbeck’s followers, captured in 1495, were spared immediate execution, and the king interrogated them.15

A plan to use the Tower in this way also fits with another account of Henry VII’s methods, described by the man who may have initiated the fall of the duke of Buckingham in Henry VIII’s reign – that the king ‘would handle such a cause circ*mspectly, and with convenient diligence for inveigling, and yet not disclose it, to the party nor otherwise, by a great space after, but keep it to himself, and always grope further, having ever good await and espial to the party’.16

Henry next visited the Tower in January–February 1496, at the time of the negotiation and agreement on 24 February of the treaty with Philip IV of Burgundy known as the Intercursus Magnus.17 The evidence of the king’s itinerary suggests he was in the Tower very early in the new year, on 5 January; then at Sheen; then back at the Tower from around 13 January, certainly through a period over the latter half of the month, and very probably through February; and at Sheen again by 26 February.18 The council met on 18 January. And on 4 February one of the Plumptons’ correspondents referred to a visit to the Tower to speak with Richard Fox, lord privy seal, about a legal matter.19 These dates are highly suggestive of the Tower being a focus for these sensitive discussions with Henry’s own councillors and the representatives of Duke Philip.

January was again the occasion for a visit in the following year, probably around 11–12 of the month. Parliament sat during the first months of 1497. It had been summoned on 20 November 1496, and was in session from 16 January to 13 March, so it appears Henry’s visit, during a period of weeks when he was mainly at Westminster, was associated with preparations for the opening of parliament.20 Henry returned to the Tower on 19–20 April, as part of a move from Sheen to Greenwich in the aftermath of parliament and before setting off for a tour through the Home Counties and Midlands in June, connected with the response to the Scottish invasion of Northern England in support of Perkin Warbeck’s claims.21 However, that progress was interrupted by the rebellion that broke out in the south-west of England. Henry was back at the Tower again on 18 June, for safety and defence, and probably stayed until the end of the month, in the face of Cornish rebels who headed for London. Henry’s preparations for a war against the Scots meant he had a military force ready to respond, and his troops under Lord Daubeny encamped on Hounslow Heath on 13 June. The following day there was a clash between the rebels and some of Daubeny’s men near Guildford. Believing that they might find support in Kent, the rebels continued to Blackheath, which they reached on 16 June. The following day, at Deptford Bridge, the Cornish were defeated. Many of those rebels were themselves to be visitors to the Tower as prisoners in the aftermath of Henry’s victory. Vitellius A. XVI describes how their leaders Michael Joseph ‘An Gof’, Thomas Flamank and Lord Audley were examined by the king and council in the Tower, and how on Midsummer’s Day, also at the Tower, the king made knights including one of the city sheriffs, Richard Haddon.22

It may be that Henry’s visit in 1497 was necessary given the pressing military threat posed by the Cornish rebels, but it did usher in a period when the king spent more time more frequently at the Tower, and during which investment in the buildings there had recommenced.23 In 1498 Henry was again at the Tower twice, in May and July. In May the king was at the Tower from 8 May to the end of the month, with the exception of an excursion into Hertfordshire and, notably, to visit the house of one of his leading counsellors and supporters, Thomas Lovell, at Elsyng in Enfield. On the latter occasion, his visit on 26–31 July came soon after the arrival at the Tower of Perkin Warbeck (on 18 June), who joined the already imprisoned Edward, earl of Warwick. Warbeck had escaped, possibly with the king’s connivance, on 9 June, following a period when he was paraded by the king and accompanied him on his progresses. Warbeck was to remain in the Tower until November 1499, when he was tried at the Palace of Westminster on 16 November and on 23 November hanged at Tyburn.24 The year 1499 again saw a visit to the Tower from the king during 4–15 May and 17–22 December.25

1500 did not find Henry VII visiting the Tower, but he spent time there in 1501 in April, May and July. In April the king celebrated St. George’s Day at the Tower, with changes being made to the layout of chapel seating to accommodate the Garter Knights. In May a tournament took place, with a stand or balcony set up in the Ordnance House for spectators.26 The stimulus to this renewed use of the Tower was the active diplomacy of the period, which saw heightened expectations of Catherine of Aragon’s arrival in England that spring, although in practice this did not occur until October 1501.27 There was also the sequence of negotiations in London between November 1501 and the conclusion of the formal agreement on 24 January 1502 leading to Margaret Tudor’s marriage to James IV of Scotland.28 Henry’s interest in the Tower does seem to have grown in 1501, for it was between July 1501 and November 1502 that £100 was spent on the building of a new tower there, the only one to be added in the entire period between 1485 and 1660.29

When Henry returned to the Tower in the last weeks of 1501, it was in a political context of threat and opportunity, as the wedding of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon grew closer and fears of conspiracy surrounding Edmund, earl of Suffolk, heightened. On 7 November 1501 Suffolk; Sir Robert Curzon; Suffolk’s brother Lord William de la Pole; Lord William Courtenay, son of the earl of Devon; Sir James Tyrell; and Sir John Wyndham were denounced as traitors at St. Paul’s Cross.30 A week later, on 14 November, the marriage of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon was celebrated at St. Paul’s. Henry visited the Tower soon afterwards, in the period around 20, 22 and 24 December, and given his previous practice, it is hard to characterize this as purely routine.31 Earlier visits had almost all been in the context of major occasions (coronations, parliament) or serious threat (rebellion and riot). During the spring of 1502 Thomas Lovell was sent to Guisnes to arrest Tyrell, his son and a group of supporters. This was apparently achieved through a degree of subterfuge, if we can rely on Suffolk’s account of the episode.32 Lovell also took charge of Guisnes Castle, producing an inventory that the king himself annotated.33 Early in March 1502 £14 was paid to seven men of Guisnes, to be repaid from Sir James Tyrell’s ‘Casket’, and later in the month a total of nineteen soldiers of Guisnes received a total of £18. On the last day of March £5 14s 3d was recorded as having been spent on boarding for Sir James Tyrell’s servants in London.34 The context became more problematic for the king when Prince Arthur died on 2 April, and there are signs that the health of the queen was already causing concern, though she was not to die until 11 February 1503 and was evidently well enough to conceive her daughter Katherine some time during May 1502, probably around the middle of the month (assuming she was at full term when Princess Katherine was born on 2 February 1503). Privy seal records suggest the king was at Greenwich until 26 April, but that he then moved to the Tower from 27 April, staying until at least 2 May. His location is then unclear until the same records indicate his presence in Greenwich from 7 May.35 This allows for him to be at the Tower, close to the location of Tyrell’s trial at the London Guildhall on 2 May, and very close to the location of Tyrell’s imprisonment. Tyrell was executed, with Sir John Wyndham, on 6 May 1502.36 Earlier evidence for Henry’s willingness to take a personal role in the questioning of prisoners, from 1495, is significantly confirmed in a further case from 1502.37

The potential involvement of Henry VII in the questioning of Tyrell is given greater importance when the presence of the queen, Elizabeth of York (sister of the princes), is also taken into consideration.38 Elizabeth spent Easter 1502 at Richmond, then travelled to visit the Tower briefly on 1 May, when she was given rosewater by the nuns of the Minories (which lay just to the north of the Tower in the parish of St. Botolph without Aldgate), probably crossing into the City of London immediately after. If there was a confession from Tyrell about the death of the princes, both the king and the queen were present to hear it on these days leading up to the opening of his trial at the Guildhall on 2 May. Elizabeth then left the Tower almost immediately, heading back to Greenwich on 3 May, stopping en route to visit her aunt Elizabeth, sister of Edward IV, the dowager duch*ess of Suffolk and an elderly woman by this stage, at her house at Stepney.39 The immediacy of this visit might suggest the importance of any revelations from Tyrell in the Tower, and Elizabeth’s desire to pass news of the princes’ fate to their aunt, the last survivor of their parents’ generation.

Henry returned to the Tower in the final days of 1502, being there from about 13 December until 22 December. Once again he was accompanied by the queen, as we know that payments were made to cover her losses while playing cards, and for wine for her, while the couple were at the Tower.40 Henry and his queen were also both at the Tower in the first months of 1503, and it was there that Elizabeth gave birth to her last child, Katherine.41 There are divided opinions on whether this was intentional: Thomas Penn suggests that this was Elizabeth and Henry’s plan, but Arline Naylor-Okerlund argues on the basis of evidence in Vitellius A. XVI that Elizabeth went into labour earlier than expected and the birth was originally intended to have taken place at Richmond. The queen’s surgeon was summoned on 22 January, at a point when Henry’s location is not clear, but he had been at Richmond on 20 January. He was certainly at the Tower when Katherine was born on 2 February, and Elizabeth herself died there on 11 February. Henry seems to have left the Tower at that point and is next recorded on 15 February at Richmond.42

It appears that more than two years then passed before Henry returned to the Tower: while it cannot be proven, the associations the Tower now held with family tragedy are likely to have been a factor in choices of itinerary and residence.43 When he did return, it was for a visit in April 1505, which lasted for two or three days at most, and then a similarly brief visit in mid November and one of perhaps ten days in December 1505.44

More regular visits were seen in 1506, in February, May, November and December. These seem, once again, to respond to major diplomatic events and to the presence of important prisoners in the Tower. The visit on 19 February coincided with Henry’s welcome of Philip, king of Castile, to London. The second visit lasted from around 19/20 May until the end of the month. The earl of Suffolk, having been transferred via Calais from custody at Namur, had been imprisoned in the Tower on 24 April 1506. At that point Henry had just left on a progress to Cambridge and beyond, travelling as far as Walsingham. Privy seal records suggest that, having been at Hedingham in the north of Essex on 14 May, he may have gone to the Tower five days later after visiting Westminster. The king’s next visits in 1506 fell on 10–13 and 19–20 November, probably separated by a brief trip to Greenwich, and then Henry was in the Tower from around 12 December to a few days before the end of the month.45 It is unsurprising that this resumption of use of the Tower coincided with further work there in 1506, in the form of a new gallery.46

In 1507 it was May and December that saw Henry visit the Tower. The first of those stays began perhaps as early as 13 May and certainly from the 16–20 of the month. The second ran from 4–25 December.47 Henry’s last visit to the Tower was from about 25 October 1508 to the end of the month, when the king moved to Greenwich.48

Overall analysis shows that visits to the Tower were a relatively uncommon occurrence for Henry, especially in the first fifteen years of his reign. That reign covered twenty-five calendar years, of which ten saw no recorded visit to the Tower (1486, 1488–93, 1500, 1504, 1509).49 Across the remaining sixteen years, five saw what appears to be only one visit, albeit these were of varying lengths (1485, 1487, 1495, 1503, 1508). And so the king’s most frequent and extended activity at the Tower occurs in just nine years: 1494 (two separate visits), 1496 (three discrete visits, but possibly two if January–February evidence represents one rather than two visits), 1497 (three), 1498 (two), 1499 (two – ruling out an unlikely July date), 1501 (four, or possibly three if the evidence from April and May represents one rather than two separate visits), 1502 (two), 1505 (three), 1506 (three) and 1507 (two).

Across those sixteen years in which visits took place, Henry was at the Tower in January in four years (1495, 1496, 1497, 1503). He was at the Tower in February in 1496, 1503 and 1506. There is no evidence of a visit in March. He visited in April in four years (1497, 1501, 1502, 1505), in May in seven (1494, 1498, 1499, 1501, 1502, 1506, 1507), in June only in 1497 and in July in two years (1498, 1501). There is no evidence of a visit in August or September, but in October he was there in two years (1485, 1508), in November in two or possibly three (1487, 1505(?), 1507), and in December in six or possibly seven (1494, 1496(?), 1501, 1502, 1505, 1506, 1507). That relative frequency in December is associated with routines the court built up around Christmas; May’s popularity is harder to ascribe to a generic cause. It may provide a context for Henry’s presence there in April and May 1502 along with Sir James Tyrell, but it is striking that April had to that point seen the king visit only twice before, in 1497 and 1501. If this was a significant recurring pattern of activity, it was not continued, and 1503 and 1504 saw no visit at this time of year.

Returning, therefore, to the questions posed at the start of this article, it is hard to support a view that the Tower was consistently one of Henry’s favourite residences. Many years passed without a visit by the king. In this, a significant contrast can be seen between father and son. The accession of Henry VIII almost immediately demonstrated the potential for more royal interest in the Tower, mainly due to the new king’s more martial disposition.50 When both Henry VII and his queen, Elizabeth of York, moved to the Tower in the early months of 1502, they were making an unusual move, and one that would normally be associated with significant ceremonial or security threat. This evidence suggests their visits were not purely coincidental with the imprisonment and interrogation of Sir James Tyrell. And so Henry’s likely choice to be present adds to the probability that Tyrell had something to confess that was of more than passing interest to the king and queen. The possibility that Tyrell’s imprisonment was the occasion for a shocking confession of guilt in the murders of the princes grows more likely.51

*

I am grateful for the assistance and advice of friends and colleagues provided for this and earlier articles on this theme, and especially to Dr. Sean Cunningham of The National Archives and to Dr. Katharine Carlton, my research assistant; to members of the Richard III Society for their questions and suggestions, enabled by the Society’s Bulletin editor, Alec Marsh; also to anonymous readers for their helpful comments; and to Drs. David Dunlop, Lisa Ford and Fiona Kisby Littleton for the opportunity to refer to their unpublished doctoral theses. Errors and omissions remain entirely my responsibility.

1

Thomas More, The History of King Richard III, ed. R. S. Sylvester (London, 1963), p. 86 (‘[v]ery trouthe is it & well knowen, that at such time as syr Iames Tirell was in the Tower, for Treason committed agaynste … king Henry the seuenth, bothe Dighton and he were examined, & confessed the murther in maner aboue written’). Varying degrees of scepticism are seen in A. Hanham, Richard III and His Early Historians, 1483–1535 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 152–90; More, History of King Richard III, pp. lxv–civ; P. M. Kendall, Richard the Third (London, 1955), pp. 398–405, 422–3; C. Ross, Richard III (new edn., London, 1999), pp. xxvi–xxxi; S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (corrected repr., London, 1982), p. 93 n. 1; P. W. Hammond and W. J. White, ‘The sons of Edward IV: a re-examination of the evidence on their deaths and on the bones in Westminster Abbey’, in Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law, ed. P. W. Hammond (London, 1986), pp. 104–47, at pp. 111–12; A. F. Pollard, ‘The making of Sir Thomas More’s Richard III’, in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. J. G. Edwards, V. H. Galbraith and E. F. Jacob (Manchester, 1933), pp. 223–38, at pp. 228–36; and A. Fox, Thomas More: History and Providence (Oxford, 1982), pp. 75–96. See now T. Thornton, ‘More on a murder: the deaths of the “Princes in the Tower”, and historiographical implications for the regimes of Henry VII and Henry VIII’, History, cvi (2021), 4–25.

2

E.g., W. H. Sewell, ‘Memoirs of Sir James Tyrell’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History, v (1878), 125–80, at pp. 175–6.

3

M. Hicks, Edward V: the Prince in the Tower (Stroud, 2003), pp. 186–9, discussing The National Archives of the U.K., KB 9/79/7-10/19 (a special oyer et terminer file for London in July 1503 but not a state trial for Suffolk); KB 8/2. For Edmund de la Pole, see S. Cunningham, ‘The last Yorkist rebellion? Henry VII and the earl of Suffolk, 1499–1504’, in Richard III and East Anglia: Magnates, Gilds and Learned Men: Proceedings of the 8th Triennial Conference of the Richard III Society Held at Queens’ College, Cambridge, 15–17 April 2005, ed. L. Visser-Fuchs (London, 2010), pp. 69–91.

4

Polydore Vergil, The Anglica Historia, A. D. 1485–1537, ed. D. Hay (Camden 3rd ser., lxxiv, 1950), pp. 72–4 (‘ad turrim (prout saepius faciebat) se contulit’); and M. Lewis, The Survival of the Princes in the Tower: Murder, Mystery and Myth (new edn., Stroud, 2018), pp. 27–8.

5

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London, v: East London (London, 1930), pp. 74–5; The History of the King’s Works, iii: 1485–1660, pt. 1, ed. H. M. Colvin, D. R. Ransome and J. Summerson (London, 1975), pp. 262–77, esp. pp. 263–4; L. W. Cowie, ‘Kings in the Tower of London’, History Today, Sept. 1978, pp. 589–96; G. Parnell, ‘The rise and fall of the Tower of London’, History Today, March 1992, pp. 13–19; and G. Parnell, The Tower of London: Past and Present (rev. edn., Stroud, 2009). For the Tower’s growing role as a visitor attraction, see R. Samuel, ‘The Tower of London’, in Samuel, Theatres of Memory, ii: Island Stories: Unravelling Britain, ed. A. Light, S. Alexander and G. Stedman Jones (London, 1998), pp. 100–24; and D. Hahn, The Tower Menagerie: Being the Amazing True Story of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts (London, 2003), pp. 74 ff.

6

H. Eberhard Mayer, ‘A ghost ship called Frankenef: King Richard I’s German itinerary’, English Historical Review, cxv (2000), 134–44; T. Craib, S. Brindle and S. Priestley, The Itinerary of King Henry III, 1216–1272 (n.p., 2013); D. B. Tyson, ‘A royal itinerary: the journey of Edward I to Scotland in 1296’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, xlv (2001), 127–44; R. Studd, An Itinerary of Lord Edward (Lists and Indexes, cclxxxiv, 2000); C. Shenton, The Itinerary of Edward III and His Household, 1327–1345 (Lists and Indexes, cccxviii, 2007); B. Wolffe, Henry VI (London, 1981), pp. 361–71; and R. Edwards, The Itinerary of Richard III, 1483–1485 (London, 1983).

7

P. Webster, ‘Making space for King John to pray: the evidence of the royal itinerary’, in Journeying Along Medieval Routes in Europe and the Middle East, ed. A. L. Gascoigne, L. V. Hicks and M. O’Doherty (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 259–86; and N. Saul, ‘Richard II, York, and the evidence of the king’s itinerary’, in The Age of Richard II, ed. J. L. Gillespie (Stroud, 1997), pp. 71–92. See also, e.g., J. Crockford, ‘The itinerary of Edward of England I: pleasure, piety and governance’, in Gascoigne, Hicks and O’Doherty, Journeying Along Medieval Routes, pp. 231–58. For studies of royal itinerary and roads, see, e.g., M. Prestwich, ‘The royal itinerary and roads in England under Edward’, in Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads, ed. V. Allen and R. Evans (Manchester, 2016), pp. 177–97.

8

See the commentary, mainly on the annual cycle of major feast days, under Henry VII and Henry VIII, in F. Kisby, ‘Kingship and the royal itinerary: a study of the peripatetic household of the early Tudor kings 1485–1547’, Court Historian, iv (1999), 29–39; and F. Kisby, ‘The royal household chapel in early-Tudor London, 1485–1547’ (unpublished Royal Holloway and Bedford College, University of London, Ph.D. thesis, 1996), pp. 377, 420 (which, based on the unpublished itinerary compiled by Margaret Condon, indicated Henry VII spent less than 2 per cent of his time at the Tower; Richmond was favoured for Easter, Whit Sunday and Christmas/Epiphany).

9

L. L. Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration in the reign of Henry VII’ (unpublished University of St. Andrews Ph.D. thesis, 2001), pp. 205–83; and Edwards, Itinerary of King Richard III. Ford demonstrates Henry’s determination to retain control of affairs even when away from Westminster, and hence ‘the close adherence of the locations mentioned in privy seal warrants to the king’s own itinerary’ (pp. 34, 207–8).

10

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 34.

11

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 59–60; P. Holmes, ‘The Great Council in the reign of Henry VII’, English Historical Review, ci (1986), 840–62, esp. at pp. 844–5; and J. A. Guy, The Cardinal’s Court: the Impact of Thomas Wolsey in Star Chamber (Hassocks, 1977), p. 7.

12

British Library, Egerton MS. 985, fols. 41b–48, printed in L. G. Wickham Legg, English Coronation Records (Westminster, 1901), pp. 220–39, esp. at pp. 221–3; The Heralds’ Memoir, 1486–1490: Court Ceremony, Royal Progress and Rebellion, ed. E. Cavell (Donington, 2009), pp. 130–2; S. Anglo, ‘The foundation of the Tudor dynasty: the coronation and marriage of Henry VII’, Guildhall Miscellanea, ii (1960), 3–11, at pp. 6–8; Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 209, 216; Chrimes, Henry VII, pp. 59–60; and W. Busch, England Under the Tudors (London, 1895), pp. 24, 38. These brief but important visits may have prompted the commissions of 1485–8 relating to work on the Tower as well as the Palace of Westminster, Windsor, Eltham and other palaces (Calendar of Patent Rolls 1485–94, pp. 10, 193, 216, 220; and Calendar of Close Rolls 1485–1500, p. 25).

13

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 216–34.

14

C.P.R. 1494–1509, p. 13; Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 204–5; Vergil, Anglica Historia, pp. 72–5; Chronicles of London, ed. C. Lethbridge Kingsford (Oxford, 1905), pp. 203–4; The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London, 1938), p. 256; Edward Hall, Hall's Chronicle: Containing the History of England, during the Reign of Henry the Fourth, and the Succeeding Monarchs, to the End of the Reign of Henry the Eighth (London, 1809), p. 468; I. Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 1491–1499 (Stroud, 1994), pp. 84–5; S. Cunningham, Henry VII (London, 2007), pp. 77–9; and A. Wroe, Perkin: a Story of Deception (London, 2003), p. 200. It might be questioned why Sir William Stanley, with his intimate knowledge of the court as Henry’s chamberlain, was not alerted to the threat by Henry’s unusual resort to the Tower, but in 1494/5 there were no recent precedents of such actions (even if the Tower coup of 13 June 1483, in which his brother Thomas Stanley was injured, should perhaps have been in Sir William’s mind).

15

I. Arthurson, ‘Espionage and intelligence from the Wars of the Roses to the Reformation’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, xxxv (1991), 134–54, at p. 141. This personal involvement of the king was evident from the start of the reign (e.g., Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, ed. C. G. Bayne and W. H. Dunham (Selden Soc., lxxv, 1956), pp. 58–9).

16

Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, III. cxiii (III. 1283 – calendar entry).

17

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 239; T.N.A., E 101/414/6, fols. 16r, 17r, 20r–v; Busch, England Under the Tudors, p. 148 (Philip’s ambassadors were quartered at Crosby Hall from 1 Feb., less than a mile from the Tower); T. Rymer, Foedera, (20 vols., 1704–35), xii. 578–88; A. F. Pollard, The Reign of Henry VII From Contemporary Sources (3 vols., London, 1913–14), ii. 285–309; and R. B. Wernham, Before the Armada: the Growth of English Foreign Policy, 1485–1588 (London, 1966), p. 68.

18

There is evidence for the king’s presence in the Tower on 20, 23, 26–8 and 31 Jan. and 4 Feb., before being at Sheen on 26 Feb.; the privy seal records suggest presence in the Tower on 13–16, 18, 20 and 23 Jan. and 2, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17–19, 22 and 25 Feb. (Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 239).

19

Edward Barlow to Sir Robert Plumpton, 4 Feb. 1495/6, in The Plumpton Letters and Papers, ed. J. Kirby (Camden 5th ser., vii, 1996), p. 112.

20

The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275–1504, ed. C. Given-Wilson and others (16 vols., Woodbridge, 2005), xvi. 280–313; T.N.A., E 101/414/6, fol. 59v; and Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 241 (the only evidence for his presence in the Tower is privy seal evidence for 11–12 Jan., but this coincides with a gap in other records, and it is very likely that between his time at Greenwich, evidenced until 4 Jan., and his appearance in the record at Westminster from 15 Jan., Henry visited the Tower).

21

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 241–2. Henry also dated a letter to the duke of Milan from the Tower on 29 April (Calendar of State Papers, Milan, 1385–1618, no. 521).

22

Kingsford, Chronicles of London, pp. 213–15; Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 242; Busch, England Under the Tudors, pp. 110–11; Cunningham, Henry VII, pp. 88–9; and T.N.A., E 101/414/6, fol. 76r. Ambassadorial reports gave the impression in some quarters that the queen had withdrawn to the Tower, where the royal treasure was being guarded, while the king had fled London (Cal. S.P. Milan, no. 527).

23

N.B. the commissions related to work at the Palace of Westminster, the Tower and elsewhere of Nov./Dec. 1496 (C.P.R. 1494–1509, pp. 88–9).

24

T.N.A., E 101/414/16, fols. 26r, 27r; Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 245–6; and Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, pp. 190–218.

25

T.N.A., E 101/414/16, fol. 64r; E 101/415/3, fol. 7r; and Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 250–2. A visit to the Tower on 31 July (which Ford bases on T.N.A., C 82/192) looks very unlikely, given that Henry was at Southampton on 29 July, then on 1 Aug. at Beaulieu, both in Hampshire and about 70 miles from London; the record is more probably from either 1498 or 1500.

26

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 257–8; T.N.A., E 101/415/3, fols. 51r, 53r, 60v; Brit. Libr., Egerton MS. 2358, fols. 12–23 (account of clerk of king’s works, 1500–2); and Colvin, Ransome and Summerson, King’s Works, iii, pt. 1, p. 264 n. No records survive in the Garter register (The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, from its Cover in Black Velvet, usually Called the Black Book, ed. J. Anstis (London, 1724), p. 241).

27

Kingsford, Chronicles of London, p. 234; Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1485–1509, pp. 294, 300; I. Arthurson, ‘“The king of Spain’s daughter came to visit me”: marriage, princes, and politics’, in Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales: Life, Death and Commemoration, ed. S. J. Gunn and L. Monckton (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 20–30; G. Kipling, The Receyt of the Ladie Kateryne (Early English Text Soc., orig. ser., ccxcvi, 1990); and S. Anglo, ‘The London pageants for the reception of Katherine of Aragon: November 1501’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxvi (1963), 53–89.

28

D. Dunlop, ‘Aspects of Anglo-Scottish relations from 1471 to 1513’ (unpublished University of Liverpool Ph.D. thesis, 1988), pp. 214–15; Kingsford, Chronicles of London, pp. 253–5; and Great Chronicle, pp. 316–17.

29

Brit. Libr., Egerton MS. 2358, fols. 13v–23 (and these accounts also indicate repairs to chambers at the Tower and new ironwork to improve the security of rooms for prisoners and storage: fols. 12–15); and Colvin, Ransome and Summerson, King’s Works, iii, pt. 1, p. 263.

30

Busch, England Under the Tudors, p. 172. This was not a proclamation recorded in Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin (3 vols., New Haven, Conn., 1964–9).

31

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 259–60; and T.N.A., E 101/415/3, fols. 74r, 77r.

32

Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner (2 vols., Rolls Ser., 1861–3), i. 181. Lovell appears on commissions in England in late Jan. 1502 (C.P.R. 1494–1509, pp. 287, 293), and then again at the start of April 1502 (C.P.R. 1494–1509, pp. 290–1). He received a payment on the last day of Feb. 1502 (T.N.A., E 101/415/3, fol. 85v; and Brit. Libr., Additional MS. 7099, fol. 73). Henry VII had first moved against Tyrell, ordering the seizure of Guisnes, on 6 Oct. 1501: D. Grummitt, ‘“For the surety of the towne and marches”: early Tudor policy towards Calais 1485-1509’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, xliv (2000), 184–203, at p. 197.

33

T.N.A., SP 46/123, fols. 113–116. C.P.R. 1494–1509, p. 132, is an indenture of 9 July 1502 for the custody of Guisnes. The early months of 1502, probably more specifically Feb., saw a meeting of the Great Council, of which little is known, but which dealt with a request from the pope for support against the Turk (Holmes, ‘Great Council’, pp. 858–9).

34

T.N.A., E 101/415/3, fols. 86v, 89r–v, 90r.

35

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 260. £9 13s 4d was paid to an apothecary on 29 April 1502 for material for the queen’s use (T.N.A., E 36/210, fol. 33).

36

Busch, England Under the Tudors, p. 172; and H. A. Wyndham, A Family History, 1410–1688: the Wyndhams of Norfolk and Somerset (London, 1939), pp. 26–8.

37

Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 59899, fol. 212v (questioning of John Dawtry, Thomas Thomas and their clerks); see n. 15.

38

T. Penn, Winter King: the Dawn of Tudor England (London, 2011), pp. 82–5. Cf. the emphasis placed on royal presence by David Starkey in the Channel 4 programme Richard III: the Princes in the Tower (broadcast 21 March 2015).

39

T.N.A., E 36/210, fol. 33 (Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York: Wardrobe Accounts of Edward the Fourth, ed. N. Harris Nicolas (London, 1830), pp. 8–9).

40

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 262; and T.N.A., E 36/210, fols. 76–7, 80.

41

Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 59899, fol. 11v; and Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 263 (on 26–7 Jan., and then probably until 11 Feb., albeit with recorded presence in the City itself on 4 Feb.).

42

Penn, Winter King, p. 94; A. Naylor-Okerlund, Elizabeth of York (New York, 2009), p. 202; and Kingsford, Chronicles of London, p. 258. The queen’s surgeon had, in fact, already had a reward of 46s 8d on 20 Jan., and Henry made an offering at All Hallows Barking, beside the Tower, in the first few days of Feb. (Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 59899, fols. 11r–v, 12v).

43

There is a lone privy seal writ from the Tower dated 19 Feb. 1504, but given the records of the king’s presence at Baynard’s Castle on 18–20 Feb., and the general residence of the court at Westminster through the latter part of Jan., all of Feb. and early March that year (no doubt associated with the parliament that opened on 25 Jan.), it appears to be evidence of, at most, a fleeting visit (Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 265; and Given-Wilson and others, Parliamentary Rolls of Medieval England, xvi. 314–419).

44

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 271, 274; Brit. Libr., Add. MS. 59899, fol. 85r; and T.N.A., E 36/214, fols. 10r–v.

45

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 275–7; Vergil, Anglica Historia, pp. 136–9 (indicating that significant meetings took place at Windsor); Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1202–1509, no. 874; Busch, England Under the Tudors, p. 192; and Penn, Winter King, p. 223. Vitellius A XVI says Suffolk was brought to the Tower towards the end of March (Kingsford, Chronicles of London, p. 261).

46

Colvin, Ransome and Summerson, King’s Works, iii, pt. 1, pp. 263–4.

47

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, pp. 278, 280; and T.N.A., E 34/214, fols. 78v, 109v, 111v.

48

Ford, ‘Conciliar politics and administration’, p. 282; and T.N.A., E 34/214, fols. 149r–v. For an episode involving the bishop of Catania and the use of the Tower by the king in July 1508, see Correspondencia de Gutierre Gomez de Fuensalida, embajador en Alemania, Flandes é Inglaterra (1496–1509), ed. J. Fitz-James Stuart (Madrid, 1907), p. 466; and G. Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon (London, 1942), pp. 83–4.

49

I have discounted 1504, on the basis that there is evidence for the king’s presence on only one day, and that supported only via a privy seal record.

50

D. Starkey, Henry: Virtuous Prince (London, 2008), pp. 315–16 (12–14 Dec. 1509).

51

As well as adding security to the foundations of a later fascination with the Tower as a place of imprisonment and death for children (see, e.g., H. E. Marshall, Our Island Story: a Child’s History of England (London, [1905]), ch. 59, commented on in Samuel, ‘Tower of London’, pp. 120–1).

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