Silver Boar - Vol VII No. 2 - June 2000

Editor Jane Wilkinson. B.A.

CASTLES IN DESPAIR
THE SPOILS OF THE CONQUERER
RICHARDS LAST RESTING PLACE by Dorothy Mitchell

CASTLES IN DESPAIR

We all love romantic ruins, but neglect can be dangerous. Isn’t it time we put them to use. cooling castle on the isle of Grain in north kent is looking for a new owner. The asking price is £50,000 - £100,000. It may sound a bargain but what exactly can one do with a ruined Medieval castle. You can’t turn it back into a home and as it is a scheduled medieval monument it cannot be altered in any way. Neither can you let it finish the job of falling down. The law requires you to keep your ruin in its current state of ruination. under the 1882 Act of Parliament which founded
the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments. You are not permitted to flood the moat of the
castle without permission. Neither, as in the case of Cooling Castle. can you build a house next
door and use the ruins in which to hold medieval get togethers. England has 450 castles and we take it for granted that they should be preserved. Yet we don’t like the idea of having the ruins turned into working buildings. The result of this attitude is a landscape littered with ruins, picturesque though they may be. Wigmore Castle in Herefordshire recently had £1,000,000 spent on it, accordingto English Heritage which has now merged with The Royal Commission of Historical Monumentsthere are a further crumbling castles on English Heritage’s list, a further 63 are unoccupied ruins. Saltwood Castle, home of the late Alan Clark alsomakes it onto the “attention” list because the outer bailey is crumbling away. It was from Saltwood Castle that the three knights who murderedThomas Becket set forth to do their dirty deed yes, ruined castles are romantic but they are a greatdanger to the public who insist on climbing them.Richard Howarth of Sheriff Hutton castle will verify that. In conclusion we should consider ourselves lucky that
English Heritage has taken over Middleham Castle.

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THE SPOILS OF THE CONQUEROR

WILLIAM OF WARRENNE, EARL OF SURREY.
Died 1088. Conspicuous loyalty to William the CONQUEROR made Warrenne the wealthiest man in one of the richest kingdoms in Europe. He distinguished himself in ducal service to William in the 1050’s but it was the invasion of England in 1066 that provided him with huge wealth. He fought at Hastings and was rewarded with lands which within 20 years extended
into 13 counties, including important estates around Lewes in Sussex. Through the early period of the Norman conquest he played a leading role in suppressing revolt. Life became more difficult after William died. Warrenne supported William Rufus in his claim to the throne against Robert Curthose and Odo of Bayeux and was rewarded with the title of the Earl
of Surrey in 1088. He did not live long to enjoy it as an arrow hit him in the leg later that year at the Battle of Pevensey and he died at Lewes Priory. His dynasty survived as the Earls of Warrenne or Surrey and played a part in public life for over 300 years. Based on our Sunday Times, calculations of Warrennes share of the Net National Income at the time he would be worth over £56.6. Billion today. Much more than Bill Gates of Microsoft.

ROBERT, COUNT OF MORTAIN. 1031 - 1090
A half brother of William the Conqueror, Robert was created Count of Mortain in Normandy around 1055. He played a leading role in the Conquest, proving to be an effective military leader-he is depicted on the Bayeux tapestry advising William on strategy after the landings. His reward was immense. Within 20 years he owned 800 manors with land from Sussex to Yorkshire in the North, and Cornwall to the west. While his lands were valued at about £2,500 his total wealth was perhaps £8,000, but it did not save him when William died. He opposed the crown going to William Rufus and withstood the siege at Pevensey, where William of Warrene was fatally wounded. But after yielding to Rufus he was pardoned and withdrew to Normandy where he died in 1090. The Count of Mortain was worth £46.1 BILLION.

ODO OF BAYEAU - EARL OF KENT.
Like Robert of Mortain, Odo was half brother to the Conqueror and one of the most powerful men in England after the invasion, His wealth, which came from his royal connection, was increasing even before 1066, as William had made him Bishop of the lucrative see of Bayeaux while still a teenager. Odo took part in the conquest and was rewarded with the earldom of Kent and vast English estates worth more than £3,000 a year. He was an efficient military commander, helping William to pacify the North and made more money by settling land disputes for a fee. He acquired a reputation for cruelty. By 1086 Odo had managed to double his wealth but this fortune could not prevent his downfall. His position depended on his good relations with the king. In 1082, William decided to destroy his brother. Odo was arrested and imprisoned in Rouen. He was restored by William Rufus but made the mistake of joining the revolt against the new king whose victory led to the confiscation of his English lands. ODO OF BAYEAUX was worth £43.2 BILLION.

RICHARD FITZALAN, EARL OF ARUNDEL
AND WARRENNE. 1307 - 1376.
Fitzalan’s father was executed in 1326 but he did not succeed to the title of Earl of Arundel, and the Welsh Estates that went with it, until he petitioned the Crown in 1330. He proved to be one of Edward III’s most loyal generals, taking part in virtually every important campaign on the Continent. War was a profitable operation for him, as K.B. McFarlane noted in The Nobility
of England, “It is impossible to say how much Arundel had multiplied his capital by skilful investment, but its original source was almost certainly war. He was not the only baron to turn moneylender” Arundel’s wealth increased substantially after 1353 when he succeeded,
through his mother, to the earldom of Warrenne or Surrey. By 1370, Edward III was more than £20,000 in his debt. Despite his military exploits, Arundel died peacefully. A remarkable inventory of his assets included a huge hoard of gold, silver and bullion worth £30,000 stored in the high tower at Arundel, Sussex. A further £18,000 was kept for him in chests at St. Paul’s London by his agent John Philipot and another £10,000 was held on the family estate in the west of England. He was also owed £4,500 in outstanding loans. Because the inventory did not run to his landholdings, personal wardrobe, jewels or the furnishings of his castles and homes, a total valuation of £150,000 is appropriate. Arundel’s wealth passed down through the generations but, as with other dynasties, his descendants do not automatically qualify for inclusion in
the RICHEST OF THE RICH list. His son, Richard, the Earl of Arundel and Surrey also carved out a career in war fare. In 1387 he prepared an expedition which defeated a large fleet of French and Flemish ships off Margate. A hundred ships filled with wine were captured and his popularity soared when he refused to profit from the haul. For a whole year wine was cheap in England. At the height of his wealth he was worth as much as his father. But in 1397 he had moved in open rebellion against the crown after years of tension. He was sentenced to death, and told the executioner to “sharpen well his axe”. The executioner obliged. Arundel was worth £48 BILLION.

HUGH THE DESPENSER THE YOUNGER. DIED 1326.
Why become a dictator, especially of an unruly Country? Despenser had a simple answer. “To Make myself rich” the heir to a substantial estate, Despenser was married by Edward I to an heiress Who brought him part of the great Gloucester Fortune. When his wife’s brother, the Earl of Gloucester, was killed at Bannockburn in 1314, Despenser acquired a third of another vast fortune, worth £1,507 a year, most of it in Wales, including the lucrative lordship of Glamorgan. But that was not enough. Acting with blatant illegality, Despenser sought to increase his lands. By 1321 he had provoked the Marcher lords sufficiently for them to attack and defeat him in what is known as the Despenser War. The marcher lords wasted his lands and forcedEdward II to exile him and his father Hugh. But they were recalled the following year and Despenser assumed total dominance over the king in a relationship which some historians believe was homosexual.
From 1322 Despenser virtually ran a dictatorship in England, seizing lands and imposing unfavourable exchanges. The widowed Countess of Pembroke, for instance, was forced to sell vast numbers of livestock at a fraction of their value, and surrender some of her lands. At various times Despenser owned Chepstow, Usk, Tonbridge Castle and Gower. He imprisoned and
tortured his opponents, and manipulated the legal system to enrich himself further. Seemingly untouchable he imposed a reign of terror until 1326, when Queen Isabella and her lover Roger de Mortimer rebelled against Edward. Despenser and his father were captured and executed. His landed income was £7,500 a year with chattels worth £3,000 and about £6,000 invested with
Italian bankers. Despenser the Younger was worth £13.8 BILLION.

JOHN OF GAUNT, DUKE OF LANCASTER 1340 - 1399
The greatest nobleman in late medieval England, John of Gaunt, who was made Duke of Lancaster in 1362. was the fourth son of Edward III. He married well, his wife, Blanche of Lancaster brought him a huge inheritance. After her death he married the daughter of King Pedro the Cruel of Castile. When she died he married his mistress, Katharine Swinford. Gaunt was an effective diplomat and in increasingly troubled England he proved to be a force for stability, mediating between Richard II and his opponents. His wealth enabled him to keep about 2,000 retainers who dominated local commissions where they too were a stabling force. Usual for those times he died peacefully worth by today’s standards. £43.2 BILLION.

RICHARD BEAUCUAMP, EARL OF WARWICK 1382—I 439.
A truly outstanding soldier, Beauchamp, 5th Earl of Warwick, came from a line that had dominated the midlands for more than a century. He augmented his family fortunes by marrying two heiresses. The first, Elizabeth Berkeley, did not produce a male heir, but the second, the widowed Isabel Despenser, bore him the son he craved. Beauchamp maintained a large
retinue and developed the economy of Warwick by making the River Avon navigable. He fought in many campaigns from the age of 21 to within a couple of years of his death through ill health in 1439. His inheritance, greatly supplemented by the fortunes of his two wives, gave him an annual income of more than £5,000. In all he was worth about £1,000,000. His son, Henry, died before he could produce a male heir, thus ending the Beauchamp line. However, the earldom passed to Henry’s brother in law, Richard Neville, the most famous Warwick of all, The King Maker.
This Earl of Warwick was worth, £26.2 BILLION

ARCHBISHOP GEORGE NEVILLE. 1432 - 1476.
Neville’s aristocratic background, he was the son of the Earl of Salisbury and brother of Warwick the Kingmaker, persuaded Oxford university to shorten the BA and MA courses he had to take in order to become a bishop. The university even made him its chancellor at the age of around 21.
From the age of ten he was given church jobs, including the valuable golden prebend of Masham in Yorkshire, and his father persuaded the royal council that the young clergyman was worthy through his " blood, virtue and cunning" of a see. He was duly made the Bishop of Exeter in 1455 and Archbishop of York 10 years later. Both offices brought enormous revenues and Neville lived in great style at a mansion in Rickmansworth. He reputedly possessed movables worth £20,000 in 1472. Although he was in the church for profit, he had a knowledge of theology and was an effective preacher. Though he was greatly disliked by the Dean and Chapter at York Minster. When the Nevilles fell out with Edward IV, he supported the return of Henry VI and served as his chancellor. His failure to hold London in 1471 contributed to Warwick’s death in the battle against Edward’s forces at Barnet. He continued to plot against Edward and was imprisoned
in Calais. On Richard of Gloucester’s appeal to his brother for his release, Neville returned to England a sick man and died soon after leaving; £6.1 BILLION

EDMUND GREY, EARL OF KENT. 1420-1489.
An aristocratic turncoat, Grey was plundering Aquitaine before he was 20, then went on to pillage parts of England, first on behalf of the Lancastrians, then for the Yorkists. The son of Sir John Grey and nephew of the Duke of Exeter, he was created Earl of Kent in 1465 by a grateful Edward IV who had already given him the manor of Ampthill in Bedfordshire for switching the vanguard of the royal army to the side of Warwick and the Yorkist succession at the Battle of Northampton in 1460. By 1483 he was carrying the second sword at the coronation of Richard III and later that year he was appointed commissioner of oyer and terminer, hearing legal cases around London and taking a cut of the fines imposed. When he died he was worth, £4.8 BILLION

FRANCIS, VISCOUNT LOVELL. 1454---
When builders installed a chimney at the medieval manor at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire in 1708 they discovered a vault. Inside was a skeleton sitting at a table with a book open. pen and paper
beside it. The tableau crumbled into dust in minutes. Francis Lovell, one of the richest men of his generation, had apparently died of starvation in his own home, where he had fled after the battle of Stoke, 1487, fighting against Tudor. A true friend of Richard III, he fought with him at Bosworth. The last part of his life was spent in revolt against Tudor whom he almost killed at York, His capacity to wage revolts was due to his vast wealth. HE DIED WORTH £4.7 BILLION.

HENRY STAFFORD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 1457 - 1483.
Buckingham most probably instigated the murder of the Princes in the Tower. ‘Then he rebelled against the man whom he had helped onto the throne. Richard III. He was defeated and executed in 1483 at the age of 26. His ruthless pursuit of power was matched by wealth and prestige. A descendant of Edward III he succeeded to his dukedom whilst still a minor, His connections were such that he was allowed to assume the full rights of his title and to become a knight of the garter at 16. His wealth, based in the Marches, was greatly augmented by a grateful Richard who gave him control of Wales and the border lands. After his execution his lands were confiscated. At his peak he was worth £60,000. By today’s standards Buckingham would be worth £14.4 BILLION.

CECILY NEVILLE, DUCHESS OF YORK. 1415 - 1495.
Cecily could teach today’s Sloan Ranger’s all about shopping. She once ordered a dress decorated with 325 pearls and eight ounces of gold. In 1443-44 her expenditure on clothes was equivalent to an earl’s income which prompted her husband, the Duke of York to appoint a person to keep an eye on her spending. The youngest of 23 children she lived in great luxury, travelling with her husband to his posts in Ireland and France. mother of Edward IV and Richard III, she objected to Edward’s Marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, declaring that he was no son of hers, Which gave rise to the rumours that he was illegitimate. After her Husband, three sons and four grandsons died violently in the struggle for The crown, she became extremelyReligious and spent many hours reading Religious books. Rich through inheritance from her father’s family and Later the estates of her husband and sons, She died worth, £4.7 BILLION.

All the nobles listed above acquired great wealth, either by fair means or foul. What is more important, Richard was descended from most, or all of them. So, the question that needs to be asked, did he inherit great wealth, if so, where did it go? We know that through marrying Anne Neville, a great heiress, he accumulated immense lands and holdings. As we have seen, most of the nobles had money salted away in banks. Did Richard? One thing for is certain, he had a lot of beautiful jewelry which without doubt would have been appropriated by Tudor.

The above article was an extract from the Sunday Times By William Rubinstein and Philip Beresford.

RICHARD’S LAST RESTING PLACE. by bDorothy Mitchell
It has always been assumed that Richard’s last resting place was the Greyfriars, Leicester. That was until Henry VIII, at the Dissolution of the Religious Houses, had the grave torn open and the bones thrown into the River Soar. Yet, there are many historians who believe that this is merely legend and that Henry’s henchmen desecrated another grave nearby and scattered the remains of same into the said river. We know that Tudor, or Elizabeth of York paid for a tomb to Richard to be erected within Greyfriars, it was of grey marble and cost around £12.00. according to Leyland, Henry VIII’s historian. We know that Richard was taken into the Greyfriars, after been exposed for two days beneath a boiling August sun, but was his burial permanent? There has been many places cited by many people over the years, the latest being Scotland. To my way of thinking this is stretching the imagination just a little too far. Why should the Scots wish for Richard to be buried in their country? He wasn’t a Scot, he hadn’t been domiciled there. He hadn’t any relatives there who would want him to be buried on Scottish soil, remember, Richard had burnt and taken Dumfries in May 1482 and later that year led an army into Scotland, instead of his burnt out brother, Edward IV. Granted he took Edinburgh without loss of life, Granted James III queen through much of him, but that wouldn’t have been enough reason for the Scots to bring the body northwards in order to give it a Scottish internment. But, until definite proof emerges regarding the discovery of positive identification regarding Richard’s bones I think anybody’s guess is as good as another. So, here’s mine. I believe that Richard, and his son Edward, were buried in
York Minster, that was always his intention. At the time of his death six altars had already been erected, probably in the choir, complete with his device of the White Boar. Close to the Minster
was being erected a College for one hundred priests in order that they say many masses a day for Richard and his family when they at last departed this mortal coil. The following is taken from the
Minster Fabric Rolls, indisputable evidence that the altars had been erected and the College partly so. What is more they had been erected for a specific purpose.

Paid for 56 wayncots forthe making of six altars for
the chaplains of our bid, the King ----------------------------£1- 7s - 0d
Timber ---------------------------------------------------------- 7s - 0d
Sawing timber and wayncots------------------------------------ 15s - 0d
Working the crests of the said altars -----------------------------18s - 0d
Keys, locks. tyres and slats for the altars -------------------------20s- 0d
Wages for the workmen engaged on work for said altars
John Whynfield ------------for 60 days
Robert Byshope -----------for 60 days
Michael Clerke ------------for 59 days
Richard Robynson ---------for 25 days
at 6d a day ------------------------------------------------£7 - 17s - 6d
and a small allowance for 20 wayncots--------------------------17s - 4d
Timber ----------------------------------------------------------6s - 8d
Nails -----------------------------------------------------------------8d
For two of the saidaltar stones to sold, not allocated ------------24s - 4d
-----------------------------------------------------------£13- 19s - 6d
Received by N/Master John Hurt, the treasurer.
for making altars in the Cathedral Church of York
for the chaplains of the Lord King--------------------------£6- l3s - -4d

I believe that Richard’s body was allowed, by Tudor, to be brought to York He probably thought that the farther away Richard was the better. After all many people would make a pilgrimage to the grave and it would be a focus point for Yorkist supporters. As Richard had belonged to the North, Tudor could have told himself, then the North could have him. This decision might have come about some time after 1487, because in 1486 Tudor came in state to York and was almost
killed by the Wensleydale uprising, Rather foolishly he came again in 1487, after the Battle of Stoke, and the same thing happened. Welsh Henry had been frightened to the core of his
miserable skinny body and he never visited York again, much to this city’s delight. York Minster didn’t entirely escape at the Dissolution of the Religious Houses, a lot of altar ornaments were
stolen, including the magnificent jewelled chalice Richard donated, a lot of tombs knocked about. But he had to have something to boast about to Rome, and as it was staffed by canons and not
monks, he decided to save it. A few years ago, during excavations in the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey, the tomb of St William, one of York’s saints, was unearthed. The abbey being close to the Minster. Big as a bus it once graced the Minster’s high altar, now it holds pride of place in the Undercroft. The tomb, and probably the bones, must have been taken before Henry’s
henchmen got to work for safe keeping in the Abbey. The latter being the last of York’s religious houses to be violated. Therefore, what was to stop the Augustinian Friary, where Richard always stayed when visiting York from transporting the bodies, and tombs, of Richard and his son from the Minster and re-bury them deep in their foundations. The Religious houses in York weren’t all wrecked into ruins in one fell swoop. The smallest ones, those who hadn’t an income of £100 a year, falling first, Henry intended using the Augustian Friary as his jewel house, where he could store his accumulated loot. As it turned out, he had either too much, else he saw a chance of selling the land to a faithful supporter at a low price expecting high support if the need should arise. Nothing now remains of Richard’s Friary, only a few weathered stones incorporated into the river wall. I should be most interested to hear of any member’s theory on where they think Richard
was buried. Furthermore, we will print it.