End of Empire

220 years ago today the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II sent his herald into central Vienna to announce the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. 

  

The Holy Roman Emperor Francis II  

Imperator Romanorum Semper Augustus

He is wearing the crown made for the Emperor Rudolf II 1576-1612, which became the Austrian Imperial Crown

Image: Wikimedia 

 

The proclamation did not cause much stir as for the last two years the Emperor had also borne the title Emperor of Austria and he retained his authority over the Austrian crown lands as well as the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, and the lands taken in the Partitions of Poland plus what was accessible of the Habsburg dominions in Italy. It was the threat posed by the French under their self-proclaimed Emperor, and soon to be son-in-law of Emperor Francis, that appears to have decided the Habsburgs to dissolve the Empire rather than have it broken apart by the French.

As Emperor Francis I he was to join the coalitions that eventually wore the “Corsican ogre” down and he was to host the Congress that sought to re-establish order to Europe in 1814-15.  

 

So ended the formal existence of the Empire officially established by the coronation by Pope Leo III in St Peter’s Rome of Charlemagne on Christmas Day 800. Territorially the Empire was the Frankish kingdom already ruled by the new Emperor Charles.

As the Carolingian domains fractured there had been a time without an Emperor until Otto the Great revived it in 962. From 1250 to 1273 there was no Emperor, but several claimants, until in the latter year the Electors, fearing a Papal imposition of the King of France, as a compromise, offered the crown to a relatively unknown man in the person of the ruler of Austria, Rudolf of Habsburg. He was the last Habsburg Emperor until Albert II in 1437-39, but from then onwards the Imperial title and crown was theirs - with the exception of a Wittlesbach with a Habsburg mother who felt he had missed out with the Pragmatic Sanction and held the title as Emperor Charles VII in opposition to his cousin Maria Theresa’s husband Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who thenbsucceeded as Emperor Francis I, grandfather of the last Holy Roman Emperor. The Imperial House took a poor view of other rulers, be they Peter the Great or Napoleon, assuming the title of Emperor. 

As we are in the later eighteenth century let us dispose of that pretentious windbag Voltaire’s description of the Holt Roman Empire as being neither Holy, Roman nor an Empire. All it shows is his ignorance of medieval political and religious thought on the nature of government and of the concept of Empire, and its complementary position to that of the Church in the good ordering of a large part of Europe.

  

Wikipedia appears to have a good overall history of the Holy Roman Empire and its institutions based on Peter H Wilson’s important 2016 book on the subject at Holy Roman Empire 

After 1815 the Emperor presided over the German Confederation - which had replaced the Westphalian definition of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation - and, after a few local difficulties in 1848-9, retained that status until 1866. Nevertheless the Austrian Empire was the custodian of its traditions, including the Imperial insignia, in Vienna until 1918. 

When Emperor Francis lay dying in 1835 his five year old grandson the Archduke Francis was much distressed. When he in turn died in 1916 as Emperor Francis Joseph his coffin was followed by his successor and his consort and their four year old son, Archduke Otto, who died in 2011 - and whom I heard speak in Oxford in 1994 - so in a very few handfasts the centuries slip away.

 

Blessing of Grapes on The Transfiguration

Fr William Rock of the FSSP often writes insightful articles online on their website about liturgical and other matters. 

Today he has a very interesting account of the origins and development of the tradition of blessing grapes on the feast of the Transfiguration. He shows how it was interpreted in spiritual terms by William Durandus at the end of the thirteenth century, but that its origin actually was over a thousand years earlier in the pontificate of St Sixtus II in the early third century. That rite has, it seems to me, similarities to the four seasonal ember days as a thanksgiving for the harvest of seasonal crops. From Rome it appears to have spread east into what became the world of Orthodox Christianity and merged with local traditions there.

The article brings out the antiquity of the custom, and the stability of the liturgical texts.

It is also worth noting that it was not until after 1456 that the Transfiguration came to be universally observed on August 6th. That was the day on which news of the Ottoman retreat from the siege of Belgrade on July 22nd reached Rome, and Pope Calixtus III ordered that henceforth August 6th would be the universal celebration of the Transfiguration in thanksgiving.

    

Pope Callixtus III

Image: Wikipedia 

Fr Rock’s erudite article can be read at Blessing of Grapes

 

There is also a detailed article on the Othodox understanding of the Transfiguration and the tradition of blessing grapes on The Catholic World Report website at Blessed grapes and hymns of glory: The Feast of the Transfiguration in the East

Life’s little luxuries at Eilean Donan castle in the medieval period

Recent archaeological discoveries in excavations at Eilean Donan castle on the north-western coast of Scotland have revealed fascinating insights into life there in the medieval centuries.

Eilean Donan has become famous as a symbol of Highland Scotland in the past century since the restoration, indeed the reconstruction of the castle, which the Royal Navy bombarded to ruins in 1719 after it had been occupied by Spanish troops to support a prospective Jacobite rising.

Eilean Donan Castle

Image: visitinvernesslochness.org 

Wikipedia has a history of the castle and its architectural development at Eilean Donan

Medievalists.net has a report on the discoveries from the excavations which can be seen at Rare Medieval Hair-Styling Tool Found at Eilean Donan Castle

The outstanding discover was a gravoir for styling a woman’s hair. This is only the third to be found in the whole UK and immediately suggests that at very least the wife of the Lord of Eilean Donan aspired to present herself in the latest international fashion. The fact that it was apparently made locally reinforces the image of a cultured society.

Other finds included gaming counters, toys for children made from bone, and small pottery crucibles for metal working in copper, silver and gold. These may have been for making personal adornments, or, maybe, for alchemy.

Eilean Donan is remote by land but by sea could connects to other parts of the Highland coastline and the Isles, and beyond that to the culture of western and Scandinavian Europe and to their markets.

Life could no doubt be harsh and demanding in the Gaelic world but these discoveries indicate that it was bound into a wider set of relationships and that fashion and recreation were part of Highland life.

Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpeix

On this day ninety years ago, in 1936, Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpéix C.O. Bishop of Lerida (Lieida) in Spain, together with twenty of his clergy, many of whom he had recently ordained, were murdered by the Republicans in the early days of the Spanish Civil War. 

By the end of the war in 1939 6,832 priests and religious, including 12 bishops and 283 religious sisters, had been murdered. These atrocities were particularly common in Catalonia where Lerida lies. 

Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpéix 

A modern painting in the Oxford Oratory created to mark his beatification

Image: Oxford Oratory

 

 Image:Washington Oratory 

The Oxford Oratory has two posts about him at Blessed Salvio Huix — The Oxford Oratory

and at Blessed Salvio Huix — The Oxford Oratory

The Bournemouth Oratory also has a post at Blessed Salvio Huix-Miralpeix - The Bournemouth Oratory

The Birmingham Oratory has a post on their website 

at Blessed Salvio Huix 

Wikipedia has a biography of him at Salvi Huix Miralpéix

He was beatified as one of 522 martyrs of the Spanish Civil War in 2013. More have been beatified since. He is the first Oratorian martyr to be declared a beatus. 

    

Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpéix

Oratorian Protomartyr

Image: Birmingham Oratory

May Bl. Salvio Huix Mirelpeix and his companions pray for Spain and for us all

The Drummer of Niklashausen

Having spent the last few days blogging about events in England in July 1476 I shall remain in that year to look at, and share, one of the more notable events of that spring and summer, the story of the Drummer of Niklashausen. 

I first encountered these events in the pages of Norman Cohn’s fascinating and stimulating The Pursuit of the Millenium about popular movements with apocalyptic or chiliastic aspirations or claims. 

Some years later I discovered Richard Wunderli’s Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen which I strongly recommend as a piece of history about localised events and their implications. In it Wunderli looks at the events of those months in 1476 when the eponymous drummer, an eighteen year old shepherd called Hans Boehm ( Böhm), attracted a considerable following which, moving from being a religious revival with bonfires of the vanities in no short order to calls for social and religious revolution and alarmed the local seigneurial and ecclesiastical authorities into taking drastic action which culminated in Boehm being arrested, convicted of heresy and burned at the stake in Würzburg on July 19th. Even with his final and fiery end the movement he had initiated retained some life into the next year.

 

Wunderli’s book investigates these events rather like Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie did with his study of residual Catharism in Montaillou and allows the reader through such mentalité history to enter into the world of communities in the past.

 

The story of Hans Boehm is set out well with quotations from contemporary or near-contemporary sources on the Executed Today website at 1476: Hans Bohm, the Drummer of Niklashausen

There is another online piece which draws on Cohn’s book and explores the context of these radical movements in Germany which can be read at The Drummer of Niklashausen – Andrew James

There is a review of Wunderli’s book which may also be of interest here

Another article which has a number of sayings made by, or attributed to, Boehm, and which also stresses his illiteracy can be seen at Client Challenge

Hans Boehm was apparently born at Helmstadt, mid-way between Wurzburg and Niklashausen, in 1458. His surname might possibly suggest that his family originated in Bohemia, with its Hussite and Taborite ideas, or that it was a nickname associating him with such radicalism. In 1466-7 a feud between the local landowner, John Count of Wertheim, and the Teutonic Knights had resulted in Helmstadt and two neighbouring villages, Roßbrunn and Uettingen being burned to the ground.

Niklashausen today

Image: Wikipedia 

Boehm worked as a shepherd and as an entertainer playing his pipe and drum at village celebrations in the Necker valley around Niklashausen. That, as the accounts linked to above recount, all changed the cold winter night early in Lent when young Hans, watching over the sheep, had, or claimed to have, a vision of the Virgin Mary.

Hans Boehm has his vision of the Virgin Mary

A woodcut from 1493

Image:jenikirbyhistory.getarchive.net

This event set in motion the events at Niklashäusen  when, renouncing his vanities Hans burned his drum and pipe. One suspects this was a real sacrifice as he probably owned very little. 

Visions are unquantifiable. Those who receive than are often disbelieved as we know from seers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We have no way now of establishing whether Boehm’s vision was genuine, an innocent mistake, a delusion or fraudulent.

Nor can we be certain whether he was an innocent abroad, or a victim manipulated by the beghard hermit, or deluded by becoming a popular hero and the centre of attention.

The Beghard’s cave Niklashausen 

Image komoot.com

His increasingly radical message may be a result of whatever his original message was running out of control as he responded to the crowds. He may have been illiterate, but he appears to have been an effective public speaker.

Did he consciously or unconsciously say what the peasants wanted to hear? Why did it also appeal to townspeople, people perhaps more likely to have the vanities, the pointed shoes and the long hair to sacrifice to a bonfire of vanities?

Niklashausen from the Beghard’s cave

Image: komoot.com

His message was in many ways very localised to the Necker valley and its economic and social structure. He may well have never travelled further than the area around Helmstadt, Niklashausen and Wurzburg.

 

The Marianberg castle at Wurzburg where Hans Boehm was imprisoned and interrogated 

Image: Facebook 

The fears of the crowd, and indeed of the executioner, indicate a series of beliefs about the supernatural that probably seem strange to most modern people, but which in the late fifteenth century were very real for the people, peasant and townsfolk alike, of the Main and Necker valleys.

The execution of Boehm and his two companions from The Nuremberg Chronicle

Image: executedtoday.com

There are modern memorials to Boehm in Wurzburg in the site of his execution and in Helmstadt. 

 

There are significant similarities to the events of the Peasants War of 1525 or to the 1514 Hungarian peasant revolt led by Győrgy Dózsa to make the modern observer see more than just peasant disgruntlement. The Wurzburg authorities in 1476 may well have nipped in the bud a much more serious uprising.   

It was also at this time that writers in Germany began to compile and publish works on witchcraft which was increasingly coming to be seen as actively evil and Satanic rather than as something that was not approved of, but which the Church could contain, tolerate and marginalise.

Cohn’s study of such radical movements was in part a response to the events of the twentieth century, notably in Germany. It is perhaps not entirely facetious to wonder if  the German synodical church movement has older roots than Vatican II.

Was Hans Boehm an unrecognised saint, a gullible victim of manipulative people, a proto-social revolutionary, a deluded or dangerous simpleton, a mixture in differing ways of these and other factors? We cannot know, but we can be intrigued by his story.

The reburial of Richard Duke of York 1476 - an afterword

As the captains and the kings depart Fotheringhay it is reasonable to ask what happened subsequently.

The interior of the nave at Fotheringhay church

Image: jamesparsons.org

In 1482-3 King Edward IV assigned £100 to build his father’s tomb in the choir of the collegiate church, but nothing survives of that. In 1495 Duchess Cicely died at Berkhamstead Castle having outlived all but two of her children, and was taken to lie beside her husband at Fotheringhay. 

The pulpit in the church given by King Edward IV

Image: Facebook 

The Royal Arms in the pulpit 

Image: Facebook

In 1548 the college was dissolved and the choir abandoned, the parishioners just using the nave. A surviving inventory list remains of the hearse from 1476, and items such as altar frontals of white sarcenet with garters, of white sarcenet with fleur de lys and of red sarcenet with the Yorkist fetterlock badge together with what was described as a herald’s tabard of velvet with gold embroidery, but which may well have been part of the harness offered up at the burial. The altar frontals were probably made from the fabric offered at the funeral ceremonies.

In 1566 Queen Elizabeth I visited Fotheringhay and was shocked at the state of her ancestors’ graves and arranged for their removal to the sides of the parochial altar where the bodies remain in their matching monuments.

A commission appointed by the Queen arranged for the demolition of the remains of the eastern portion of the church in 1573.

Fifteen years later the castle witnessed the trial and execution of Mary Queen of Scots and thereafter the castle was left to decay. It was demolished in the 1620s and 1630s, leaving only the earthworks of the motte and ditches and one small fragment of exposed walling.

 

The Elizabethan monument to Duke Richard and Duchess Cicely in Fotheringhay Church

Image: warmingtonbenedice.org.uk

If the reburial had been a celebration of the Yorkist dynasty then it was really almost the last opportunity for such an event.

Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy appears nowhere in the records of the reburial - not in person, or proxy, and with no Burgundian ambassador. Her husband Duke Charles, the erstwhile ally of her brother, was busy, and unsuccessfully, fighting the Swiss, being defeated by them at Grandson and Morat, in 1476, and was finally slain by them in the snow at Nancy in January 1477. Much of the remainder of Margaret’s life was to revolve around supporting her stepdaughter Mary and her husband Maximilian in their struggles with the French and with rebellious Burgundians, when she was not supporting or encouraging Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. Whoever we may think they were, at Fotheringhay in the summer of 1476 such a scenario would have been unthinkable.

In December 1476 the Duchess of Clarence died and the loss of Isabel appears to have tipped George into increasingly irrational and indeed criminal and then treasonous behaviour. In consequence the King had him arrested, tried in Parliament and sentenced to death - according to legend by drowning in a butt of malmsey wine.

King Edward, now guilty of fratricide, remained ever self-indulgent, and angered when King Louis abrogated the deal they had struck in 1475. When King Edward died suddenly early in April 1483 the Yorkist house turned out to be one of cards. Amongst those at Fotheringhay Earl Rivers and Lord Hastings were beheaded as was the Queen’ second son, Richard Grey. One person whom one might have expected at Fotheringhay, the Queen’s almost twenty one year old brother-in-law, the Duke of Buckingham was not present. By background his family were Lancastrian rather than Yorkist, although his paternal grandmother was one of the sisters of Duchess Cicely, but by the mid 1470s as he achieved adulthood he would have seemed to have accommodated to the new dispensation. He too did not survive 1483.

 

Of those at Fotheringhay who not only survived but prospered there was only really the Countess of Richmond and her husband Lord Stanley.

  

At the centre of all the events we have followed were whatever earthly remained of Richard Duke of York and his second son. The Duke has had some academic and some more popular biographers in recent years, but he remains enigmatic.

The epitaph on his hearse is given in Hammond, Sutton and Visser-Fuchs’ splendid compilation, and as a statement of the Yorkist claim and of filial piety is what one would expect. 

  

 The opposite view might be that he was a blundering and not very bright magnate who pitched the country into what we now usually call the Wars of the Roses for his own selfish ends, and that the consequent bloodshed - and there was a lot on battlefields and scaffolds - could well be laid very firmly at his feet. All those requiem masses may well have been very necessary for his eternal salvation.   

The reburial of Richard Duke of York 1476 - Funeral and Funeral Feast

 

Bishop Rotherham leads King Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth and their court in prayer to the Holy Trinity 

From the frontispiece to the Luton Guild Book circa 1475

Image: Instagram - Natalie Grueninger

The funeral ceremonies were held on the Tuesday. 

Liturgically this began with three High Masses, those of Our Lady, of the Trinity,  and of Requiem. According to the herald’s description all three were offered by Bishop Rotherham, which seems unusual. It may mean that he presided in pontificals from the throne and that others actually offered the Mass. Bishop Rotherham also preached “a very noble” sermon. Meanwhile the service for Rutland was held in the Lady Chapel “as befitted his estate”.

At the offertory King offered the Mass penny for his father, making an obeisance as he passed the coffin. The Queen, not wearing a high headdress, offered next making “a great obeisance and reverence” and then similarly her two daughters. They were followed by the 

Countess of Richmond who had presumably joined her husband Lord Stanley from her castle at Bourne in Lincolnshire. It is tempting to speculate what she was thinking, other than as a pious woman fulfilling her Christian duty to pray for the dead.

The two French ambassadors, representing King Louis XI were escorted by two unnamed earls to make their offerings and two barons similarly escorted the two Danish ambassadors representing King Christian I. A single baron escorted the Portuguese ambassador representing King Afonso V to make his.

Following this Norroy King of Arms presented the Duke’s coat of arms which was received by an unnamed earl. March King of Arms presented the Duke’s shield, which was also received by an unnamed earl.Whether this was the same peer is not specified, nor the form of the arms, that is, whether they were his arms as Duke of York or the undifferentiated Royal arms as rightful king. Ireland King of Arms offered the sword and two heralds, Windsor and Snowdon, the helmet

Lord Ferrers presented the harness [the suit of armour] and the courser by riding it into the church escorted by barons, knights and two heralds. In his hand he carried a axe with the point downwards. The courser was black and richly trapped to the ground “with the whole anrms” and was led to the gate of the choir where the animal was received by the deacon. After this the sermon was delivered and more cloths were laid on the coffin. According to one of the descriptions the King offered to the body and coffin seven pieces of cloth of gold five yards long, by the hand of his Chamberlain, Hastings, and the Queen through her Chamberlain six pieces five yards long. Each Duke offered five, each earl three, and each baron and  “the lowest esquire” one.

Following the funeral there was, as custom demanded, a feast. The surging accounts only really cover this aspect of the reburial - there is nothing to indicate the costs of  the cortège from Pontefract or of the alms distributed. However Chester Herald recorded that at the end of the ceremonies in addition to their robes, hoods, and expenses the Office of Arms received £20. What does survive, and it is detailed, is given in Hammond, Sutton and Visser-Fuchs’ study. 

Over the four days from July 28th to 31st something like two thousand people were fed each day. By contrast the population of Fotheringhay in the sixteenth century is estimated at about three hundred, and in the 2011 census was 119. 

The King’s pavilioner had been busy erecting ‘halls of canvas’ for mourners to rest, wheat and sleep as well as an open air cooking site set up with ‘rakkes’. Four crates were required for ‘tentes’. Carpenters were employed to make tables, forms and trestles in ‘hales’ and ‘tentes’ and other places in the castle. Linen for table cloths was bought.

Goods were brought from, and later returned to London. 31 tuns and 180 gallons of ale, 40 pipes of wine from the royal cellars, 2000 wooden bowls, 1088 clay pots, 49 beef cattle, 210 sheep, 90 calves, 200 pig, plus fish and poultry, and 182 quarters of charcoal were all purchased .

 

The fish included two fresh salmon and 100 salt fish. The poultry included capons, cygnets, hens, partridges, pheasants, herons, ‘wypes ’[ lapwings or peewits, known in eastern England as piewypes] coneys, ‘rabettes’, chicken, plus milk, ‘creme’, ‘butir’ and eggs. William Strode was paid for transporting the poultry for thirty one days with his five horses £10.6.8, including 6.8d as a reward.

Pewter vessels cost £6.18s, and ‘disces and plates’ of wood £7.19.4.

The spicery cost £8.15s, and 10.8d carriage from London. Mustard, vinegar and verjuice were also bought and a barrel of honey cost 26.8d and 14 gallons more was bought at 14d a gallon

Bread was brought from Stamford and carriage paid for it, which doubtless kept the bakers of the town very busy.

Though it is not recorded in the paymentsthere would also have been fodder for the animals that brought mourners and goods to Fotheringhay.

Such a funeral cost a great deal. That of the Earl of Northumberland, who had accompanied the body from the north band was at Fotheringhay, at Beverley in 1489 following his murder, cost over a thousand pounds. If the catering seems striking, it was as nothing compared with the late Archbishop George Neville’s gargantuan enthronement feast at Cawood in 1465. This was a time when prodigality was in indicator of status and grandeur.

It was also an opportunity to share with not only those attending but to also use why was left over for charitable gifts to the less well-off and the poor. They turned up to grand funerals to receive basic necessities and occasional treats in return for their prayers.

 

As Thomas Whiting, Chester herald recorded  “during Mass and afterwards all who came each had a penny and each woman with child two and on the said day up to five thousand people who came to receive alms were counted; and there were also tents and pavilions and halls of canvas where people could sit and rest and there were as many as 1500 places where they could sit and eat, beside other, reserved places and apart from the court of the King were counted as many as twenty thousand [sic] people; there was enough to drink and eat of wine and meat for everybody.”

The reburial of Richard Duke of York 1475 - Stamford to Fotheringhay

The usual morning routine was repeated for the last time as the bodies began the last stage of their journey and left the Stamford Greyfriars. Passing once again through the town to St Mary’s church the procession would have turned in the shadow of the church tower and spire to the left and down the slope to cross the bridge over the Welland and then climb up through the Stamford Baron parish of St Martin to the open road south towards Fotheringhay

One of the accounts in French records that on  “the 29 day of the said month the said body was moved from Stamford to Fotheringhay ... it was received very honourably by the said town of Stamford and by all the houses of religion and all the parishes. And it was received on the way by all the local processions and again torches and alms were given to all who came.”

 

The houses of religion would have been the Austin, Carmelite, Dominican and Franciscan friaries, and also the Benedictine St Leonard’s Priory, which was a cell of Durham Cathesral priory, but which in 1440 only two monks.

Stamford today has five surviving medieval parish churches, and the remains of two others but there were fourteen parishes in the medieval town together with that of St Martin in Stamford Baron, south of the river Welland, which was part of the fief of Peterborough Abbey. Those in the borough were consolidated into five under an Act of Parliament in 1548. 

So if the monastic houses and the parishes all turned out as the account seems to imply the Stamford element in this stage of the procession must have been quite considerable.

 

  

Fotheringhay Collegiate Church of St Mary and All Saints

Image: The Tudor Travel Guide

There is a good illustrated account of the church together with a plan and picture of the reconstruction model at Fotheringhay

A reconstruction model of the church and college at Fotheringhay

Image: Wikimedia 

When the procession arrived at Fotheringhay it looks as if the leading figures who has escorted the bodies now took their places alongside other nobles and bishops.

The first group to meet the procession “with great reverence” was the collegiate body of clergy accompanied by the bishops, both those who had travelled from Pontefract with the remains, although the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield has disappeared from the list, so he may have dropped out at some point, and those who had travelled directly to Fotheringhay, together with the Dean of the King’s Chapel.

At the entrance to the churchyard the body was removed from the carriage and borne by twelve knights, with the banners borne by six others.

King Edward had awaited the arrival of the remains of his father and brother at the gate of the churchyard. Clad in mourning dark blue with the hood furred with miniver  the handsome auburn haired six foot four Yorkist “golden boy” might still appear splendid on a public occasion, but he was already showing signs of too much good living. The Burgundian-French chronicler Philippe de Commynes had been awed the King’s physical presence when in exile in 1470-71 but when he saw him again in 1475 he noted that the English king might look splendid but was starting to get fat.

King Edward IV

A painting of circa 1510, taken from a lost original. Note the developing double chin

Image: Society of Antiquaries 

The Jibg made his obeisance to the coffin, laid his hand on the effigy, kissed it and wept. He then, with his brothers the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, brother-in-law the Duke of Suffolk, stepson the Marquess of Dorset, the Earls of Lincoln, Northumberland, Essex, Kent and Rivers, and Lords Stanley, Hastings, Audley, Dacres, Greystoke and Welles escorted the body to the choir where it was immediately placed in the hearse that had been commissioned. The King entered his closet - his private, enclosed pew - the princes went into the hearse and the officers of arms, their tabards worn over their mourning habits, stood on each side. According to one account the body of the Earl of Rutland remained with his father whilst the other states that it was taken to the Lady Chapel at the east end of the church. Also present were the Queen and two of her daughters - presumably the eldest, Elizabeth and Mary - and many ladies, both married and unmarried, and all in mourning attire. 

Following a sermon Placebo and Dirige were started and at the Magnificat at the King’s command his Chamberlain Lord Hastings laid seven five yard lengths of cloth of gold on the effigy and the Queen’s Chamberlain, Lord Dacre of the South, offered one five yard length which were laid in the form of a cross. Assuming these were pieces of hand-woven Italian silk they would have been quite narrow because of the nature of the looms.

 

George Duke of Clarence

A late sixteenth century probably based on a lost original 

Image: Daily Express / Philip Mould & Co