The reburial of Richard Duke of York 1476 - Grantham to Stamford

 

Following the morning’s main requiem and the celebration of many other Masses, as one of the two accounts written in French records, “the said body was moved from the side town of Grantham and was escorted and received honourably by the whole town and the county around it as far as Stamford and there was received by the lords of the neighbourhood and the citizens of the dais town, all dressed in black and by all the archers of the crown.”

 

The cortège would have moved through the town from 
west to east and finally leaving the walled area came to the Greyfriars, who alongside the Dominicans and the Carmelites had their monastery outside the north-eastern town wall. Here the hearse was again set up as at the previous stations “and large gifts were given there especially to the churches and to all who came great and small.” There the body remained for the rest of Saturday and through Sunday until it was removed to Fotheringhay on the Monday. 

 

Stamford

John Speed’s map of 1610

The Greyfriars was to the east of the town with, according to the traditional identification the Carmelites to the north and the Dominicans, the ruins of whose buildings are shown, to the south

Image: Wikimedia 

The main buildings of the friary are lost but it is recorded that Joan, Princess of Wales, mother of King Richard II, was buried with her first husband Sir Thomas Holland in a “sumptuous chapel …next the choir”

What used to be identified as the gateway of the Whitefriars is now thought to have been that of the Greyfriars, and that the locations of the two monastic houses have been transposed since the end of the sixteenth century.

 

 

The late fourteenth century friary gateway

 

Image: stamfordsecretstours.com

As the procession approached Stamford from the north it would have passed the site of the battle of Losecote Field in March 1470 when King Edward having had two hostages, Lord Willoughby and Welles, father of the rebel leader Sir Robert Welles, and Sir Thomas Dymoke, the King’s Champion, beheaded in front of both his army and that of the rebels, went on to scatter his opponents. For survivors from the Yorkist army this was doubtless a time for reflection on the events of that day.

Stamford itself was a town with strong ties to the house of York and in 1461 had experienced the wrath of the Lancastrian army. At one time it was claimed the town had been devastated but a more likely interpretation is that as at Ludlow in 1459 after the stand-off at Ludford Bridge the town was pillaged for alcohol and provisions.

   

Some months later in 1461-2 King Edward IV granted Stamford a charter of incorporation. 

Later fifteenth and early sixteenth century Stamford was clearly a prosperous town as evidenced by the churches of All Saints, St John, and St Martin as well as Browne’s Hospital, which was initially founded in 1475. There is more about it at History and buildings | Browne's Hospital, Stamford

 

All Saints Church Stamford

The south wall above the thirteenth century arcading, the clerestory and the tower and spire were rebuilt after 1470 in an initiative funded by the wealthy wool merchant Browne family

Image: britainexpress.com