The reburial of Richard Duke of York 1476 - Pontefract to Doncaster

The cortège began the journey to Fotheringhay on the morning of Monday July 21st 1476. The day began with a requiem Mass celebrated in the Pontefract Blackfriars by the Bishop of Durham whilst the Bishop of Hereford who preached.m a ‘notable’ sermon. Meanwhile to Dominicans celebrated Dirige and requiem masses at an altar ‘beneath’ the choir - presumably a nave altar.

This pattern of the evening Placebo and Dirige and a morning requiem became the daily regimen for the following week as well as the distribution of alms in return for prayers for the deceased.

It was decided to send the bishops and abbots in attendance one or two miles ahead to set up and so that they could be ready in their black copes and white mitres simplex to receive the bodies at the next stational church. 

All the mourners were clad in full length black gowns with hoods to cover the head, and so swathed they prepared for the journey to Fotheringhay.

Following the Requiem the body of the Duke was transferred to the funeral carriage. The contemporary accounts make no mention in this respect of Rutland’s remains. It is therefore unclear if his bones were conveyed with his father or in a separate vehicle.

 

We do have illustrations of this type of four wheeled carriage

The funeral procession of King Richard II

Image: Medieval Histories

A Flemish depiction of the funeral procession 

of King Richard II painted in 1468

Image: Wikimedia / Berlin State Library

The funeral procession of Alexander the Great by Willem Vreelant 1470

Image: Wakefield Historical Society

The carriage was covered in black velvet which could be drawn back to display the funeral effigy and pall-covered coffin. Beneath was a valence of black sarcenet fringed half a yard deep with four beaten gold angels holding the arms of the Duke.

The arrangement is very similar to the very impressive funeral vehicle reserved for Dutch monarchs, and used in 1962 and 2004. 

Seven horses, trapped to the ground in black cloth bearing the arms of the deceased pulled the carriage. Such complete covering in black would be rarely seen today, but can be seen in film of the Portuguese 1908 double royal funeral.

At the front of these horses rode Sir John Skipwith with the undifferenced English royal standard to again assert  York’s claim to the throne which he had made in the last months of his life. Behind Skipwith the other six horses were in the charge of three riders who guided the other horse in their pair with a whip and reins.

Accompanying the carriage were three Kings of Arms - March, Norroy and Ireland - five heralds - Windsor, Falcon, Chester and Hereford from England , and Snowdon from Scotland - and four pursuivants - Guisnes, Comfort, Ich Dien and Scales. Some of their titles reflect territorial or heraldic associations of the Duke, such as March and Falcon, whilst the Welsh and Chester titles may be a reference to the fact that when he died, under the Act of Accord, he enjoyed the status and revenues of the Principality of Wales. Scales pursuivant suggests the involvement of Queen Elizabeth’s brother Anthony Earl Rives who was also Baron Scales.

Although clothed in the same mourning gowns and hoods as all the other mourners the Kings, heralds and pursuivants wore their tabards over them. They stood outside the barriers round the hearse when in the various churches.

There were five religious banners depicting the Trinity, Our Lady, St George, St Edward and St Edmund and four with heraldic badges of the Yorkists, the White Hart, the White Lion, the Falcon and fetterlock and the White Rose semme

In addition to the sixty men who had kept watch overnight and were paid twelve pence a day and twenty shillings at their departure - no mean sun in 1476 there wer also hundred poor men who provided an escort. All were clad in the black gowns and carried torches. These may have been like those of linkmen or they may have been the tall tapers which often appear in pictures of the liturgy from the time.

With such a prestigious item as the Duke’s body and the numbers of people involved one wonders if men were sent on ahead to fill in potholes and ruts and effect necessary road repairs in advance of the cortège, or indeed to effect repairs after it had passed on.

King Richard III

Image: Society of Antiquaries / Richard III Society

Leading the procession of mourners was the youngest of York’s sons, the Duke of Gloucester, the future King Richard III. Already battle hardened, having spent time in exile in 1470-71, and increasingly accustomed to exercising delegated royal authority, as well as a married man with both legitimate and illegitimate children, Gloucester was almost three months short of his twenty fourth birthday.

With the Duke were a number of northern nobles who, graded by their rank, had the privilege of joining him within the barriers round the hearse.

Henry, Earl of Northumberland was about twenty seven and related to the York family as is indicated in Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. However his father had died from wounds received at the battle of Towton fighting for the Lancastrian cause. His son had managed to be restored to his attainted inheritance in Northumberland and Yorkshire and contrived to tread a prudent path in his dealings with the Yorkist kings.

Lord Stanley from Lancashire was a man of great influence there and aged about forty one. Not only was he a power in the north-west but was married to the countess of Richmond, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who was to join him at Fotheringhay. There is a biography of him at Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby

Lord Welles held his title jure uxoris He was a younger brother of Lord Hastings, the King’s loyal friend and Chamberlain, but his wife’s family were Lancastrian as is explained at Richard Hastings, Baron Welles. He was in his mid thirties to mid forties.

Lord Greystoke was nearly seventy and another northern Lord who had managed to make skilful political adjustments as can be seen at Ralph Greystoke, 5th Baron Greystoke

Lord Dacre of the North, or of Gilsland, aged about fifty two, was from a Lancastrian family, having fought for King Henryat Towton, but had made his peace with the new situation, as is set out at Humphrey Dacre, 1st Baron Dacre

Lord Mountjoy was about twenty six and his biography is at John Blount, 3rd Baron Mountjoy

Leaving the friary the procession faced the rising ground of Mayors Walk, and the Ackworth and Hardwick roads - the latter being altered in 1820 - before climbing up to Hundhill and then joining the Roman road rising to Barnsdale Bar and turning right along what later centuries would call the Great North Road through Barnsdale towards Doncaster. Leland in the 1530s noted that the area around the town had “good meadowland, corn and some woods.”

Along the way local processions from parishes appear to have joined in. Each priest who had sung Mass for the Duke received twelve pence and each clement four pence. All who came, rich and poor alike received a penny and each woman with a child two pence.. To each parish were given torches, anti sone two, to others less according to need, and four pence to those who rolled bells, as well as the alms distribution at the churches where the body rested, the church itself receiving five or six marks, and the furniture of the hearse. This was to be the pattern all the way to Fotheringhay. Given that the roads taken do not actually pass through many villages it must be assumed that people knew the cortège was going to be in their vicinity and assembled with their parish clergy in advance. This was probably one reason for the fees to bell ringers, the other being that the bells gave a solemn accompaniment to the occasion as the procession moved through the parish.

Doncaster was surrounded by land that comprised part of the York family lordships of Conisbrough and Hatfield. In 1467 King Edward IV had granted it a charter of incorporation. As we shall see along the route he also honoured the town in his own way in 1464 and 1470 by having Lancastrian opponents executed there.

The cortège went to Greyfriars. This was on an island between the river Don and the river Cheswold on a site the Franciscans had partially reclaimed from the rivers. The procession would cross the five arched bridge over the Don and pass through St Mary’s Gate, with its adjacent chantry chapel to the right and the Greyfriars buildings were on the left. A second bridge of three arches led into the town dominated by its fine church of St George - tragically lost in a catastrophic fire in 1853 and replaced by a handsome church by Scott which reproduces some of the features of its predecessor. This would more or less face the Greyfriars across the Cheswold and would have been a recent construction, if not still being worked upon. In the town, described by Leland as built of wood … and are [stone] slated”, was a second friary, that of the Carmelites, which was home to the popular pilgrimage shrine of Our Lady of Doncaster.

St George’s Church Doncaster

An engraving of the church in 1801

Image: Wikimedia / The Tudor Travel Guide

At the Greyfriars the procession was doubtless net by the Mayor, local clergy, with crosses and banners, relics and holy water, plus guilds and fraternities. Alms were distributed to so many people that those recording it lost count. The Franciscan church where the Duke’s remains rested overnight had five altars recorded in 1538, and possessed four bells, which suggests it was larger or more impressive than the Dominican house in Pontefract where the day had started.