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

The cortège resumed its journey with its banners and torches and attendant ceremonial after a requiem Mass the following morning.  It must have passed along Frenchgate, High Street, past the Carmelite friary, and along Hallgate. The town was enclosed by earthen and timber ramparts, with a ditch on the outer side. Four stone gates on the main roads allowed access. Outside on the south Hallgate cross still exists as a landmark. 

The procession would have passed this and continued southwards in the same way as it had the previous day towards Bawtry and then south-west to cross the small river Ryton to arrive at Blyth and the priory that was to accommodate the Ducal remains that night.

Blyth Priory had been founded in 1088 as a dependency of the Benedictine house of the Trinité sur Mont, later known as St Katherine’s, at Rouen. Like other alien priories the fourteenth century brought problems and in 1409 it was refounded as an independent house. In the fifteenth century it appears very much to have been under the patronage of the duchy of Lancaster, who often appointed the prior, exercising the rights as successors to the founder Roger de Busli, whose Honour of Tickhill was now a part of the Lancastrian estates. The core of the church dates from the late eleventh century and is one of the earliest Norman buildings in England. Architecturally it is of great importance, and closer in style and detail to buildings in Normandy.

Blyth Priory from the south-west

Image: southwellchurches.nottingham.ac.uk

The south aisle was built as a parochial chapel about 1300, and the tower may have been under construction in 1476. Bequests that year and in 1481 for the fabriciae ecclesiae are thought to be for this work, and a bell was acquired in 1509, which helps establish a completion date. 

The crossing tower, transepts, each with an apsidal chapel, and the choir with its apse and aisles with squared-off apses were destroyed soon after the suppression.

The nave of Blyth Priory

                        Image:nottshistory.org.uk

In the fifteenth century the church appears to have been  cut completely in two by the erection of the east wall which was then painted with a Doom, of which only fragments survive. It is dated to the later fifteenth century and in 1476, if not recent work, may still have been in the process of being painted.

There is more about the Doom at Medieval Wall Painting of the Doom, Blyth, Nottinghamshire

 

The east wall of the nave with the remains of the Doom painting

Image: Flickr/derelinquat impius 

The hearse was set up as at Pontefract with the five candelabra and the Office of the Dead sung. Given the probable presence of the Doom I would think the coffins may have lain here rather than in the monastic choir, but the accounts give no indication on this point.

Due to its location Blyth was used to accommodating visitors at the Priory and at inns in the town, or at the two local almshouses. Only a few weeks earlier in 1476 that curiously unsuccessful political prelate Archbishop George Neville, one of the younger brothers of Warwick the Kingmaker, had died on June 8th whilst staying at Blyth.