Tiltyard Friendships and Bonds of Loyalty in the Reign of Edward IV, 1461–1483

Levitt, Emma

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_2

Tiltyard Friendships and Bonds of Loyalty in the Reign of Edward IV, 1461–1483

Emma Levitt³

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First Online: 01 July 2020

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2 Citations

Abstract

Of the many sudden changes of political fortune which mark English society in the fifteenth century, none is more remarkable than the recovery of the Yorkist cause. Edward IV’s usurpation of the throne heralded a new Yorkist dynasty following the sixty-two-year rule of the house of Lancaster. This chapter analyses the tactics and methods by which Edward IV managed to retain his throne, at the same time as reasserting the prestige of the monarchy and cementing bonds of loyalty amongst a divided court. In this chapter, I will illustrate how Edward IV was calculated in his use of tournaments, splendour and promotions to the Order of the Garter, which were intended to publicise the authority of the house of York and his kingly masculinity. My analysis of Edward IV’s kingship focuses especially on his promotion of chivalry, which saw the return of jousting tournaments, Garter ceremonies and heraldic symbols, all elements of the cultural frame within which bonds of loyalty to the crown could be established.

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Notes

1.
K. Vickers, England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1913), pp. 439, 494.
2.
C. Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics, 1377–1399 (Oxford, 2008); C. Fletcher, ‘Manhood and Politics in the Reign of Richard II’, Past and Present 189 (2005), 3–39.
3.
K. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (Abingdon, 2013).
4.
Ibid., p. 34.
5.
Ibid., p. 59.
6.
R. Connell and J. W. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender and Society 19 (2005), 829–59. A leading and very influential contributor to the field of masculinities, Raewyn Connell notes that a cultural hegemonic model of masculinity was an ideal enacted by an elite minority.
7.
I. Mortimer, The Fears of Henry IV: The Life of England’s Self-Made King (London, 2013), p. 36. Henry stands out as one of the most remarkable exponents of the joust the English royal family had ever produced according to Mortimer.
8.
R. Barber, ‘Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and Court Culture under Edward IV’, in Arthurian Literature XII, ed. J. Carley and F. Riddy (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 133–57.
9.
For a recent study of Edward’s martial kingship see A. Corbet, Edward IV, England’s Forgotten Warrior King: His Life, His People, and His Legacy (Bloomington, 2015).
10.
PROME, November 1461, mem. 2.
11.
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16.
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18.
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19.
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20.
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21.
CPR, 1461–67, p. 435. See also, TNA, C 81/802/1630.
22.
TNA, E 404/73/1/45A.
23.
Barber, ‘Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur’, p. 144.
24.
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25.
D. Crouch, Tournaments (London, 2005), p. 1.
26.
R. C. Coltman, The Medieval Tournament (New York, 1987), p. 3.
27.
John Tiptoft’s ordinances were copied into numerous collections. These collections are kept in the College of Arms, the British Library, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. College of Arms: MS M. 6, ff. 56v–57r; MS L5bis, ff. 121v–122r. BL, Add. MS 33735, ff. 3r–4r; Add. MS 46354 f. 58v; Harley MS 1354, ff. 13r–14v; Harley MS 1776, f. 45r; Harley MS 6064, ff. 86r–86v; Harley MS 6079, f. 34v; Stowe MS 1409, f. 209r. Bodleian Library: Ashmole MS 763, f. 148r; Ashmole MS 1116, f. 108v.
28.
J. Barker, The Tournament in England, 1100–1400 (Woodbridge, 1986), p. 145.
29.
BL, Harley MS 6064, f. 36v. In a tournament held during the reign of Elizabeth I, the four challengers are first detailed as receiving prizes, which included a tablet of diamond, a chain, a ring full of diamonds, and a chain of gold. Then three prizes are listed for victors in the tilt (a chain), the tourney (a diamond), and the foot combat (a ruby).
30.
The transition from the tiltyard as a focus for training in warfare to being instead essentially a theatre for spectacular pageantry is argued by S. Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969).
31.
Ross, Edward IV, pp. 64–5.
32.
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34.
T. Elyot, The Castel of Helth … (London, 1541), pp. 12–13.
35.
Historical Collections of a Citizen of London, ed. Gairdner, p. 219.
36.
Historical Collections of a Citizen of London, ed. Gairdner, p. 219.
37.
Historical Collections of a Citizen of London, ed. Gairdner, p. 219.
38.
G. Richardson, The Field of Cloth of Gold (New Haven and London, 2013), p. 136.
39.
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40.
BL, Lansdowne MS 285, ff. 155r–199v. G. Lester, Sir John Paston’s Grete Boke: A Descriptive Catalogue, with an Introduction, of British Library MS Lansdowne 285 (Cambridge, 1984), p. 37.
41.
T. Hahn, ‘Gawain and Popular Chivalric Romance in Britain’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. R. Krueger (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 18–34.
42.
M. Hicks, ‘Woodville, Anthony, second earl Rivers (c. 1440–1483)’, in ODNB, available at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/29937 (accessed 28 December 2018).
43.
A. Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2006), p. 9.
44.
For tourneying fraternities, see R. M. Karras, From Boys to Men: Formation of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Pennsylvania, 2002), pp. 58–67.
45.
R. Horrox, ‘Hastings, William, first baron Hastings (c. 1430–1483)’, in ODNB, available at http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12588 (accessed 3 January 2018).
46.
These theories of age in the Middle Ages have been argued as having only a tenuous connection to the reality of men’s lives and men’s bodies. See F. Dunlop, The Late Medieval Interlude: The Drama of Youth and Aristocratic Masculinity (York, 2007), p. 13.
47.
The wedding celebrations inspired a number of eyewitness accounts. An English account is found in BL, Add. MS 46354, ff. 41v–50v.
48.
Corbet, Edward IV, p. 153.
49.
R. Horrox, ‘Parr, Sir William (1434–1483)’, in ODNB, available at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21404 (accessed 29 December 2018).
50.
Barker, The Tournament in England, p. 117.
51.
Barber, ‘Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur’, pp. 133–56; M. Keen and J. Barker, ‘The Medieval English Kings and the Tournament’, in Nobles, Knights and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages, ed. M. Keen (London, 1996), pp. 83–101.
52.
The four eyewitness accounts are found in the following places. The English accounts can be found in BL, Lansdowne MS 285, ff. 18r-24r, 29v-43r, 99r-100v, and College of Arms MS L5bis. The BL account (that of the Chester Herald) can found in print in S. Bentley, Excerpta Historica (London, 1831), pp. 176–212; L. C. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward IV, part 1 (London, 1923), pp. 414–20; H. F. Cripps-Day, The History of the Tournament in England and in France (London, 1918), pp. 96–8; R. C. Clephan, The Tournament: its Periods and Phases (London, 1919), pp. 76–7. The Burgundian accounts can be found in O. Marche, Memoirs (Ghent, 1556), pp. 489–90, and Utrech University Library, MS 1776, ff. 186r–225v. The Burgundian accounts can also be found transcribed and translated in R. Moffat, ‘The Medieval Tournament: Chivalry, Heraldry and Reality, an Edition and Analysis of Three Fifteenth-Century Tournament Manuscripts’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2010). In addition to the four sources cited, the following all mention the 1467 tournament: W. Worcester, Letters and Papers illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry VI, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols. (London: Rolls Series, 1861–64), ii, p. 478; Hall’s Chronicle, Containing the History of England During the Reign of Henry IV and the Succeeding Monarchs to the End of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. H. Ellis (London, 1809), pp. 267–70; J. Stow, Annales (London, 1631), p. 406.
53.
Brown and Small, Court and Civic Society, p. 36.
54.
BL, Lansdowne MS 285, f. 43r.
55.
Bodleian, Ashmole MS 656, f. 94v.
56.
BL, Harley MS 69, ff. 1r–2r, printed in Cripps-Day, History of the Tournament, Appendix IV.
57.
Bodleian, Ashmole MS 856, ff. 94v–101v.
58.
Vale, War and Chivalry, p. 79.
59.
R. Barber, ‘The Order of the Round Table’ in Edward III’s Round Table at Windsor: The House of the Round Table and the Windsor Festival 1344, ed. J. Munby, R. Barber and R. Brow (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 137–49.
60.
W. M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and the Recovery of Royal Authority in England, 1340–60’, History 72 (1987), 4–19.
61.
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62.
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63.
J. S. Bothwell, Edward III and the English Peerage: Royal Patronage, Social Mobility and Political Control in Fourteenth-Century England (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 107.
64.
W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Foundation and Early Development of the Order of the Garter in England, 1348–1399’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 50 (2017), 361–92.
65.
Ross, Edward IV, p. 274.
66.
J. Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (London, 2002).
67.
G. F. Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter (London, 1841), pp. 162–4.
68.
Ibid., pp. 162–4.
69.
Ibid., pp. 162–4.
70.
C. Donohue, ‘Public Display and the Construction of Monarchy in Yorkist England, 1461–85’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of York, 2013), p. 126.
71.
J. L. Sanford and M. Townsend, The Great Governing Families of England, Volumes 1 & 2 (Edinburgh and London, 1865), p. 191.
72.
Ross, Edward IV, p. 73.
73.
E. Ashmole, The History of the Most Noble of the Garter; and the Several Orders of Knighthood in Europe (London, 1715), p. 515.
74.
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75.
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76.
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78.
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More, The History of King Richard the Third, pp. 44–5.
82.
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83.
T. Gumus, ‘Court Chivalry and Politics: Nominations and Elections to the Order of the Garter, 1461–1483’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Bilkent University, 2007), p. 146.
84.
Donohue, ‘Public Display and the Construction of Monarchy’, p. 128.

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University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK
Emma Levitt

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Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Matthew Ward
Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Matthew Hefferan

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Levitt, E. (2020). Tiltyard Friendships and Bonds of Loyalty in the Reign of Edward IV, 1461–1483. In: Ward, M., Hefferan, M. (eds) Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_2
Published: 01 July 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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