chroniclers of the time, cited by Mr. Sewell, though most of them charge Richard with the murder, are silent about Tyrell, with the exception of a ' History of Richard III.,' usually attributed to Sir Thomas More. William Rastell,1 his son-in-law, found it among his papers, and printed it in 1557, more than twenty years after the execution of Sir Thomas. With regard to this History, More could not have written the earlier part, as he would not have spoken of his personal knowledge of the last illness of Edward IV., being at that time barely three years old. One view of the book is that More, who was brought up in the house of Archbishop Morton, and educated under his direction, noted down what he learned from the Archbishop in conversation. Another, a great authority, is inclined to regard the English copy as Morton's own work, basing his conclusion on the mention of the illness of Edward IV. In any case it is not evidence that can be put aside, though perhaps in some particulars in accurate. The personal bravery of Sir James Tyrell makes his share in the murder of these hapless boys intrinsically improbable, and the verdict in many minds will be 'Not proven.' Against Richard III. the proofs are stronger, but it is beyond our purpose to examine them. The name of the Gipping knight is prominently before the reader of the events of the reign of Henry VII.; and it is impossible that if he had been generally regarded as guilty he would have been placed in the positions of trust in which we find him. He had been made Supervisor of Guisnes on January 13, 1485, Governor of Glamorgan and Morgannoke on the 24th, and Constable of Tintagel in June. It is uncertain where he was on the battle-day at Bosworth, but up to that time there was nothing to recommend him to Henry VII., except a general idea of his ability. 1 Son of John Rastell. 2 Creasy,' History of England,' ii. 497. 3 Sir H. Ellis, 'Hardynge,' p. xx. Parliament repealed two Acts, by which land had been granted to him, restoring their old possessions to Sir Thomas Arundell and William Knyvet; while, to gain the services of so useful a man, he received for life the offices which he had held under Richard III. in South Wales. Honours and riches poured in on him, and there is no putting a limit to the height to which he might have attained, had it not been for the imprudence of Edmund de la Pole, now Earl of Suffolk by the death of his elder brother John, Earl of Lincoln, at the battle of Stoke in 1487, and of his father, Duke John, at Wingfield in 1491. Henry VII., stark usurper as he was, felt constant uneasiness at the movements of any who were in the succession to the crown. The troublesome betrothal stories affecting Edward IV. unsettled people's minds about the rights of his daughter Elizabeth, Queen to Henry VII. Failing her, the right lay with Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the sole surviving child of George, Duke of Clarence. Next came Edmund de la Pole, son of Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of the great Richard, Duke of York. It was a perilous position, and the great show made by him at the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales, with Katharine of Aragon drew inconvenient attention to him--a condition of things which was not improved by his fleeing with his younger brother Richard to his aunt Margaret, Countess of Burgundy, the inveterate enemy of the Tudor upstarts. On their way they looked in at Guisnes, and being, as Mr. Sewell suggests, old friends and neighbours of the Tyrells, for Wingfield and Gipping are only about a dozen miles apart, their reception by Sir James may have been at the outside an act of indiscretion. Henry, though at first hard to be convinced, took measures for the arrest of the De la Pole adherents at Guisnes. Thus Sir James Tyrell, his son Thomas, and others were brought to London and tried before a commission at the Guildhall. 1 See Chapter IX. They were all sentenced in the form usual in cases of treason, but young Tyrell and Wellesbourne, the family servant, had their sentence commuted to imprisonment during pleasure. In 1504 the young man was pardoned, and in 1507 restored to his father's estate at Gipping. The assertion against which Mr. Sewell contends is that Sir James confessed the murder of the princes between his sentence and his execution. It rests on the Morton-More Life of Richard III., referred to above, and will be received, doubted, or rejected, according to the various estimates which may be formed concerning that work. Sir James Tyrell was buried in the church of the Austin Friars in Old Broad Street, used since the days of Edward VI. as the Dutch Reformed Church. The Tyrell family were owners in that ward. What may be called the Church life of these times is most impartially illustrated by the contemporaneous documents. From the days of Laban and Jacob, when a heap, called by Laban Jegar-sahadutha, and by Jacob Galeed, each term meaning a heap of witness, was used by those patriarchs as a dining-room, and they did eat and drink on the heap' in confirmation of their alliance, eating and drinking in common have played an important part in solemnities, sacred as well as secular. Of this character were the potationes ecclesiastica, or church-ales, of which the earlier of the remaining parish books contain instances. At the remote village of Cratfield these accounts remain in very fair preservation, dating back to 1490, in which year we find five church-ales to have been held, or imbibed, if that be the most proper verb. The days were Passion Sunday (the fifth in Lent), one by the legacy of William Brews, Pentecost, All Saints' Day, and one for Geoffrey Baret. The sums collected were 7s. 4d., 9s., 9s. 8d., and 7s. 8d., on the first four days. The last is left blank. The small items of expense in washing of the vestments, etc., only amount to 12s. 4d., 1 Of Wittingham Hall in Fressingfield. but no account of the balance is made in 1491, when the days appear to have undergone change, Plough Monday ('dies lune cum aratro') making its appearance. In 1492 'Refreshment' Sunday (the fourth in Lent) comes on appropriately; but in 1493 they went back to Passion Sunday, had a church-ale in harvest, and substituted 'hallowesday' (Hallow Mass, All Souls', November 2) for their previous All Saints'. These variations in so short a time are but typical of the constant change and flux in all externals to which the material element even in things Divine is subject. They had saved up their money for a purpose, having found that their images wanted painting. One Thomas Bollre received the large sum of £2 13s. 4d. for 'peyngtyng of ye image of our lady,' and the sum of 8s. for 'ye peyngtyng of ye tabernacull of Seynt Edmond,' to whom the chapel of the guild seems to have been dedicated. In 1494, having received several legacies and gathered an unusual sum at the church-ale in harvest, they employed Bollre to paint the tabernacle of our Lady, and paid him £7 for his work. What we may call the private church-ales were not intended to be perpetual, being only part of the Trental or Thirty-day arrangements, into which the will of Geoffrey Baret's uncle John gives us excellent insight. This John Baret was serving the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds in some capacity as bailiff, and his tomb, with some lines which are not to be despised, stands in St. Mary's Church: 'JOHN BARET. 'He that will sadly behold me with his ie So endeth ech creature: doeth John Baret. Wherefore ye pepil in waye of charitie For such as I am right so shalle ye al bi. Now God on my sowle: have merci and pitee. Amen.' In his will he makes arrangement for the chimes to 'smyth' the tune Requiem Eternam without intermission till his Thirty-day, which is also called the Month's mind, should be passed. Sometimes bellmen were employed at these times to go about exhorting all to pray for the soul of the deceased. The public feast, as we see, was dear to other testators, but not to all. John Coote of Bury, for instance, 'will neyther ryngyn nor belman goynge,' but his almsgivings and dinners on his thirty-day to be don in secret manner.' I have suggested that the Trental may have sprung from the thirty days' mourning for Moses and Aaron. Analogous arrangements were made in wills for the observance of the earth-tide, or year-day, the anniversary of the testator's death. The Cratfield folk were apparently well satisfied with Bollre's work, as they paid him in 1498 £8 6s. 8d. ' for ye peyntyng of ye image of Saynt Edmñde and ye tabernacle,' noting also the previous 8s. 4d. The two lord mayors connected with Suffolk, alluded to in the last chapter, were Sir Ralph Josselyn, K.B., and Sir Henry Kebyll. The former was Lord Mayor in 1464 and 1476. His arms-az., at each corner of a circular wreath entwined ar. and sa., a hawk's bell or-are in Long Melford Church, in which parish he owned large property. This branch of the family is extinct, but well-known members of other branches survive at Ipswich. Sir Henry Keble, citizen and grocer, was not Lord Mayor till 1510. In many spellings the name was of old standing in the county. John Kybel of Gorliston and others appeared against the claims of Yarmouth before the barons of the Exchequer in 1306. In the next century some were in business in London, John Kebyll, wheel ΙΟ |