The Last White Rose (54 page)

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Authors: Desmond Seward

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In their staunch fidelity to a dispossessed royal family, and in their adherence to Common Law and disgust at the setting aside of the obvious heir to the throne, the last Yorkists foreshadowed the Jacobites. Supporters of the exiled House of Stuart may have been aware of this when they adopted the White Rose as their own emblem – James II had been Duke of York before he became king. However, there was no Sir Walter Scott to immor-talize their sixteenth-century predecessors.

Although Mary and Elizabeth were in turn threatened by rivals (the former by her sister, the latter by her Scottish cousin), neither of them appears to have been particularly frightened by the situation. By their time, their dynasty’s right to the throne was established beyond question, so that they had no sense of being parvenus. Indeed, Elizabeth’s triumphant reign made it seem that the Tudors had been predestined to rule England. In consequence, the cult of the Tudor age has largely obscured the Yorkist pretenders (except, perhaps, for Perkin Warbeck) and concealed the dread in which the White Rose was held by Henry VII and Henry VII.

Epilogue

 

1
. D.M. Loades,
Two Tudor Conspiracies
, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1965, pp. 21–3, 45–6.
2
.
Ibid.,
p. 225.
3
. A. Rowntree (ed.),
History of Scarborough
, London, Dent, 1931, p. 214.
4
.
Oxford DNB
: H. Pierce, ‘Arthur Pole’.

C
HRONOLOGY

 

 

 

 

1483
Disappearance of Edward V and the Duke of York – the ‘Princes in the Tower’
1484
Edward, Prince of Wales dies – the Earl of Warwick is briefly heir to the throne
1484
Richard III recognizes his nephew the Earl of Lincoln as his heir
1485
Battle of Bosworth and accession of Henry VII
1486
Rising for Warwick against Henry by Lord Lovell and the Stafford brothers
1487
Lincoln and Lambert Simnel (‘Edward VI’) defeated at Stoke – death of Lincoln
1490
The Abbot of Abingdon’s plot to rescue the Earl of Warwick from the Tower
1491
Perkin Warbeck comes to Ireland and is identified as ‘Richard, Duke of York’
1492
Margaret of Burgundy recognizes Warbeck as her nephew
1495
James IV of Scotland recognizes Warbeck as King of England
1496
Warbeck invades northern England, unsuccessfully
1497
Warbeck lands in Cornwall but is captured
1499
Execution of Warbeck and the Earl of Warwick
1501
Flight of Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, nephew of Richard III
1502
Attainder of Edmund, who proclaims himself ‘The White Rose’
1506
Edmund is captured and imprisoned in the Tower
1509
Edmund excluded from Henry VIII’s ‘accession pardon’
1513
Edmund is executed – his brother Richard de la Pole becomes ‘The White Rose’
1514
Recognized as ‘Richard IV’ by France, the White Rose prepares to invade
1515
English spies try to murder Richard, ‘the king’s most dreaded enemy’
1521
Execution of the Duke of Buckingham, for ‘dreaming of the throne
1522
Francis I of France asks ‘Richard IV’ to invade England
1525
Richard de la Pole, ‘The White Rose’, is killed at Pavia
1531
Lord Exeter, male heir presumptive, is sent to the Tower on suspicion of treason
1533
Bishop Fisher asks Emperor Charles V’s ambassador to depose Henry VIII
1534
Charles V considers replacing Henry VIII by Mary Tudor and Reginald Pole – but rejects the idea
1536
The Pilgrimage of Grace, the gravest threat to Henry VIII during his entire reign
1537
Reginald Pole prepares to land in England but the Pilgrimage is crushed
1538
Execution of Exeter and Lord Montague, key members of the White Rose party
1539
Reginald Pole tries and fails to organize an invasion of England
1539
Attainder of the Countess of Salisbury, the only surviving Plantagenet
1541
Abortive plot to revive the Pilgrimage of Grace
1541
Execution of the Countess of Salisbury – ‘last of the White Rose faction’
1547
Execution of the Earl of Surrey on suspicion of planning to claim the throne

 

A
BBREVIATIONS

 

 

 

 

Bacon
Bacon, Sir F.,
The History of the Reign of King
Henry VII and Selected Works
, ed. B. Vickers, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998
CPR
Calendar of Patent Rolls (1235–1509)
, 52 vols, London, 1891–1916
CSP Milan
Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts… at
Milan
(
1385–1618
), ed. A. B. Hinds, London, H.M.S.O. 1912
CSP Sp
Calendar of State Papers,
(Spain), 20 vols, ed. C. Bergenroth, P. de Gayangos and
M.A. S. Hume, London, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, 1862–1954
CSP Ven
Calendar of State Papers,
(Venice),
1202–1603
, 11 vols, ed. R. Brown, G. C.
Bentinck and H. F. Brown, London, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts & Green, 1864–97
Gairdner RIII
Gairdner, J.,
The History of the Life and Reign
of King Richard the Third to which is added the
Story of Perkin Warbeck
, rev. edn, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1898
GEC
Cockayne, G. E. (ed.),
Complete Peerage of
England, Scotland, Ireland, etc.
Extant, Extinct
or Dormant
, 13 vols, rev. edn, ed. V. Gibbs and H. Doubleday, London, 1910–49
Great Chronicle
The Great Chronicle of London
, ed. A. H Thomas and I. D. Thornley, London, G. W. Jones, 1938
Hall 
Hall, E.,
The Union of the Two Noble and
Illustre Famelies of Lancastre
and York
, London, [1548]1809
Leland
Leland, J.,
The Itinerary of John Leland in
or about the Years 1535–1543
, 5 vols, ed. L. Toulmin-Smith, London, 1907–10
LP Hen VII
Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns
of Richard
III and Henry VII
, 2 vols, ed. J. Gairdner, J., Rolls Series, 1861–3
LP HVIII
Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of
the Reign of Henry VIII, 1509–47
, 21 vols and addenda, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, J. and R. H. Brodie, London, 1862–1932
Materials 
Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry
VII
, 2 vols, ed. W. Campbell, Rolls Series, 1873–7
Memorials
 
Memorials of King Henry the Seventh
, ed. J. Gairdner, Rolls Series, London, 1858
Oxford DNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
, 60 vols, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004
Paston Letters
 
The Paston Letters
, ed. J. Gairdner, Gloucester, Alan Sutton, 1986
Plumpton Corr
The Plumpton Correspondence
, ed. T. Stapleton, CS old series (21), London, 1839
Rot. Parl. 
Rotuli Parliamentorum (1278–1504),
6 vols, ed. J. Strachey and others, London, 1767–77
Vergil
The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil
AD
1485–1537
, ed. and trans. D. Hay, Camden Society, Third Series 74, 1950

 

B
IBLIOGRAPHY

 

 

 

Printed Primary Sources

 

André, B.
, De vita atque gestis Henrici Septimi
, in J. Gairdner (ed.),
Memorials
of King Henry the Seventh
, Rolls Series, 1873–7.
Arnold, Richard,
Customs of London
, Antwerp, 1504.
Ballads from Manuscripts
, ed. F.J. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1868.
The Book of Howth
,
in
Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts
, 6 vols, ed. J.S. Brewer, Public Record Office, London, Longman, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1867–73.
Calendar of the Close Rolls
,
Henry VII (1485–1500)
, vol. 1, Public Record Office, London, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1955.

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