Yorkshire Almanac Black humour in a report to Venice regarding the arrival at York of the body of James IV of Scotland after Flodden

29 September 1513: Black humour in a report to Venice regarding the arrival at York of the body of James IV of Scotland after Flodden

J.S. Brewer, Ed. 1920. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 1, 1509-1514. London: HMSO. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

[Report sent to Venice, at Michaelmas, 29 September:] Cadaver Scotorum Regis adductum est Eboratum, ideo quod venit ante festum divi Michaelis civitatem Eboracensem, quam dixerat se capturum.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Hall unfortunately doesn’t mention York. Catherine of Aragon was at this stage regent, Henry VIII being in France:

Well known it was by them that fought, and also reported by the prisoners of Scotland, that their king was taken or slain, but his body was not found till the next day, because all the mean people as well Scots as English were stripped out of their apparel as they lay on the field, yet at the last he was found by the Lord Dacre, who knew him well by his privy tokens in that same place where the battle of the Earl of Surrey and his, first joined together.

This King had diverse deadly wounds and in especial one with an arrow, and another with a ball as appeared when he was naked. After that the body of the King of Scots was found and brought to Berwick, the Earl showed it to Sir William Scott his Chancellor, and Sir John Forman his sergeant-porter, which knew him at the first sight and made great lamentation. Then was the body bowelled, embalmed, and seared, and secretly amongst other stuff conveyed to Newcastle… After this noble victory the earl wrote first to the Queen which had raised a great power to resist the said King of Scots, of the winning of the battle, for then the body of the King of Scots was not found, and she yet being at the town of Buckingham had worded the next day after that the King of Scots was slain and a part of his coat armour to her sent, for which victory she thanked GOD, and so the Earl after that the North part was set in a quietness, returned to the Queen with the dead body of the Scottish king and brought it to Richmond (Hall 1809).

Rumour that not the Scots but the English had been soundly beaten spread quickly after the battle and was satirised by Henry VIII’s court poet, John Skelton:

Lo, these fond sots, and trattling Scots,
How they are blind in their own mind,
And will not know their overthrow
At Brankston Moor. They are so stour,
So frantic mad, they say they had
And won the field with spear and shield.
That is as true as black is blue,
And green is gray. What euer they say,
Jemmy is dead, and closed in lead,
That was their own king: fie on that winning! (Skelton 1568)

Also:

Katherine of Aragon, the victor of Flodden, reportedly sent James IV's bloody tunic to her husband Henry VIII to fly as a banner in his campaign against the French https://t.co/BxYSWHUOs0

— Dr Francis Young (@DrFrancisYoung) September 9, 2021

Richard Jackson, a 16th century schoolmaster of Ingleton, wrote a Ballad of Floddon Field. See also.

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Comment

Hall unfortunately doesn’t mention York. Catherine of Aragon was at this stage regent, Henry VIII being in France:

Well known it was by them that fought, and also reported by the prisoners of Scotland, that their king was taken or slain, but his body was not found till the next day, because all the mean people as well Scots as English were stripped out of their apparel as they lay on the field, yet at the last he was found by the Lord Dacre, who knew him well by his privy tokens in that same place where the battle of the Earl of Surrey and his, first joined together.

This King had diverse deadly wounds and in especial one with an arrow, and another with a ball as appeared when he was naked. After that the body of the King of Scots was found and brought to Berwick, the Earl showed it to Sir William Scott his Chancellor, and Sir John Forman his sergeant-porter, which knew him at the first sight and made great lamentation. Then was the body bowelled, embalmed, and seared, and secretly amongst other stuff conveyed to Newcastle… After this noble victory the earl wrote first to the Queen which had raised a great power to resist the said King of Scots, of the winning of the battle, for then the body of the King of Scots was not found, and she yet being at the town of Buckingham had worded the next day after that the King of Scots was slain and a part of his coat armour to her sent, for which victory she thanked GOD, and so the Earl after that the North part was set in a quietness, returned to the Queen with the dead body of the Scottish king and brought it to Richmond (Hall 1809).

Rumour that not the Scots but the English had been soundly beaten spread quickly after the battle and was satirised by Henry VIII’s court poet, John Skelton:

Lo, these fond sots, and trattling Scots,
How they are blind in their own mind,
And will not know their overthrow
At Brankston Moor. They are so stour,
So frantic mad, they say they had
And won the field with spear and shield.
That is as true as black is blue,
And green is gray. What euer they say,
Jemmy is dead, and closed in lead,
That was their own king: fie on that winning! (Skelton 1568)

Also:

Katherine of Aragon, the victor of Flodden, reportedly sent James IV's bloody tunic to her husband Henry VIII to fly as a banner in his campaign against the French https://t.co/BxYSWHUOs0

— Dr Francis Young (@DrFrancisYoung) September 9, 2021

Richard Jackson, a 16th century schoolmaster of Ingleton, wrote a Ballad of Floddon Field. See also.

Something to say? Get in touch

14 May 1604: One of the compensatory “northern poems” registered today by Dr John Favour, Vicar of Halifax, to celebrate the union under James of Scotland and England a year ago

25 September 1066: The Stamford Bridge massacre by Harold Godwinson’s army of Harald Hardrada and Tostig Godwinson’s force – symbol of the end of the Viking Age

2 July 1644: Henry Slingsby of the Royalist York garrison recounts Prince Rupert’s defeat at Marston Moor today, which ends Charles I’s hopes in the north

29 August 1570: On arriving in Yorkshire, Archbishop Grindal declares war on bloody-minded folk-Catholicism

25 January 1328: Edward III (15) marries his cousin Philippa (13) of Hainaut (Belgium) at York Minster, in order to save England from the Scots, the French, and the English

2 October 1800: Part of an obituary to Harry Rowe, Punch and Judy man, trumpeter at the Battle of Culloden and the York assizes, who died today, old and ill, in the York poorhouse

17 August 1618: Walking from London to Edinburgh, Ben Jonson drives a parson and an innkeeper into an alcoholic frenzy at Tollerton (York),

12 April 1706: The first four-day stagecoaches from York to London and vice versa depart from the Black Swan in each city

1 June 1318: Archbishop Melton of York tells the Ripon bailiff to ensure that everyone pays their proper share of the protection money agreed with the Scots

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Comment

Stephen Werronen on the myth that the “sons of perverted rashness” burned Ripon minster:

In the turbulent years following the English defeat at Bannockburn, Ripon was one of scores of towns and villages that were vulnerable to Scottish raiders. Most histories of the minster contain a similar version of events: the Scots enter the town and the townspeople take refuge in the minster, an agreement is reached whereby the Scots will spare the town for a ransom of one thousand marks, and later the Scots return to set fire to the town and the minster. While Ripon Minster’s historians have been quick to repeat this episode, none of them has ever produced physical evidence of fire damage to the minster. This evidence is not forthcoming because, as closer examination of textual evidence indicates, the nature of the Scottish raids has been exaggerated by Ripon’s historians. This article begins by showing how the accepted version of events passed from one author to the next, from the beginning of the eighteenth century down to the present. As the discipline of architectural history developed, the early claims for total destruction of the minster by the raiders should have been critically reconsidered. However, they were retained and simply modified to suit other evidence. Moreover, the partial destruction of the minster has been taken for granted by historians to the extent that they have used this assumption to interpret other evidence regarding the building and its history (Werronen 2012/09/02).

Werronen’s first un-source is the folkloric Thomas Gent:

Happily did this church and town flourish, (escaping the miseries of the barons wars in King Henry III’s time) till the 12th year of the unfortunate King Edward II, anno 1318. Then it was, the Scots, with their valiant King Robert, won the important fortress of Berwick; which King Edward endeavouring to recover again, by a close siege; others of that country diverted him, by making havoc of his people in other parts of England, and had like to have taken the Queen prisoner, who resided in a village near York, in the time of the siege. ‘Tis inconceivable what losses and devastations the city and adjacent country suffered by those people in the following year. [Misdated account of the battle of Myton-on-Swale.] No wonder was it then, the Scots should renew their exactions, as they had done before. For so much had they impoverished, in particular Ripon, that the distressed inhabitants could not comply with a new demand, to redeem it from ruin, by the payment of a thousand marks, which occasioned several of their lives to fall as sacrifices to the fury of these men: Who were not satisfied with blood alone; but set the town in a conflagration, which destroyed the house of the most high: As though, in time of war, there should be no regard to the honour due to the great king of heaven and earth! And this happened about September, anno 1332 [i.e. 1318].

[Edward III’s victories at Dupplin Moor in 1332 and at Halidon Hill and Berwick-upon-Tweed (which was retaken) in 1333]

These great successes of the English so exhilarated the hearts of the king’s subjects, especially about Ripon, that several persons of eminence, assisted by the Archbishop of York, soon began to make a contribution towards the rebuilding of the town. Workmen were employed, who happily effected the same, in a few years. Its late lamented desolation was then turned to a welcome place of resort, adorned with more delightful habitations.

Then, too, did the church, after so often repeated fortunes and misfortunes, begin to raise its declined head. It was built almost from its very foundations: the spires, more beautiful than before: the windows, adorned with curious painted glass, containing, among other devices, the arms of its renowned benefactors. Everything appeared magnificent: nothing was wanting to incite a true veneration for the house of prayer, in the eye of the religious beholder.

(Gent 1733).

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