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| | | From: ForeverAmber (Original Message) | Sent: 10/23/2005 4:23 PM |
Have proceeded on to reading another Derek Wilson, In the Lion's Court: Power, Ambition, & Sudden Death in the Reign of Henry VIII. He's proposed a compelling Princes in the Tower suspect I hadn't even considered before!  John Howard was a Yorkist supporter. The Howards at this time were considered arrivistes but could claim kinship to the Mowbray Dukes of Norfolk. John Howard coveted the Norfolk lands & title. Wilson states that for several weeks in the summer of 1483, Richard III briefly placed him in control of the Tower after the previous Constable of the Tower, Dorset, fled to France. Sir Thomas Brackenbury was not appointed the Constable of the Tower until July 17th. On the same day that RIIIs position as Regent for Edward V was proclaimed, John Howard was made a privy councillor & steward of the Duchy of Lancaster. Howard took a leading role in persuading Elizabeth Woodville to let Richard of York out of Sanctuary to join EV in the Tower. You may recall that at age 5, Richard was married to the Norfolk heiress, Anne Mowbray, who subsequently died very young. Richard was not only the Duke of York, but the Duke of Norfolk through his wife. Thus this little princeling stood between what John Howard wanted for his family, the Norfolk inheritance which he believed was rightfully the Howards'.  According to Wilson, the Howards must have been quite chummy with RIII, as Sir Thomas Howard, John's son, was the one who set up Hastings for the infamous Council meeting where Hastings was declared a traitor. Wilson also says that an examination of John Howard's household accounts show that in June 1483 he purchased two bags of LIME! Which is a nice way of disposing of unwanted corpses. When RIII became king, Howard was created Duke of Norfolk & received the lion's share of the Mowbray lands to go with it. His son Thomas became the Earl of Surrey at this time as well. Now I don't like what this implies regarding RIII ...Wilson says that there was no revocation of the Act of Parliament from January 1478 which gave Richard of York the Mowbray estates & the Norfolk title. He infers from this that RIII knew that the title to the dukedom & the lands had recently become vacant. He also states that the reason the Howards come under no suspiscion in More's History is because More undertook writing it at approximately the same time the Norfolk estates & title were restored to John Howard's son.  John Howard also became Earl Marshal, Admiral of England, Ireland, & Aquitaine, & Steward of the King's Household. He carried RIIIs crown at the coronation. Wilson implies all these honors were for getting rid of the Princes in the Tower for RIII before Brackenbury ever set foot in it. After Bosworth, in which John Howard was killed fighting for RIII, his son Surrey was attainted for treason & stripped of the Norfolk lands & title. He spent about 3 & a half years in the Tower for fighting on the Yorkist side & then was released early in 1489 by Henry VII, who had the attainder reversed & gave him the vacant position of Deputy Warden of the North Marches (traditionally a Percy honor but the current Earl of Northumberland was a minor at the time). He ruled the north in quasi-royal state, his sons were sent to Court to be royal pages, young Thomas Howard's (our Tudor Norfolk) bethrothal to Elizabeth of York's sister Anne was allowed to stand, & thus began the Howard family's usefulness to the Tudors. Now I also wonder about H7 being nice to the Howards, in light of the fact that he tried to pre-date his reign to the day before Bosworth so that he could greedily gobble up everything belonging to RIIIs supported....what was in this for Henry as well? |
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Ooops sorry....Brackenbury was Robert, not Thomas, I believe....this book is about Henry VIIIs six Thomases (Norfolk, More, Wolsey, Cranmer, Cromwell, & Wriothesley) & I got Thomases on the brain I guess LOL |
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Oh I almost forgot...More must have been writing this unfinished book for about a gazillion years if Wilson thinks he started in in 1489 when he was all of what, 12 years old? Why I put in the LOL |
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Very interesting hypothosis...however...I still think Margaret Beaufort did it. |
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I don't care for the RIII implications here either...but you gotta admit those Howards WERE a greedy lot...hmmm.... |
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