Chapter 8

The political narrative is informed by A.J. Pollard, Late Medieval England 1399–1509 (Harlow 2000). Disclosing the extent to which the history of fifteenth-century England, like that of ancient Judea, is structured according to the lives of its good and bad kings, the standard royal biographies are those by Nigel Saul, Richard II (London 1997); Ian Mortimer, The Fears of King Henry IV (London 2007); C.T. Allmand, Henry V, 2nd edn (London 1997); Bertram Wolffe, Henry VI (London 1983); R.A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (London 1981) and by Charles Ross, Edward IV, 2nd edn (London 1997), and Ross, Richard III (London 1981). For attacks on the Isle of Wight, S.F. Hockey, Insula Vecta: The Isle of Wight in the Middle Ages (Chichester 1982). For the navy, N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain, 660–1649 (London 1997). For Richard II, besides Nigel Saul’s magnificent life, there are two collections of extremely valuable essays, Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. Anthony Goodman and James L. Gillespie (Oxford 1999), and The Age of Richard II, ed. James L. Gillespie (Stroud 1997) as well as Christopher Fletcher’s Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics (noted above, chapter 7). For Bishop Despenser, Margaret Aston, ‘The Impeachment of Bishop Despenser’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 38 (1965), 127–48; Kelly DeVries, ‘The Reasons for the Bishop of Norwich’s Attack of Flanders in 1383’, in Fourteenth Century England III, ed. W. Mark Ormrod (Woodbridge 2004), pp. 155–65, and for his nephew, Martyn Lawrence, ‘“Too Flattering Sweet to be Substantial”? The Last Months of Thomas, Lord Despenser’, Fourteenth Century England IV, ed. J.S. Hamilton (Woodbridge 2006), pp. 146–58. For the ‘Merciless Parliament’, and for Richard’s adolescence, Fletcher, Richard II. For the handkerchief, George B. Stow, ‘Richard II and the Invention of the Pocket Handkerchief’, Albion, 27 (1995), 221–35. For court culture, Gervase Mathew, The Court of Richard II (London 1968). For the Wilton Diptych, Dillian Gordon, Making and Meaning: The Wilton Diptych (London 1993); The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. Dillian Gordon, Caroline Barron and others (London 1997), and Shelagh Mitchell, ‘Richard II and the Broomscod Collar: New Evidence from the Issue Rolls’, Fourteenth Century England II, ed. Chris Given-Wilson (Woodbridge 2002), pp. 171–80. For the atmosphere at court, Nigel Saul, ‘Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship’, English Historical Review, 110 (1995), 854–77. For Richard in Ireland, James L. Gillespie, ‘Richard II: King of Battles’, in The Age of Richard II, ed. Gillespie (Sutton 1997), pp. 139–64. For the coronation oil, J.W. McKenna, ‘The Coronation Oil of the Yorkist Kings’, English Historical Review, 82 (1967), 102–4. For Henry IV’s Accession, Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. Gwilym Dodd and Douglas Biggs (Woodbridge 2003). For the Welsh, R.R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dwr (Oxford 1995). For the Scrope rebellion, Peter McNiven, ‘The Betrayal of Archbishop Scrope’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 54 (1971–72), 173–213. For Henry V, in addition to Allmand’s magnificent biography, see the collection of essays ed. Gerald L. Harriss, Henry V: The Practice of Kingship (Oxford 1985), and the contemporary life of the King, the Gesta Henrici Quinti: The Deeds of Henry the Fifth, ed. Frank Taylor and J.S. Roskell (Oxford 1975). For the Lollard knights, besides McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings, see Peter McNiven, Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry V: The Burning of John Badby (Woodbridge 1987). For the Agincourt campaign, Anne Curry, The Battle of Agincourt, 1415 (Stroud 2000); Curry, Agincourt: A New History (Stroud 2005); Juliet Barker, Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (London 2005). The briefer account by John Keegan, The Face of Battle, 2nd edn (London 2004) retains its value, with splendid surrounding detail by Ian Mortimer, 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory (London 2009). For the ensuing conquest of Normandy, Juliet Barker, Conquest: The English Kingdom of France 1417–1450 (London 2009); C.T. Allmand, Lancastrian Normandy, 1415–1450 (Oxford 1983). For the profits of war, K.B. McFarlane, ‘The Investment of Sir John Fastolf’s Profits of War’, Transactions of the Royal History Society, 5th series 7 (1957), 91–116. For the end of the alien houses, D.J.A. Matthew, The Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions (Oxford 1962). For Christ’s foreskin, Nicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood (Cambridge 2001). For the minority of Henry VI, John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge 1996). For Catherine of Valois and the Tudor marriage, Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty, 2nd edn (Stroud 2005), and for the suggestions over the paternity of Edmund Tudor, Gerald Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort. For general remarks as to the evidential poverty and general uselessness of the fifteenth-century English aristocracy, see McFarlane, England in the Fifteenth Century (London 1981), and Colin Richmond, ‘Identity and Morality: Power and Politics During the Wars of the Roses’, in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Rees Davies, ed. H. Pryce and J. Watts (Oxford 2007), pp. 226–41. For the Southampton Plot, T.B. Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot of 1415 (Southampton 1988). For the use of imagery and propaganda, J.W. McKenna, ‘Henry VI of England and the Dual Monarchy: Aspects of Royal Political Propaganda, 1422–32’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 28 (1965), 145–62. For Joan of Arc, the most recent biography is by Larissa J. Taylor, The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc (London 2009). For Richard of York, P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 1411–1460 (Oxford 1988). For the trial of Duke Humphrey’s wife, R.A. Griffiths, ‘The Trial of Eleanor Cobham: An Episode in the Fall of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 51 (1969), 381–99. For Duke Humphrey as humanist, Alessandra Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England (Leiden 2004) and the exhibition catalogue, Duke Humfrey and English Humanism in the Fifteenth Century (Bodleian Library Oxford 1970). For the piety of Henry VI, Roger Lovatt, ‘A Collector of Apocryphal Anecdotes: John Blacman Revisited’, in Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. T. Pollard (Gloucester 1984), pp. 172–97. For his dynastic awareness, R.A. Griffiths, ‘The Sense of Dynasty in the Reign of Henry VI’, in Griffiths, King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London 1991), pp. 83–101. For the Cade rebellion, I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford 1991). For Talbot, A.J. Pollard, John Talbot and the War in France, 1427–1453 (London 1983). For Caxton, N.F. Blake, Caxton and His World (London 1969). For the Wars of the Roses, amongst a wealth of alternatives, see Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses (Cambridge 1997). For George, Duke of Clarence, Michael A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence: George Duke of Clarence, 1449–78, 2nd edn (Bangor 1992), and for Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker (Oxford 1998). For the posthumous cult of Henry VI, Leigh Ann Craig, ‘Royalty, Virtue, and Adversity: The Cult of King Henry VI’, Albion, 35 (2003), 187–209. For Malory, illuminated by recent performances by the Royal Shakespeare Company, see P. J. C. Field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (Cambridge 1993), with the Morte d’Arthur edited (by Janet Cowen) as a Penguin Classic. For alchemical interests at the court of Edward IV, Jonathan Hughes, Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV (Stroud 2002). For Richard III, besides the standard biography by Charles Ross, see Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge 1989), with a wealth of illuminating detail by Colin Richmond, ‘1485 and All That, or What was Going on at the Battle of Bosworth?’, in Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law, ed. P.W. Hammond (London 2000), pp. 199–242. For Bosworth, Michael Bennett, The Battle of Bosworth, 2nd edn (Stroud 1993). For the relocation of the battle site, readers are advised to keep an eye on cyberspace, meanwhile relying upon such reports as that at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/8523386.stm>.