University of Birmingham
The Romance of the Stanleys
Flood, Victoria; Byrne, Aisling
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10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.103512
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Flood, V & Byrne, A 2015, 'The Romance of the Stanleys: regional and national imaginings in the Percy Folio'
Viator, vol 46, no. 1, pp. 327–351. DOI: 10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.103512
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THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS: REGIONAL AND NATIONAL
IMAGININGS IN THE PERCY FOLIO
Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood*
Abstract: This article investigates a body of early Tudor poetry associated with the Stanley earls of Derby,
preserved in the Percy Folio (British Library, Additional MS 27879). It argues that the Lancashire and
Cheshire authors of these poems modified strategies of national address, rooted in a historical and prophetic
tradition we can trace back to Geoffrey of Monmouth, to construct a clear regional identity centered on the
dynastic mythology of the Stanley family. The Galfridian Stanleyite mythology of this period presents a
significant counterpart to contemporary political historical and prophetic treatments of the Tudor accession.
This provides an important new literary-historical context for our understanding of the Percy Folio romance
The Turke and Sir Gawain.
Key words: Stanley earls of Derby, Percy Folio, Bosworth, Flodden, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry VII,
Henry VIII.
The ways in which national identities in the medieval British Isles were underwritten
by the narrative patterns and thematic concerns of romance have been a persistent concern for scholars over the last two decades.1 One of the most important chapters in this
history is the application of Galfridian historical and prophetic models to Henry VII,
the first Tudor monarch. Insular authors of the late fifteenth century enthusiastically
cast Henry as an Arthur redivivus, who, in the terms of a powerful strand of political
prophecy ultimately derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth, would unite the British
Isles under a single monarchy.2 The association of Galfridian mythology with the Tudor dynasty proved to be long-lived, and retained its political resonance until the end
of the Tudor period. Although little commented upon, partisan uses of Galfridian
material during the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were by no means restricted
to royal contexts, but also found a place in contemporary non-royal dynastic fashioning. The type of mythic-historical and prophetic models drawn on in relation to the
Tudors could be, and were, co-opted to articulate localized loyalties and affinities, and
to cement regional power bases. The present article considers the reworking of
Galfridian paradigms in a very particular dynastic and regional context in the decades
*
Merton College, Merton Street, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK. Philipps-Universität Marburg, Wilhelm-RöpkeStrasse 6D (Raum 08D10), 35032 Marburg, Germany.
1
For some notable examples see Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature and
National Identity (Oxford 1996); Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of
Cultural Fantasy (New York 2003); Patricia Ingham, Sovereign Fantasies: Arthurian Romance and the
Making of Britain (Philadelphia 2001).
2
Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford 1969); David Carlson, “King Arthur and Court Poems for the Birth of Arthur Tudor in 1486,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 36 (1987) 147–183;
David Starkey, “King Henry and King Arthur,” in James P. Carley and Felicity Riddy, eds., Arthurian
Literature XVI (Cambridge, 1998) 171–196; Gruffydd Aled Williams, “The Bardic Road to Bosworth: A
Welsh View of Henry Tudor,” Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1986) 7–31;
Russell Rutter, “Printing, Prophecy, and the Foundation of the Tudor Dynasty: Caxton’s Morte Darthur and
Henry Tudor’s Road to Bosworth,” in E. L. Risden, Karen Moranski, and Stephen Yandell, eds., Prophet
Margins: The Medieval Vatic Impulse and Social Stability (New York 2004) 123–147; David Rees, The Son
of Prophecy: Henry Tudor’s Road to Bosworth (London 1985).
Viator 46 No. 1 (2015) 327–352. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.103512 328
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
following the accession of Henry Tudor—that of the Stanley earls of Derby, who controlled large parts of Cheshire and Lancashire, with an influence extending into North
Wales, and who ruled the Isle of Man.
In the following pages we consider a body of verse in praise of the Stanleys, items
that appear to have been composed between the 1480s and the 1520s. All but one of
these texts are contained in a single manuscript of the seventeenth century, British
Library, Additional MS 27879, also known as the Percy Folio. David Lawton has described the Percy Folio as “the main repository of the verse of Stanley eulogy,” and
the persistence with which the texts in the volume appear to reflect Stanley interests
has suggested to Gillian Rogers that its compiler had access to the family’s library.3
Although internal evidence places their composition between the 1480s and 1520s, the
texts do not appear in any manuscript earlier than the late sixteenth century. The precise circumstances in which they first circulated, and continued to be read in the decades immediately following their composition, remain obscure. In terms of the political culture in which this material was composed and first circulated, the closest analogues to the Percy ballads are the more widely discussed romances and Galfridian
chronicles composed about, and in the milieux of, the Percy earls of Northumberland,
Beauchamp earls of Warwick and Mortimer earls of March—material which, like the
Percy Folio ballads, remained in long enduring circulation.4 Although the late date of
the Percy Folio means that direct Stanley patronage for the works cannot be ascertained with any certainty (nonetheless, this is by no means impossible—the family’s
patronage activities are well attested),5 we can safely assume a similar context of regional interest, and the patronage of gentry households with connections to the Stanleys, such as the Breretons, remain a strong possibility (discussed below).
Given the lack of evidence for direct Stanley patronage, it is safer to think of the
poems as Stanleyite (rather than Stanley) in origin and message: the works of
individuals with an investment in the family and its fortunes, at home in Cheshire or
Lancashire. That these texts were potentially composed across the two counties does
not significantly dilute the claims to Stanleyite cohesion or to common purpose we
find in the various texts discussed here; it has long been acknowledged that there was
a pronounced sense of political and cultural integration across these regions. As David
3
David A. Lawton, “Scottish Field: Alliterative Verse and the Stanley Encomium in the Percy Folio,”
Leeds Studies in English 10 (1978) 42–57; Maldwyn Mills and Gillian Rogers, “The Manuscripts of Popular
Romance,” in Raluca L. Radulescu and Cory James Rushton, eds., A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Woodbridge 2009) 49–66.
4
Matthew L. Holford, “Family, Lineage and Society: Medieval Pedigrees of the Percy Family,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 52 (2008) 165–190, at 182–186; G. Tscherpel, “The Political Function of History:
The Past and Future of Noble Families,” in R. Eales and S. Tyas, eds., Family and Dynasty in Late Medieval
England: Proceedings of the 1997 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington 2003) 87–104, at 101; A. S. G. Edwards, “Recordings of a Dynasty: Verse Chronicles of the House of Percy,” in Julia Boffey and Virginia
Davis, eds., Recording Medieval Lives: Proceedings of the 2005 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington 2009),
74–84, esp. 76; Chris Given-Wilson, “Chronicles of the Mortimer Family, c.1250–1450,” Family and Dynasty in Late Medieval England 67–86; Emma Mason, “Legends of the Beauchamps’ Ancestors: The Use of
Baronial Propaganda in Medieval England,” Journal of Medieval History 10 (1984) 25–40.
5
P. Hosker, “The Stanleys of Lathom and Ecclesiastical Patronage in the North-West of England During
the Fifteenth Century,” Northern History 18 (1982) 212–229.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
329
Lawton has noted, from 1400 onwards we see considerable intermarriage between a
relatively small group of leading Cheshire and Lancashire families, and “That such a
social group should have been so cohesive, so anchored within one region and so long
enduring makes it a phenomenon exceptional in the history of medieval and Tudor
England”.6 The close relationship between literary work and regional identity in late
medieval and early modern Cheshire, Lancashire and the surrounding areas, has seen
notable attention from Michael Bennett and Robert W. Barrett.7 Both scholars have
stressed the distinctiveness of these communities, and indeed Bennett’s title Against
All England gestures towards a north-west Midlands identity articulated through a
measure of antagonism towards the rest of the country. There is certainly something of
this in writing from this region: the texts in question often overturn the hierarchical
relationship between region and nation, and center and periphery. As Barrett has
demonstrated, these texts approach historical events in a way calculated to place the
geographical periphery of Cheshire and Lancashire at the center of English history;
indeed, there are points in these works where “English history becomes little more
than an unintentional side-effect of Stanley history.”8 Barrett’s analysis of the Percy
Folio texts demonstrates how their authors carefully craft a Stanley-centric vision of
recent history by highlighting and embellishing certain events and omitting others.
However, the interest of these texts goes beyond their manipulation of the historical
record. Helen Cooper has drawn attention to how Stanleyite texts draw on romance
narrative structures,9 but the full extent of their (often quite sophisticated) engagement
with literary models remains to be acknowledged.
The Stanleyite material in the Percy Folio places regional identities in dialogue
with larger British models, and, in particular, Galfridian romance and prophetic frameworks more usually associated with monarchical self-imagining. In these poems we
find Stanley actors cast both as the faithful knights of the Arthurian Tudor monarch
(both Henry VII and Henry VIII), and as regional kings in their own right, with their
own naturalized territorial claims. Although the fit of romance material might seem
less neat in the case of the Stanleys than at monarchical level, the model of sub-kingship articulated in the Galfridian tradition provided a clear basis for application to nonroyal dynasties. Furthermore, the Stanleys’ particular history and possessions meant
that tropes associated with royalty and, by extension, British mythological frameworks, could be appropriated readily. In their role as Kings of the Isle of Man, the
Stanleys were the only subjects of the English monarch to maintain royal status themselves over a protracted period of time; while their sphere of influence also extended
across the Welsh and Scottish borders, suggestive to their broader affinity of a particularly pronounced sense of pan-insular power. Alongside the ballads of the collection
6
Lawton, “Scottish Field” (n. 3 above) 51–52.
Michael J. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge 1983); and Robert W. Barrett, Against All England: Regional
Identity and Cheshire Writing, 1195–1656 (Notre Dame 2009).
8
Barrett, Against All England (n. 7 above) 186.
9
Helen Cooper, “Romance after Bosworth” in Evelyn Mullally and John Thompson, eds., The Court
and Cultural Diversity (Cambridge 1997) 149–157.
7
330
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
that directly treat family history, this engagement with wider British mythology has
important implications for another work in the Percy Folio making use of Galfridian
metonyms, the Man-set Gawain romance, the Turke and Sir Gawain.
STANLEY HISTORY AND HISTORICAL MYTHOLOGY
The later Middle Ages saw the Stanley family rise from small landowners in the Midlands in the middle of the fourteenth century, to the most powerful political players in
Lancashire, Cheshire and the Isle of Man by the end of the fifteenth century. In the
Tudor period, only the Percys could rival them in the control they exercised over affairs in the north of England.10 The Stanleys first rose to national prominence during
the lifetime of Sir John Stanley (ca. 1350–1414). The second son of the bailiff of the
Forest of the Wirrall, John won fame for himself by his deeds in the wars in France
and made his fortune by marrying Isabella Lathom, heiress to Lathom and Knowsley
in southwest Lancashire.11 At various points he was made a knight of the garter, steward of the household of the Prince of Wales, controller of the wardrobe and constable
of Windsor Castle. He also served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. His son, also called
John (ca. 1386–1437), consolidated his father’s gains. In the next generation the family’s fortunes rose again: Thomas Stanley (ca. 1405–1459) became the first Lord Stanley and was appointed to a number of influential positions, including the lord
lieutenantship of Ireland that his grandfather had held. The next important advance in
the family’s fortunes occurred in 1462, when following his support for the Edward IV
at the Battle of Townton in 1461, Sir John’s great-grandson, also called Thomas (ca.
1433–1504), was appointed chief justice of Cheshire for life, cementing the local
influence of the Lathom branch of the family. Additional honors followed in the reign
of Richard III. However, perhaps the most significant subsequent event in Stanley
history is a matter not of Yorkist but of Tudor support, when during the Battle of Bosworth Field in August 1485—and it is generally accepted after some prevarication—
Thomas joined his brother William (ca. 1435–1495) in offering support to Henry Tudor, a move that proved decisive in Richard III’s defeat.12 A grateful Henry created
Thomas earl of Derby. Two years later the role played by the family in thwarting
Lambert Simnel was rewarded with further lands in Lancashire. A generation later, in
1513, they played a crucial role in the Battle of Flodden.
This material provides a rather mixed bag for anyone attempting a literary celebration of the family’s fortunes. Some elements, such as Sir John’s rapid rise on account
of his military exploits and his advantageous marriage, conform rather neatly to the
patterns of romance, while others, such as Thomas Stanley’s opportunistic actions at
10
Andrew Taylor, The Songs and Travels of a Tudor Minstrel: Richard Sheale of Tamworth (York
2012) 40. The most complete overview of the medieval fortunes of the family is Barry Coward, The Stanleys, Lords Stanley and Earls of Derbv, 1385–1672, The Origins, Wealth and Power of a Landowning Family (Manchester 1983). For a general history of the family after Bosworth see J. J. Bagley, The Earls of
Derby 1485–1985 (London 1985).
11
Irvine, W. Fergusson, “The Early Stanleys,” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and
Cheshire 105 (1953) 47–68.
12
Michael J. Bennett, The Battle of Bosworth (New York 1985) 96, 105; Ralph A. Griffiths and Roger
S. Thomas, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty (New York 1985) 152–153.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
331
Bosworth, are sorely in need of post hoc reshaping. Before we turn to the Percy Folio
texts, it is worth glancing at the most extensive surviving literary treatment of Stanley
family mythology: the so-called Stanley Poem.13 The Stanley Poem is much longer
than any other surviving text in praise of the family and appears to date from at least a
generation later than the latest of the Stanleyite Percy Folio ballads. Its broad outline is
that of an ancestral romance, but it is distinguished from the Percy Folio texts by its
relative lack of engagement with Galfridian materials. The Stanley Poem is over 1300
lines long and so poor from a metrical perspective that it has been largely ignored by
literary scholars. It has traditionally been attributed to Thomas Stanley, bishop of
Sodor and Man (1502–ca. 1568), but Andrew Taylor has made a case for the
sixteenth-century harper Richard Sheale as the author.14
The poem features numerous episodes that have more basis in romance than in history. Sir John Stanley is knighted by the king for defeating the champion of France in
single combat. He then begs leave to go abroad to seek out adventures, and travels
extensively throughout Christendom winning great renown through his feats of arms.
Finally he comes to the Turkish court where he stays half a year, wins the love of the
Grand Turk’s daughter and makes her pregnant. Stanley returns to England to great
acclaim, and then to France, serving under Sir Robert Knowles. Having assured us that
Sir John thus became one of the most famous knights in England, the poem turns to
the Lathom family. It recounts how Lord Lathom found a baby boy tended by an eagle. Lathom adopts the boy and names him Oskell. Oskell in due course inherits his
lands and has one child, Isabella. In a classic instance of the romance trope of love by
reputation, hearing of his great deeds Isabella falls in love with Sir John, and despite
her father’s opposition to the match sends him a token of her love. The couple elope
and, accepting the inevitable, Isabella’s father consents to the union. 15 The poem
continues to give the following generations of Stanleys careers that echo Sir John’s.
Thomas Stanley, first earl of Derby, gains renown and the hand of Lady Margaret
Beaufort by defeating a challenger from “over sea” in single combat;16 and his son
Edward Stanley (later first Baron Monteagle) enjoys victory over the “king of Castyle,” his prowess compared to that of the romance hero “Tristam.”17 In the poem’s
obligatory account of the Battle of Bosworth, the Stanleys are depicted as flocking to
Henry Tudor’s side without hesitation, and Thomas Stanley sets the crown on the
young king’s head after the battle.18 The details of the battle itself are occluded, and—
very much a product of the Tudor period—the dubious genealogical grounds of
Henry’s royal claim are ignored, replaced by an insistence that he was God’s instru-
13
J. O. Halliwell, ed., The Stanley Poem in The Palatine Anthology: A Collection of Ancient Poems and
Ballads Relating to Lancashire and Cheshire (London 1850) 208–271, at 223. Halliwell does not provide
lineation for the poem.
14
Andrew Taylor, “The Stanley Poem and the Harper Richard Sheale,” Leeds Studies in English 28
(1997) 99–122.
15
Halliwell, Stanley Poems (n. 13 above) 210–223.
16
Ibid. 229–231.
17
Ibid. 252–253.
18
Ibid. 249–250.
332
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
ment for the overthrow of the wicked king Richard, whose crimes are detailed at
length.19
While the Stanley Poem appears to be a product of the second half of the sixteenth
century, its narrative matter is likely to be of earlier origin. For instance, the association of the Stanleys with the motif of the eagle in the Percy Folio texts suggests that
the story of Oskell was in circulation by the late fifteenth century (the dating of these
texts are discussed below). The Stanley Poem gives some indication of the sort of
dynastic mythology in which the Percy Folio texts participated. There are five historical ballads scattered throughout the Percy Folio that explicitly celebrate the Stanleys’
involvement in national history. 20 These overtly Stanleyite ballads fall into two
groups: three detailing the family’s dedication to the Tudor cause in 1485: Rose of
England, 21 Bosworth Feilde, 22 and Ladye Bessiye; 23 and two which explore the
instrumental place of the Stanleys and their men in the defense of the Anglo-Scottish
border: Flodden Feilde24 and Scottish Feilde,25 a position that can be understood as in
many respects a continuation of, and coda to, the family’s earlier Tudor service. This
is a strikingly high number of such texts in a single manuscript, given that we only
know of one other Stanleyite ballad from the period.26 Other materials in the Folio also
allude to the Stanleys. There are various references to the earls of Derby, and the ballad The Grene Knight mentions the “Castle of Hutton” (line 493), a possible allusion
to the Stanley holdings at Hooton in Cheshire where Sir William Stanley built a manor
house in the late 1480s, and the nearby Delamere Forest is also mentioned at line 87.27
The Turke and Gawain, to which we return in the final section of this article, also appears in the Percy Folio and sets its central adventure on the Isle of Man, a Stanley
possession.
THE STANLEYS AT BOSWORTH: KINGMAKERS
The late dates of the Percy Folio and of the other manuscripts in which these poems
survive, mean that we must generally rely on internal evidence for dating them. It has
been noted that two of the Bosworth poems, Ladye Bessiye and Bosworth Feilde, contain verbal echoes of each other and it has been suggested that the former borrowed
19
Ibid. 249.
Mills and Rogers, “The Manuscripts of Popular Romance” (n. 3 above) 65. For a discussion of the
ballads see Taylor, Songs (n. 10 above) 46–56; and Barrett, Against All England (n. 7 above) 171–195.
21
Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 10 vols. (London 1882) 6.331.
22
J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript. Ballads and Romances, 3 vols.
(London 1868) 3.233.
23
Ibid. 3.319.
24
Ibid. 1.318–340.
25
Ibid. 1.199. There is a more recent edition of Scotish Feilde and Flodden Feilde: Ian F. Baird, ed.,
Scotish Feilde and Flodden Feilde: Two Flodden Poems (London 1982).
26
This is the ballad which Lawton calls “Flodden Feilde II,” preserved in BL MS Harley 3526 (fols
100v–133r). Lawton, “Scottish Field” (n. 3 above) 50.
27
Thomas Hahn, ed., The Greene Knight, Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales (Kalamazoo 1995)
309–336, line 493. See also E. Wilson, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Stanley family of Stanley, Storeton, and Hooton,” Review of English Studies NS 30 (1979) 308–316.
20
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
333
from the latter.28 Bosworth Feilde29 makes reference to James I at the end, but David
Lawton has argued convincingly that this is a later addition, since a prose précis of the
poem is datable to a generation earlier.30 Helen Cooper has gone further than Lawton
in postulating that the poem may date to the late fifteenth century, in the immediate
aftermath of Bosworth.31 An early date would tally with another feature of Bosworth
Feilde: the positive portrait of William Stanley, who was executed in 1495 for
supporting Perkin Warbeck.32 Similarly, William is an important figure in the account
of the battle, and the days preceding it, we find in Ladye Bessiye and Rose of England.
Although it is possible that these texts represent a post mortem attempt to redeem a
fallen hero, given the distance the family and their broader affinity put between themselves and William’s treachery in the period immediately following 1495, we would
not expect William to assume a prominent role in Stanley encomium after this point.
We can understand the sudden surge in Stanleyite composition in the years following the battle as part of a broader process of myth-making, naturalizing the family’s
new magnate status as the earls of Derby.33 The Bosworth ballads of the Percy Folio
must be understood in relation to the particular dynastic mythology with which they
engage, rewriting the Stanley history of this period in line with a more broadly national vision of the Tudor right. The first allusion to the Stanleys in Bosworth Feilde
comes in a prayer spoken by Henry Tudor upon his arrival at Milford Haven, asking
God to send him “the loue of the Lord Stanley” (59), Sir Thomas Stanley. The poem
follows this with a reference to the close familial relationship between Henry and
Thomas, who was married to Margaret Beaufort, Henry’s mother and the root of his
Lancastrian claim. In his prayer Henry reflects on the military prowess of Sir Thomas
and his brother William, who certainly could—and in the final event, did—command
a considerable reserve of military power in Cheshire and Lancashire for the Tudor
cause. The ballad asserts that the Stanleys made an early decision to support Henry,
and concludes with Henry’s coronation by Thomas on the battlefield:
the crowne of gold that was bright,
to the Lord stanley deliuered itt bee.
anon to King HENERY deliuered itt hee,
the crowne that was soe deliuered to him,
& said, “methinke ye are best worthye
to weare the crowne and be our King.”
(635–640)
The somewhat audacious “methinke” with which Stanley prefaces his declaration of
Henry’s right to rule articulates a regional perception of the Stanleys as arbiters of the
claim to the throne. This scene recurs throughout the Stanleyite ballads, and in the
28
Lawton, “Scottish Field” (n. 3 above) 47.
Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript (n. 22 above) 3.233–359
30
Lawton, “Scottish Field” (n. 3 above) 47.
31
Helen Cooper, “Romance after 1400,” in David Wallace, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval
English Literature (Cambridge 1999) 690–719, at 711n.
32
Taylor, Songs (n. 10 above) 47.
33
Barrett, Against All England (n. 7 above) 195.
29
334
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
later Stanley Poem, and has some claims to historical truth, or at least a very broadly
disseminated fiction. Polydore Vergil also records that it was Thomas Stanley who
removed the crown from the corpse of Richard III and placed it on Henry’s head.34
Here as in all three of the Bosworth ballads, Thomas Stanley is understood as a
staunch and long-time Tudor partisan, a characterization somewhat at odds with the
common historical regard for him as a “powerful nobleman … who survived the Wars
of the Roses by not adhering strongly to any one party and by repeatedly demonstrating a remarkable ability to switch sides at the most favorable moment.”35
Rose of England treats essentially the same history as Bosworth Feilde, and again,
with its positive portrayal of William Stanley, may have been written before 1495. The
ballad glosses over Sir Thomas’s equivocation during the battle. Here the myth of
long-held Tudor support is opened up to a broader regional framework of meaning.
Thomas Stanley and his supporters are understood as on the winning side from the
very beginning. On the eve of battle Henry Tudor addresses his Stanley and Stanleyite
allies with the greatest courtesy:
But [at] Attherston these lords did meete;
A worthy sight itt was to see,
How Erle Richmond tooke his hatt in his hand,
And said, Cheshire and Lancashire, welcome to me!
(93–96)
Across the Stanleyite ballads, Cheshire and Lancashire are always code for Stanley
men. However, the Tudor affiliation of the Stanley host at “Attherston” (Atherstone)
before the battle was by no means so straightforward: it was here that Thomas Stanley
appears to have remained, deliberating for some time between the forces of Richard
and the forces of Henry.36 By contrast, William (and his broader Anglo-Welsh affinity,
discussed further below), appears to have thrown his weight behind Henry Tudor at an
earlier stage in the run-up to Bosworth. This is a valuable piece of history for the ballad-author, who alludes to William’s command to the bailiffs of Shrewbury to open
the town gates for Henry’s army to pass through, an event also recorded in the town’s
chronicle.37 However, total Stanley support for the Tudors came late in the day—perhaps during the battle itself.38 Certainly, there were not only strategic but personal
reasons for such a delay. Suspecting Thomas Stanley’s changeable loyalties before the
battle, Richard III had taken hostage his son George Stanley, the Lord Strange. This
situation is recounted in both Rose of England (which recalls Thomas Stanley’s distress regarding the capture of the “young eagle”), and Ladye Bessiye.
34
Griffiths and Thomas, Making of the Tudor Dynasty (n. 12 above) 164.
John A. Wagner, “Stanley, Thomas, Earl of Derby (c.1435–1504),” in idem, ed., Encyclopedia of the
Wars of the Roses (Santa Barbara 2001) 256. For the Stanleys’ relationship with Richard see M. K. Jones,
“Richard III and the Stanleys,” in Rosemary Horrox, ed., Richard III and the North (Hull 1986) 27–50
36
Griffiths and Thomas, Making of the Tudor Dynasty (n. 12 above) 153.
37
Ibid. 150. For acceptance of this as an “authentic detail” in the ballad see Wagner, “Stanley, Thomas,
Earl of Derby” (n. 35 above) 236.
38
Bennett, Battle of Bosworth (n. 12 above) 105.
35
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
335
In respect of details like these, historians have drawn on the ballads for information
about the battle.39 Yet while fragments of genuine historical record may be present
here, this history has far more in common with romance than chronicle. Indeed, the
author of Rose of England draws enthusiastically on romance tropes associated with
the Tudor accession, chief among them the presentation of Henry Tudor as the displaced heir returning across the sea.40 The ballad reads as a statement of Henry Tudor’s right to the English throne, and presents Richard III as a usurper, in terms consistent with contemporary Tudor literary propaganda. It opens with a description of the
rose of England, enthroned in a garden, whose sanctuary is invaded by a boar:
A crowned king, with a crowne of gold,
Ouer England, Ireland, and of Ffrance.
Then in came a beast men call a bore,
And he rooted this garden vpp and downe;
By the seede of the rose he sett noe store,
But afterwards itt wore the crowne.
(11–16)
The boar is an allusion to the crest of Richard III, the white boar, as it appears consistently in early Tudor propaganda. The seed of the rose in whom he set no store is
Henry Tudor, figured by the red rose, who comes to power at the poem’s conclusion:
“Our king, he is the rose soe redd, / That now does flourish fresh and gay” (125–126).
In his imagining of the boar’s “up-rooting” of the garden of England, the ballad-author
employs a key Tudor propagandist strategy of this period: Henry Tudor was not an
interloper, but a king claiming a prior right, who unseated Richard, an unlawful king.
In this respect, the use of the rose cipher is particularly interesting. As a Lancastrian
cipher, the red rose has been understood as a Beaufort emblem—associated with
Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, the grounds of his Lancastrian claim. It was an
important symbol in the years following the Tudor accession, for its parity with the
white rose of York, adopted by Elizabeth of York (although whether before or after
her marriage to Henry we cannot say). The two roses were combined by Henry as
early as 1486, and the selection of this image by the ballad-author may well have
drawn on contemporary Tudor propaganda surrounding the royal marriage—a detail
consistent with a late fifteenth-century date of composition.41
Tudor imagery here finds an important Stanleyite addition. The ballad-author describes the rescue of the rose’s branch by an eagle, the rose’s exile from England, and
his return to Milford Haven to defeat the white boar:
Then came in an egle gleaming gay,
Of all faire birds well worth the best;
He took the branche of the rose away,
39
Griffiths and Thomas, Making of the Tudor Dynasty (n. 12 above) 153.
For discussion of this as a historical romance motif see Rosalind Field, “King Over the Water: Exileand-Return Revisited,” in Corinne Saunders, ed., Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England
(Cambridge 2005) 41–54.
41
A. J. Pollard, The Wars of the Roses (Basingstoke 1988) 7.
40
336
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
And bore itt to Latham to his nest.
But now is this rose out of England exiled,
This certaine truth I will not laine;
But if itt please you to sitt a while,
I’le tell you how the rose came in againe.
Att Milford Hauen he entered in;
To claime his right, was his delight;
He brought the blew bore in with him,
To encounter with the bore soe white.
(21–32)
The eagle with his nest at Lathom must be understood as an allusion to the Stanley
crest, a reference to the family’s foundation legend preserved in the Stanley Poem, and
which was clearly circulating during this period. The eagle’s safeguarding of the
branch of the rose is an explicitly genealogical image: an allusion to Thomas Stanley’s
marriage to Margaret Beaufort. Margaret’s is the branch of the Lancastrian family tree
from which Henry, the rose of England, grew. It is by extension of this that the balladauthor is able to locate Thomas Stanley in a reconstructed familial relationship to
Henry: when the rose returns to Milford Haven to defeat the white boar, he sends a
message to “my father, the old egle” (35).
Rose of England also owes an important debt to political prophecy of a distinctly
Galfridian character, with strong Arthurian resonances. The heraldic ciphers invoked
in the poem appear in a wealth of contemporary political prophecies associated with
the Tudor accession, engaging with historical frameworks which correspond strongly
to the ballad’s understanding of the events of this period. One of the most important
examples of pro-Tudor prophecy circulating as a retrospective prophecy of the battle
of Bosworth, with an important relationship to Rose of England, is preserved in the
Prophecies of Rymour, Beid and Marlyng.42 Although extant in its earliest form from
the reign of Henry VIII, the prophecy has strong claims to the inclusion of material
circulating roughly contemporary to the early Stanleyite Bosworth ballads. Here,
following an allusion to the evils of the reign of Richard III, “A kynge shall reigne
without Rightwysnes, / And put downe blod full hye” (121–122), a “banyshed barone”
(145) appears out of the west and restores British supremacy to the island. This vision
must be understood as fundamentally Arthurian: the banished baron is derived directly
from the bastard of the late fourteenth-century Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of
Erceldoune, a figure who unites the British Isles and conquers Europe in the fashion of
Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae.43 In the Prophecies of
Rymour, Beid and Marlyng this Arthurian advent is rooted in a clear recollection of
the Tudor accession:
Then shall entre at mylford haven
vpon a horse of tree
42
James A. H. Murray, ed., The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune: With Illustrations
from the Prophetic Literature of the 15th and 16th Centuries (London 1875) 52–61.
43
Murray, Romance and Prophecies (n. 42 above) 1–47; Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the
Kings of Britain, ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright (Woodbridge 2007) IX. Hereafter Historia.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
337
A banyshed barone that is borne
of bruts blode shalbe
through helpe of a Egyll anone
he shall broke all bretayne to the see
be side bosworth a felde shalbe piched
ther be mete shall bores two
of dyuerse colors shalbe right
the one shall the other sloo
A harts hed with tenes bright
shall werke his armes woo
The white bore shalbe dight
The profficies saith soo
(143–156)
As Helen Cooper has observed, the historical resonance of this is clear: it reads as an
account of Henry Tudor’s progress across the sea, from exile in Brittany, to Milford
Haven; and from there to Bosworth Field, where the white “bore” is defeated.44 This is
precisely the same narrative as we find in Rose of England, and certainly the author of
the prophecies and the author of the ballad drew on the same historical-prophetic
structure related to the Tudor accession. Notably, in the Prophecies the Stanley eagle
appears as part of a nationally-disseminated prophetic reading of contemporary history, memorializing the contribution of Thomas Stanley at Bosworth, yet in line with
interests which are in no obvious sense localist. The Prophecies of Rymour, Beid and
Marlyng may well reflect the incorporation of elements of Stanleyite propaganda into
mainstream Tudor verse: Stanley encomium was clearly successful.
The Tudor prophetic mythology common to both the ballad and the Prophecies certainly pre-dates both productions, and the introduction of Stanleyite elements. An
early example, important for its early use of the Tudor rose, is found in the late fifteenth-century trilingual Welsh border manuscript National Library Wales, Peniarth
MS 53.45 Peniarth 53 is one of a number of significant, but little studied, multilingual
collections from Wales and the border, containing fifteenth-century English language
factionalist prophetic material, alongside material derived from the Welsh tradition of
cywyddau brud. Among its political pieces the manuscript preserves a macaronic prophetic poem in Latin and English dated to the year 1484, which forecasts the accession
of:
A dragon wt a rede ros þat ys of grete fame
A bastard in wedlock boryn schall he be
þe crown to optayne he wyll chalenge by name
but ii yers & more þe blew bore schall haue degre
(131)46
44
Helen Cooper, “Thomas of Erceldoune: Romance as Prophecy,” Cultural Encounters in the Romance
of Medieval England (n. 40 above) 171–187, at 180–181.
45
For dating of the manuscript, and itemisation of its contents, see J. Gwenogvryn Evans, Report on
Manuscripts in the Welsh Language (A Descriptive Catalogue), 2 vols. (London 1898–1910) 1.ii.403–409.
46
Transcription by Flood.
338
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
This material has an explicitly Welsh field of vision. Alongside the bastard of the
Erceldoune tradition (as popular in Wales as it was in England), the Beaufort rose is
fused with the red dragon, long held to be representative of the Welsh nation in Welsh
political prophecy.47 The red dragon carried an important historical and contemporary
resonance in Wales into the later fifteenth century: it was employed by the Welsh rebel Owain Glyn Dŵr as his standard in revolt against the Lancastrian regime of the
early fifteenth century, and was reemployed by Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth.48 As powerful as this material was in a Welsh context in 1484, in the years
following 1485 the British right of Henry VII (understood in relation to his Welsh
ancestry) saw wide English usage also. This was indebted to the long English reception history of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetiae Merlini, which introduced the red
dragon of the Britons into English prophetic traditions.49 The image of Henry Tudor as
the British dragon and Lancastrian rose, pitted against the boar Richard III, appears
also in the brief depiction of the Battle of Bosworth in Scottish Feilde, where we read
of the support of Thomas Stanley and the men of Lancashire and Cheshire for a hero
presented in the same terms as the Peniarth 53 panegyric:
… a dragon ful dearfe: that adread was therafter,
Rayled full of red roses and riches enowe.
There he bickered with a bore
(25–27).
This type of prophetic material, with its Anglo-Welsh pedigree, could readily have
taken root among the Stanleyite milieu in Cheshire. On its western border Cheshire
presents an important site of Anglo-Welsh interaction: as Helen Fulton has observed,
the town of Chester was the site of significant Anglo-Welsh commercial, religious and
literary engagements, of a type with the pattern of co-existence and hostility we find
more broadly across the Welsh March.50 Chester falls firmly within the Stanley sphere
of influence. The most significant Stanley player in and around Chester and on the
Cheshire/Gwynedd border was not Thomas Stanley but his brother William. Following services to Edward IV at the Battle of Towton, William was appointed chamberlain of Chester, sheriff of Flintshire and constable of Flint Castle for life.51 Appointed
justice of north Wales in the reign of Richard III, it was from here that William recruited troops in Henry Tudor’s name in 1485.52 Although long a locus of Lancastrian
47
Historia Brittonum §42, in John Morris, ed., Nennius: British History and the Welsh Annals (London
1980).
48
Rees, Son of Prophecy (n. 2 above) 106–107; Williams, “The Bardic Road to Bosworth” (n. 2 above)
13.
49
Historia (n. 43 above) VII.33–36.
50
Helen Fulton, “The Outside Within: Medieval Chester and North Wales as a Social Space,” in Catherine A. M. Clarke, ed., Mapping the Medieval City: Space, Place and Identity in Chester c.1200–1600 (Cardiff 2011) 149–168.
51
Michael K Jones, “Sir William Stanley of Holt: Politics and Family Allegiance in the Late Fifteenth
Century,” Welsh History Review 14 (1988) 1–22.
52
Griffiths and Thomas, Making of the Tudor Dynasty (n. 12 above) 152.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
339
support, and a thorn in the Yorkist principality’s side,53 in the weeks leading up to
August 1485, the Tudor partisans of north Wales were in many respects the natural
allies of William Stanley, a Yorkist no longer. There is reason to believe that during
this period the Stanley affinity spanned both sides of the Cheshire/Gwynedd border, a
sphere of interest consistent with the family’s religious patronage across north Wales
of which there is evidence from the early Tudor period.54
In his study of the career of the younger Stanley brother, Michael K. Jones suggests
that the influence William was able to wield in north Wales in 1485 may not simply
have been a product of his office, but was also, at least in part, an extension of AngloWelsh allegiances the family had developed in the region through a combination of
marriage and patronage.55 By the end of the Yorkist period the Stanleys held significant properties in Wales, including Holt Castle, from where, the (probably Cheshire)
author of Ladye Bessiye writes, William rode to Bosworth with a western army, alongside forces of the prominent Welsh Tudor supporter, Rhys ap Thomas. References to
the Stanleys appear in a number of Welsh language poems from the fifteenth and sisteenth centuries.56 Denbighshire poet Tudur Aled makes a number of references to
William Stanley, identified as the “ieirll Hwtwn” (lord of Hooton), and his nephew
George Stanley, the Lord Strange.57 On the Cheshire/Gwynedd border the Stanleys
were key political actors in a history which was not only English but Welsh, and
Stanleyite engagements with Tudor prophecy were potentially an Anglo-Welsh affair,
keyed in to a political discourse which spanned the border.
The realization of prophecy is a similarly important feature of the westwards-looking Ladye Bessiye.58 As it survives the text is indebted to some of the material found in
Bosworth Feilde and suggests a level of inter-textuality between the Stanleyite ballads.
The ballad tells of Elizabeth of York’s possession of a prophetic book left to her by
the late Edward IV, containing a prophecy of Elizabeth’s own accession, understood
by the princess, with considerable prescience, as a prophecy of Henry Tudor’s defeat
of Richard III. Upon Elizabeth’s instigation Thomas Stanley calls Henry Tudor back
from Brittany and under her instruction aids him in his fight against Richard. The ballad ends with Henry’s coronation on the battlefield, this time by both Thomas and
William Stanley, and his marriage to Elizabeth. Lawton assumed the ballad was
associated with the Breretons, a Cheshire family related to the Stanleys by marriage.59
One Humphrey Brereton appears as a messenger between Thomas Stanley and William Stanley and various adherents in Lancashire and Cheshire, and later, between
Elizabeth and Henry, and his various adventures here are given in detail. The Brereton
family also appear in the margins of the Stanleyite mythology in Flodden Field, where
a Sir William Brereton strongly identifies himself with the Cheshire and Lancashire
53
Fulton, “The Outside Within” (n. 50 above) 161–162.
Jones, “Sir William Stanley of Holt” (n. 51 above) 9.
55
Ibid. 13–19.
56
A number of examples are noted by Jones, ibid. 15–16.
57
T. Gwynn Jones, ed., Gwaith Tudur Aled (Cardiff 1926) 5.19, 20.29, 20.94, 29.1, 30.11, 76.13, 63.14.
58
In addition to the Percy Folio the ballad is preserved in BL, Harley MS 367 (c.1560–1570).
59
Taylor, Songs (n. 10 above) 48.
54
340
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
affiliates of the earl of the Derby. Although we can by no means understand the ballad
as the true historical testimony of Humphrey Brereton,60 it was composed by someone
with a particular interest in the family, and their relationship to the Stanleys. In this
allusion we find potential evidence of authorship or patronage, or at the very least a
broader social context. The ballad is almost certainly a Cheshire production: when he
reaches Henry Tudor at Bigeram Abbey in France, Humphrey Brereton encounters a
gatekeeper who is a Cheshireman, from Malpas, who requires no further assurance of
Humphrey’s good intentions towards Henry.
As Cooper has noted, the ballad reads as something of an ancestral romance.61 Certainly, Elizabeth’s feelings for Henry come close to the love by reputation motif which
we find across English and French romance (including the Stanley Poem), and we find
another romance theme in the ballad’s introduction of Richard III as an incestuous
uncle, whose advances Elizabeth must flee (31–32). This romance vision, which
culminates in Henry’s coronation and marriage to Elizabeth, is heavily engaged with
the prophetic structure represented by Edward IV’s book. Elizabeth addresses Thomas
Stanley:
Thinke on Edward, my father, that late was King,
Vpon his deathe-bed where he did lye
… into your keeping hee put mee,
& left me a booke of prophecye:
I haue itt in keeping in this city;
he knew that yee might make a Queene,
father if thy will it be.
(47–48, 51–55)
Elizabeth tells Stanley that this future will only be possible if he calls Henry Tudor
back from the continent, and mobilizes the Stanley affinity in line with the Tudor
cause. The ballad-author’s understanding, as we find in Rose of England, is of Thomas
Stanley’s, and here also William Stanley’s, preordained part in the Tudor accession.
We might wonder if in this prophetic book the author of Ladye Bessiye had in mind
prophetic material of the Erceldoune type pertaining to the role of the Stanley eagle in
the Tudor accession, but he is nowhere as specific as this. Rather, like the author of
Rose of England, he is invested in the instrumental place of the Stanleys in the birth of
the new regime. As in Rose, the ballad-author casts Thomas Stanley in a pseudogenealogical relationship to the post-1485 royal line, but in this case not in regard to
Henry but rather Elizabeth. In Ladye Bessiye we read that Edward IV has instructed
the princess to seek Stanley’s protection, and Elizabeth addresses Stanley as “father”
or “father Stanley,” a counterpart to Henry’s address to Stanley as “my old father, the
eagle” in Rose of England.62 Through constructed paternal relationships to the new
60
Cooper, “Romance after Bosworth” (n. 9 above) 155.
Ibid. 154.
62
We might note that on one occasion in the poem Richard III refers to Stanley as “father Stanley,” and
it functions as a conventional form of respectful address. However, it also here implies a close relationship
between Stanley and the (soon to be) deposed king. The earl is the moral center of the kingdom.
61
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
341
king and queen in these ballads, Thomas Stanley is by implication the father of the
Tudor realm; not only a kingmaker, but the force behind the birth of a royal dynasty,
and the chief architect of the end of the Wars of the Roses.
Yet in Ladye Bessiye the Stanleys are presented primarily as guardians of the displaced right of the heiress of Edward IV: the text is interested not only in prophecies
of Henry as king but of Elizabeth as queen. It has been suggested that in his interest in
Elizabeth the ballad-author was something of a Yorkist partisan,63 and certainly, Ladye
Bessiye makes a case for the family’s continued Yorkist loyalty—insofar as it is
framed as a devotion to Edward and his daughter—and here support for Henry becomes an act of loyalty to the Yorkist princess. In this respect the ballad-author’s
interest in Edward IV’s prophetic book presents some intriguing possibilities. A
wealth of Yorkist prophetic collections survive from the 1460s and ’70s from across
England and Wales, including Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 623, which incorporates
material typical of this prophetic oeuvre, including a list of positive prophetic ciphers
for Edward IV such as the red dragon, “ruben draco,” alongside a wealth of other
Galfridian signifiers, and the white rose, “alba rosa” (fol. 71r).64 We might wonder if
Elizabeth’s book was intended as such a collection. Notably, a number of Yorkist ciphers were drawn on by Tudor partisans, not least the red dragon, and of course the
rose, and the author of Ladye Bessiye may well depend on this element of commonality in his understanding of Edward’s prophetic book. In considering the possible influence of Yorkist political prophecy among the broader Stanley affinity we must
remember that during the reign of Edward IV the Stanleys were staunchly Yorkist.
Indeed, it has even been suggested that William Stanley’s support for the pretender
Perkin Warbeck in 1495 was indicative of some continued level of Yorkist affiliation.
This interest may well in itself owe some debt to William’s engagements in Chester:
the principality’s close connections to the crown, and vested interest in the young
Prince of Wales.65 However, in this venture William appears to have received little
support from his broader Anglo-Welsh affinity, or the rest of the family—who were
instrumental in the later suppression of Warbeck. In the years following Bosworth
then, a Stanleyite partisan was probably in no sense still a Yorkist one—yet the Yorkist connection remained an important part of the family’s history. Like the other Stanleyite ballads, Ladye Bessiye draws on broader partisan discourses where and when
they intersect with Stanley interests. The text is at once Yorkist and Lancastrian—
drawing on elements of both to endorse the role of Sir Thomas Stanley as a Yorkist so
faithful that he became a Lancastrian.
63
Ibid. 156.
For a discussion of Yorkist use of Galfridian material as a precursor to the Tudor see Sydney Anglo,
“The British History in Early Tudor Propaganda,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 44 (1961) 17–48.
65
Jones, “Sir William Stanley of Holt” (n. 51 above) 21.
64
342
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
THE NORTHERN BORDER: THE STANLEYS AND THE SCOTS
Now we turn to the second category of Stanleyite ballads in the Percy Folio, concerned with the battle of Flodden Field.66 Both Flodden Feilde and Scottish Feilde
were probably composed within a generation of the battle. As David Lawton notes,
Flodden Feilde displays an interest in hostility between the Stanleys and the Howards,
resolved by a marriage in 1528, so we might estimate a composition between 1513 and
1528.67 Scottish Feilde contains a tribute to James Stanley, bishop of Ely (lines 283–
294), and so can most readily be placed within a generation of his death in 1515, although Ian F. Baird has suggested that the tone and length of the tribute suggest that it
was composed very shortly after the bishop’s death, placing it very close indeed to the
events at Flodden.68 Scottish Feilde is also extant in the sixteenth-century Lyme manuscript, which has been localized around Baguely, in Cheshire.69 This almost certainly
reflects the milieu in which the ballad was originally produced, since the ballad concludes in both extant copies:
He was a gentleman by Iesu that this iest made,
… att Bagily that bearne; his bidding place had,
& his Ancetors of old time: haue yearded their longe,
Before William Conquerour: this country did inhabitt.
(416, 418–420)
This is a very similar gentry context to that in which we might also place the
Breretons. These Stanleyite verses were associated with relatively prosperous families
in the northwest Midlands with a strong affiliation to the Stanleys.
The ballads are suggestive of the use of Stanleyite mythology as a type of damage
limitation. Although the son of the second earl of Derby, Edward Stanley, was
awarded the title of Lord Mounteagle after the battle, Flodden Field was also a dark
hour in the regional history of the Lancashire and Cheshire affiliates of the Stanleys:
the main body of Lancashire and Cheshiremen at the battle were reported to have scattered and fled. In the face of this charge, both ballads defend the courage of the men of
these regions and their dedication to the Tudor crown. As in the Bosworth ballads this
strategy marries a local and a national field of vision. 1485 was long remembered in
the Stanleyite milieu and is a point to which the Flodden ballads return. We have
noted above the brief account of the Battle of Bosworth integrated in Scottish Feilde.
Similarly, in Flodden Feilde, following his great disappointment in the men of Lancashire and Cheshire, the earl of Derby reminds the king of 1485:
Who brought your father att Milford Hauen?
66
Flodden Feilde is also extant in a late 16th- or early17th-c. hand in BL Harley MS 293, and in the mid
to late 16th-c. BL Harley MS 367, where Ladye Bessiye also appears in the same scribal hand.
67
Lawton, “Scottish Field” (n. 3 above) 50. There is one other Stanleyite poem on Flodden Field, the
text Lawton titles Flodden Feilde II––the only one of these ballads not included in the Percy Folio. It survives in BL Harley MS 3576, a manuscript of the late 16th or early 17th c. Its pronounced classicising
tendencies led Lawton to place its composition no earlier than the second half of the 16th c.
68
Baird, Two Flodden Poems (n. 25 above) ii.
69
Taylor, Songs (n. 10 above) 55.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
343
King Henry the 7th forsooth was hee
thorow the toune [sic: turn] of fortune we did him bring,
& soe convayd him to Shrewsbury
& soe crowned him a Noble King
& Richard that day were deemed to dye. (127–132)
This passage, which like the Bosworth ballads associates the Stanleys with the accession of Henry VII, builds on the vision of the Stanleys as kingmakers, clearly a
fundamental component of this regional mythology well into the sixteenth century.
Again these verses give the impression that the Stanley affinity wholeheartedly backed
Henry’s royal claim prior to the battle, and here actually back-dates the Stanleys’
pseudo-coronation of the king to his arrival at Shrewsbury, potentially held in association with the legend of William Stanley’s order to the Shrewsbury gatekeepers.
The absolute command Derby is held to exert over the men of these regions must
be associated with the elevated term of address applied to him in the ballad by the king
himself: “the kynge of Man” (47). In Henry’s recognition of Stanley as a regional
monarch, the ballad-author draws on another fundamentally Galfridian paradigm, that
of the regional sub-king who commands mighty armies and regions under the auspice
of an imperial monarch, but with some apparent measure of regional autonomy. The
original source of this vision is Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur’s court at
Caerleon in Book IX of the Historia, where Arthur gathers around him a group of subkings through whom he rules the British Isles, its outlying islands and much of western Europe.70 This model was widely utilized in the medieval chronicle traditions derived from Geoffrey, and forms the basis of the regional associations of Arthur’s
knights in medieval romance. In their status as kings of the Isle of Man, Arthurian subkingship had a particularly direct applicability for the Stanleys, and though the Isle of
Man itself is never mentioned in the Historia, in the early fifteenth century it was
added to the mythic Arthurian empire (this addition is discussed further below). Although the powers the title conferred were limited by the small size of the island, the
symbolic capital to be derived from it by the Stanley family was considerable. A sense
of this can be gleaned from the fact that John Stanley, in his capacity as ruler of Man,
appears as an independent signatory in an Anglo-French treaty signed in 1414.71
In the broader context of the ballad, the principal effect of the naming of the earl as
the king of Man also emphasizes the far northern extent of Stanley territories, casting
Derby as a powerful northern ruler capable of raising an army to be mobilized against
the Scots. Man must be understood as a territory as strategic, and contested, as any on
the Anglo-Scottish border. The island was traditionally seen as Scottish and this
perception persisted in England even after the island came under English control in the
late fourteenth century.72 Man was subject to Scottish incursions, and in 1456 a Scot-
70
Historia (n. 43 above) IX.306–355.
Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism (n. 7 above) 217. J. R. Oliver, Monumenta de Insula
Manniae, Manx Society IV (Douglas 1860) 1–6.
72
Tim Thornton, “Scotland and the Isle of Man, c. 140–-1625: Noble Power and Royal Presumption in
the Northern Irish Sea Province,” The Scottish Historical Review 77 (1998) 1–30, at 9–11. To give one
71
344
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
tish raid on the island was repulsed by Thomas Stanley. The raid had been launched
from Kirkcudbright and the following year the Stanleys sacked the town. This reprisal
was in direct contravention of a truce that had been drawn up between the English and
Scottish kings and is a measure of the autonomy with which the Stanleys felt they
could act in the region.73 The kingship of Man gave the Stanleys one foot in Scotland
and they exercised influence there with great enthusiasm. Man also had particular
symbolic significance in its position almost mid-way between Ireland and Britain, at
the very heart of the archipelago. 74 Viewed from London, the Cheshire-Lancashire
lands the Stanleys controlled were rather peripheral, but viewed from the perspective
of the British Isles as a whole they could not have been more central. The geographical location of Stanley lands may also have played into the family’s sense of quasiregal importance, giving them a sphere of influence that was more international than
local. They had trading links with Ireland and two of their members held the Lord
Lieutenantship of that country. They wielded power across a patrimony that extended
from the Welsh border towards Scotland and over the sea to the Isle of Man. Some
sense of their pan-insular conception of their power can be gleaned from the fact that
the second John Stanley and Thomas Stanley, first earl of Derby, are styled as the
Lord or King of “Man and the Isles” (Rex Manniae et Insularum) in surviving documents.75 Although the other isles were firmly under Scottish control, it seems that the
Stanleys felt that their rulership of the key island of Man entitled them to the ancient
kingdom of Man and the Isles.76
In the ballads relating to Flodden, the Stanleys are understood to be more than mere
representatives of the king on the northern border. This perception of partially devolved royal power was particularly compelling among milieux engaged in AngloScottish border conflict, and it was by no means unique to the Stanley affinity. A similar construction appears in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century material associated with the defense of the northern border by the Percy earls of Northumberland
(also briefly the first English rulers of Man between 1399 and 1403), particularly in
relation to Henry “Hotspur” Percy, son of the first earl. Hotspur’s prowess at the 1388
Battle of Otterburn was lauded by contemporary chroniclers, and was memorialized in
the English ballad, Battle of Otterbourne that circulated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.77 The ballad narrates an encounter between Hotspur and the Scottish
earl of Douglas, presented as a judicial combat undertaken between representatives of
two great dynastic powers on the border. This measure of northern heroism seems to
have been understood by a late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century scribe as of a
similar sort to that associated with the Stanleys in Flodden Feilde: the BL, Harley MS
example among many, Ranulf Higden describes Man as Scottish in C. Babington and J. R. Lumby, ed.,
Polychronicon, 9 vols. (London 1865–1886) 2.36–37.
73
Thornton “Scotland and the Isle of Man” (n. 72 above) 18.
74
Ibid. 11.
75
Oliver, Monumenta (n. 71 above) 13, 27. In these documents both “rex” and “dominus” are used with
the title, seemingly interchangeably.
76
Thornton, “Scotland and the Isle of Man” (n. 72 above) 31.
77
“The Battle of Otterbourne,” in Francis James Childs, ed., English and Scottish Ballads, 8 vols.
(1857–1859) 7.3–25.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
345
293 witness of this Stanleyite ballad (fols. 55v–61v) follows directly from the Battle of
Otterburn (fols. 52r–55r) in the same hand. Among the broader milieu of the Percys, as
for the Stanleys, the status of regional champion went hand-in-hand with that of royal
champion: acting as the king’s proxy on the northern border. The position of the Stanleys in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was remarkably similar to the
Percys one hundred years previously. In both cases we see the cultivation of a power
base at a geographical remove from the crown, home to a force potentially great
enough to depose and to make kings—an activity in which both families engaged,
with varying levels of success. Within the broader milieu of both dynasties, we find
evidence of a clear perception of petty kingship. Contemporary chroniclers recorded
that at the 1403 Battle of Shrewsbury, one of the most significant events in the early
fifteenth-century Percy rebellion against the Lancastrian regime, Percy troops cried
out “Henry Percy, King.”78 Although hostile chroniclers glossed this as damning evidence of Percy designs on the English throne, we can perhaps better understand its
function as an articulation of a perception of regional power. We see here the cementation of a regional honor-group understood by its members as something of a nation
unto itself. It was in such a context that prophetic, Arthurian, and Galfridian rhetoric
saw its most powerful localist applications, and there is some evidence of a sustained
Percyite interest in such materials.79
This vision of sub-kingship, as it is developed in Flodden Feilde, belongs to a
broader cultural context informing the ballad, rooted in the Tudor mythology we can
trace back to the 1480s: a combination of romance and prophecy. Like his father,
Henry VIII was regarded as an Arthurian hero by some prophetically-minded
commentators. The Prophecies of Rymour, Beid and Marlyng introduces a “childe
with a chaplet [crown]” (447), a figure in the vein of the banished baron, and the bastard of the Romance and Prophecies. Although the child came to be used as a standard
of opposition to Henry during the 1530s, it originally appears to have functioned as a
positive cipher for the king.80 This is precisely the type of international career with
which Henry is associated in Flodden Feilde. Fundamental to the realization of this is
the earl of Derby, who promises to aid Henry in both the subjugation of the Scots and
conquest of France, through calling on his reserves of Lancashire and Cheshiremen:
Lett me haue Lancashire and Cheshire both,
I desire noe more helpe trulye;
If I ffayle burne vp all Scottland,
Take me & hang me vpon a tree!
I shall conquer to Paris gate
78
John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs and Leslie Watkiss, eds., The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham: Volume II: 1394–1422 (Oxford 2011) 370–371. Discussed in J. M. W. Bean,
“Henry IV and the Percies,” History 44 (1959) 212–227, at 226. See also M. V. Clarke and V. H. Galbraith,
“The Deposition of Richard II,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 14 (1930) 125–155, at 135, 179.
79
The development of Percyite prophecy is discussed in chapter 4 of Victoria Flood, “The Development
of Political Prophecy on the Borders of England, c.1135–1450s” (PhD thesis, University of York 2013).
80
Sharon Jansen, “Prophecy, Propaganda, and Henry VIII: Arthurian Tradition in the Sixteenth Century,” in Valerie M. Lagorio and Mildred Leake Day, eds., King Arthur through the Ages, 2 vols. (New
York 1990) 1.275–291.
346
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
Both comlye castles and towers hye!
Wheras the walls beene soe stronge.
Lancashire and Cheshire shall beate them downe.
(111–118)
The walls of Paris are no match for the might of the men of these regions, and the
military might they exhibit in the other ballads is here extended to the continent. The
ballad-author’s vision may well borrow from the childe’s conquest of Europe in the
Prophecies of Rymour, Beid and Marlyng:
And wyn his enymys on euery side,
And boldely bete them downe.
There shal advaile no erthly pride
In castell, towre, ne towne.
(511–514)
As in Rose of England, this vision can be brought to fruition only by the support offered to the Tudor monarch by the Stanleys and their regional influence.
There is one particularly clear marker of such a strategy in Scottish Feilde, where
the prowess and fame of the men of Lancashire and Cheshire, under the earl of Derby,
are praised:
Much worshippe haue the wonne in warre: their was of their names
In france & in few lands: soe fayre then behappen
Sith Brute here abode: & first built vp houses.
(16–18)
This reference to long-standing achievements in France by the men of these regions is
almost certainly indebted to the historical use of troops from Lancashire and Cheshire
in the Hundred Years’ Wars, and the exploits of Sir John Stanley.81 Here, the historical
martial prowess of the men of these regions is traced back even further: to Brutus’s
original conquest of Britain. This is an allusion to the British origin myth of Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s Historia I, which tells of the settlement and naming of Britain by Brutus and his band of Trojan refugees. This material gained new prominence in the
broader context of the British propaganda associated with the Tudor accession. In
Scottish Feilde the motif assumes a decidedly localist application, articulating a deeply
rooted territorial right to a particular corner of Britain: the settlement of Lancashire
and Cheshire is traced back to the time of Brutus. This is a history which the balladauthor invokes, implicitly identifying himself as a Stanleyite Cheshireman in the ballad’s conclusion, where he writes of his family’s roots in Cheshire, in the time “before
William Conquerour this cuntry did inhabitt” (420). This type of Galfridian foundation
myth is also an important constituent element of The Turke and Sir Gawain, an account of the Arthurian settlement of the most westerly Stanley territory—the Isle of
Man.
81
Bennett, Community, Class, and Careerism (n. 7 above) 162–183.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
347
THE KINGSHIP OF MAN: THE TURKE AND SIR GAWAIN
The loss of the lower halves of the pages in the section of the Percy Folio containing
The Turke and Sir Gawain means that elements of the plot of this romance are now
lost; however, given the use of a number of highly conventional tropes across the romance, the content of the missing portions can be reconstructed with some measure of
plausibility.82 The text as extant tells of a disruption at Arthur’s court during a feast by
an otherworldly challenger. This challenger is here identified as a “Turke.” As in Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight an exchange of blows is instigated, which is answered
by Gawain. At this point there is a lacuna in the manuscript, but it appears that the
Turk leads Gawain through a hill to his own country, before taking Gawain back to the
British Isles for a confrontation with the giant pagan king of the Isle of Man. There is
a second lacuna in the manuscript concerning the proposed journey and the initial portrayal of the island’s inhabitants, but a hostile confrontation appears to be the implication. The monstrous King of Man sets a number of marvelous challenges for Gawain,
which the latter accomplishes, abetted by the Turk. Following the eventual defeat of
the pagan king, the Turk instructs Gawain to strike off his head, and Gawain reluctantly complies. The Turk is then revealed as the Christian knight Sir Gromer Somer
Jour (a character who also appears in another northwards-looking Gawain-romance,
The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle), who is then granted the kingship of
the Isle of Man by Arthur following Gawain’s refusal of the honor.
The language of the Turke and Sir Gawain suggests that it dates from around 1500
and originated in the North or North Midlands.83 This date places it in the post-Bosworth period of the Stanleyite ballads, and it is possible that the romance belongs to
roughly the same period as the composition of Flodden Feilde, a text that also displays
an interest in the kingship of Man. The external evidence of the geographical origins
and the Stanley connections of the Percy Folio, along with the poem’s internal evidence of the figure of the Turk (associated with Sir John Stanley in family legend),
and the stress on the unique title King of Man, all suggest a Stanley connection for the
romance. Although the island enjoyed a rich literary life in other medieval literatures
(particularly literature from Ireland) depictions of Man from medieval England are
few and far between, and it does not seem improbable that Stanleyite interests lie behind the setting of the Turke.
The thematic relationship of the romance to Sir John Stanley’s exploits at the court
of the Grand Turk has been remarked upon before.84 Sir John was also, importantly,
the first Stanley King of Man. In the Stanley Poem, the final word on John Stanley is
devoted to his attainment of the Kingship of Man, which functions as a sort of
apotheosis in this lengthy panegyric:
82
Hahn attempts this in his edition, offering “prose summaries, inevitably somewhat speculative of the
sections that are lost”; Sir Gawain, ed. Hahn (n. 27 above) 337.
83
“The Turke and Sir Gawain,” in Sir Gawain, ed. Hahn (n. 27 above) 337–358, at 337.
84
David Lawton, “History and Legend: The Exile and the Turk,” in P. Ingham and M. Warren, eds.,
Postcolonial Moves (New York 2003) 173–194, at 187–189.
348
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
The king then bestowed this fayre fertile iland
After Lord Scroope on the Earle of Northumberland;
In Henryes dayes, the fourth of his raigne,
At battayle of Shrewsburye was that earle slayne.
For that Sir John Standley was formost in these affaires,
The king gave the iland to him and to his heyres,
Which he well deserved manye divers waies:
Even thus the Ile of Man came first to the Standleys,
Prainge God in possession they may long claime,
With all the rest they have, God preserve them.
(p. 223)
Acquiring the kingship of Man is one of the most significant moments in Stanleyite
history. However, the relationship of the Turke and Sir Gawain to Stanley rule of the
Isle of Man is not completely straightforward. Crucially, Gawain refuses the kingship
of the island: he is adamant that he will “never a king bee” (330). A reading that
imagines a one-to-one relationship between the figure of Gawain and that of Sir John
Stanley must be discounted. Furthermore, the Turk occupies a rather different (and
more benign) role in this romance than the Grand Turk of the Stanley Poem, although
the use of an exotic character to confer authority on an English hero is common to
both. The Turk of the Stanley Poem deepens the romance resonances of the work and
widens the geographic scope of Stanley’s exploits, while the Turk of the Percy Folio
romance prompts and enables Gawain’s feats of chivalry. Elements like the Turk and
the kingship of Man may function as Stanleyite markers in the narrative, badges that
announce the text’s affiliation to a particular family at a particular place and time, but
the romance plot is by no means completely dependent on Stanley family history, real
or imagined. The relationship between this romance and the history of the Stanley
family might be expressed in typological terms, with Arthurian (pseudo-)history
prefiguring more recent dynastic history. What we appear to have in the The Turke
and Sir Gawain is an origin myth for the Isle of Man, firmly located in the Arthurian
past, but which deploys a range of motif and plot elements that foreshadow the coming
of the Stanley kings.
The territorial preoccupations of the Turke and Sir Gawain echo those found in the
texts generally grouped together as the “Gawain romances,” many of which stage the
bringing of an outlying territory of Britain under Arthur’s centralized control.85 The
figure of Gawain as he is depicted in this and other Gawain romances, defending England against the threats on her borders is a rather neat fit for how the Stanleys saw
themselves. For instance, Gawain’s actions, undertaken in the service of an Arthurian
monarch—his defeat of mighty enemies, and seizure of new territories for Arthur—are
analogous to the achievement of Thomas and William Stanley in the Bosworth ballads. The Turke and Sir Gawain also bears comparison with northwards-looking Flod-
85
A Stanley connection has frequently been suggested for the most famous Gawain romance, Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight; however, the suggestion that it might have been composed for Sir John
Stanley is undermined by the early date of the manuscript. See further Helen Cooper, “Introduction,” Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Keith Harrison (Oxford 1998) ix–xxxiii.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
349
den ballads (although the romance appears to predate Flodden by a decade or so).
Gawain’s Scottish territorial connections, long embedded in the Arthurian tradition,
make him a particularly apt hero in narrative focused on an island that was generally
seen as Scottish, and for a family so heavily invested in the politics of the northern
border.
It is unlikely that the resonance of the title “king of Man” would have been lost on
a North-West Midlands audience. The proposed conferral of the title on Sir Gawain
and Sir Gromer would seem to invoke Stanley rule of the island and their unique regal
position:
Sir Gromer kneeld upon his knee,
Saith “Sir King, and your wil be,
Crowne Gawaine King of Man.”
(320–322)
The romance imagines a sub-kingship for Man of the sort that the Orkneys, Cornwall
and other regions enjoy in Geoffrey’s Historia. It takes it for granted that Man does
not come under the direct control of the English monarch. Significantly, the Turkeauthor is not alone in explicitly making the Isle of Man one of Arthur’s possessions.
Although Geoffrey makes no reference to the island in the Historia, John Hardyng’s
Chronicle (which dates from the middle years of the fifteenth century) lists Man
among the territories subdued by Arthur:
The somer nexte Arthure went to Ireland
With batayle sore forfoughten yt conquered,
And of the kyng had homage of that lande,
To hold of hym, so was he of hym feared,
And also gate, as chronycles haue ve lered,
Denmarke, Friselande, Gotelande, & Norway,
Iselande, Greneland, Thisle of Man, and Orkynay
He conquered these to hold of hym euermore.86
The addition of Man in this otherwise faithful rendition of the insular and Scandinavian conquests that Geoffrey attributes to Arthur is most probably reflective of Hardyng’s own regional affiliations. He was in the service of the Percy earls of
Northumberland, the Stanley’s predecessors as rulers of the Isle of Man, who also, as
noted above, were the subject of dynastic and regional mythologizing of an analogous
kind in the years of their ascendancy. The author of the Turke makes a similar statement to Hardyng, incorporating the Isle of Man into a Galfridian fantasy of total insular control through regional sub-kingship.
However, there are identifications of power in the text that do not depend on the
relationship of the family to Tudor history and Arthurian imaginings, but present the
Stanleys as regionally autonomous. All the poems we have discussed write and rewrite events of broadly British historical and mythological significance in the light of
86
John Hardyng, The Chronicle of Iohn Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (London 1812) 126.
350
AISLING BYRNE AND VICTORIA FLOOD
Stanleyite interests. At their most hyperbolic they embed regional interests in British
frameworks in meaning. However, The Turke and Sir Gawain goes even further than
this. The Galfridian fantasy of the text is not limited to celebrating sub-kingship and
stressing the Stanleys’ significance in contemporary insular affairs: it also constructs a
relatively autonomous nation or proto-nation from the region, by echoing one of the
most famous episodes of Galfridian history. The Turke-author’s account of Man as a
beautiful island peopled by giants who are defeated by a newly-arrived conquering
hero is highly reminiscent of the account of Brutus’ conquest of the giant-infested, but
highly attractive, island that he renames Britain in book I of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
Historia. Gawain’s adventures on the Isle of Man are effectively a version in miniature of Geoffrey’s British foundation legend.
This serves two functions. Firstly, in a manner that recalls how the author of Scottish Feilde imagined his ancestors’ arrival in Britain with Brutus, the Turke-author
connects contemporary territorial rights to a narrative of insular beginnings. This is an
understandable tactic in regard to a territory that was not only relatively recently Stanley-dominated but only relatively recently English. Secondly, the Galfridian echoes in
Turke invert the usual relationship between regional and national mythology. Although the final return to Arthur’s court suggests that this has been a romance about
bringing an outlying territory under central control, the co-opting of the British
foundation narrative ensures that the audience never loses sight of the autonomy of the
island. The parallels between Geoffrey’s foundation legend and this romance strongly
suggest that the Isle of Man can be seen here as a metonym for the Island of Britain,
with all the potential for independent history and self-determining power that this implies. Yet this material does more than stake a territorial claim: it represents the dynastic mythology associated with the family at its most absolute. To the author of the romance the Stanleys were king.
CONCLUSION
In exploring the deep-rooted appeal of medieval romance, Matthew Giancarlo observes that “what romance responds to … is the social system of genealogy itself.”87
Depending on whose interests are at stake, this genealogical view of history sees national events pivot not only on the lineages of kings but also on the experiences of
more local dynasties. In the case of the Stanleyite texts of the Percy Folio, British history hangs on Stanley history and everything that lies beyond their purview slips out
of focus. This is romance as history.
For authors who place the Stanleyite affinities of the northwest at the center of British history, nothing could be more natural than to appropriate the elements of the early
87
Matthew Giancarlo, “Speculative Genealogies,” in Paul Strohm, ed., Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English (Oxford 2007) 352–368. Giancarlo’s thesis develops Gabrielle M.
Spiegel’s earlier work on the place of aristocratic interests in French chronicle writing, Romancing the Past:
The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-century France (Berkeley 1993). On the relevance of this model to Geoffrey’s work in particular see Francis Ingledew, “The Book of Troy and the
Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae,”
Speculum 68 (1994) 665–704.
THE ROMANCE OF THE STANLEYS
351
Tudor engagement with romance frameworks, and in particular Galfridian and prophetic material, for regional ends. Seen as borrowing, these strategies demonstrate the
undoubted dependency of families like the Stanleys on the king’s favor, but seen as
appropriation, they also witness a pronounced sense of regional importance, a twofold
perception of faithful royal service and local autonomy. In an era when the monarch
expected a considerable measure of regional power to be exercised by magnates, there
is nothing particularly remarkable about these authors’ claims. Yet the role of literary
and mythic-historical models in underpinning and articulating these regional and affinity-led perceptions deserves the sort of attention that scholars have given to more
broadly national and royal narratives. The relatively large body of surviving Stanleyite
literature makes the earls of Derby a useful case study in this regard, but they are also
in some ways a special case. The potential relevance of the Galfridian vision of history
to this family was more than usually pronounced. The Stanley’s unique status as subkings under the English crown, and the pan-insular nature of their influence and interests created historical conditions particularly germane for the application of romance
models. As the Turke and Sir Gawain-author suggests, to the followers of the Stanleys
the family’s sphere of influence was not only an instrumental part of Tudor Britain,
but a nation unto itself.