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Notes
Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, ed. Thomas Wright, 2 vols. (1859-61), II: 256-57.
E.g. M.H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages: a Political History (1973), p. 456; and T.B. Pugh, "Richard Plantagenet (1411-60), Duke of York, as the King's Lieutenant in France and Ireland," Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Society: Essays Presented to J.R. Lander, ed. J.G. Rowe (1986), p. 109.
The possibility that lines 25-28 in the other two manuscripts might represent a later insertion seems to be ruled out by the fact that the Harley 48 copy of the epitaph is itself immediately preceded by an account of the Fotheringhay reinterment—virtually conclusive evidence that this ceremony was the original occasion of the poem's composition.
There are three separate accounts of this ceremony, two in French (B.L., MSS. Harley 48, fols. 78r-81r, and Harley 4632, fols. 123r-125r) and one in English (B.L., MS. Addit. 45131, fols. 23v-24r); none has been printed in full. A detailed summary of the first is, however, to be found in Cora L. Scofield, The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, 2
B.L., MS. Addit. 45131, fol. 24r. An inventory of the trappings of the hearse (College of Arms, MS. I. 11, fol. 188v) describes the image on the cloth as "our lord sytting on the dome"; cf. the Last Judgment painted by Rogier van der Weyden (c. 1443-46) in the Hôtel-Dieu at Beaune, which shows Christ seated on a rainbow.
B.L., MS. Harley 48, fol. 81r. Harley 4632 estimates "bien de quinze a seze [m] per-sonnes Repues aux despens du Roy et y eust quarante pipes de vin [i.e. over five thousand gallons] partans du scellier du Roy celle Iournee" (fol. 125r).
College of Arms, MS. I. 11, fol. 188v (although "viij banners beten with golde of decentes" do appear). Another copy of this inventory is in B.L., MS. Addit. 46354, fol. 62r.
See C.E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani (1972), p. 353. For Whiting's career, see H. Stanford London, "A Complete List of the Officers of Arms," in Walter H. Godfrey, The College of Arms (1963), pp. 121-122; both French accounts agree that Chester Herald was one of the officers of arms attending the ceremony (B.L., MS. Harley 48, fol. 78r and Harley 4632, fol. 125r). Anthony R. Wagner's suggestion (Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. [1956], p. 108, fn. 2) that the copyist of MS. Harley 48 was Richard Chester is unconvincing.
In the description of York's reinterment blanks have been left for the names of the English noblemen who presented the duke's achievements (fol. 80v). An experienced officer of arms like Whiting, an eyewitness to the ceremony, would surely have been able to provide these names; on the other hand, if he were copying someone else's account after a lengthy interval, his memory might well have failed to supply them.
Anthony R. Wagner, A Catalogue of English Mediaeval Rolls of Arms, Harleian Society's Publications, 100 (1950), pp. 111-116.
Anthony R. Wagner, Heralds of England (1967), p. 129; H. Stanford London, however, suggests "soon after 1480" for the date of Ballard's creation as March, College of Arms, p. 278.
Though the readings in S are superior in every case, Thynne appears to have trouble with his exemplar at both line 22, where trauaile et is a later insertion before daunger, and line 24, where a curious pen stroke after gard seems to indicate indecision about the correct ending (both A and H read gardent, with signs of scribal interference in the first half of the line, apparently designed to provide this verb with a plural subject). One might also note that S and A differ at line 28 (where Harley has a lacuna).
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