longer.blue

Here it is, one of English history’s rarest sights: the throne is empty. There is no king. September 30th 1399, Richard II’s reign has been wiped from the record and History awaits Henry IV’s claim to it. The image is itself historical, having passed through several hands. It began as a coloured illustration for the duke of Burgundy’s chronicle of Jean Creton, 1405. Creton himself guided the illustrator, the Virgil Master, to achieve faithful portrayals. Creton was an eyewitness to many of the events covered in his 16 illustrations but, uniquely, not this one. He had left England before. However, a ‘French cleric’ came to him from England with news of how the deposition etc had played out. The representation of Arundel in the middle left and Henry on the right in the high hat is how they appear in other illustrations depicting earlier events. Creton met them both. This image was copied by a line engraver in the early C19th and used in the Revd Webb’s translation of Creton in Archaeologia XX. Then the author scanned it from his copy and cleaned it up. As an image of Arundel and Henry it’s pretty authentic and useful to head a post on my book but I’m going to hold off with the thesis and start with a side show for the benefit of those of us with a particular Yorkist/Ricardian interest. Male entail. You’ve read around the subject already and are familiar with this term which appears in every history book. It’s used by writers who want to suggest that Henry IV had a legitimate claim to the throne by descent. That he was a legal successor to Richard II. However, ‘male entail’ barred him from the throne. By male entail, it is the person ‘nearest the body’ of he deceased that inherits. That means in a living line. The death of John of Gaunt cut Henry IV off from the living line to Edward III. The person next in line to inherit from Edward III, given the extinction of Richard II’s line and the death of John of Gaunt, was Edmund duke of York. In my book, I don’t dwell on this as its not germane to my thesis. In fact, I talk about it to discount it’s application to Henry IV only. But after discounting its relevance, I was forced to mention something tangentially interesting. One reads the word ‘election’ quite often in the sources, and I discuss what that might mean, but in Creton there is an actual election. The French cleric told him that those assembled were asked by Arundel whether they would have the duke of York – no, or his son – no, or his next son – no, or Henry – Yes. That is the male entail. No wonder Richard Duke of York thought he had a good claim to the throne in 1460