Richard Duke of Gloucester as Lord Protector and High Constable of England , livre ebook

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Acclaimed author Annette Carson continues her Richard III studies by concentrating on his brief protectorate while he was still Duke of Gloucester. Until now traditionally misrepresented, his office as Lord Protector has been poorly understood owing to an over-reliance on foreign reporters ignorant of the precise significance of this very English institution. Of equal importance, and equally disregarded, is his concurrent office as Lord High Constable of England, vested with military and judicial authority on behalf of the crown. This study reviews the development of both offices and their constitutional legitimacy in Gloucester's hands.

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Middle Ages

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Publié par	Imprimis Imprimatur
Date de parution	07 septembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780957684058
Langue	English

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RICHARD DUKE OF GLOUCESTER AS LORD PROTECTOR AND HIGH CONSTABLE OF ENGLAND
‘The Consent and Good-Will of all the Lords’
Annette Carson
Imprimis Imprimatur
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Published by Imprimis Imprimatur 21 Havergate, Horstead, NR12 7EJ annettecartson@btinternet.com .
© Annette Carson, April 2015, 2021 The right of Annette Carson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the copyright holder.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
eISBN 978-0-9576840-5-8
Contents INTRODUCTION
PART I: AN OVERVIEW OF 15th-CENTURY ENGLISH CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL FRAMEWORKS RELATING TO LORDS PROTECTOR AND HIGH CONSTABLES

1.
The Office of Protector and Defender of the Realm
(a) Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
(b) Richard, Duke of York

2.
The Lord High Constable of England and his Court

3.
The Crime of Treason
(a) Development of Treasonable Offences
(b) Development of Attainder

4.
The Constable’s Court under Edward IV
PART II: IMPACT OF THE FOREGOING EVIDENCE ON THE ROLE OF RICHARD DUKE OF GLOUCESTER DURING HIS PROTECTORATE

5.
Richard of Gloucester as Lord Protector and High Constable
(a) Notes on background and sources
(b) Preamble
(c) Protector and Defender of the Realm
(d) High Constable of England
Appendices I – X
Bibliography
Acknowledgements and Notes on Illustrations
Introduction
The overall objective of this study has been to establish a greater understanding of the offices of Lord Protector and High Constable as held by Richard, Duke of Gloucester during the months of April to June 1483, between the death of his brother Edward IV and his assumption of the throne as Richard III. Both offices have entailed consideration of how precedents were set and frameworks put in place for their effective operation within the administration of fifteenth-century England. The Lord Protector, when appointed, is generally recognized to have been a leading member of the government, but less well known is that the High Constable of England, as one of the Great Officers of State, wielded national powers which included some that were second only to the king himself, principally when dealing with rebellion, insurrection or any of the many other activities deemed to be treasonable.
In order to understand these two offices I have gratefully relied upon a handful of historians whose prior studies have provided excellent secondary sources in their chosen specialties: J.S. Roskell has been invaluable for the origins of the office of Lord Protector; P.L. Johnson has been my source for a synopsis of the protectorates of Richard, Duke of York; and M.H. Keen and G.D. Squibb have produced masterly works on the High Constable and his Court. This latter topic has been of interest to me since the early 2000s when, living abroad and working on Richard III: The Maligned King (published 2008), I sought information on the powers and competencies of the Constable’s Court. On my return I determined to rectify this gap in my knowledge. I also wanted to clarify the office of Lord Protector, since the standard biographies of Richard III seemed to assume that the holder was at liberty to make of it whatever he wished, and that it equipped a particularly ambitious or unscrupulous incumbent, i.e. Richard when Duke of Gloucester, with powers equivalent to those of a regent which provided a pathway to the seizure of supreme power. I now believe this to be an erroneous assumption, although understandable in view of the misleading way it was characterized by commentators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who knew nothing of the constitutional position it occupied. This position was, in fact, very precise: having been inaugurated and recorded by decision of the King’s Council in 1422 to apply during Henry VI’s minority, it had been set within a specific governmental framework that remained constant thereafter, with the protector’s tenure defined by Parliament each time a protectorate was subsequently established. Protectors were appointed in varying circumstances in the fifteenth century, but always when the king was indisposed or under-age and deemed unable to exert personal rule.
A keen appreciation of this constitutional dispensation had clearly been uppermost in the minds of those members of the governing King’s Council who confirmed Richard, Duke of Gloucester in the office of protector in May 1483. 1 Hence the sub-title of this essay is taken from those words of the chronicle of Crowland Abbey which record Richard’s appointment, with the precedent of 1422 still being cited sixty years after the event:
… Richard, Duke of Gloucester received that solemn office which had once fallen to Duke Humphrey of Gloucester who, during the minority of King Henry [VI], was called Protector of the Kingdom. He exercised this authority with the consent and the good-will of all the lords … 2
The offices of Lord Protector and High Constable were among the highest in the realm, but for whatever reasons they have remained widely misunderstood and their precise significance is very often glossed over. In considering the career of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, to ignore the way in which the responsibilities of these offices impacted upon him is to overlook an important contributing factor. In particular the role of the Lord Protector, along with the question of what he was meant to protect, have suffered enormous distortion in the popular mind, especially since the title was employed in different contexts in later centuries and endured considerable disfavour after its association with Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s. When applied to Richard III it still evokes the age-old error that assumes his role to have been ‘protector of the sons of Edward IV’. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the facts will demonstrate, and indeed the title itself is very clear: Protector and Defender of the Realm and Church in England and Principal Councillor of the King. A review of secondary literature suggests that serious confusion exists in the historiography in this respect. For example, Professor Michael Hicks, while correctly confirming that Richard of Gloucester was ‘the only possible candidate to be protector’, and citing the precedents of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Richard, Duke of York, writes confusingly of Duke Humphrey’s protectorship that it ‘conferred the right to protect the person of the king and the realm’. 3 Hicks has also stated more than once that Richard of Gloucester in 1483 was ‘his nephew’s protector’. 4
Whereas the origin of the office of protector is well established, much more difficult is to assign a date from which the ancient office of High Constable of England existed, although its early raison d’être in the mediaeval context of knighthood and military campaigning is self-evident. References date back to the thirteenth century at least, from origins as a standing lieutenant of the king delivering judgement in time of war. Edward IV asserted, perhaps rather grandiloquently, that it had existed since the Conquest. The High Constable was personally appointed by grant of the king; and it will come as no surprise that the powers and purview of the Constable and his Court were continually developed to suit changing circumstances as each monarch came to deal with increasing unrest. The task of tracing their development – one might even say their transformation – under the English kings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is significantly hindered by the paucity of coherent documentation, a hindrance which is much greater when examining the critically important Constable’s Court which left no records.
Since a major part of the High Constable’s sphere of jurisdiction came to embrace the crime of treason, some exploration has been necessary in that area of the law, including the increasingly creative development of attainder by successive monarchs. The leading study of the mediaeval law of treason is that by J.G. Bellamy, of which I have made extensive use, although this essay cannot pretend to cover the topic exhaustively. Key requirements have also been to address how Edward IV widened the scope of the crime of treason and how he employed his High Constables to deal with it, with their jurisdictions and summary powers entrenched in the wording of their grants of letters patent. 5 His brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, appointed for life in 1469, was his last and longest-serving High Constable and may be assumed to have consolidated the way in which the king desired the Constable and his Court to operate. This being the prerogative of the monarch alone, it would have remained unchanged until decreed otherwise by any subsequent king.
The foregoing considerations provide a number of strands of evidence that shed light on these two key offices which in 1483 became combined in Richard of Gloucester’s person. I believe i