Appendix II

On the Date of the Death of William, Lord Hastings

Modern historical research has tended to move away from what is seen as the more traditional, somewhat hidebound, litany of dates approach to history that was dominant in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Understandable though this trend is, dates are important. In the present context, the date of the execution of William, Lord Hastings is absolutely pivotal. If what I have suggested is correct, it is really quite critical that Hastings was beheaded on Friday 13 June 1483, in the first rush of Richard’s anger. and not one week later on 20 June after a whole week for calmer deliberation.

In some sense, this concern over dating looks to be a non-issue. The date of Hastings’ execution is given by the Crowland Chronicle¹ and there appear to be no contemporary records which contradict this information. This certainty might have persisted but for the protestation of Clements Markham, who, in 1891, argued that Hastings was actually executed one week later.² For Ricardian apologists this suggestion has some appeal, since it would tend to suggest that Richard had given Hastings the benefit of due process before dispatching him, instead of the summary execution which appears to argue for Richard’s more malevolent motivations. Markham’s position is not merely one of wishful thinking: he based his proposition on the Stallworth letter,³ which was dated Saturday 21 June and referred to the execution as occurring on Friday last, the implication taken by Markham being that the preceding Friday was in fact 20 June.⁴

This proposal tended to languish, most probably because it was an interpretation (and one which we shall see for which there is an evident explanation), and especially because no corroborative evidence could be found. This all changed in 1972 when in her article⁵ Alison Hanham cited a passage in the Acts of the Court of the Mercers’ Company⁶ which could be interpreted as indicating that William, Lord Hastings was still alive on Sunday 15 June, two days after his execution date. Her observations induced a response by Professor Wolfe,⁷ who cited an impressive array of contradictory evidence which seemed to confirm the original date. Although Hanham had argued that some of the extant documents could have been altered, one of the primary sources of confirmation came from the building records of Kirby Muxloe castle.⁸ Thanks to the great tradition of English workmen downing tools as soon as it looked like they might not be paid, we can see the most mobile of the workmen, the master masons, leaving Hastings’ unfinished structure after only working on Monday 16 June 1483. From this we may infer that news of Hastings’ demise reached the outskirts of Leicester sometime either during the weekend or on the Monday itself.

The dispute, however, did not stop at this juncture. Hanham had included her re-dating in her own text, ‘Richard III and his Early Historians,’⁹ which had appeared before she had the opportunity to see and reply to Wolfe’s original article. This turned out to be an important sequence of events, since her argument persuaded Wood to include this revised date in his very influential article.¹⁰ It has been suggested that this re-dating had only limited effect on what Wood proposed, but this is not so, especially in relation to the interpretation of the critical event of the release of Richard, Duke of York from sanctuary¹¹ in Westminster

After having the opportunity to examine Wolfe’s original response, Hanham returned with her own response,¹² which focused primarily upon Wolfe’s specific arguments rather than bringing any new information to the fight. As this interchange was proceeding, others were also prompted to reply to Hanham’s original observations. Thompson’s article¹³ supported the interpretation of Wolfe and thus reconfirmed the original dating on 13 June. Much of the dispute revolved around the interpretation of the citation in the Acts of Court. Unfortunately, we only posses a sixteenth-century copy of the lost original and some concern was aired about the problems of copying and original dating. The most comprehensive evaluation of this issue was presented by Sutton and Hammond,¹⁴who concluded that, while copying mistakes were obviously possible, perhaps the most telling piece of evidence was that the meeting of the Court of the Mercers’ Company would have had to have happened on a Sunday, which would have been a very exceptional circumstance. It was concluded that the entry had actually referred to a meeting that had occurred on that date but in an earlier year than 1483.

In respect of the interchange between Hanham and Wolfe, Wolfe contributed the final word,¹⁵ but there followed another observation by Coleman¹⁶ which focused on the ‘Black Book’ of the Exchequer. As Chamberlain of the Exchequer, Hastings’ death was recorded on 13 June, and this added to the collective weight of evidence which re-affirmed the date which the Crowland Chronicle first established. There were also a number of commentaries on this issue which provided useful information,¹⁷ and indeed, there remains a concise summary of the controversy by Hammond which is on the present Ricardian website.¹⁸

It is natural that we tend to see the world in terms of ‘winners’ and ‘losers,’ and if we have to view it in this manner then Alison Hanham comes out as a ‘loser.’ But this is a very limited perspective. As Atreed¹⁹ so trenchantly reminds us, Alison Hanham made a significant contribution to scholarship with her observations on this matter and, although the traditional date of Friday 13 June 1483 stands as the day that Hastings lost his head, it is primarily thanks to Hanham that we have now assembled the present body of information which supports this contention. I fully concur with Atreed’s assessment that we have much for which to thank Hanham. From my present perspective, the critical necessity to establish the notion that Richard acted in the first flush of anger is very much bolstered by the information which emerged in this process of debate.