Research & Sources - Richard III Society

Introduction

The raison d’être of the Richard III Society is to research into the life and times of King Richard III.

Research Community

This is achieved through a network of members, some of whom are eminently qualified historians and others who are enthusiastic amateurs, as well as occasional projects in which professional historians are funded by the Society to undertake research on our behalf. Over the past few decades, books researched and published by Society members have included The Coronation of Richard III: The Extant Documents edited by Dr Anne Sutton and Peter Hammond, Richard III’s Books by Dr Anne Sutton and Dr Livia Visser-Fuchs, The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case by Philippa Langley and The Itinerary of Richard, Duke of Gloucester: 1452-1483 by Marie Barnfield.
All members are encouraged to carry out original research; to report on their findings; and to participate in Society research projects (see below). This research is often published in the Society’s highly respected journal The Ricardian or in the members’ magazine, The Ricardian Bulletin.
The Society is also greatly helped by the academic historians who regularly contribute to the The Ricardian, with articles and reviews and give lectures at Society-organized events.
Volumes 3-30 of The Ricardian are now available on this site as PDF downloads, free of charge to all. In the future, groups of volumes will be added to the online series after a minimum of 5 years. The Ricardian online is available here.

Research Committee

The management and delivery of the Society’s research agenda is the responsibility of the Research Committee. Collectively the committee provides a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience in late medieval studies. Its responsibilities include:

Managing the Society’s research projects, facilitating research by members and dealing with queries from them and the general public.
Administering the Society’s bursaries and the palaeography course.
Liaising with the academic community and the Yorkist History Trust which is a charity that was set up by the Society to provide research grants and to publish both monographs and editions of fifteenth-century manuscripts.
Promoting the academic image of the Society.
Organising conferences and other educational/research events as required.
Working with the Education Officer to help disseminate Ricardian Research. Some of this is to be found on the Education Website where you will also find a list of relevant Online Sources provided by other organisations.
More details and occasional updates on research can be found at the Research Committee blog.

Research Projects

Through its research community the Society has completed three major research projects focussing on fifteenth century wills and is currently working on a fourth. Wills are a very important source for details of medieval life and for genealogical details of the testator and their family.

Index to Testators 1399-1540 Many wills have already been transcribed, in widely scattered sources such as journals, books and collections of wills and in many different forms, complete, abstracts or as brief notes. The Index is a collection of references to as many published wills as possible for wills written or proved between the years 1399-1540. Individual references give the name of the testator, the date and place the will was made, the date of probate and the full source reference. This will save historians considerable work in seeking out these wills. This can be read on online here.
The Logge Register of PCC Wills, 1479 to 1486 involved the transcription of the wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury Logge register (TNA PROB 11/7), which contains some 390 wills in Latin and in English, registered between 1479 -1486. Many of the members doing this work learnt their palaeographical skills through the Society palaeography course. Logge was published in 2008.
The third wills project, English Wills proved in the Prerogative Court of York, 1477-1499 involved the transcription of a selection of wills in English from the Prerogative Court of York; transcription of TNA PRO E404 (1475-1491) which covers the records of the Exchequer during the reigns of Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III and beyond. This is now out of print but can be read online here.
The Milles Register of PCC Wills, 1487- 1491 contains 662 wills. Of these 299 are in English, 324 are wholly in Latin and 29 are partly in English and partly in Latin. Work is well underway with transcribing (and, where applicable, translating) all of these documents. Regular progress reports are carried in The Ricardian Bulletin.

Members of the Research Committee are currently preparing a calendar of the exchequer warrants for issues for the Yorkist kings to be published online following work on this by Simon Neal (see below).

The Society also helps to fund scholarly research in a wide range of ways, including on specific research projects. Recently these have included.

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and other Analogous Documents preserved in The National Archives XXXV: 1 Edward V to Richard III (1483-1485). IPMs recorded the lands held at their deaths by tenants of the crown. There are 240 of these records which survive from Richard’s reign. The Society has provided funding for a researcher to transcribe and translate these Inquisitions in collaboration with the University of Winchester as part of their mapping the medieval countryside project. This book was published in 2021 and can be purchased from Boydell & Brewer. As with wills these documents can throw more light on individuals and their connections and much more, as the project’s blog reveals.
Polydore Vergil’s Life of Richard III: an edition of the original manuscript by Dr Stephen O’Connor. This is a transcription and translation of the chapter on Richard III from the original Latin manuscript of Polydore Vergil’s English History held in the Vatican archives. It is different in several ways from the published versions. Publication was paid for with a legacy from Dr Lesley Boatwright who initiated the project.
The Exchequer Warrants for Issues (E404s). These are instructions from the king for irregular or special payments to be made out of the Exchequer and they provide a wealth of detail about the everyday business of government and the king’s expenses. We have paid a researcher to catalogue and calendar these warrants from 1461-85 and are very grateful for the bequest from Pauline Stevenson which has made this work possible. The cataloguing has already been integrated into The National Archives’ catalogue and the full calendar will be available online shortly.
The Middleham Accounts. A set of accounts for Richard III’s lordship of Middleham in 1473-4 and another for the same lordship under Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick in 1465-6 survive in The National Archives. The Society paid a researcher to transcribe and translate both accounts. These have been edited for publication by Anne F Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs to include Gladys Cole’s research on these and were published by the Yorkist History Trust in 2024.
The Society has published a A Beginner’s Guide to Research. The most recent edition is available online.

Banner Image of King Richard III’s Book of Hours (MS 474 f.7v) reproduced by kind permission of Lambeth Palace Library.