Sir James Tyrell

Sir James Tyrell was born in 1456, the son of Sir William Tyrell of Gipping, Suffolk, and Margaret Darcy of Maldon, Essex.

Early in 1462, James’ father was arrested for complicity in the Earl of Oxford’s treasonous plots. Having been found guilty, Sir William Tyrell was beheaded on Tower Hill and buried in the church of the Austin Friars. James’ wardship was granted to King Edward’s mother Cecily, Duchess of York, who regranted it to James’ mother. In 1469 he married the Cornish heiress Anne Arundell.

In May 1471, Tyrell fought for the House of York at the Battle of Tewkesbury and was knighted on the field by Edward IV. By 1473, he had joined Richard, Duke of Gloucester’s retinue and in 1474 first appears as a member of his ducal council. in that year he was one of the challengers at the tournament to celebrate the creation of Edward IV’s youngest son as Duke of York. Tyrell was part of the army that invaded France in 1475.

Richard of Gloucester appointed him as Sheriff and Master Forester of his lordship of Glamorgan and Constable of the lordship’s chief fortress, Cardiff Castle. In 1478 he was an MP for Cornwall and took part in the jousts to celebrate the marriage of Richard, Duke of York to Anne Mowbray. In April 1479 Gloucester appointed him as one of the Chamberlains of the Exchequer.

By January 1480, his cousin, Elizabeth Tyrell (c. 1436-1507) had been appointed Lady Mistress of the Royal Nursery by Queen Elizabeth Woodville. In July 1482, during the Scottish campaign, Gloucester made Tyrell knight-banneret and in mid-November, the King appointed him as one of three deputies (Vice-Constables) heading a commission to manage Gloucester’s office of Constable of England.

Following Richard III’s accession in June 1483 Tyrell was appointed a Knight of the Body, Master of the Horse and Master of the Henchmen. His name heads the list of knights who attended  Richard at his coronation. After the October uprising against King Richard and the Duke of Buckingham’s capture in Shropshire, Tyrell took receipt of Buckingham from the Sheriff of Shropshire and escorted him to Salisbury where his execution took place. According to an Elizabethan copy of a lost early-sixteenth century memoir, with the aid of his gentleman servant, Christopher Wellesbourne, Tyrell had been sent to seek out Buckingham’s five year-old son and heir who became third duke in 1485 but would eventually be executed by Henry VIII.

Tyrell was given authority to seize and administer Buckingham’s forfeited Welsh estates and to assert the King’s authority over crown lands in Wales. He was also rewarded with the stewardship of the Duchy of Cornwall for life and given the Cornish lands of his wife’s rebel half-brother Thomas Arundell.

On 22nd January 1485 Tyrell was made Lieutenant of Guines Castle in the Marches of Calais a key strategic stronghold. As a result, he was not present at the Battle of Bosworth. Tyrell’s absence from Bosworth may account for the fact that he was not attainted for his support of Richard III.

Under Henry VII, Tyrell kept his office at Guines but lost his positions in Wales and Cornwall and the Arundell lands. By 16th June and 12th July 1486, he had secured two royal pardons for a possible association with the first Yorkist rebellion against King Henry, headed by the Stafford brothers and Francis, Viscount Lovell. The first pardon was for himself and the second for himself and those in the Guines garrison, including its former chaplain. By 1488 Tyrell was again a Knight of the Body. In 1489 he fought on the English side at the Battle of Dixmude, where he was wounded in the leg, and by 1495, he was a Royal Councillor and feoffee to the use of Henry VII’s will.

In November 1499, the executions took place of Edward, Earl of Warwick, and the man who claimed to be Richard, Duke of York (more widely known as Perkin Warbeck). Tyrell was not named in the pretender’s confession. In 1501, Tyrell attended the Lord Steward (Sir Robert Willoughby) at the reception of Catherine of Aragon in London.

Following the death of Henry VII’s heir, Prince Arthur, in April 1502, Henry VII lured Sir James Tyrell out of Guines Castle by promise of safe-conduct in order to indict him for his support of the Plantagenet Yorkist heir, Edmund de la Pole. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, Tyrell was tried for treason at the Guildhall in London on 2nd May 1502, four days later he was, like his father before him, executed on Tower Hill and buried in the Austin Friars. He was 46. His son Thomas, who was arrested with him, had his sentence commuted to imprisonment.

Sir James Tyrell was posthumously attainted for high treason on 25th January 1504. The attainder was reversed three years later, on 19th April 1507.

A witness statement, written by the young man claiming to be Richard, Duke of York in c, 1493 details his removal to safety from the Tower of London in late July or early August 1483 by John Howard. Sir James Tyrell was present at the Tower at the time and is named in York’s statement.

Sir James Tyrell served three kings with distinction.

He is more widely known today for his portrayal in William Shakespeare’s play, The Tragedie of Richard III (1593/4) where he is depicted as the murderer of the sons of Edward IV. Shakespeare’s play was based on a literary narrative by Sir Thomas More, discovered amongst More’s papers after his death and published in 1543. More wrote that Tyrell had confessed to the murder of King Edward’s sons at the time of his imprisonment. No evidence supporting this claim has ever been found.

Tyrell’s biographer, the Reverend W H Sewell, said of him, ‘We have abundant evidence of the greatness, reputation and personal bravery of Sir James Tyrell. He was one of the foremost, and certainly one of the ablest men of his day.’

Tyrell had five children with his wife, Anne Arundell.

His likeness may adorn the walls of Gipping Chapel in Suffolk.

Sources

British Library Harleian Manuscript 433 (Richard III Society 1980-3)

Rosemary Horrox, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

TNA SP 46/139 f. 167

Essex Record Office, D/DQ/14/124/3/40

Douglas Richardson and Kimball G Everingham, Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families (Genealogical Publishing Co. 2004)

Anne F Sutton and P W Hammond (eds) The Coronation of Richard III: The Extant Documents (Alan Sutton, 1983)

W E Hampton, ‘Sir James Tyrell’, Crown & People (Richard III Society, 1985)

W E Hampton, ‘Opposition to Henry Tudor after Bosworth’, Crown & People (Richard III Society, 1985)

Emma Cavell (ed) The Herald’s Memoir 1486-1490 (Shaun Tyas, 2009)

Rev William Campbell (ed), Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII (1873)

Richard S Sylvester (ed), St Thomas More: The History of King Richard and Selections from the English and Latin Poems (New Haven, 1976)

Reverend W H Sewell, ‘Memoirs of Sir James Tyrell’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Natural History and Archaeological Society, Vol 5, Part Two, 1878.

Philippa Langley, The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case (The History Press, 2023).