Free Library of Philadelphia Rare Book Department
Lewis MS E201 - The Edward IV Roll

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Anyone who has struggled to follow the argument at the beginning of Shakespeare's Henry V or the plot of the next four history plays can tell you that the royal family tree of fifteenth-century England is impossible to follow -- from its gnarled roots to its many intertwined branches.

The equally confusing period called the Wars of the Roses (from about 1450 to 1487) takes its name from the dynastic struggles of two factions of the family -- the Yorkists, whose emblem was a white rose, and the Lancastrians, who later became associated with the red rose.

This magnificent genealogy of the first Yorkist king, Edward IV (1442-1483) was probably created to celebrate his accession to the throne in 1461 after defeating the forces of Henry VI in battle, and is as much a propaganda tool as a commemorative document. In it, the supporters of Edward IV harness legend, prophecy, superstition, words, and visual images to offer a compelling propaganda statement to an increasingly literate public.

The manuscript was on display as part of the Leaves of Gold exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Frist Gallery, Nashville, in 2001-2002. This page is an all-in-one version of a presentation on the website of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

In the middle of the fifteenth century Henry VI, son of the great king Henry V, suffered a mental collapse and the governance of England was turned over to his cousin Richard, duke of York.

Henry's grandfather, Henry IV, had usurped the throne from Richard II and based his claim on being descended from the third surviving son of Edward III through direct male descent. Richard, duke of York, on the other hand, claimed descent from Edward III's second surviving son -- but through the female line. Claims and counterclaims turned to the clashes of arms we now call the Wars of the Roses, and Richard, duke of York was killed in battle on December 30, 1460. His son, the eighteen-year-old Edward, Earl of March (tall, blond, handsome, and eligibly single), took up the cause.

Edward defeated the forces of Henry VI in two brilliantly-fought battles and assumed the throne on June 28, 1461. Unfortunately for Edward, Henry VI was still very much alive, and so were many nobles still loyal to Henry.

So, who was the rightful king of England? This gripping question depended on the legitimacy of descent through the female line -- a claim that Henry V had advanced to justify his invasion of France, but which would paradoxically have barred him from claiming the very throne he occupied.

Additional web links: Visit Britannia.com's Monarchs of Britain or Britannia page
for brief biographies of medieval English kings
Use the University of Hull's Royal Genealogy Database to explore
the overlapping family relationships of medieval English kings and nobility
(like most genealogy databases, this is a work in progress
and is regularly expanded or corrected)

Edward IV was born on April 28, 1442, the eldest son of Richard, duke of York and Cecily Neville. He was born in Rouen, France, where his father was serving as King Henry VI's Lieutenant-General. He was created Earl of March about September 1445.

Because his father was involved in the political turmoil of the 1450s, Edward himself first appears on the political stage at the age of ten, marching at the head of an army to free his father from captivity. After his father's forces were routed at Ludlow in 1459, Edward accompanied his cousins Richard, earl of Warwick and Richard, earl of Salisbury to Calais. At this point Edward emerges as a political figure in his own right, playing a key role in the invasion of England and the capture of Henry VI at the battle of Northampton in the summer of 1460.

Following his father's death at Wakefield (December 30, 1460), Edward rallied the Yorkist troops to spectacular victory at the battle of Mortimer's Cross (February 2-3, 1461). He assumed the throne March 4, 1461, won a second and decisive victory at the Battle of Towton (March 29, 1461), and was crowned king on June 28, 1461. The Edward IV Roll was quite possibly commissioned between March 4 and June 28 or shortly thereafter.

Despite some Lancastrian attempts to regain the throne in the early 1460s, Edward settled into a largely peaceful reign. His political alliance with the powerful magnate Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick ("the Kingmaker") was strained, however, when Edward secretly married an impoverished Lancastrian widow, Elizabeth Woodville, in 1464. This clandestine marriage thwarted Warwick's hopes for a royal alliance with France. Relations were further strained when Edward favored an alliance with France's adversary, the Duchy of Burgundy.

In 1469 Warwick entered into an alliance with the Lancastrian forces and in 1470 was successful in reinstating Henry VI on the throne. Edward and his brother Richard, together with other Yorkist adherents, fled to Burgundy, where they gathered mercenaries and returned to England in the spring of 1471. In two hard-fought battles, Barnet and Tewkesbury, Edward delivered the final blow to the House of Lancaster. Warwick was killed during the Battle of Barnet, Henry VI's only son Edward of Lancaster was slain during or immediately after the battle of Tewkesbury, and Henry VI himself met his end, probably at Edward's orders, in the Tower of London shortly thereafter.

From this time until his death, Edward ruled with little opposition. He mounted an invasion of France in 1475, but accepted a treaty and a financial settlement in lieu of a war. In 1477, Edward accused his brother George duke of Clarence of treason. George was executed in February 1478, and rumor had it that he was drowned in a barrel of malmsey wine, a rumor immortalized in Shakespeare's Richard III. In the early 1480s, England was involved in a series of border skirmishes with the Scots, a campaign Edward entrusted to his remaining brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester.

Edward was a vigorous, handsome and charming man and a charismatic leader by popular accounts. As his biographer, Charles Ross, describes him, "He was clearly a man of considerable intelligence, equipped with a particularly retentive memory. He had considerable personal charm and affability and by temperament was generous, good-natured and even-tempered. Consistently courageous, he had great confidence in himself and the capacity to inspire it in others, and from early in his career showed natural gifts of leadership." His contemporaries described him as handsome, and when his coffin was opened in 1789 his skeleton found to measure 6'3-1/2". He was not a particularly scholarly man, although like many of his contemporaries he ordered lavish manuscripts for his personal library, nor was he especially pious or devout. He enjoyed the pursuits of ceremony and display (especially lavish dress), hunting, feasting, and the company of women. His court borrowed heavily from the culture of the Burgundian court, where his sister Margaret presided as Duchess of Burgundy.

When Edward died, on April 9, 1483, he left behind a widow and seven surviving children -- two sons and five daughters. After two months of political upheaval, in which Edward's widow and her supporters were involved in a struggle with Edward's brother for control of the government, Edward's son was set aside and his brother Richard assumed the throne as Richard III. The fate of Edward's sons is a hotly debated mystery to this day. Following the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Edward's eldest daughter Elizabeth became the queen of King Henry VII.

Edward IV's lifetime spans the principal events of the Wars of the Roses. There are several excellent reviews of the political and military history of the time, including the following:

When Edward IV assumed the throne in 1461, he became the third king to depose a living monarch since the Norman Conquest in 1066. Like his predecessors, he faced the difficult task of reuniting a divided country. But unlike his predecessors, he had to cope with not only a living ex-king but a whole ex-dynasty at liberty and commanding the loyalty of a significant political faction.

The deposition of Henry VI differed from those of Edward II and Richard II in several important respects. Edward II resigned his crown in 1327, ostensibly of his own free will, in favor of his son Edward III and died shortly thereafter at the hands of his captors. Some seventy years later, the childless Richard II also signed away his rights of kingship to Henry IV, and likewise died a few months later.

Edward IV had no convenient legal fiction of the blessing of an abdicating king to strengthen his claim, nor did he have Henry VI in his custody. Instead, Henry VI enjoyed both liberty and relative safety across the border in Scotland, along with his assertive wife and young son and a number of influential nobles who remained loyal to his cause. Both Scotland and France saw an opportunity to weaken their English opponents by encouraging a continuation of civil war, and Edward found himself facing both an actual Scottish invasion and a rumored French one on the eve of his coronation.

With Henry's adherents potentially able to muster so much domestic and foreign support, it was thus vital for Edward to solidify his base of Yorkist supporters, to win over as many neutral nobles and gentry and members of the opposition as possible, and to demonstrate to England's neighbors that the Yorkists had a firm grip on the machinery of government and the support of both the magnates and the people. Without the acquiescence of Henry VI in his own deposition, Edward had an urgent and pressing need to validate his claim to the throne by right of heredity, by conquest, and by divine approval.

Edward's coronation, which he could expect all but his most vehement opponents to attend, was the perfect occasion to state his case to a wide audience by all the means at his disposal. If he could win the support of those who attended his coronation, he could count on them in turn to influence their own supporters when they returned to their homes. To do so, Edward IV and his supporters used every persuasive technique at their command, including the propaganda genealogy.

Medieval people read history for many of the same reasons we read history today. They read history for its instructive value and for the way it offered examples of right and wrong conduct. They read history for entertainment, and they read history to satisfy their curiosity about the origins of their country and their families.

For people in fifteenth century England, the story of their country's founding was the stuff of legend, closely related both to classical literature and to Bible stories. England, they believed, was founded by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas. After the fall of Troy, Brutus defeated the Greek king Pandrasus, married his daughter, and then wandered across the face of Europe, eventually settling on the shores of Albion, where the Britons' long and noble history included defeat of the Romans and the exploits of the legendary King Arthur.

This entertaining blend of history, literature, and wishful thinking received one of its most skillful renderings from Geoffrey of Monmouth, whose History of the Kings of Britain (ca. 1138-1139) was accepted by most people as true from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. A medieval "best-seller", it was translated from the Latin and summarized into English, Welsh, and Anglo-Norman and survives in many manuscript editions. It also formed the basis of many later medieval "best-sellers" such as Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon and the Brut Chronicles.

By the middle of the fifteenth century the Brut Chronicle had become firmly entrenched as a combination of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History and genealogical updates by various continuators. In its double row of "British" kings the Edward IV Roll lists all the kings mentioned in Geoffrey's History, with with the exception of a small and obscure group who are summarized in one box rather than listed generation by generation.

Additional web link: Arthurian passages from Geoffrey of Monmouth's
History of the Kings of Britain

If the kings of the fifteenth century could be said to have one thing in common, it might be the questionable right each had to hold the throne, and a more or less regular series of challenges to the legitimacy of their reigns. England's common people were increasingly interested in political events, keenly aware of their grievances, volatile and responsive to calls to action from the gentry and nobility they served, and credulous to the point of gullibility where rumors were concerned. As a result, insurrections rode on a current of seditious, exaggerated, or frankly fabricated reports, and the royal establishment worked to cut off those rumors at their source by the use of propaganda.

Edward IV's campaign for the throne was accompanied by a concerted propaganda effort that included political songs and poems, newsletters, "bills" or broadsheets hung up in public places pleading the Yorkist cause, the blessing of a Papal legate, sermons in public places, and a wide range of symbolic gestures to demonstrate the legitimacy of Edward's kingship.

Edward himself was quick to seize on symbols to demonstrate divine approval of his cause: a vision of three suns in the sky before the battle of Mortimer's Cross, for example, quickly became, first, the blessing of the Holy Trinity and, later, divine confirmation that Edward should claim the three crowns of England, France and Spain. A vision and a victory so close to Edward's seat of Wigmore, ancestral home of the Mortimers, from whom Edward derived not only the claim to the throne of England but also the rich heritage of Brutus, Arthur and Cadwallader, would have had an almost miraculous symbolism to a fifteenth-century audience, and the Yorkists were happy to capitalize on this fortunate conjunction of tradition and contemporary events.

One important propaganda technique used by the Yorkist was the genealogy demonstrating Edward's descent from the ancient lines of England, France and Wales, and the superiority of his claims to those of Henry VI. Many of these genealogical rolls still survive and show some evidence of an early form of assembly-line production, demonstrating how broadly they were distributed among the nobility and the gentry. Their purpose is to reinforce the legitimacy of Edward IV's kingship through his ancestry, through his prowess as a warrior, and through divine approbation, and their audience appears to have been the nobility and gentry whose opinions could influence and shape "public opinion."

The use of the pedigree to further these aims is not original with the Yorkists. During the 1440s, when it was obvious that the Lancastrian dynasty was faltering, a number of genealogies were created to demonstrate the superiority of the Lancastrian claim to the throne. One surviving example goes so far as to omit Edward III's second son Lionel of Antwerp, duke of Clarence, entirely in an apparent attempt to forestall any claims to inheritance of the throne by descent from an older son of Edward III -- since the Lancastrians claimed descent from third son John of Gaunt.

What is unique to the Yorkists, however, is the degree to which they made effective use of imagery to reinforce their claims. In this manuscript, its creators have combined heroic portraiture, quotations from the Vulgate that stress divinely-assisted triumph over enemies and genealogical diagramming that highlights the Yorkist line's ties to a rich legacy of British legend that far surpasses the Lancastrian -- as well as genealogical superiority from the more recent past.

For additional reading on propaganda and genealogies in the fifteenth century, see:

Genealogical manuscripts celebrating one's family history are fairly common throughout later medieval England. Many combine the twelfth century Compendium Historia in Genealogia Christi of Peter of Poitiers, a history of the world through the birth of Christ, with the British legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth and with more recent family records.

A fourteenth-century genealogy of the Mortimer family, the "Wigmore Manuscript," contains a Brut, a genealogy of the English kings, and a genealogy of the Mortimer family. It apparently was designed to advance the Mortimer family's claim to the throne of England in the later fourteenth century in preference to that of the descendants of John of Gaunt, presaging the Yorkists' genealogical arguments and appeal to the "British" heritage. Richard II had a pedigree that traced his descent from Noah. During the reign of Henry VI, when his marriage had not yet produced an heir, the succession was again an issue. Concerned that Richard, duke of York might present a strong case to be named the heir apparent, Henry VI's advisors produced a series of pedigrees, including some that omitted the son of Edward III from whom York could claim superior descent. Some surviving pedigrees of fifteenth-century nobility include genealogies of the Percy family, the Nevilles, and a remarkable document celebrating the achievements of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick.

In the case of Edward IV, the large number of surviving manuscripts suggests that they were consciously produced in large numbers as part of a program to influence the opinion of the nobility and the gentry as well as wealthier merchants, a group who in turn could influence large numbers of friends, supporters, and adherents. Some of these manuscripts are in Latin, others in English, and most of them begin with a version of a standard considerans text, in which the writer explains that considering the difficulty of reading old books and the limited time many have to study them, he will write a brief history of the world from Creation to Christ "to take away length from him that is weary and of little will, comfort and solace in form and figure to the bodily eye, and comfort and grace to them that are well-willed."

To this one fifteenth-century writer adds that "I behold that many men desire greatly to have knowledge of chronicles of kings that aforetime reigned in this land; therefore, I have put the names of them in this work, from Japhet the son of Noah lineally descending to Brutus the first king...and from him to Edward the fourth king of that name after the conquest of England." These manuscripts follow a standard format, with one large illustration showing the Fall of Man, and with minimal illustration thereafter.

Two genealogies depart significantly from this pattern. One is the manuscript explored here. The other, in the British Library, is a typological life of Edward IV. The term "typology" is usually reserved for religious studies, and refers to finding parallels between Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah and the life of Christ. In the "typological life of Edward IV," Old Testament episodes are paired visually with episodes from the life of Edward IV in five pairs of images presented side-by-side. An illustration of Joshua at the battle of Jericho, for example, is paired with an illustration of Edward IV in battle. In another, David the shepherd has a vision of three men, foreshadowing the Trinity. This is paired with Edward's vision of the three suns in the sky before the battle of Mortimer's Cross -- and the three suns in turn are paired with the three crowns of England, France, and Spain. In another pair, the infant Moses floating down the Nile in a woven basket foreshadows Edward's escape across the Channel to Calais.

Following the five pairs of illustrations, a genealogy of the kings of England since Henry III takes the form of a tree of Jesse, a popular medieval way of conveying Jesus' pedigree from the House of David and beyond. In this genealogy, though, the culmination is not Christ but Edward IV, who survives the attempts of the usurping Henries to lop off the branch from which he descends.

There are many myths and misconceptions surrounding heraldry, the colored emblems transmitted from generation to generation to identify individuals, families, corporations and communities. It has been widely believed, at one time or another, that heraldry has its origins in classical Greece and Rome, or in the runes of the barbarians or the Germanic/Scandinavian tribes, or in the Byzantine or Muslim culture, where it was discovered by the crusaders.

In reality, the beginnings of heraldry can be found in twelfth-century Europe, and heraldry may have spread quickly through the medium of international tournaments. Heraldry is a response to transformations in European society after 1000, and especially to the need for quick identification in response to changes in military technology -- such as the development of helmets that obscured a warrior's face.

In much of Europe heraldry is regulated by little except custom. Arms identify women, clergy, bourgeois communities, and in some times and places even peasants. As Michel Pastoureau commented, armorial bearings are like business cards -- anyone can use them, but not everyone does. In England, on the other hand, use of armorial bearings is restricted to the gentry and is controlled by the College of Arms and the High Court of Chivalry.

Heralds originally carried messages, including declarations of war, and announced at tournaments. As such, they were a bit like modern sports announcers in that they needed to recognize individuals by their coats of arms with speed and accuracy. Over the years both heraldry and the duties of heralds became more complex and more precisely spelled out. Achievements of arms are described in an elegant, economical and supple language called blazon, based on twelfth-century Anglo-Norman French.

By the time the Edward IV roll was created, it was common for kings and nobles to employ the services of skilled heralds, who enjoyed considerable prestige and recognition. The College of Arms was formally established in 1484 by Edward IV's younger brother, Richard III, who granted them a charter and a building in London, Coldharbour, to use for storage of their records. Richard's successor Henry VII seized the building and gave it to his mother; the present charter and building site were given to the College by Queen Mary in 1555.

There are five major illustrations in this manuscript, in addition to more than 50 shields and banners, several beasts, and dozens of roses, suns, and fetterlocks. The art historian Kathleen L. Scott has suggested that the major illustrations were probably allotted to three different artists.

Scott assigns the half-figures of the Kings and Princes to a third illustrator. These half figures, appearing behind a low wall, comments Scott, "are more accomplished, more decided in the delineation of faces and figures and in the application of color than the Adam and Eve artist."

Much of the material in this section is adapted from two articles by Kathleen L. Scott:

Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, vol. 6 (London: Harvey Miller, 1996). vol. 2, pp 288-89, no. 104; ills. 393, 394
"The Edward IV Roll." In James Tanis and Jennifer Thompson (eds.) Leaves of Gold: Treasures of Manuscript Illumination from Philadelphia Collections (Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2000, in preparation).

J. J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992.
Faye and Bond. Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada. Originated by C. U. Faye; continued and edited by W. H. Bond. New York: Bibliographical Society of America: Distributed by Klaus Reprint Co., 1962.
P.W. Hammond, A. F. Sutton, and L. Visser-Fuchs, "The Reburial of Richard, Duke of York, 21-30 July 1476," The Ricardian: Journal of the Richard III Society, Vol. 10 (December 1994) , pp. 122-65, note 58.
A. J. Pollard, Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, Stroud and New York: Sutton Publishing and St. Martin's Press, 1991.
Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, "Richard III's Books: Ancestry and 'True Nobility,'" The Ricardian: Journal of the Richard III Society, Vol. 9 (December 1992), pp. 343-58, note 18.

The manuscript opens with a portrait of an armed equestrian Edward IV. Right of conquest, right of descent, the sovereignty of England, and the Hand of God are all represented in this initial image.

The armed and mounted figure hearkens back to Edward's spectacular victories at the battles of Mortimer's Cross and Towton just a few months before. The closed crown of England, unlike the open crowns of France and Castile/Leon on the shields flanking Edward, signifies the sovereignty of the English monarch. The arms on the horse's trappings -- England (red with three gold lions) and France (blue with fleur-de-lys) quartered with Castile (red with gold castle) and Leon (white with red lions) -- reinforces the Yorkist claim of legitimacy of descent through the female line.

The horse-trapper's central escutcheon with its three crowns of Brutus, legendary founder of England, foreshadows the three crowns of England, France, and Spain, as well as the three suns seen in the sky at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross, a weather-related illusion called parhelion.

The Hand of God is quite literally evident in the divine hands emanating from nebuli with the inscriptions "Si deus nobis cum, quis contra nos" (If God is with us, who can be against us?), "Dextra domini fecit virtutem" (The right hand of God gives strength"), and "A domino factus est istud" (This is the Lord's doing).

The gold letter inscription under Edward is from the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John: In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum hoc erat in principio ("In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word. The same was in the beginning...")

Next, a brief history of the world flanks roundels depicting the Creator enthroned, the Fall of Man, and, shown in part at the bottom, Noah and the Flood. The elaborate initial I on the left is balanced on the right by two white roses and Edward's motto, "Comfort et liesse," comfort and joy. Edward IV was known as "the Rose of Rouen" in propaganda poems of the period in reference to his birthplace, and the white rose became a dominant icon for the Yorkist dynasty.

The caption surrounding the roundel, whose figure may represent the Father or the Son, reads "Ego sum alpha et o[mega] dixit dominus deus omnipotens" (I am the beginning and the end, says the Lord God almighty), a condensation of Revelations 1,8. This is a highly unusual subject for a pedigree manuscript, and may have been chosen both to emphasize divine approval of Edward's accession and to echo the imagery in the two Yorkist badges, the rose-en-soleil and the sun in splendor.

The roundel illustrating the Fall of Man is introduced by the caption "prothoplaustus Adam et Eva" (the first man, Adam, and Eve). Less accomplished in illustration than similar roundels in other genealogies, it is different in its emphasis. The caption surrounding the roundel is a paraphrase of Genesis 3, 13-14, in which God curses the serpent and promises to create "inimicitas ponam inter te et mulierem ipsa conteret caput tuum" (enmity between you and the woman, and the woman will bruise the serpent's head). Both the caption and the imagery, with the serpent being driven headlong into a black pit by divine intervention, serve to reinforce the divine judgment that Edward should be king and divine retribution on his opponents.

Beneath the Fall of Man, three small roundels show Abel, Cain, and Seth, followed by the names of Seth's sons and a roundel showing Lameth, the father of Noah.

Edward's links with a glorious past are signaled in the first four banners of this manuscript, shown here: to the left, the banner of St. George, followed by the arms of Brutus, legendary founder of England, impaling those of Pandrasus, whose daughter Brutus married. To the right we see the banners of King Sebbi and the Duke of Cornwall.

St. George, Brutus, Pandrasus, and the Dukes of Cornwall are all logical candidates for top billing in the manuscript. St. George was the patron saint of England and thus of the Order of the Garter, and one to whom the Yorkists were particularly devoted. The Duchy of Cornwall was a traditional holding of the heir apparent. Brutus and Pandrasus are a venerable part of the founding legends of Britain.

It is difficult to explain the choice of Sebbi, one of hundreds of Saxon kings, to be noted on this manuscript opposite St. George. Sebbi led a virtuous and saintly life, but so did many others. The answer may lie in the stories of his death. Shortly before he died, according to the Venerable Bede, Sebbi saw a vision of three men in bright clothing, who foretold the time and manner of his passing. Sebbi thus shared with Edward IV (who saw three suns before the battle of Mortimer's Cross) a vision that can be interpreted as a vision of the Trinity. And, there may have been an additional reason. When Sebbi died, the sepulcher brought for him was found to be too short but then miraculously stretched to fit. Perhaps Sebbi is mentioned less for his piety or his vision than for his height -- a worthy ancestor for Edward IV, who at six feet four was larger than life.

A roundel commemorating the Flood shows Noah and his wife in an ark that resembles a fifteenth-century ship. Above the ark we see the departure of the raven, who did not return, and the arrival of the dove with the olive branch. Assorted couples people the ark. The surrounding caption meticulously records the number of years Noah lived after the flood -- 350 -- and his [imagined] place of burial. ("Noe post diluvium vixit [350] annos mortuus et sepultus est in Phaleth.")

The first of two rows of roundels beneath the Flood show the sons of Noah -- Sem, king of Asia, Japhet, king of Europe, and Ham, king of Africa -- together with a diagrammatic tau map of the world (A tau map is a graphic device that divides the known world, a circle, into three continents by the use of a tau, the Greek letter T). All these Old Testament figures are dressed in the height of mid-fifteenth century fashion, a common practice in medieval illustrations.

The second row of roundels shows the sons of Japhet, king of Europe, followed by British (green borders) and French (blue) lines of descent, and short histories of the seven Saxon kingdoms (yellow). Either through scribal error or deliberate omission, the French line does not show a linear connection to any of Japhet's sons, unlike the British and Saxon lines. (Those familiar with the "Salic law" speech in Shakespeare's Henry V may be interested to note that the French line begins with "Faramundus," better known to Shakespeareans as Pharamond.)

The lines of descent are decorated by three Yorkist symbols in regular rotation -- the sun in splendor, the fetterlock, and the rose-en-soleil, while the white rose image continues to alternate with the banners on either side of the manuscript.

The makers of this manuscript adhered faithfully to the list of kings shown in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain -- a listing so exhaustive that it was necessary to assign them two full columns on the manuscript. The line descends vertically for several feet and then begins again in a second green column.

This section continues the British and French lines of descent and the histories of the Saxon kingdoms through the reigns of Cadwallo for the British, Alfred for the Saxons, and Rollo for the Normans. Arthur appears in the line of British Kings (green box in one of the rows near the round map).

The diagrammatic map of the seven Saxon kingdoms in the shape of a rose suggest that even those ancient kingdoms were a foreshadowing of the Yorkist dynasty.

The gold-letter text is from Luke 4,30, "[Jesus] autem transiens per medium illorum ibat." (But Jesus, passing through the middle of them, went his way"). It refers to Christ's safe passage through a group of hostile Pharisees who had sought his destruction. Its placement between the banners of the Cinque Ports (the port towns of southeastern England) and Calais would evoke memories of Edward's flight to Calais in 1459 and his return in summer 1460 and would suggest that Edward's flight and triumphal return were preordained.

A series of seven charming miniature half-portraits introduces the second section of the manuscript, which presents Edward's descent from seven ancient lines. On the left the armored prince of Wales is in conversation with the green-robed Duke of Cornwall; the blue-robed King of France strokes his beard while the red-robed King of England holds orb and scepter, followed in order by the king of Castile (in purple now faded to mauve), the duke of Aquitaine in green again, and the duke of Normandy in fashionable black armor.

The genealogy resumes again with lines of descent beginning with Cadwallo for Britain (green boxes on the left); Obertus in the white boxes, leading to William Marshal and the incorporation of the Clare line, Radalphus of France in blue; King Alfred, representing a unified Saxon England, in yellow; and Rollo of Normandy in red. Because of some graphic devices used by the creators of this document to create space for additional lines of descent, it is not possible to "read across" to find contemporaries.

Some of the more interesting imagery in this section can be found on the left and right borders. Where the previous section contained banners alternating with white roses, we now see shields alternating with standards held up by heraldic beasts.

The choice of beasts, like everything else in this manuscript, was calculated to emphasize the legitimacy of Edward IV's claim to the throne. The white hart, emblem of the deposed Richard II, would have reminded a fifteenth century audience of the injustice of that deposition. The black bull of Clare is a pointed reminder of Edward's descent from Lionel of Clarence, Edward III's second son. Finally, the white lion, the emblem of the Mortimer earls of March, who married into the Clare line, is an emblem that Edward IV retained as his own throughout his reign.

At the beginning of this genealogical section (see previous screen), although there are seven half-portraits of kings and dukes, there are only five lines of descent shown. In this section of the manuscript the Norman line shifts to create a space for the dukes of Aquitaine; the Spanish line will be included in similar fashion later. Note also the blending of the Norman (red) and Saxon (yellow) lines just below Harold, defeated at the Battle of Hastings and surrounded by a green-brown border instead of Saxon yellow; and the union of the British/Welsh and Mortimer lines, red and green, toward the bottom of this section.

The French line (blue) has split, about two-thirds down this section. The left split leads to Isabella of France, who will marry Edward II of England, and the right split eventually leads to Katherine of Valois, who will marry Henry V.

Two images toward the bottom of this section also bear mentioning. A pair of small roundels containing a red dragon, representing the Welsh, and a white dragon, representing the Saxons, are visual reminders of Geoffrey of Monmouth's account of a prophecy by Merlin. This prophecy describes a struggle in which the Welsh, defeated by the Saxons at first, would ultimately prevail. For the Yorkists the red dragon represented Edward IV, and the white dragon the Lancastrians. The identification of Lancastrians and Saxons is made further along in the manuscript, where Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI are all bordered in Saxon yellow alone. The dragon images celebrate the blending of the Welsh and the Mortimer lines (green and red) when Ralph de Mortimer, lord of Wigmore, married Gwladys Ddu, daughter of Llewelyn the Great, prince of Gwynedd -- thus linking the Mortimers, and by extension Edward IV, to Cadwaladr, Arthur, and Brutus.

Finally, this section includes a charming miniature of a peacock -- a symbol of immortality, and one connected with Edmund the Martyr, whose banner appears nearby.

This section brings together the royal lines of England, France, and Spain in the persons of Richard, duke of York (multicolored rectangle toward the bottom) and Edward IV (large interlaced squares just visible at the bottom). Toward the top appears a closed crown near the entry for Henry III, from whom a Plantagenet "Tree of Jesse" springs in another propaganda roll created for Edward IV. [See other genealogies].

Just to the right of the closed crown is an image combining a number of Yorkist symbols in one -- a falcon, badge of Edward's father Richard, duke of York, sits atop the fetterlock of Edmund of Langley, which encloses a white rose (silver, now tarnished) with a cross of St. George at its center. A little further down, a crown set with suns introduces the Spanish line.

Other images of note include the Percy crescent, the Stafford and Bourchier knots, and the ermine-furred cap of state just above Edward IV's interlaced squares.

The richness of Edward IV's heritage is brought home by the multicolored lines in comparison with the plain yellow borders surrounding the three Lancastrian kings (Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI). Lest anyone miss the point, three boxes -- surrounded by borders of the appropriate colors -- explain Edward's hereditary claim to the crowns of each of these kingdoms.

Here the full arsenal of Yorkist text and imagery is brought to bear in support of Edward's claim to the throne.

The interlaced rectangles representing Edward IV are surrounded by images of kingship: crowns and scepters for the three realms of England, France, and Spain; ostrich feathers, a badge of the Princes of Wales; and garters, representing the Order of the Garter. The swords represent the two swords of justice to the spirituality and the temporality and the blunted sword of mercy, Curtana. The text within the three left garters reads "A Domino factum est istud," This was the Lord's doing (Mark 12, 11), while that within the three garters on the right reads "Firmum con[s]ilium [meum] faciat dominus," May the Lord help [me] to persevere (Judith 8, 31).

These images of royalty are combined with the three Yorkist images seen throughout the manuscript -- the rose-en-soleil, the sun, and the fetterlock.

Small boxes below Edward list his siblings, and give details on their titles. For some years it was thought that this manuscript was produced some time after 1468, the year that Edward's sister Margaret became Duchess of Burgundy. However, recent examinations of the manuscript suggest that her title, as well as those of other siblings, were written in at a later date and in a different hand.

The manuscript ends with a shaded scroll containing text once again celebrating the accession of Edward IV and making the case for descent through the female line. To make the final visual statement, the white lion of March (left ) supports a standard holding a banner with the same bearings as the horse at the beginning of the scroll -- the quartered arms of England, France and Castile/Leon, with the arms of Brutus/King Arthur on an escutcheon at the center -- while, to the right, Richard II's white hart supports the arms of the Kings of England.

I have drawn heavily on the work of four scholars in the preparation of this section. The work of Alison Allan on propaganda in Yorkist England made it possible to set this manuscript in its proper historical context. Kathleen Scott's entry in her survey of English manuscripts and her entry for the exhibition catalog, Leaves of Gold: Manuscripts from Philadelphia Collections, form the basis for much of the commentary on the manuscript as a work of art. To Ralph Griffiths I am indebted for the time he took to discuss this manuscript with a group of members of the Richard III Society at the Free Library in 1993 and for his unfailing kindness in answering my many questions thereafter. Finally, without the active collaboration of Peter Hammond, Research Officer of the Richard III Society, many of the shields and banners in the manuscript would have gone unidentified and unexplained. The strength of this section owes an incalculable debt to the contributions of these four scholars; any errors are solely mine.

Many others deserve their thanks for their advice and encouragement along the way. The Free Library of Philadelphia Rare Books Department staff has been uniformly helpful since the former curator, Howell Heaney, first showed me the manuscript in 1962. Special thanks are due to Karen Lightner, Martha Repman, and William Lang at the Free Library. In addition to Peter Hammond, Geoffrey Wheeler deserves thanks for his research on the heraldry of the manuscript over the years. Charles T. Wood, Dartmouth College, has suggested a number of fruitful lines of inquiry.

These acknowledgments would not be complete without a word of thanks to the many members of the Richard III Society whose generous financial support made possible the conservation of this manuscript, and to the staff of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts for carrying out the work.