Gone Medieval - Origins of Treason in England

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

First defined in law in 1352, treason remains one of the most serious crimes a person can commit. And, remarkably, the core of the original Treason Act remains in force and relatively unchanged today.A fascinating exhibition at the National Archives is offering a unique selection of letters, pamphlets, posters, maps and trial papers to reveal the motives, actions and fates of those accused of being traitors, many of whom paid the ultimate price for their cause. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis finds out more from Dr. Euan Roger, principal Medieval records specialist at The National Archives.This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Treason is the ultimate crime that can be committed against a monarch or a state. It's the act of becoming a traitor and it can carry the most gruesome of penalties in England that included being hanged, drawn and courted. The law of treason in the medieval period in England centred on one document,

the treason act, parts of which are still on the statute books today. nearly 700 years later. This document and the cases of treason that led to are the focus of an incredible new exhibition at the National Archives in London that runs until April 2023, and which is free to get into. I've seen it, and there are so many amazing documents there

that it's genuinely mind-blowing. There's also a book that you can grab now entitled A History of Treason that complements the exhibition and offers a little bit of compensation if you can't get there. I'm delighted to welcome back Ewan Roger to Gone Medieval today.

Ewan is the Principal Medi-Eval. or record specialist at the National Archive and gets to look after some of these incredible documents. So thank you and welcome back, Ewan. Thanks for having me. It's great to be back. So this new exhibition focuses on acts of treason and at the centre of it, at the beginning of it, is this treason act. And the first thing I just wanted to clear up is it's called the treason Act 1352, but if you Google it in some places, it's called the Treason Act 1351. Can you explain the difference in those two dates for us, please? Yeah, so the difference in these two dates is that the treason act was passed in what we would historically consider to be January 1352.

But medieval people didn't see the start of the year as beginning on the 1st of January as we do today. And so for them, the treason act would have been passed in 1351. And how this gets even more complicated is that lawyers tend to use that old date of 1351, whereas historians would normally modernise it. And at the National Archives, we have both the treason act historically, but we're also responsible for publishing legislation on legislation. gov. And so we actually have two different forms of the day in all of our records, but historically, we used 1352. Just to help it make a little bit more sense. So why was the treason act bought about

in 1352? So Edward III is king at the time. Is it in response to some immediate crisis, or is he dealing with some longer term problems around treason here? Treason's always been a thing in this country. It goes right the way back to the earliest law codes that we have. And at the heart of it is that relationship between the Crown and the members of the nobility, the leading magnates of the country. And what happens in the 14th century? Actually, it all kicks off a little bit earlier. It kicks off under Edward I and Edward II. And treason essentially starts off being used by Edward I to crush his enemies in Scotland and in Wales. He's deeply offended by the Scots rebellion against him, the Welsh rebelling against him. And for him, it seems to be entirely personal.

and he actually executes more than 20 people during his reign for treason and really makes these show trials. And the problem with that is he develops what's called the king's record. And this is essentially a way that someone can be declared guilty by the monarch simply stating the facts and his parliament or his leading nobles agreeing with him. So it makes it a very ruthless way of taking your enemies down. Now, while that's against the Scots, for example,

that might not be considered to be a particularly bad thing. they aren't at war with the Scots. But what happens under his son, Edward II's reign, is that treason starts to be used really arbitrarily by factions around the king on rival sides, using this powerful tool to completely crush the rival factions. That's really difficult, because while treason is undefined at this point, it can be used unreasonably against whoever doesn't have power. It's a really powerful tool. And why treason is so important is because it's a crime unlike any other. So murder, for example, is obviously a very bad crime at this time. But treason has always been treated differently. And the way it works is if you are a traitor,

your bloodline, your inheritance is completely wiped out. And so for nobles, that's a really powerful tool to use and to have used against you because it wipes out your family line entirely. Now, in 1352, Edward III is very much riding high. He's been successful in the French Wars. settling down with an ability a bit more. It's becoming a better relationship between the Crown and the nobles. And the treason act is essentially a way to try and draw the line, redefine that social contract between the king and his leading magnates. Interesting. So the treason act is part of that rebalancing, but also about defining what is treason. And I guess by necessity then, also defining what isn't treason so that the king can't just use this on a whim. Yeah, exactly. And

when they define the Act in 1352, the Crown and his justices settle on a relatively narrow definition of treason. They don't include concepts like Lesse Magisté, which is used a lot more in France, which is about denigrating that royal honour, that royal majesty, and assuming, accroaching the power of the king. None of these concepts are drawn into the text of the Treason Act. So it's relatively narrow, and that makes it quite a nice balance, I think, between the crown and the nobles, because it's fair all round, or as fair as Edward III and his justice can make it. And I guess missing out, let's say, Majesty in particular, is interesting for Edward III, given that he would have felt like that was something he had used already

against Roger Mortimer, who'd been his regent kind of while he was in his teenage years. So he might have felt that that was something he did want included, and yet it gets excluded. So does that speak a little bit to the fact that there's pressure from the nobility to limit what can be called treason. Yeah, I think definitely in the text of the Parliament role in which the Treason Act is also copied, we see in that text that it's actually been requested by the nobles in Parliament to define this treason. And I think part of it does go back to Edward II and Mortimer. In that particularly in Edward II's reign, Lessei Magistay is very much at the heart of what's problematic. And as you say, Edward had used these concepts against Mortimer. And I think also we need to think here about,

the fact that while Edwards is using these, he's a very young man at this time. There's so much death and execution and royal families literally torn apart in those early years of the 14th century that I think it must have affected him as a monarch, as a person and influences the way that treason has approached. So what does the treason act actually define as treason? You said it's quite a narrow list of things. What could you be convicted of treason for in 1352? So at the heart of the treason Act are five key clauses. And the first of these is probably the most important, the one that still people think of as treason today. And all of these five clauses are still on the statute, but today. So the first of these is compassing and imagining the death of the king or the senior male members of the

royal family. And that was actually last updated in 2015 with the succession to the Crown Act, which made that gender neutral. So it's not all about the firstborn male anymore, but the firstborn child of any sex. The second clause is about violating the king's consort or the queen or again those senior female members of the royal family. And this is an attempt to make sure the royal bloodline is kept uncorrupt. It's very much protecting that. And then the third and fourth clauses are first really brought in as concepts by Edward I, but are then narrowly defined in 3052. And these are levying war against the king or adhering to the king's enemies. So that's essentially going into battle against the king. And in the 14th century, that's very much based on ideas about banners on the

battlefield and knights on horseback. It's very much that formal going into battle, which becomes problematic in which the second reign. But this is very much the kind of two sides going into pitched warfare against one another. And then finally, we have a clause which relates to murdering the royal officials, so the Chancellor, the Treasurer and the Royal Justices, but it only extends to while they're doing their official business, while they're on work time, it doesn't include them when they're just going about their daily lives. So if you want to bump one of them off, you have to do it on a day off. Yes, exactly, or once they finish for the day. And there are further clauses around counterfeiting, particularly the Royal Seal and particularly the Royal Coinage.

But they're also interested about coins coming into the realm from elsewhere, particularly from Luxembourg. There's a particular type of coin that is being brought in. it's not perceived to be good. But these essentially get taken out of the act later on. It's those five key clauses that still remain today. And does the treason act lay down the penalties for anyone who's found guilty of treason? So interestingly, it actually doesn't. There's nothing about means of execution. There's nothing about any of this. That comes back to royal custom, ancient laws. There's very much this idea that the trademark of treason is that you're drawn to the place of execution, originally drawn at the hall.

horse's tails are literally dragged behind a horse. And then eventually they realize that these people are turning up at the execution sites and they're practically dead already. And so they put them on a hurdle. But that's very much the hallmark of treason. But that's not in the act at all. What the act does talk about is the concept of forfeiture. So forfeiting your entire estates, all your possessions to the crown. If you murder someone, then you still have to forfeit your goods, but only for a fixed period of time. Whereas with treason, you forfeit things forever, essentially, unless your treason's overturned at some point. But yeah, nothing about hanging, drawing or quartering, even though under Ebb of the First in particular, we see in chronicle accounts

of the executions the fact that the way people are being executed is very much linked to their crimes. So William Wallace, for example, they talk about his entrails being burned because of his crimes against the church. And the entrails are what gives rise to those heretical, heinous, traitorous thoughts. and so that's why they're burning the entrails to purge it, I guess. But none of this is covered in the treason act at all. That's amazing because we so closely associate, particularly being hung, drawn and courted, with treason as the punishment that you would think

they would sit next to each other, but clearly they don't. No, but what we do see is in some of the legal cases around this, we see the method of execution being brought out there. So it's not defined by statute as such, but it is in the common legal knowledge, and it does get brought out. And there's actually a little S symbol that quite often is annotated as in the margins of these records,

which essentially refers to them being drawn and hanged, and you can physically see the clerks making a note of this in their records. Ouch, it's quite real, isn't it? Just a little less on the side can lead to such a horrendous punishment. So does the exhibition, the exhibition kind of moves on then from the 1352 Act, does it have some good examples that you can give us of the act in action? Yeah, so as we go into the exhibition, the first stories that come out after the treason act itself

are related to Richard the Second's reign and we have loads of treason going on in Richard's second's reign. But what is actually quite interesting is that a lot of it sits outside of what is actually included in the act because Richard's reign is very much the time when the act is being tested to its absolute limits. And this comes about in all sorts of different ways. In 1381, for example, we have the peasants' revolts

where the peasants and people of all statuses rise up and move, on London and other places as well. This is a mass revolt, a mass uprising. And yet, when the raw justices try and prosecute this, it actually doesn't fit within treason. They think these are traitors, these are bad people. We want to get them with treason legislation. We want to dramatically punish them as much as we can. But they find it really hard to make treason and charges stick in that legal kind of mindset because they're not levying war. Levying war is referring to knights and horseback with banners. And obviously the peasants don't do that in third. person 81. So they try and push these charges through and they try and frame things within the

framework of treason where it's not necessarily applicable. And I think what makes this quite dangerous is that Richard the second's reign, that's quite early on. And they're already getting this mindset of, okay, we can frame things as treason. We can use this act, but embellish it. We can bring things in differently. And what you then get is you get factionalism returning once again and charges of treason. And a lot of this is grounded in Parliament because one of the clauses in the Treason Act states in 1352 that if anything comes up in the future which is seen to be treason or thought to be treasonous, it has to be referred to the king in Parliament for judgment. And so what we see is we see Parliament starting to become the centre of treason and traitorous acts

being framed within this text that isn't really fit for purpose. And I think what we've see throughout the exhibition as a whole is actually treason being expanded and then when treason is expanded too far it becomes unworkable it becomes undefined yet again and so we see this kind of rise of treason and then in each case it comes back to 1352 so for example we have the lord's appellant to appeal richard second's favourites of treason and then appealed themselves a treason later on and in each of these parliaments they're going to say it's actually treasonous now to turn over any of the acts that we've made in this Parliament. But at the end of Richard's reign, when he's deposed, we see the new Lancasterian regime saying, okay, we're going back to 1352. We need to go back

to that core legislation in the 14th century. I think it's quite a good example then of that early tension between Parliament and the monarch. The Parliament is trying to take the personal element of treason out of it so that the monarch isn't just trying anyone for treason who upsets them or does something they don't like. And the monarch is almost instantly trying to find ways to push against that, really pushing at the edges of where treason law is and just trying to claw back a bit of power. Yeah, definitely. I think Richard the Seconds reign is particularly evident of that, because you have the king literally sitting in Parliament, seeing his friends, his closest favourites, being condemned, being executed, and being absolutely powerless to

stop it because he hasn't got the power to force through his right, his majesty, I guess, in a lot of cases. And it seems to go in waves as well, doesn't it? You say you get the Lancasterian regime come in and sort of revert back to 1352. But then you do see treason start to evolve and expand again. One of the cases in the exhibition is that of John Whitelock in 1413. So can you tell us a little bit about what he does that's suddenly considered treason two? Yeah. So John Whitelot's case is absolutely fascinating because the Lancasterans say they're going back to 1352, but they're not really going back to 1352. Because what we see under Henry IV and Henry V in particular is we see the rise of words being framed as treasonous. And of course, that's not really applicable under

352 at all. But the way they get around this is by what's called constructive treason. So they say that these words are going to incite people around the country to withdraw their love from the king or to rise up against the king. They're inciting their seditious. And so therefore, they're brought in under that compassing and imagining clause of the act. So in Whitelock's case, Whitelock is a form of servant of Richard II. And a lot of these treasonous words are concerned with Richard still being alive because he's been deposed, he's probably been murdered in secret. But because Parliament hasn't done that in the open, we get these words saying Richard's alive. He's often in Scotland or other places and he's the rightful king, he'll come back. And Whitelock is accused of putting bills,

so bill posting around London, so literally sticking up words and flyers almost around the city, stating that Richard the second is still alive, stating that Henry IV, who's just died at this point, had been struck down with leprosy for his heinous acts against the former king. And White Lott, his bill is actually presented as evidence in the trial record. And we've got the original bill in English

on display in the exhibition. And his case is fascinating because he essentially commits himself into the Lancaster in custody and says, I will put myself in the Tower of London, provided you don't mistreat me, while you test my claim. And if I'm found to be true, let me out and give me my name of a true man.

But if I'm found to be lying, I will submit myself to the vilest death that can be ordained to me by the two Henry's, or by Henry V at this point. So he seems to believe in this very strongly. Whether or not he does in real life is quite difficult to tell, because he actually breaks out of the Tower of London and escapes. And the janitor who's working there, who helps him escape, is hanged, drawn and quartered in his place. So if you're looking after a prisoner in the Tower of London,

don't help them get out because you'll suffer in their place. And these words are being framed as treasonous. But what's interesting in Whitelot's case is he is actually committing treason at the same time. He's adhering to the Scots, who are the King's enemy at this point. So they've got this very solid acclaim against him. Anyway, he brings a Scottish spy to London when he comes down, but they're also framing these words as treasonous at the same time.

It sounds a little bit like, as I say, you know, pushing against those boundaries because they could have just gone straight for conspiring with the Scots and they would have got him. But instead, it seems like they're trying to test whether they can make this stick that's saying something, you know, like a previous king is alive and is going to come along and depose the current king. Is that treason? It's almost the question and they're asking. Yeah, definitely. And you see a real personal interest from the two Henry's in these types of cases. I think with Whitelux case, Henry V is supposed to have turned up in person, which is a very, very. rare thing to have happened. And in another case, we see the monarch apparently testing,

interrogating people on his own behalf to try and find out what's been going on. Is Richardson alive? What's going on? Why are these treasonous words appearing? And it's very much, yeah, testing to see, can we get away with this? And each time a case like this happens, it sets a precedent for the future. And so it becomes easier each time. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, host of the new podcast American History Hit. Twice a week, I'll be exploring stories from America's past to help us understand the United States of today. Join me as I head back in time to witness Thomas Jefferson, write the Declaration of Independence, head to the battlefields during the Civil War. Visit Chief Poetton as he prepares for war with English colonists.

Tour Central Park before it was Central Park. and a city in Tennessee which helped build the atomic bomb. From famous battlefields to secret cities, from familiar names to lesser-known events, I'll speak with leading experts from across the United States and beyond to bring American history to life. Join me every Monday and Thursday for American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. One of the documents that you've got on display that I was particularly fascinated by is the indictment of Eleanor Cobham in 1440.

Can you tell us a little bit about who Eleanor was and why she's accused of treason? Yeah, so Eleanor is the wife of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, who is the uncle of Henry the 6th, who's king at this time. And at this point, Henry doesn't have a son and heir. And so Humphrey is the kind of next in line the heir apparent. And Eleanor, if that was to happen, would have become queen. Now, Eleanor's trial is absolutely fascinating. Again, it's one of these test cases. is legally dubious in many ways. She is charged or accused of forecasting when the king,

Henry VI, will die. So casting a nativity, a horoscope for the king. So she's not actually plotting or planning to kill the king. What she's doing is she's forecasting when this will happen. And they use one of these constructions to try and frame this as treasonous yet again. So what they do in this case is they say that by forecasting the king's death and crucially, by telling people when the king will die, that will mean that people withdraw their love from Henry. He will find out and he'll become melancholic. He'll become sad by this fact. And so by that logic, he will then die sooner than he would have done if they hadn't cast this horoscope. So it's again, it's kind of construction to try and work this out.

And they use claims that she was using necremency and magic and astronomy, or not that she was. her associates were using necriments, the astrology and magic to work out the horoscope, summoning demons of the earth and of the air, and malign spirits to tell this forecast. So it's all wrapped up in this treasonous magic, but actually it's very much a legal construction, and it's quite dubious. But again, we have these precedents and so they can put it through. But what's tricky with Eleanor is that she's a woman, and that's the real problem that they have with all of this, because there's no legal precedent for putting a noble woman on trial. For a man, it's very simple.

We have Magna Carta, which states a jury of someone's peers will be putting them on trial. But for a woman, we don't have that. And they fudge it. They commissioned two inquiries, one spiritual and one secular, one legal. And they put her on a spiritual trial. But in the secular trial, they very much put her in as an associate, not the leading figure. And they're focused much more on the men that have committed it on her. incitement. Interesting. So they have to get around the fact that women haven't been included in

treason laws by this point by finding some men who they can accuse of treason and then associating Eleanor with that. Yeah, essentially. The main accusation against her is that she is encouraging these men who are her servants, they're members of our household. Encouraging them to do this is the main way that she's framed. Now, I should say that it's only because she's a noble woman. Had she been just any old woman in the street, this wouldn't have been the case. It's a noble woman is the issue here. I mean, is she found guilty? What does she admit to? How much do we know about what she's actually found guilty of? She's only really tried in the spiritual court because they haven't got this way to process her trial in the secular court. And in the spiritual court,

she's accused of 28 charges of heretical acts. And she admits to five of these, but we don't know exactly which ones. What we do know is that there's a woman called Marjorie Gjordaigne at the part of all of this. And she's also known as the witch next eye, so a witch living at a place near Westminster. And Marjorie and Eleanor seem to have had a connection. Now, we know Eleanor's interested in the occult, but what we actually think is that her connection with Gjordermain was much more about trying to conceive a child. Marjorie's perhaps a wise woman who's providing fertility medicines to members of Eleanor's household and to her self. And this is what they get her on and they essentially find her guilty of seducing Humphrey using love potions and

love magic and trying to conceive a child using magical means. And what that means is that they annul her marriage to Humphrey because they say it's been brought about heretically using magic. And she's forced to do three separate penitent walks through the city of London on busy market days where the people come out and see her and they're not to show her any respect as she's walking through. So we know she's doing something. We know she has these associations. And it's probably just because she's trying to conceive a child. It seems to me that that's maybe a strange extension of the treason laws that again reflects Henry VI's particular situation. So he's a childless monarch. He's been married for several years by this point. He's worrying about what might happen

after him. And he sees maybe his uncle's wife might be looking at fertility magic. So he's maybe be thinking about having a child who could be an heir and that suddenly becomes a threat in Henry's mind. So they devise a way to create that as treason. It's kind of bending all of those rules again. I mean, there are definitely concerns around treasonless magic generally at this time. So in the aftermath of Venner's trial, they actually commission a survey and inquiry around the country to find out what people are doing with necrimency, what magic is going on. At the back of our minds, we have that kind of treaseless magic is dangerous. But I do think This is a means of targeting Humphrey and Eleanor's household and targeting Humphrey as the heir apparent to the throne of England.

It is, I think, very much focused on that. But also, people seem to be obsessed with Eleanor one way or the other. People love her or people really hate her at this time. And there's an incredible story of the aftermath of Eleanor's trial. So she's mated divorce her husband or the marriage is an old, and she's put into life imprisonment for the rest of her days. and a few years later, Henry the Sikh is riding across Blackheath, so that's near where the Cobham household been based. And a woman called Giuliano Ridligo shouts and across the king as he's riding across his space. And she essentially says, you're stupid and the whole of England

knows that you're stupid. Send Eleanor back to her husband who you've taken her away from. It's quite a strong reaction to do this. And actually, it's recorded in the legal records that they say, do you know who you're speaking to? Do you know who you're shouting at? And she says, yes. She said, I know exactly what I'm doing. Now, there is perhaps a suggestion that she has mental health issues and it's partly rooted in that, but she very strongly is supportive of Eleanor. It's very Marmite. People love her or people really hate her. I think it's also an interesting case in what it tells us about attitudes to noble women at this time. So we're talking almost 100 years after the treason act, more than 200 years after Magna Carta. And it's like they've only just

thought, what do we do if a noble woman commits treason? We don't have a mechanism for that. Do they correct that? Do they put something in place now? Yeah, they very much changed the law now in response to Eleanor's trial. Earlier in the century, they had an instance of a treasonous noblewoman, Jonah of Navarre, that had taken place and she'd half been put on trial, half not being put on trial. And in response to that case, they don't change the law. But with Eleanor, they now grasped that nettle and changed the law. So they make it the case that noble woman in the future will be tried by a jury of their male peers in the same way that a man would be.

In this case also is quite interesting about powerful women and the reaction to powerful women in the 15th century, because you get all of these poems coming out about her trials and tribulations that come out after the trials that have taken place. And they're very misogynistic. They basically, along the lines of she was too powerful, she was too up herself, she was too extravagant, and she's been brought low. and the line that ends each of the verses is all women should beware of me. So it's very much a misogynistic take on women being overly powerful at this time.

And I guess we have to wait till the medieval period is over almost another hundred years before Henry VIII actually sets about executing noble women. And the medieval period, we weren't keen on doing that in England at least. It's interesting to think about what would have happened, though, if someone like Margaret Bonjou had been captured and had been brought in, whether they would have even contemplated it at that time. It's hard to say. Yeah. And the medieval section of the exhibition, I mean, the exhibition goes on for centuries after the medieval period with some brilliant documents around the Tudor period,

the gunpowder plot, Charles I, the First trial, and way beyond, even into the 20th century. But the medieval period ends at the exhibition with the attainder against Richard the 3rd that was placed in Henry the 7th's First Parliament. So what does that document tell us about treason and maybe what does it tell us about Richard the third too? The bill of attainder is really interesting in that attainder in the 15th century with the wars of the roses, treason becomes almost a very strategic tool that you can use against your enemies, particularly when you've got the country in the midst of literally a civil war. And what you have in these attenders is wholesale charges against the entire losing side or the entire side that's not in power. So it's not

just Richard the third that's being attains in this document. It's all of his group as well. There's lots and lots of names in there. And it becomes, yeah, essentially a tool to condemn your enemies on mass. But a lot of these attainers aren't actually carried through. So we see attained in the Wars of the Roses being used as a tool to keep people in check. And what this does is you essentially say, if you come back to loyalty, if you come back to my side, I can reverse what's happened to you and you can have your estates back, you can have your inheritance back. Obviously, in Richard the Third's case, that can't be the case because it's done after his death. It's posthumous and it's quite interested in terms of a posthumous attainder because on one hand,

it's condemning the entire Yorkist line essentially this document. But at the same time, it's unnecessary. There are some issues around bringing back certain estates into the Crown's hands, but it's unnecessary. this is very much a show of force against the defeated Yorkist king. And in these acts of tanger, we have very emotive language being used throughout. We can see some of the accusations that are coming out in these documents, condemning, bloodshedding, odious, murderous, all of these kind of powerful words are being used to really condemn people to taint their bloodlines, to taint their reputations.

And I think we see that with Richard the Third. And the way that Henry goes about putting this through Parliament is quite dodgy in and of itself. I think the two striking things about it. So the first is that Henry the 7th dates his reign from the day before he wins the Battle of Bosworth so that Richard can be a traitor for taking up arms against Henry because he was the right for king by that point. So even that the basis of attaining the previous king is kind of a legal fiction. It's really dodgy, fudgy ground, isn't it? It's unbelievably cheeky to try and push it through because Henry is categorically a traitor at the Battle of Bosworth. He has been a tainted. He's come back. He has faced the king in open warfare.

The king has died in that battle. Henry is categorically a traitor. And at the start of that first parliament, there's a lot of questioning about exactly how they're going to crown Henry as king, bearing in mind he's been attainted. And essentially, they'd agree to forget the attainder kind of really ever happened. And actually, I'm now the king and that they simply state that he is the king. But at the same time, yeah, he backdates the start of his reign to the day before the Battle of Bosworth, making in an instant Richard the traitor rather than Henry. And that's really dodgy. In reports of the Parliament, we see that it's being sore questioned with, is the quote.

People aren't happy with this, but in the end it's forced through. But it doesn't last very long because 10 years later, he's forced to change the law again. because he realizes this is a terrible decision because if he then loses in a battle, then he can become the traitor immediately in exactly the same way. And so they changed the law again in 1495. Yeah, I guess how do you raise an army to come out and fight for you when if you lose, they might all be traitors for fighting for you, kind of shot himself in the foot a little bit?

And I guess the second biggie in it is that this attainder is often used against Richard the third when we think about the princes in the towel, which, as you know, is something very close to my heart. So there is a phrase in there where it says Richard is guilty of several things, including the shedding of infant's blood. And it's been claimed that that, you know, is a sideways accusation that he murdered his nephews, the princes in the tower. Do you think that's a fair assessment of what those charges are?

I think when it comes to this attainder, that it's not really to do with the princes and tower. They use these emotive words. It's an attempt to smear people's reputations, essentially, across the board. But at the same time, we see quite formulaic language being used in these various bills and acts of attainder. So we see reference in other documents to the shedding of innocence blood, which is very similar to that used against Richard. So I don't think it's reference to the Prince Tower particularly. I think this is a very emotive language.

But then again, the Yorkists are behind a lot of the use of this emotive language. If you look at Titulus Regis, for example, that's very much using these kind of smears against Edward the 4th in Richard's own reign. So I do think we're seeing this formulaic language, but the Yorkists are as much a part of the problem as they are affected by it. Absolutely. I think there's often an effort to portray the Tudors as the masters of propaganda, but they were literally just building on what particularly the Yorkists have been doing all through the Wars of the Roses. That's kind of the birth of the spin doctor with people like Warwick and Edward IV. They were absolute masters of this kind of thing. So it was nothing new. And I think for what it's worth, you know, I see

what Richard is accused of in that attainder is very much that formulaic language, but there's a biblical kind of element to it, almost an effort to paint him as like a herod figure that he's ruling like a tyrant, shedding infants blood all over the place, that he's the most wicked king in a biblical sense, just to make him look even worse. I think if it was an accusation that he murdered his nephews, you'd accuse him of regicide or killing his own nephew or something much more specific like that. Yeah, I completely agree. We had to see the kind of biblical, spiritual undertones to all of this as well. And I think you're right, wicked is the sense that they're trying to get across in all of these documents. And we do actually have evidence of them using previous

records as precedents to devise their own strategies. So we have papers in the archives, which are not in the exhibition, from one of Henry the 76th Checker clerks. And in those documents, we have a copy or a version of some of the texts being used by Warwick and Clarence in the readaption period. So we can see they are drawing on these older texts and reworking and reusing them to try and push forward their claims. But you're very right. I think the spiritual undertone to all of this is very much the context that we need to think about them in. I was going to end by asking you an unfair question about what your favourite document in the exhibition is, but I'm going to probably end with asking you an even more unfair one. Have you got a favourite document that didn't

make it into the exhibition? I do. We've got an amazing document which records the execution of William Wallace and it's the only document where he's described as claiming to call himself King of the Scots. So it's a fascinating document and that language isn't used in any of the kind of contemporary chronicle accounts of his trial. So it's very much the only evidence we have for that claim. And I would have loved to have seen it in the exhibition, but unfortunately, it's massive. It's unbelievably large. And I think we'd have had to get rid of the entire 15th century if we were to make space for this one document. So unfortunately, didn't make the cut. But there's a picture of it in the book. Fabulous. I definitely don't want to be doing away with the 15th century.

Exactly. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Ewan, and sharing all of that with us. And I thoroughly recommend the exhibition to anybody who can get down there and the book if you can't. The National Archives Treason Exhibition is on now until April 2023 and is free to enter. And there's also that book, A History of Treason, to accompany it. And that's written by several of the experts at the archives, including Ewan. You can join Dr. Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts. It really does help new listeners to find us.

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