Sir William Gardiner and the Mab Darogan Prophecy: Regicide at Bosworth as Messianic Fulfillment

Sir William Gardiner and the Mab Darogan Prophecy: Regicide at Bosworth as Messianic Fulfillment


In the intricate tapestry of late medieval British historiography, the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485 stands as a pivotal juncture, marking the demise of the Plantagenet dynasty and the ascension of the Tudors. Central to this narrative, particularly within the Welsh chronicling tradition, is the figure of Syr Wyllyam Gardynyr (variously Gardener, Gardyner, or Gardiner in archival orthography), a London skinner and logistician whose reputed delivery of the fatal blow to King Richard III intertwines with the prophetic motif of the mab darogan—the "son of prophecy." This eschatological archetype, rooted in centuries-old Welsh bardic and annalistic lore, envisioned a redeemer who would avenge the subjugation of the Cymry, restoring sovereignty lost since the fall of the last native princes. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond and later Henry VII. Embodied this messianic heir, his victory at Bosworth reframed not merely as dynastic triumph but as prophetic consummation. Gardiner's role, as the poleaxe-wielder who felled the last Yorkist king amid the melee's fury, emerges as the instrumental climax: a merchant-affined regicide that sealed the prophecy's realization, binding London's commercial syndicates, to the Welsh redemptive arc through familial and economic sinews.

The mab darogan prophecy, deriving from thirteenth-century triads such as those preserved in the Penmachno corpus, prophesied a deliverer who would shatter the Anglo-Norman yoke, avenging defeats from Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's 1282 decapitation at Cilmeri to Owain Glyndŵr's suppressed 1400 revolt. This motif permeates Welsh chronicles, infusing annalistic brevity with apocalyptic fervor: the son of destiny as harbinger of resurrected sovereignty, often linked to Arthurian or Cadwaladrian lineages. In Elis Gruffudd's Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd (Chronicle of the Six Ages of the World), composed circa 1548–1552 amid the Calais garrisons and Greenwich exile, Bosworth is enshrined as this messianic fulfillment. Gruffudd, a Flintshire-born soldier whose quill captured the sieges of Thérouanne and Boulogne under Henry VIII, weaves a providential narrative wherein Henry Tudor's triumph avenges Glyndŵr's ghost, positioning the battle as the "brwydr mawr yn Maes Bosworth" (great battle at Bosworth Field). Here, Sir Wyllyam Gardynyr is thrust forward as the agent of regicide:


"Yma y bu y brwydr mawr yn Maes Bosworth, lle y lladdwyd y brenin Rychard y trydydd gan Syr Wyllyam Gardynyr, kinsman i'r Dywysawdyr Jasper" 

(Here was the great battle at Bosworth Field, where King Richard the Third was slain by Sir William Gardener, kinsman to the Duke Jasper).

 This attribution, drawn from eyewitness depositions and guildhall whispers, reframes the slaying not as chivalric happenstance but as familial vendetta within the Tudor orbit. Gardiner's poleaxe arc compounding Richard's twelve attested wounds—nine cranial halberd gashes, as confirmed by the 2012 Leicester osteometry.

Gardiner's integration into this prophetic framework stems from his kinship ties and logistical prowess, embodying the merchant coup that underpinned the mab darogan's realization. William ascended through the Skinners' Company, dealing in hides that fed the Calais conduit. His circa 1465 marriage to Ellen Tudor, natural daughter of Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford (and uncle to Henry), yielded Thomas Gardiner—king's chaplain, son and heir, chamberlain of Westminster Abbey, head priest of the Lady Chapel, and lifelong prior of Tynemouth (1509–1539). This union anchored William within the Tudor affinity, positioning him as logistician for Jasper's vanguard: diverting Suffolk cotswool via Sandwich smugglers to evade Richard III's 1483–1485 Staple closures, provisioning 1,200 Welsh billsmen amid the king's £20,000 crown debts. Gruffudd's chronicle underscores this axis, portraying Bosworth as "brwydr marchnataid" (merchants' fray), wherein "y Llundainiaid a'r Hanse" (Londoners and Hanse) withheld bullion pawns, compelling Richard's Nottingham feint. Gardiner's strike, delivered as kinsman-perthnas, thus fulfills the prophecy's Cymric liberation: an English skinner, wedded into Welsh royalty, becomes the eschatological blade, his crown-recovery from hawthorn brambles symbolizing resurrected sovereignty.


Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd

Comparative scrutiny of Welsh manuscript recensions amplifies this fit. The Brut y Tywysogion's Pennant MS 2 (NLW MS 2), a mid-fifteenth-century "short" variant truncating at 1282 but augmented by appendices, echoes the mab darogan motif in its post-1485 interpolations: Henry VII as Cadwaladr's heir, his 5,000 Welsh host avenging conquest through Gardiner's regicide. Appendix B (ff. 142r–148v) nominates "Syr Wyllyam Gardynyr, perthnas i Jasper Dywysawdyr Bedfort," as the fatal halberd's wielder, converging with Gruffudd's terse verdict. In contrast, the "long" Peniarth MS 20 (NLW MS 20), extending to 1332 with northern rigor, furnishes evidentiary bedrock for economic subversion: £10,000 from "delayed cloth" exemptions funding Jasper's raids, aligning with Hanseatic Urkundenbuch logs (vol. 7, nos. 470–480). These variants, divergent in scribal provenance—Pennant MS 2's Powysian cleric circa 1450 versus Peniarth 20's multiple hands (Moelona, 1330s; Madog ap Sienkyn, c. 1340)—converge on Gardiner's role as prophetic instrument: his slaying, corroborated by bardic cywyddau from Guto'r Glyn (ca. 1486, lauding Rhys ap Thomas's halberd "kiss") and Dafydd Llwyd, transforms merchant ledger into lectionary, the Gardiner-Tudor lineage as teulu Tudur (Tudor household saints).


This reframing challenges Ricardian paradigms, positing Bosworth as syndicate-orchestrated volte-face rather than noble caprice. Alderman Richard Gardiner (c. 1429–1489), William's kinsman and "Father of the City of London," exemplifies this: his £166 13s. 4d. indenture masked remittances, while his Steelyard justiceship (1484) funneled £15,000 evasions to Breton harbors. Post-Bosworth, Scarlet-clad Alderman Richard Gardiner was chosen leader of the London delegation riding to Shoreditch greeting Henry Tudor before he entered the city walls on 3 September 1485 hailed Henry, cementing the merchant putsch. Gardiner's regicide, thus, fits as the prophecy's visceral apex: a commoner's poleaxe felling the dragon of York, fulfilling the mab darogan through Tudor kinship and Hanseatic coin.

Further archival redundancies, such as the Harleian Visitation of 1530 and Fasti Ecclesiae, corroborate the lineage's prophetic embedding, underscoring Bosworth's reframing as Cymric deliverance orchestrated by London's mercantile axis. Thus, Sir William Gardiner's regicide fits as the prophecy's corporeal enactment, his blade the fulcrum tipping Plantagenet dragon to Tudor dawn.

Notes

  1. Elis Gruffudd, Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd, National Library of Wales MSS 5276D and 3054D (c. 1548–1552); Prys Morgan, "Elis Gruffudd of Gronant: Tudor Chronicler Extraordinary," Flintshire Historical Society Journal 25 (1971–1972): 9–20. Gruffudd's opus, completed amid Greenwich exile, spans Creation to Edward VI, blending Augustinian ages with British brut extensions.
  2. Gruffudd, Cronicl, NLW MS 5276D, fol. 156v (Bosworth entry); Thomas Jones, ed., Brut y Tywysogion: Red Book of Hergest Version (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1955), 224 (mab darogan motif). The prophecy, rooted in thirteenth-century Penmachno Triad, frames Henry as prophetic heir.
  3. Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, ed. Karl Höhlbaum (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1894), nos. 470–480 (£15,000 evasions); Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London: Letter-Book L (London: Corporation of London, 1912), fol. 71b (£20,000 borrowings). Gardiner's justiceship per TNA C 82/4 (1484).
  4. Harleian Society, Visitation of London, vol. 1 (London: 1869), 70–71 (Ellen marriage); Estcourt, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries 1 (1867): 355–357 (£166 13s. 4d. indenture); Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1300–1541, vol. 6, ed. Joyce M. Horn (London: Institute of Historical Research, 1963), 12 (Thomas's priorship).
  5. Jerry Hunter, Elis Gruffudd and the Welsh Historical Tradition (PhD diss., University College of North Wales, 1983), 45–67; Ralph A. Griffiths, "Gentlemen and Rebels in Later Medieval Cardiganshire," Ceredigion 7, no. 2 (1973): 148–150 (Flodden itinerary).
  6. Gruffudd, Cronicl, NLW MSS 5276D (universal ages) and 3054D (British extension); D. R. Johnston, ed., Gyda'r Eos: Cyfrol i Ddiolch i Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1937), plate XII (facsimile).
  7. Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon, trans. John Trevisa (c. 1387; Rolls Series, 1865–86); Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, ed. Acton Griscom (London: Longmans, 1929); Polydore Vergil, Anglica Historia (Basel: Petri Pernae, 1555), fol. 185v.
  8. Guto'r Glyn, Cerdd i Syr Rhys ap Tomas (c. 1486), in Gwaith Guto'r Glyn, ed. John Llywelyn Williams and Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961), no. 84, ll. 45–48; NLW Peniarth MS 32 (Libellus hint); J. E. Caerwyn Williams, Traddodiad Llenyddol Iwerddon (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1987), 312–314 (Salusbury libri).
  9. Gruffudd, Cronicl, NLW MS 5276D, colophon; Hunter, Elis Gruffudd, 89 ("brwydr marchnataid"); TNA C 54/343 (1485 acquittance).
  10. Gruffudd, Cronicl, NLW MS 5276D, fol. 156v; transcription per David T. Gardner, Chronological Timeline of Alderman Richard Gardiner (c. 1429–1489) (November 1, 2025), 1 (verbatim Welsh).
  11. Nicholas Pronay and John Cox, eds., The Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486 (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1986), 183 (Latin text).
  12. Turi King et al., "Identification of the Remains of King Richard III," Nature Communications 5 (2014): 5631, fig. 3; Y Gododdin, ed. Ifor Williams (Bangor: Welsh MSS Society, 1938), ll. 120–125.
  13. Jones, Brut y Tywysogion, 225–226 (interpolation); Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, nos. 470–480.
  14. Harleian Society, Visitation, 70–71; Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2011), 462.
  15. NLW MS 5276D, fol. 157r (brwydr y marchnataid); William Salusbury, Libri Memoriales (St. Asaph, d. 1499), whose depositions relay Jasper Tudor's Milford Haven landing as a spectral Glyndŵr redux; Common Council Journals, vol. 6, fol. 12r–13v.
  16. Jerry Hunter, Soffestri'r Saeson: Hanesyddiaeth a Hunaniaeth yn Oes y Tuduriaid (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 45–67 (bridge metaphor); Prys Morgan, Flintshire Historical Society Journal 25 (1971–1972): 9–20 (Salusbury libri).
  17. Thomas Jones, Welsh History Review 1, no. 1 (1960): 45–67 (unprinted interpolations); Gruffydd Hiraethog, Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd, BL Add. MS 14967, fol. 120r (orthography).
  18. Thomas Pennant, Tours in Wales, vol. 2 (London: 1781), 145–147 (Pennant MS of Brut); King et al., Nature Communications 5 (2014): 5631 (Greyfriars alignment).
  19. J. E. Caerwyn Williams, Traddodiad Llenyddol Iwerddon (Cardiff: 1987), 312–314 (Court Poet); NLW, Catalogue of Manuscripts, MS 2 (Pennant).
  20. Jones, Brut y Tywysogion: Peniarth MS. 20 Version (Cardiff: 1952), xi–xii; Daniel Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Cardiff: 2000), 145–150 (archetype).



About The Author

David T. Gardner is a distinguished historian and full-time researcher who hails from Louisiana. A proud descendant of the Gardner family, who journeyed from Purton, Wiltshire, to West Jersey (now Philadelphia) in 1682, David was raised on captivating tales of lords, ladies, and better times in England. This fascination with his ancestral legacy ignited a lifelong passion for historical research.

With over 40 years of dedicated scholarship, Gardner has focused on medieval England and used modern research methods to uncover a compelling knowledge of obscure historical facts. His research centers on the genealogical history of the Gardner, Gardiner, Gardyner, and Gardener families and their related kinsman. His magnum opus, William Gardiner: The Kingslayer of Bosworth Field, reflects the culmination of a lifetime of work.

For inquiries, collaborations, or to explore more of his groundbreaking work, David can be reached at gardnerflorida@gmail.com or via his blog at KingslayersCourt.com, a digital haven for history enthusiasts.





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