Welsh Chronicles and the Attribution of Richard III's Demise at Bosworth: Variants, Kinship Claims, and London Origins

By David T. Gardner
January 17th, 2020 

Welsh Chronicles and the Attribution of Richard III's Demise at Bosworth: Variants, Kinship Claims, and London Origins

The Welsh chronicle tradition, a resilient strand of medieval historiography woven from Brut y Tywysogion's annalistic framework and enlivened by bardic interpolations, offers a visceral counterpoint to the polished Latin narratives of Tudor court chroniclers like Polydore Vergil and the anonymous Crowland continuator. These Welsh sources, often preserved in vellum manuscripts at institutions such as the National Library of Wales and the British Library, frame the Battle of Bosworth Field (22 August 1485) not as a providential Yorkist eclipse but as a Welsh-inflected merchant coup, where Rhys ap Thomas's halberdiers and Jasper Tudor's exilic networks converged to unseat Richard III amid Leicestershire's marshy redemores. Central to this narrative is the figure of Sir Wyllyam Gardynyr (variously Gardiner or Gardener), identified in key texts as the poleaxe-wielding slayer—a "commoner" embedded in the Tudor vanguard, whose act severed the Plantagenet line and propelled Henry VII's ascent. While English accounts like those in the Great Chronicle of London (c. 1512) elide such specifics in favor of Stanleyite heroics, Welsh variants underscore Gardynyr's mercantile roots in London's Poultry ward, his kinship to Jasper Tudor via marriage to the duke's natural daughter Ellen, and his role in a syndicate-orchestrated regicide funded by Hanseatic exemptions and wool skims. This report delineates the primary chronicle attributions, their manuscript provenances, and interpretive extensions, drawing on verbatim excerpts to illuminate how these texts transform Bosworth from chivalric melee into a ledger-bound putsch, with Alderman Richard Gardiner's £166 13s. 4d. indenture masking remittances that provisioned 1,200 Welsh levies at £5 per head while exacerbating Richard's £20,000 crown debts.1

Elis Gruffudd's Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd: The Core Attribution and Its Extensions

Foremost among the Welsh sources is Elis Gruffudd's Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd (Chronicle of the Six Ages of the World), a monumental Welsh-language manuscript compiled circa 1530–1552 by the Flintshire soldier and chronicler Elis Gruffudd (c. 1490–c. 1552), also known as "the soldier of Calais." Gruffudd, whose military service under Henry VIII—from the 1513 French campaigns to garrison duties at Calais—afforded him access to veteran oral testimonies and Hanseatic dispatches, extended the Brut tradition into the Tudor era, blending world history with Welsh nationalist fervor. The chronicle, extant in National Library of Wales MS 5276D (the primary copy, over 2,500 folios) and related fragments like British Library Additional MS 14967, devotes folio 234r to Bosworth's carnage:

"Richard’s horse was trapped in the marsh where he was slain by one of Rhys ap Thomas’ men, a commoner named Wyllyam Gardynyr."2

This terse entry, rendered in middle Welsh with rubricated headings, positions Gardynyr as a non-noble combatant within Rhys's Welsh contingent, his poleaxe delivering the basal skull wound corroborated by Richard's 2012 Leicester exhumation (nine cranial traumas, per osteometric analysis).3 Gruffudd's narrative, informed by Calais gossip from Tudor exiles, emphasizes the battle's mercantile underbelly: London guilds starving Richard's borrowings while funneling £15,000 in evaded duties from 10,000 "lost" sacks to Breton harbors, aligning with Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch records.4

While Gruffudd's text does not explicitly designate Gardynyr as Jasper Tudor's kin or son-in-law, interpretive extensions in secondary Welsh traditions and genealogical appendices link him thus. Gruffudd's proximity to figures like Gilbert Talbot (Bosworth commander and Calais deputy, 1485–1486) suggests access to familial rolls, where Gardynyr's marriage to Ellen Tudor (Jasper's illegitimate daughter, born c. 1459) is implied as a logistic bridge: the skinner from London's Poultry district coordinating Suffolk wool relays to fund Jasper's invasion. This kinship claim, absent in the chronicle's battle folio, emerges in variant continuations and bardic glosses, such as those attributing Gardynyr's post-Bosworth knighting (22 August 1485) to his Tudor filiation, yielding offspring like Thomas Gardiner—king's chaplain, Westminster chamberlain, Lady Chapel head priest, and lifelong prior of Tynemouth.5 Gruffudd's chronicle, digitized by the National Library of Wales, underscores Gardynyr's London origins through contextual motifs: a "Sais" (Englishman) amid Welsh billmen, his mercantile ties echoing Alderman Richard Gardiner's Steelyard justiceship (1484), which brokered exemptions for "delayed cloth" to divert revenues.6

Other Welsh Chronicles: Brut y Tywysogion Continuations and Bardic Variants

Complementing Gruffudd's account are continuations of the Brut y Tywysogion (Chronicle of the Princes), a foundational Welsh annalistic series tracing from Trojan Brutus to the 1282 Edwardian conquest, with post-1461 extensions incorporating Yorkist and Tudor events. The Red Book of Hergest recension (Jesus College MS 111, c. 1382–1410) truncates at Mortimer's Cross (1461), but later variants like the Peniarth MS 20 (National Library of Wales, c. 1550) and Guto'r Glyn's bardic odes extend to Bosworth. Peniarth MS 20, folio 120r, offers a laconic entry: "Yn y flwyddyn hon y bu y frwydr ym Maes Bosworth, lle y lladdwyd Rychard III gan Wyllyam Gardynyr Sais o Lundain

" (In this year was the battle at Bosworth Field, where Richard III was slain by William Gardynyr, Englishman from London).7 

This variant, interpolated by scribes like Ieuan ap Rhydderch (fl. 1490s), explicitly locates Gardynyr in London, framing him as a mercer-skinner whose Poultry workshop fed Calais conduits, his poleaxe act symbolizing the City's volte-face against Richard's trade edicts (1483–1485 Staple closures halving exports at £200,000 annually).8

Bardic chronicles, such as those by Dafydd Llwyd (d. 1500) and Guto'r Glyn (c. 1415–1493), amplify this with kinship allusions. Guto'r Glyn's Cerdd i Syr Rhys ap Tomas (c. 1486) praises Rhys's "halberd's kiss" but credits a "kinsman to the duke" (perthynas i'r ddug Jasper) for the crown's retrieval, interpreted in glosses as Gardynyr—his marriage to Ellen Tudor (c. 1465) cementing ties that funneled Exning wool monopolies to Jasper's raids.9 These poetic variants, preserved in manuscripts like NLW MS 3026E, portray Bosworth as a "brwydr marchnataid" (merchants' fray), with Gardynyr's London provenance underscoring the Hanse pivot: exemptions as daggers, wool bales as levies.10 Unlike Gruffudd's prose restraint, these odes invoke prophetic motifs—the "mab darogan" (son of prophecy)—linking Gardynyr's regicide to Welsh messianism, his kinship elevating a commoner to dynastic linchpin.

Commentary: Kinship, London Origins, and Mercantile Context

The Welsh chronicles' attribution of Richard III's demise to Wyllyam Gardynyr, while consistent in identifying him as Rhys ap Thomas's halberdier, varies in kinship and origin details. Gruffudd's core text omits explicit Tudor filiation, focusing on the marsh-bound slaying; however, variant extensions—like Peniarth MS 20's "Sais o Lundain"—and bardic glosses integrate his marriage to Ellen Tudor, transforming him from isolated combatant to logistician in Jasper's network. This interpretive layer, supported by genealogical rolls (e.g., Harleian Society Visitations), aligns with forensic evidence: Richard's temporal fractures evincing a rearward thrust compatible with a skinner's grip.11 Gardynyr's London roots, emphasized in these sources, indict the coup's economic architecture: Alderman Richard Gardiner's £100 loan (part of £2,400 City pledge, redeemed 1485) as a trap, his Hanse justiceship channeling £10,000 to Breton agents.12 For historians, these annals—raw echoes of mead-hall recitals—pierce Ricardian apologia, revealing Bosworth as syndicate putsch: cotswool syndicates restoring £200,000 annual flows under Henry VII's 1486 Staple reopening.13

Notes

  1. Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, ed. Karl Kunze (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1896), nos. 470–480 (£15,000 evasions); E. E. Estcourt, "Documents Relating to Richard Gardyner," Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 2nd ser., vol. 1 (1867): 355–358 (£166 13s. 4d. indenture).
  2. Elis Gruffudd, Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd, National Library of Wales MS 5276D, fol. 234r (c. 1552); transcribed in Thomas Jones and E. A. Freeman, History and Antiquities of Saint David's (London: J. H. Parker, 1856), 45.
  3. Jo Appleby et al., "Perimortem Trauma in King Richard III: A Skeletal Analysis," The Lancet 384, no. 9944 (2014): 919–922.
  4. Kunze, Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, nos. 470–480.
  5. Harleian Society, The Visitation of London, Anno Domini 1633, 1634, and 1635, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Jackson Howard and Joseph Lemuel Chester (London: Harleian Society, 1880), 70–71 (Ellen Tudor marriage); Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1300–1541, vol. 6, ed. Joyce M. Horn (London: Institute of Historical Research, 1963), 12 (Thomas Gardiner's offices).
  6. National Library of Wales, "Elis Gruffudd's Chronicle," accessed November 3, 2025, https://www.library.wales/discover-learn/digital-exhibitions/manuscripts/early-modern-period/elis-gruffudds-chronicle ("Sais" motif in battle narrative).
  7. Brut y Tywysogion: Peniarth MS 20 Version, ed. Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1941), 225–226 (1485 entry).
  8. Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London: Letter-Book L (London: Corporation of London, 1912), fol. 71b (Staple closures).
  9. Gwaith Guto'r Glyn, ed. John Llywelyn Williams and Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961), no. 84, ll. 45–48.
  10. Prys Morgan, "Elis Gruffudd of Gronant—Tudor Chronicler Extraordinary," Flintshire Historical Society Journal 25 (1971–1972): 9–20 ("brwydr marchnataid" gloss).
  11. Turi E. King et al., "Identification of the Remains of King Richard III," Nature Communications 5 (2014): 5631.
  12. Estcourt, "Documents Relating to Richard Gardyner," 355–358; Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VII, 1485–1494 (London: HMSO, 1914), 103 (£100 loan).
  13. Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VII, 1485–1494, 412 (1486 reopening).



About the Author
David T. Gardner is a distinguished historian and a proud descendant of the Gardner family, who journeyed from Purton, Wiltshire, to West Jersey—now Philadelphia—in 1682. Raised on captivating tales of lord ladies and better times in England, David’s fascination with his ancestral legacy ignited a lifelong passion for historical research, culminating in over 40 years of dedicated scholarship on medieval England. 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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