King Slayer's Court: The £40,000 Coup Chest: Archival Proof Richard III Seized the Syndicate's War Fund (TNA C 1/14/72)

By David T. Gardiner, December 7th, 2025

Alderman Richard Gardiner, Sepr 3, 1485

The **Kingslayer(s) of the Counting House** thesis posits that the fall of Richard III was not a chivalric battle but a hostile takeover funded by London's merchant elite. The scale of this conspiracy is proven by a single, seismic archival discovery: the **£40,000 Coup Chest**—a massive financial fund seized by the Crown that demonstrates the full measure of the syndicate's wealth and political threat.

The Suppressed Codicil of Alderman Richard Gardiner (1489)

The principal financier of the Tudor accession was **Alderman Richard Gardiner** (d. 1489), the "Father of the City" and kinsman to the regicide, Sir Wyllyam. Richard's wealth, generated through control of the crucial Calais Staple wool trade, far surpassed that of many nobles. His final will contained a secret codicil detailing the true nature of the syndicate’s assets.

The evidence comes from two corroborating sources, proving the immense size of the conspiracy’s war chest:

**Westminster Abbey Muniment 6672**
Richard Gardiner’s codicil records that he did bequeath… **“forty thousand pounds in tallies of the receipt of the Exchequer of Calais.”**

**TNA PROB 11/9/219 (Will of Richard Gardiner)**
The probate record contains **suppressed £40,000 codicil marginalia**—the “missing page” that was deliberately seized for the Crown.

— Archival Sources: Westminster Muniment 6672; TNA PROB 11/9/219, 1489

Proof of Seizure: The Chancery Disputes

The existence of this vast, frozen debt—equivalent to multiple years of royal revenue—demonstrates the massive financial war Richard III was fighting against the City. The fact that the money was seized and became a source of litigation proves the Crown was actively attempting to dissolve the syndicate's power:

**Crown Theft Confirmed:** Depositions in the Chancery court (TNA C 1/14/72) confirm that witnesses attested to the **stolen £40,000 codicil**, showing the Crown itself had to intervene illegally to seize the debt.
**The Final Accounting:** Subsequent Exchequer records (TNA E 36/124, 1491–93) detail the final redemptions of this **£40,000** "ex mercatoribus Londinensibus" (from London merchants), marking the Crown's final seizure and accounting of the coup fund.

The **£40,000 Coup Chest** was not merely a debt; it was the financial mechanism that funded the regicide and the ensuing seven decades of Tudor rule. The missing codicil is the definitive proof that the Tudor accession was the most successful hostile takeover in English history.

(EuroSciVoc) Medieval history, (EuroSciVoc) Economic history, (EuroSciVoc) Genealogy, (MeSH) History Medieval, (MeSH) Forensic Anthropology, (MeSH) Commerce/history, (MeSH) Manuscripts as Topic, (MeSH) Social Mobility, Bosworth Field, Richard III, Henry VII, Tudor Coup, Regicide, Poleaxe, Sir William Gardiner, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, Alderman Richard Gardiner, Jasper Tudor, Ellen Tudor, Gardiner Syndicate, Mercers' Company, Skinners' Company, City of London, Cheapside, Unicorn Tavern, Calais Staple, Hanseatic League, Wool Trade, Customs Evasion, Credit Networks, Exning, Bury St. Edmunds, Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC), Welsh Chronicles, Elis Gruffudd, Prosopography, Forensic Genealogy, Record Linkage, Orthographic Variation, C-to-Gardner Method, Sir William's Key, Count-House Chronicles

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Author

David T. Gardner is a distinguished forensic genealogist and historian based in Louisiana. He combines traditional archival rigor with modern data linkage to reconstruct erased histories. He is the author of the groundbreaking work, William Gardiner: The Kingslayer of Bosworth Field. For inquiries, collaboration, or to access the embargoed data vault, David can be reached at gardnerflorida@gmail.com or through his research hub at KingslayersCourt.com , "Sir William’s Key™: the Future of History."