The New Murrey and Blue blog

Summary of a talk by Laura Cardy

Shortly after joining the Richard III Society, I was invited to contribute to The Missing Princes Project, initiated by Philippa Langley. My task focused on an intriguing question: might St John’s Abbey in Colchester have played a role in the fate of Richard of York, the younger of the two princes traditionally believed to have vanished from the Tower? And why did Henry VII take such pointed interest in the abbey and one of its lay brothers after Bosworth?

Drawing on the research of John Ashdown-Hill and David Baldwin, I soon found myself immersed in a far broader political and monastic landscape than I had expected.

Colchester: A Town of Yorkist Power

Colchester was not just a prosperous medieval town; it was a Yorkist stronghold.

• The Howard family, loyal to the House of York, had longstanding ties to the area.
• Richard III’s elevation of John Howard to Duke of Norfolk in 1483 cemented that bond.
• Howard’s death fighting for Richard on Bosworth Field was one of the last dramatic acts of Yorkist loyalty.

Colchester’s strategic importance also rested on:

• its great Norman castle, the largest keep in Europe
• a flourishing wool trade
• connections with the Hanseatic League
• major religious houses, including St Botolph’s Priory and St John’s Abbey.

It is striking, then, that Henry VII visited Colchester more frequently than any comparable town in East Anglia during his early reign. This pattern strongly suggests that Colchester, and perhaps St John’s Abbey in particular, lay under active royal scrutiny.

St John’s Abbey and Yorkist Allegiance

Founded in 1095 by Eudo Dapifer, St John’s Abbey was the only fully enclosed Benedictine house in Colchester. Its Yorkist connections were strong:

• John Howard was a patron and had sought sanctuary there.
• The young Richard, Duke of Gloucester is believed to have visited the abbey in the 1460s.
• The abbey held regional influence through its land, tenants, and network of loyal gentry.

After Bosworth, it may have provided refuge to Francis Lovell, Richard III’s closest friend and a leading Yorkist fugitive. Though evidence is circumstantial, Lovell’s known links to Colchester and Abbot Stansted make the possibility worth consideration.

In 1487, Henry VII sent his Exchequer messenger Philip Knighton to Colchester with “secret letters,” adding to the sense that St John’s and its precincts were under particular suspicion.

The abbey remained respected, however: Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, remembered it fondly, and both Henry VII and his daughter-in-law Catherine of Aragon stayed there during their travels.

A Mystery Buried Beneath the Ground

Little now survives of the abbey beyond its formidable gatehouse. Excavations in the 1970s did not uncover the lost abbey church, and centuries of development have obscured its footprint. Yet the combination of political influence, monastic autonomy, and royal attention makes St John’s a highly significant, and deeply intriguing, location in the search for Yorkist survival after 1485.

Could Richard of York have been sheltered there?
The evidence remains inconclusive, but the context is compelling.

Part II of the blog will explore the Yorkist networks beyond Colchester: the exiled communities of Flanders, the possibility of Richard of York’s survival, and the extraordinary case of Richard of Eastwell.