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Giles Capel

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Foot-combat helm of Giles Capel, Metropolitan Museum

Giles Capel (died 1556) was an English landowner and courtier.

Family background

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He was a son of William Capel, a London alderman and Mayor, and his wife Margaret Arundell, a daughter of Sir John Arundell.[1][2] Margaret Capel was related to Lady Margaret Beaufort via Thomas Grey.[3] Her inscribed Latin Bible survives in the Bodleian Library.[4]

Career

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An entry in the patent rolls describes Giles Capel as an esquire to the body of Henry VII.[5] He was a noted participant in tournaments from May 1507 onwards,[6][7][8] and attended Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold.[9] The Metropolitan Museum in New York has one of his helmets, which was displayed for many years above his monument at Rayne.[10][11]

His jousting was commemorated in a poem printed by Wynkyn de Worde, The justes of the moneth of Maye, parfurnyssed and done by Charles Brandon, Thomas Knyuet, Gyles Capel, and Wyllyam Hussy, the XXII yere of Kynge Henry the Seventh.[12][13] One unsuccessful performance was recorded in a chronicle, Henry VIII "commanded master Gyles Capel to run, howbeit his horse that day did him not most pleasant service."[14]

Capel was knighted in 1513 at Thérouanne after the Battle of the Spurs. He was the commander of two ships during the campaign, the Mary George of Hull and the Anthony of Lynne.[15]

Giles Capel performed at the tournaments of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon
Painting of the Battle of the Spurs, RCT

Entries in the privy purse accounts show that Capel brought gifts of food to Henry VIII, including cheese, partridges, and pheasants.[16] He attended the baptism of Prince Edward in 1537.[17] A letter was sent to Capel by the supporters of Mary I, during the 1553 succession crisis, concerning ships at Harwich.[18]

Giles Capel died on 29 May 1556 and was buried either at Rayne (where there was a monument) or in London.[19] His parents and his son Henry were buried in London at the family chantry at St Bartholomew-the-Less,[20] and sources including Henry Machyn's diary state he was buried there.[21]

Royal chain

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By her 1516 will, his mother Margaret bequeathed him a gold chain of his father's, which had belonged to Edward V, one of the Princes in the Tower.[22][23][24] The bequest was intended to entail the chain and other items in the Capel family:

"his faders cheyne which was younge kyng Edwarde the Vth's. To have the forsaid stuffe and cheyne during his life with reasonable werying upon that condicion that after his decease I will that yt remain and be kept by myn executors to the use of Henry Capell and Edward Capell from one to another".[25]

Giles Capel's sword and helm were kept at All Saint's Rayne until the church was rebuilt in 1840.

Margaret Capel's older step-sister Anne was the wife of James Tyrrell, who is thought to have been involved in the deaths of the Princes in the Tower.[26]

Marriages and children

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Capel married firstly, Isobel Newton (died 1511). He married secondly, Marie Roos, a gentlewoman at court, and widow of the groom of the stool, Hugh Denys.[27] She was a granddaughter of Thomas Ros, 8th Baron Ros of Helmsley Castle.[28] One of her books, Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection, was a gift from Elizabeth of York.[29] The book, in which she signed her name "Dame Capill", survives at the Yale Center for British Art.[30][31] Lady Margaret Beaufort had commissioned the print run from Wynkyn de Worde.[32]

His children included:

References

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  1. ^ William Minet, "Capells at Rayne", Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 9:4 (Colchester, 1904), p. 246–247.
  2. ^ "Noble families. temp. Henry VII", Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, 1 (London, 1834), p. 306.
  3. ^ Margaret Lane Ford, "Private Ownership of Printed Books", Lotte Hellinga & J. B. Trapp, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 3 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 214–215.
  4. ^ Julia Boffey, "Reading in London in 1501", Mary C. Flannery & Carrie Griffin, Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p. 58.
  5. ^ Calendar Patent Rolls, Henry VII, 2 (London, 1914), p. 414.
  6. ^ Anthony J. Hasler, Court Poetry in Late Medieval England and Scotland: Allegories of Authority (Cambridge, 2011), p. 132: Neil Samman, "Progresses of Henry VIII", Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reign of Henry VIII: Politics, Policy and Piety (Bloomsbury, 1995), p. 67.
  7. ^ Thomas Penn, Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England (Simon & Schuster, 2011) p. 286.
  8. ^ Janette Dillon, Performance and Spectacle in Hall's Chronicle (London: Society for Theatre Research, 2002), pp. 40, 52, 64.
  9. ^ William Jerdan, Rutland Papers (London: Camden Society, 1842), p. 32: Edmund Lodge, Illustrations of British History, 1 (London: John Chidley, 1838), p. 19.
  10. ^ Iason-Eleftherios Tzouriadis, "The Foot Combat as Tournament Event", Alan V. Murray, Karen Watts, The Medieval Tournament as Spectacle: Tourneys, Jousts and Pas D'armes (Boydell, 2020), p. 162, MET 04.3.274.
  11. ^ Baron de Cosson, "Capells of Rayne Hall and Helmets", The Archaeological Journal, 40 (London, 1883), pp. 64–79
  12. ^ Erin A. Sadlack, "A Queenly Education", The French Queen's Letters. Queenship and Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 17–47. doi:10.1057/9780230118560_2
  13. ^ Charles Henry Hartshorne, Ancient Metrical Tales: Printed Chiefly from Original Sources (London: William Pickering, 1829), pp. 246–255.
  14. ^ Henry Ellis, The Chronicle of John Hardyng and continuation by Richard Grafton (London, 1812), pp. 592–593 (modernised her)
  15. ^ Baron de Cosson, "Capells of Rayne Hall and Helmets", The Archaeological Journal, 40 (London, 1883), p. 72.
  16. ^ Nicholas Harris Nicolas, The Privy Purse Expences of King Henry the Eighth, pp. 6, 10, 42, 181
  17. ^ John Gough Nichols, Literary Remains, 1 (London, 1857), p. cclxi.
  18. ^ John Roche Dasent, Acts of the Privy Council, 4 (London, 1892), p. 299: Samuel Haynes, Collection of State Papers, p. 158
  19. ^ Baron de Cosson, "Capells of Rayne Hall and Helmets", The Archaeological Journal, 40 (London, 1883), p. 72.
  20. ^ Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450–1550 (Amsterdam University Press, 2018), pp. 58, 60, 66, 91
  21. ^ Visitation of Essex, 1612, p. 171: John Gough Nichols, Diary of Henry Machyn (London: Camden Society, 1848), pp. 108-109, 164, 350, 363.
  22. ^ William Minet, "Capells at Rayne", Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 9:4 (Colchester, 1904), p. 243
  23. ^ Tim Thornton, "Sir William Capell and A Royal Chain: The Afterlives (and Death) of King Edward V", History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 109:308 (2024), pp. 445–480. doi:10.1111/1468-229X.13430
  24. ^ Susan E. James, Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material (Ashgate, 2015), p. 88: Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Vestusta Testamenta, 2 (London, 1826), p. 595.
  25. ^ Susan E. James, Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material (Ashgate, 2015), p. 88.
  26. ^ Extraordinary new clue about the Princes in the Tower found at The National Archives, The National Archives, 2024, accessed 2 December 2024
  27. ^ Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford, 2002), p. 216.
  28. ^ Ethel Seaton, Sir Richard Roos: Lancastrian Poet (London, 1961), family tree, Appendix B facing page 550
  29. ^ Margaret Lane Ford, "Private Ownership of Printed Books", Lotte Hellinga & J. B. Trapp, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 3 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 214.
  30. ^ Book inscribed by Mary, Dame Capel: YCBA
  31. ^ Margaret Lane Ford, "Private Ownership of Printed Books", Lotte Hellinga & J. B. Trapp, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 3 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 214.
  32. ^ Madeleine Gray, "Iconography of the Font of All Saint, Gresford", The Visual Culture of Baptism in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Fonts, Settings and Beliefs (Ashgate, 2013), p. 115.
  33. ^ Nicholas Harris Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, 2, p. 533.
  34. ^ Visitation of Essex, 1612, p. 171.
  35. ^ "Ward, Henry (by 1519-56), of Gray's Inn, London and Kirby Bedon and Postwick, Norfolk", The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
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