Thomas Burdet

Thomas Burdet was born around 1425, the son and heir of Sir Nicholas Burdet of Arrow,[1] but was orphaned and made a ward of Humphrey, Earl of Stafford. Originally in the service of John, Lord Beauchamp of Powicke, he had joined the retinue of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and after the Earl's death, that of Clarence.[2] Burdet was a violent and litigious individual.[3] Around 1445 Burdet was part of a gang—which included Thomas Malory and John Rous—which on numerous occasions attacked the manor of Katharine, wife of Sir William Peyto of Chesterton, Warwickshire.[4] He supposedly had so many enemies in Wiltshire that it was recorded how, when a riot broke out in March 1477, he would have been murdered had he been present.[3] He was a justice of the peace between 1453–1454.[1]

In 1476 he was implicated in a treasonous plot against King Edward IV; his involvement supposedly stemmed from anger after the King had hunted in Burdet's park and killed his favourite white buck.[5] Burdet, John Stacy and another Oxford clerk, Thomas Blake, were arrested. The commission condemned all three.[6] In what the historian Charles Ross has called a "staged political trial",[7] and Anne Crawford a "justly conducted, if political, trial", on 10 May 1477[8] they were found guilty of "'imagining and compassing' the king's death".[9] This was high treason.[10] Blake was reprieved after a petition from the Bishop of Norwich,[11] but Burdet and Stacy, still protesting their innocence, were taken to Tyburn the following day and hanged, drawn and quartered.[12][8] His trial and execution were part of a train of events that led to the fall of George, Duke of Clarence the following year.[13] It has also been suggested that Clarence deliberately encouraged the King to hunt in Burdet's park as a means of provoking Burdet into committing treason.[14]

The legal historian and philosopher Nicholas St. John Green used Burdet and the white buck as an example of the development of the legal maxim that "a man is presumed to have intended the consequence of his acts". He argues that, Burdet, in anger, wished the buck, "horns and all", to appear in the belly of the one that had counselled the King to that evil deed. But, notes Green, since the King had not had a counsellor—effectively, he had counselled himself—this meant that Burdet was wishing the buck horns to appear in the stomach of the King, inevitably leading to his death: "the natural consequence of a wish is an act, therefore Burdet compassed the death of the king, and was guilty of treason. And upon such reasoning he was tried, condemned, and executed."[15]

The historian Christine Carpenter has argued that, in Warwickshire, men such as Burdet "were almost the only members of the gentry who were prepared to take an active part in the Wars of the Roses", being a man with "little to lose, for they ... were already losers". Carpenter concludes that it is unsurprising that, like Burdet, "several of them came to violent or disgraceful ends".[4] Burdet was buried in Christ Church Greyfriars, near Newgate.[16]

References

1. Baker 1989, p. 84.
2. Ashdown-Hill 2019, p. 13`1.
3. Hicks 1980, p. 134.
4. Carpenter 1980, pp. 35 +n.36.
5. Hughes 2002, p. 289.
6. Scofield 1967, p. 188.
7. Ross 1974, p. 241.
8. Scofield 1967, p. 189.
9. Given-Wilson et al. 2005.
10. Crawford 2007, p. 100.
11. Young 2022, p. 133.
12. Lander 1967, p. 6.
13. Jones 1972, p. 686.
14. Manning 1993, p. 48.
15. Green 2019, p. 246.
16. Sutton 2000, p. 247.

Bibliography

• Ashdown-Hill, J. (2019). Elizabeth Widville, Lady Grey: Edward IV's Chief Mistress and the 'Pink Queen'. Barnsley: Pen and Sword History. ISBN 978-1-52674-504-0.
• Baker, J. H. (1989). "A French Vocabulary and Conversation-guide in a Fifteenth-century Legal Notebook". Medium Ævum. 58 (1): 80–102. doi:10.2307/43632513. JSTOR 43632513. OCLC 1607862.
• Carpenter, C. (1980). "Sir Thomas Malory and Fifteenth-century Local Politics". Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research. 53 (127): 31–43. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2281.1980.tb01727.x.
• Crawford, A. (2007). The Yorkists: The History of a Dynasty. London: Hambledon. ISBN 978-1-84725-197-8.
• Given-Wilson, C.; Brand, P.; Phillips, S.; Ormrod, M.; Martin, G.; Curry, A.; Horrox, R., eds. (2005). "Introduction: Edward IV: January 1478". British History Online. Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. Woodbridge. Archived from the original on 11 January 2025. Retrieved 11 January 2025.
• Hicks, M. A. (1980). False, Fleeting, Perjur'd Clarence: George, Duke of Clarence 1449–1478. Gloucester: Alan Sutton. ISBN 978-1-87304-113-0.
• Hughes, J. (2002). Arthurian Myths and Alchemy: The Kingship of Edward IV. Stroud: Sutton. ISBN 978-0-75091-994-4.
• Jones, W. R. (1972). "Political Uses of Sorcery in Medieval Europe". The Historian. 34 (4): 670–687. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6563.1972.tb00434.x. ISSN 0018-2370. OCLC 1713899.
• Lander, J. R. (1967). "The Treason and Death of the Duke of Clarence: A Re-Interpretation". Canadian Journal of History. 2 (2): 1–28. doi:10.3138/cjh.2 (inactive 24 January 2025).
• Manning, R. B. (1993). Hunters and Poachers: A Social and Cultural History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485-1640. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19820-324-7.
• Ross, C. D. (1974). Edward IV. Berkeley: University of California Press. OCLC 1259845.
• Green, N. (2019). "Law and Pragmatism". In Ryan, F. X.; Butler, B. E.; Good, J. A. (eds.). The Real Metaphysical Club: The Philosophers, Their Debates, and Selected Writings from 1870 to 1885. New York: SUNY Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-7325-3.
• Scofield, C. L. (1967). The Life and Reign of Edward the Fourth, King of England and of France and Lord of Ireland. Vol. II (New impr. ed.). London: Cass. OCLC 310646653.
• Sutton, A. F. (2000). "Malory in Newgate: A New Document". The Library. 1 (3): 243–262. doi:10.1093/library/1.3.243.
• Young, F. (2022). Magic in Merlin's Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-31651-240-1.