Peter and Carolyn Hammond have long been stalwarts of the Richard iii Society and, more recently, of the Yorkist History Trust, and this substantial Festschrift is presented to them as a thank offering by their friends, fellow scholars and those whose research they have facilitated. Even by the standards of many of today’s Festschriften, especially those from the publisher Shaun Tyas, this is a weighty tome. It consists of two pieces of memoir and no fewer than thirty-one scholarly essays. The theme, according to the sub-title, is ‘Yorkist studies’ – that is, studies relating to roughly the third quarter of the fifteenth century, broadly defined. In practice, however, the period covered amounts to the long fifteenth century, with one piece – that of Michael Hicks – taking as its subject parliamentary precedence in the entire late medieval period and another – Anne Curry’s – offering, by contrast, a sharply focused study of Henry v’s meeting with the French king at Troyes in 1420. When so large a team of contributors is conscripted, and the subject they are invited to address so ill-defined, the result is inevitably a mixed bag of essays: mixed not only in terms of the quality of the pieces included but also in regard to the sheer lack of unity. It might have assisted the reader if the co-editors had arranged the contents thematically so that the volume was given some structure and meaning, but no such attempt has been made. In fact, it is difficult to detect any logic at all in the arrangement of the chapters beyond a vaguely chronological ordering, which means that we end up with a one-thing-after-another book. The lack of ordering is all the more regrettable when even the briefest glance at the contents page shows that there are indeed themes which stand out. One such is – inevitably – the fate of the princes in the Tower, another the insights into charitable and intercessory provision afforded by wills, another again the conduct and aims of late fifteenth-century diplomacy, and two more are the buildings of the Yorkist period and the workings of local society. Arrangement by theme would have brought a degree of coherence to a book that is currently without anything much to hold it together other than the contributors’ admiration for the husband-and-wife partnership to whom it is dedicated. To those coming to it from outside the Yorkist fold, this is unfortunately not enough. A heavy price is paid for the absence of a stronger editorial grip.

Much the largest grouping of essays is that concerned with how funerary rites, intercessory provision and charitable endowment are illuminated by wills of the period. Margaret Condon, looking afresh at the funerary obsequies of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward iv’s queen, shows that these were not as minimalist as sometimes supposed, with a reasonable attendance attested by the distribution of robes to mourners and Henry vii helping out with the costs. Christian Steer, in a study of the will of the Londoner John Hardy, shows how responsibility for intercessory provision could be inherited and passed on over the generations, while Richard Asquith, pursuing a similar theme, sheds light on the sequence of events that left the Grocers Company with responsibility for executing the testamentary wishes of Sir John Crosby, who had died forty years before. In another essay, Heather Falvey looks at the mortuary bequests in wills and what was done with them, while Claire Martin, in a stimulating and sometimes amusing study, serves warning that, when the testator’s money was running short, not all the bequests in a will might be honoured.

Those with an interest in the fate of the princes in the Tower will not be disappointed by the three essays on that subject: Joanna Laynesmith, offering a sceptical review of the evidence for the princes’ disappearance; Livia Visser-Fuchs on ‘Richard of York’s’ supposed statement of how he escaped from the Tower, preserved in an Arnhem archive, which she dismisses as a Perkin Warbeck spoof; and Michael Bennett, who recounts the life of Sir James Tyrell and exonerates him from any responsibility for the princes’ murder.

Insofar as Bennett’s essay looks at Tyrell in the context of East Anglian society, it relates to two other contributions that look at local or regional society, those of Simon Lambe, who reflects on the ways in which Sir Amias Paulet, a Henry vii supporter, built up his position in Somerset, and Ralph Griffiths, who describes how the Kidwelly family, prospering on royal patronage, migrated from South Wales to the Thames valley, put down roots there, but failed to establish themselves owing to extinction in the male line. Marie Barnfield’s interesting study of the treason trial of Sir Thomas Burdet also has a local dimension to it, in that it examines the future traitor’s unruly early life in south Warwickshire.

There are two essays that discuss English foreign policy, one by Lorraine Attreed usefully reviewing policy towards the Iberian kingdoms, and the other by Edward Meek using a rare survival, an envoys’ journal, to look at the conduct of foreign policy from below, from the perspective of those charged with carrying out the king’s orders.

Two other essays deal with building history, one by Lynda Pidgeon on the reconstruction of Barley Hall in York, an undertaking that one architectural historian has dismissed as little better than Disneyfication, and the other by James Petre looking at the introduction of bastions, blockhouses and bulwarks into English fortress architecture; the latter a rather pedestrian and unquestioning piece.

Three essays are concerned with the literary culture of the period, those of Julia Boffey on the Yorkist cause in Middle English verse, Margaret Kekewich on a Yorkist genealogical roll (BL, Harley MS 7353) and Martha Driver on William Caxton’s publications in Richard iii’s reign.

Rather out on a limb, because it is the only piece exclusively concerned with a non-English theme, is Michael Jones’s enjoyable essay recounting his discovery in the abbaye Saint-Guénolé at Landévennec, Brittany, of some stray documents from the now largely lost financial archive of Duchess Anne, Brittany’s last independent ruler. The remaining essays in the collection deal with such varied subjects as Richard, Duke of Gloucester’s pursuit of his debts, Richard’s appointment as king of a Council in the North, the royal power of healing scrofula, the immorality of the Vicars Choral of York Minster and the problems All Souls College, Oxford, had in managing the former alien priory at Alberbury, Shropshire, after its transfer to them by Henry vi.