Jean de Waurin's Chronicle of England Volume 6 Books 3-6: The Wars of the Roses
Jean de Waurin was a French Chronicler, from the Artois region, who was born around 1400, and died around 1474. Waurin’s Chronicle of England, Volume 6, covering the period 1450 to 1471, from which we have selected and translated Chapters relating to the Wars of the Roses, provides a vivid, original, contemporary description of key events some of which he witnessed first-hand, some of which he was told by the key people involved with whom Waurin had a personal relationship.
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On 24th September 1826 George Price Boyce was born to [his father] George Boyce.
1853. George Price Boyce (age 26). "St Brelade's Bay, Jersey".
On 20th September 1853 [his father] George Boyce died.
1854. George Price Boyce (age 27). "Anstey's Cove [Map]".
1857. George Price Boyce (age 30). "Edward the Confessor's Chapel, Westminster Abbey [Map], with Tombs of Henry V. and Edward I".
1857. George Price Boyce (age 30). "A Girl by a Beech Tree in a Landscape".
On 9th December 1857 [his brother-in-law] Henry Tanworth Wells (age 28) and [his sister] Joanna Mary Boyce (age 26) were married.
On 15th July 1861 [his sister] Joanna Mary Boyce (age 29) died from childbirth shortly after the birth of her third child.
1862. George Price Boyce (age 35). "At Binsey, near Oxford".
William of Worcester's Chronicle of England
William of Worcester, born around 1415, and died around 1482 was secretary to John Fastolf, the renowned soldier of the Hundred Years War, during which time he collected documents, letters, and wrote a record of events. Following their return to England in 1440 William was witness to major events. Twice in his chronicle he uses the first person: 1. when writing about the murder of Thomas, 7th Baron Scales, in 1460, he writes '… and I saw him lying naked in the cemetery near the porch of the church of St. Mary Overie in Southwark …' and 2. describing King Edward IV's entry into London in 1461 he writes '… proclaimed that all the people themselves were to recognize and acknowledge Edward as king. I was present and heard this, and immediately went down with them into the city'. William’s Chronicle is rich in detail. It is the source of much information about the Wars of the Roses, including the term 'Diabolical Marriage' to describe the marriage of Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s brother John’s marriage to Katherine, Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, he aged twenty, she sixty-five or more, and the story about a paper crown being placed in mockery on the severed head of Richard, 3rd Duke of York.
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1864-5. George Price Boyce (age 37). "Landscape at Wotton, Surrey: Autumn". The house in the painting is Wotton House, Surrey, the seat of the Evelyn family. The seventeenth-century diarist, John Evelyn, was born there, so it has a special literary interest. It was given a more imposing appearance later, but the situation remains the same.
1866-7. George Price Boyce (age 39). "A Surrey Common In November".
1868. George Price Boyce (age 41). "The Oxford Arms [Map], Warwick Lane, City of London".
1868. George Price Boyce (age 41). "Pensosa d'altrui". Model Mary Leslie. Inscribed on the verso on a label 'no 6', the title and 'George P. Boyce 10 Upper Cheyne Row Chelsea' and on another label in the same hand 'Light from the left hand!'. See The Athenaeum 8th May 1869.
Mary Leslie: The Diary of George Price Boyce 1869. 9th January 1869. Mary Leslie came to sit to me. Before 6th March 1871 Mary Leslie died of consumption.
The Athenaeum 1869 May 08. [8th May 1869] We may next turn to the works of Mr. Boyce (age 42). First of these is, On the Skirts of Smithfield, looking West, Midsummer, 1867 (117), a strange, but very original subject, being a picture of the rubbishheaps of the place while under transformation, and the backs of miserable houses of red brick of the deepest hues, and shabby, tumble-down hoardings of wood blanched in the sun; a temporary wreck of the old in course of changing for the new. Huge lying posters in red, green, white and yellow, each coarser and falser than its neighbour, overlook the dust-heaps of two centuries. Calmly in the glare of smoky summer sunlight rises the dingy stone church tower of Wren's building, — a pathetic picture for those who can read, and for artists who can enjoy, its exquisite tones and admirable atmospheric grading; a puzzle for those who judge by the common tests of opinion. For the comfort of several of the latter who strongly resented the introduction of two gambolling cats in a similar picture by this painter — as if London cats were not frequent in the wastes of the City — we add, that there are no cats to puzzle them here.
1871. George Price Boyce (age 44). "The Teme from Ludlow".The view is taken from Ludlow Bridge looking up the river. The picture was exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society's exhibition, 1872-73, No. 386
1873-4. George Price Boyce (age 46). "A Wooded Valley in Surrey".
1874. George Price Boyce (age 47). "The fortified manor house at Stokesay, Shropshire [Map]".
On 9th February 1897 George Price Boyce (age 70) died.
The Diary of George Price Boyce. 1941. The Diary of George Price Boyce was lost in the Second World War. Fortunately a year before its destruction by bombing in Bath the diary were consigned to Randall Davies to print in the Old Water-Colour Society's Club Nineteenth Annual Volume, 1941. Although the original is lost, some content survives. The Diary was reprinted Old Water-Colour Society's Club Nineteenth Annual Volume, 1941. Copyright of Introduction and Notes Virginia Surtess, 1980.