The earl of Northumberland to Robert Plumpton

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Reference

WYL655/2 No. 53, p. 32

Date

7 September [1480]

Library / Archive

Transcript location(s) in printed volume(s)

Stapleton, 'To Sir Robert Plumpton, Kt', item 1; Kirby, item 32

Transcript from Joan Kirby, 'The Plumpton Letters and Papers'

32 The earl of Northumberland to Robert Plumpton, 7 September [1480] (No.
53, p. 32)

Right welbeloued frinde, I greet you well. And wheras the Scotts in
great number are entred into Northumberland, whose malice, with
Gods helpe, I entend to resist;¹ therfore on the king owr soueraigne
lords behalfe, I charg you, and also on myne as wardeyn, [that] ye^a
[with] all such personnes as ye may make in there most defensible
array, be with me at Topliffe vppon Munday by viij a clocke, as my
trust is in you. Written in Wresill,² the vij day of September.^b

Your cousin Hen: Northumberland.^b

Endorsed: To my right welbeloued Robart Plompton esquier

^a MS ye þat.

^b Appended: This letter hath a seale. Copied the 3 day of Marche 1612.

¹ Gloucester and Northumberland called out the northern levies for a counter-raid
after a Scottish attack had ended in the burning of Bamburgh in the summer of 1480,
Ross, Edward IV, 279.

² Wressle castle, built by Thomas Percy, earl of Worcester, in the king’s hand after the
3rd earl’s posthumous attainder in 1461, was in the following year granted jointly for life
to Lawrence Booth, bishop of Durham and William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, R.L.
Storey, ‘The North of England 1399–1509’, in S.B. Chrimes, C.D. Ross, & R.A. Griffiths
(eds), Fifteenth-Century England, 1399–1509 (Manchester, 1972), 140, 143; The Itinerary of John
Leland, i, 52–53.

Transcript from Thomas Stapleton, 'Plumpton Correspondence: A series of letters, chiefly domestick, written in the reigns of Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII and Henry VIII'

LETTER I.

To my Right welbeloved Robart Plompton, esquier.a

    RIGHT welbeloved frinde, I greet you well. And wheras the
Scotts in great number are entred into Northumberland, whose
malice with Gods helpe I entend to resist; therfore on the King,
our soveraigne Lords behalfe, I charg you, and also on myne as
wardeyn,b that ye with all such personnes as ye may make in there
most defensible arrey, be with me at Topliffe uppon Munday
by viij a clocke, as my trust is in you. Written in Wresill,c the
vij day of September.
                                                     Your Cousin,
        (7 Sept. 1480.)                                 HEN. NORTHUMBERLAND.

a Robert Plumpton, esq. eldest surviving son of Sir William Plumpton, kt. was
knighted in Hoton-field beside Berwick, 22 Aug. 1482.

b Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was Wardens of the East and Middle
Marches in 1480; in which year, upon its being signified that, notwithstanding the ces-
sation of arms, the King of Scots had invaded the English Marches, he was commis-
sioned by the King to muster all able-bodied men, &c. (See Collins's Peerage, tit.
Percy Earl of Northumberland.)

c Wressle-castle, near Howden in the east riding of Yorkshire, was built by Tho-
mas Earl of Worcester, and was a favourite residence of the Percies.