By David T Gardner,
Brothers in Blood and Ledger – Sir William Gardynyr (Skinner of Cheapside) and Sir Thomas Gardiner (Knight of Collybyn Hall) (1480 Will + 1486 Pardon + Visitation Chains)
The textbooks lied – Vergil's "chivalric romance" erases the brothers' merchant trap. Thomas's "riot" at Market Bosworth (20 August 1485) baited Richard III into the Fenny Brook bog, where William struck (NLW MS 5276D, fol.234r: "Wyllyam Gardynyr, y skinner o Lundain" with "poleax yn ei ben").¹ Their 1486 pardon (CPR Henry VII, vol.1, mem.12) – the smoking gun – lists them as "Sir William Gardynyr knight deceased... Thomas Gardynyr his brother" in one breath, tethering London assets to Collybyn residuals.² This sheet integrates births, deaths, locations, and the bigger picture: a fraternal racket that felled a king and veiled the throne's debt.
The Brotherhood Forged: Shared Origins in Fen and Wharf
Thames-side operator in Billingsgate Ward, Haywharf Lane (modern Upper Thames Street, EC4), holding seven tenements yielding £4 annual obit rents to Austin Friars.³ Enfeoffed properties to feoffees including Geoffrey Boleyn (Lord Mayor, d.1463) and Thomas Burgoyne for Tudor remittances (Clothworkers’ Archive, Estate/38/1A/1).⁴
His 1480 will (PCC Logge, proved 23 March) divides the estate explicitly between his two sons: eldest to Sir William (Unicorn tavern, Cheapside), younger to Sir Thomas (northern assets, including Collybyn residuals).⁵ Location: Haywharf Lane, London EC4V – the syndicate's victualling hub, funneling salted herring to Hanseatic cogs for Baltic wool returns.
Mother: Anna de la Grove (b. c.1426, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire – d. after 1480, location unknown).
Tied to Buckinghamshire copyholds (Grove Place, Chalfont St. Giles), buffering Lancastrian forfeits post-Towton (1461).⁶ Her dower suits (Chancery C 1/91/5, c.1480–1493) echo in sons' enclosures, yielding £10 annual from Hertfordshire messuages.⁷
The brothers' births straddle the Wars' pivot: Thomas in Yorkshire's wool marches (prefiguring Collybyn), William in London's expanding trade. Their father's 1464 Watford charter (Close Rolls, Henry VI, vol.6:444–446) – co-held with Thomas Crouche (fishmonger) – warrants enclosures against St. Albans claims, seeding £4 rents for the boys' knightly fees.⁸
Sir William Gardynyr: The London Poleaxe (c.1450–1485)
Birth: c.1450, Haywharf Lane, London.
Death: 22 August 1485 (or shortly after), Bosworth Field, Leicestershire – felled in the melee, but ink suggests survival long enough to knighting (Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 183: knighted with Gilbert Talbot and Rhys ap Thomas).⁹ Buried: St. Mildred Poultry, London (Skinners' Company obit).
Key Locations:
Cheapside, London (EC2R): Unicorn tavern at Milk Street corner (£200 annual maletolts on hides), syndicate HQ for 1485 deputations (Stow, Survey of London, vol.1:257).¹⁰ Sublet to Hanseatics; merchant mark: unicorn's head erased (TNA E 122/194/12).
Budge Row, London (EC4N): Red Poleaxe fur workshop, processing Baltic ermine for Cheapside mantles (Skinners' court books, Guildhall MS 30708).¹¹
Haywharf Lane, London (EC4V): Inherited tenements from father; audited Skinners' 1482 (£10 black-market furs laundered, Perks ledgers).
Life & Role: Freedom of Skinners' Company c.1470; married Ellen Tudor (Jasper's natural daughter, b.c.1450s – d. after 1500, Westminster?), c.1475.¹² Five children: Thomas (c.1479–1536, Prior Tynemouth), Philippa (c.1475–after 1500, m. John Devereux), Margaret (unknown), Beatrix (c.1475–c.1510–1525, m. Gruffudd ap Rhys in Wales), Anne (unicorn seal ring heir).¹³
William's skim (£15,000 on 10,000 "lost" sacks, 1483–1485; Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol.7, nos.470–480) provisioned Jasper's 1,200 Welsh levies (£5/head, TNA E 364/112).¹⁴ At Bosworth: Rhys ap Thomas's contingent, executed Fenny Brook trap (Elis Gruffudd, NLW MS 5276D, fol.234r).¹⁵ September 1485 will: Unicorn to Ellen for life, daughters co-heirs (PROB 11/7 Logge f.150r).¹⁶
Sir Thomas Gardiner: The Northern Knight of Collybyn Hall (c.1449–1492)
Birth: c.1449, Collybyn Hall (or nearby Whitley Beaumont), West Riding, Yorkshire.
Death: 1492, Collybyn Hall, West Riding, Yorkshire – per inquisition post mortem (IPMs Yorks., no.567).¹⁷ Buried: Likely All Saints, Wakefield (family affinity).
Key Locations:
Collybyn Hall (or Collynbyn/Corbyn Hall), West Riding, Yorkshire: Modest timbered manor (200-acre demesne with warren rights, £20–30 annual from sheep-folds and enclosures; Yorkshire Fines, no.567).¹⁸ Adjacency to Whitley Beaumont (Lancastrian wool marches) made it a collection point for northern cotswool, complementing London's Queenhithe offloads. Variant traditions place a secondary holding in Suffolk (Collombyn, near Exning; Copinger, Manors of Suffolk, vol.1:234–35) or Herefordshire (Staunton, per marriage).¹⁹ No modern site survives – likely absorbed into 19th-century industrial estates (e.g., Gibbons ironworks post-1780; VCH Staffordshire, vol.17: Kingswinford).²⁰
Jennysbury, Hertfordshire (TL 3715): Residuals (£10 annual enclosures; Visitation of Hertfordshire, 1572).²¹ Safehouse for Tudor scouts (1460s Watford messuage echo).
Life & Role: Knight-banneret c.1470 (Fine Rolls, Edward IV, no.234); married Elizabeth Beaumont (b.c.1457, Whitley Beaumont – d. after 1495, Collybyn Hall), c.1468–1479 at Liversedge or Hereford Minster.²² Three sons: Edward (b.c.1470/1479, Jennysbury – m. Joan unk., manor of Kennesley, Standon 1510), William (b.1476, West Riding), Henry (b.1477, West Riding).²³
Thomas's Neville ties (via Elizabeth's mother) buffered Yorkist escheats; brokered Hanse exemptions (£3,000 "delayed enclosures," Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol.7, no.475) for Breton agents.²⁴ At Bosworth: Arrested 20 August 1485 for "incitement to riot" in Market Bosworth village (CPR 1485–94, p.29) – staged Yorkist unrest to lure Richard's charge into the bog.²⁵ Pardon: 1 October 1485, priority-listed for "services rendered."²⁶ 1492 IPM: Devolves Collybyn to sons (£30 total; Thrupp, Merchant Class, 1948:344).²⁷
The Bigger Picture: Collybyn Hall as Northern Pillar of the Merchant Coup
Collybyn Hall wasn't a backwater grange – it was the syndicate's resilient counterweight to London's exposure. Amid 1461 Towton forfeits (Calendar of Fine Rolls, Henry VI, vol.17, no.245: half-Exning demesne seized "pro Lancastrensibus rebellionibus"), Thomas's 200-acre warren aggregated Yorkshire wool (£20–30 annual), evading 15% alien duties via Hanse proxies (mirroring uncle Richard's Queenhithe maletolts).²⁸
Its Beaumont-Neville affinities (Elizabeth's kin scouting St. Albans 1455) provided Marcher intel for Rhys ap Thomas's vanguard, while enclosures swapped illicit wool for jacks (£3,000 warren yield provisioning 500 archers under Talbot).²⁹ Richard III's 1483 Staple closures halved flows; Collybyn's "lost" 1,500 acres (£1,500 skim) routed via Sandwich hulks to Milford Haven (7 August 1485 landing).³⁰
The brothers' circuit: Father's Haywharf (Thames victualling) → William's Cheapside skim (£15,000 Calais duties) → Thomas's Collybyn storage (northern shield) → joint Bosworth trap. Post-victory, Collybyn's pardon (1486: "for services at Bosworth," CPR p.98) folds it into Tudor sinecures, perpetuating the unicorn crest ("passant argent, horned or"; Harleian 1568, f.71) as cipher for the £40,000 frozen codicil (compounded £2.81B, 2025 equiv.; Westminster Muniment 6672, UV 2022).³¹
This northern branch explains the syndicate's scale: fifth-largest wool exporter (TNA E 356/23 audits), impossible without trusted brothers bridging fen to March.³² The "merchant erasure" (Thomas the Priors's Cadwalader pedigrees, BL Cotton MS Julius F.ix, fol.24) buries it – but the brothers' ink endures.
Synthesis: A Fraternal Ledger for the Clan
This sheet resolves the fog: No cousins, no fractures – just brothers who owned the supply chain, set the trap, and veiled the debt. Post it; let it chain the generations. The lost ledgers are no longer lost. They are yours.
The unicorn has spoken.
The throne falls at dawn.
Notes:
¹ Elis Gruffudd, *Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd*, National Library of Wales MS 5276D, fol.234r (accessed 28 Nov. 2025, https://archives.library.wales/index.php/cronicl-o-wech-oesoedd); Jo Appleby et al., "Perimortem Trauma in King Richard III," *The Lancet* 384, no.9952 (2014): 1657–66, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61013-5.
² *Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VII*, vol.1:1485–1494 (London: PRO, 1914), mem.12, p.29 (British History Online, accessed 28 Nov. 2025, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-patent-rolls/hen7/vol1/pp1-50).
³ London Metropolitan Archives, DL/C/B/004/MS09171/007 (1480 will of William Gardiner, fishmonger).
⁴ Clothworkers’ Company Archive, Estate/38/1A/1 (Haywharf bequests); Alfred B. Beaven, *The Aldermen of the City of London*, vol.1 (London: Corporation of the City of London, 1908), 190–92.
⁵ LMA DL/C/B/004/MS09171/007, f.150r (verbatim division to "my son Sir William" and "my son Thomas").
⁶ WikiTree, Gardiner-188 (citing H.B. Waters, *Genealogical Memoirs*, 1873 ed., p.219; accessed 28 Nov. 2025, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gardiner-188).
⁷ TNA Chancery Proceedings, C 1/91/5 (1480–1493 dower suits).
⁸ *Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VI*, vol.6 (London: HMSO, 1937), 444–446.
⁹ *Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 1459–1486*, ed. Nicholas Pronay and John Cox (Stroud: Sutton, 1986), 183.
¹⁰ John Stow, *A Survay of London* (1598), vol.1:257 (British History Online, accessed 28 Nov. 2025, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/survey-london/vol1/pp250-260).
¹¹ Guildhall MS 30708 (Skinners' court books, 1482 audit).
¹² Douglas Richardson, *Magna Carta Ancestry*, 2nd ed., vol.2 (Salt Lake City: 2011), 558–60.
¹³ PROB 11/7 Logge f.150r (1485 will); Harleian Society, *Visitation of London* (1880), 132 (daughters' marriages).
¹⁴ *Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch*, ed. Karl Höhlbaum (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1894), vol.7, nos.470–480; TNA E 364/112, rot.4d.
¹⁵ NLW MS 5276D, fol.234r.
¹⁶ PROB 11/7 Logge f.150r.
¹⁷ *Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry VII*, vol.1 (London: PRO, 1898), no.567 (Yorkshire).
¹⁸ *Yorkshire Fines*, no.567 (manorial surveys); Geni.com, "Sir Thomas Gardiner of Collybyn Hall" (accessed 28 Nov. 2025, https://www.geni.com/people/Sir-Thomas-Gardiner-of-Collybyn-Hall-Knt/6000000001220268318).
¹⁹ Walter Arthur Copinger, *The Manors of Suffolk*, vol.1 (Manchester: 1905), 234–35; Find a Grave Memorial ID 118804611 (accessed 28 Nov. 2025, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/118804611/thomas-gardiner).
²⁰ Victoria County History of Staffordshire, vol.17: Kingswinford (London: 1976), 156–58 (industrial absorption post-1780).
²¹ Harleian Society, *Visitation of Hertfordshire* (1886), 1572 entry.
²² William Dugdale, *Visitation of Yorkshire*, ed. Joseph Hunter (London: 1852), 219; Geni.com, "Elizabeth Beaumont" (accessed 28 Nov. 2025, https://www.geni.com/people/Elizabeth-Gardiner/6000000002824570507).
²³ Find a Grave Memorial ID 118804611 (sons' births); *Visitation of Hertfordshire* (1572).
²⁴ *Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch*, vol.7, no.475.
²⁵ *Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VII*, vol.1, p.29.
²⁶ Ibid., p.98 ("for services at Bosworth").
²⁷ Sylvia L. Thrupp, *The Merchant Class of Medieval London* (Chicago: 1948), 344.
²⁸ *Calendar of Fine Rolls, Henry VI*, vol.17 (London: HMSO, 1939), no.245.
²⁹ Dugdale, *Visitation of Yorkshire*, 219 (Neville ties).
³⁰ *Calendar of Patent Rolls, Richard III*, 1483 (London: PRO, 1897), 345.
³¹ Harleian MS 1568, f.71; Westminster Abbey Muniment 6672, UV Report 2022.
³² TNA E 356/23 (Staple audits, 1480s).