Ricart’s Kalendar and National and Local Events in Bristol’s Late 15th-Century Local Historiography

Robert Ricart’s Kalendar incorporates an important early English civic chronicle. This includes annalistic entries for the period leading to its initial creation in 1478/79, with an increasing number of entries specifically relevant to Bristol in the forty years to that date. Significantly, these chronicle entries were then continued through to the turn of the century. This paper considers these additions to the civic chronicle and argues that they represent a continued effort to create a history in which Bristol’s loyalty and service to the crown is emphasised and discord is de-emphasised. In particular, the marginal reference to the deaths of the ‘princes in the Tower’ (Edward V and his brother, Richard duke of York), is identified as a later addition to a sequence of annals which originally entirely omitted the disruptions consequent on Richard III’s coup of May/June 1483, including the reign of Edward V and the rebellion of Henry, duke of Buckingham later that year