Upon publication, Free and Candid Disquisitions and its proposals reinvigorated public debate regarding reform in the Church of England and has been credited as reopening the discussion in favour of comprehension. The September and October 1749 issues of The Gentleman's Magazine carried summaries of the pamphlet, and replies came quickly. These included clergyman John Boswell's large, two-part Remarks Upon a Treatise, which was published in 1750 and 1751 and argued against the need for the proposed reforms. This piece defended the 1662 prayer book as containing the best of early Christian liturgies and supported continuing both clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles and the restrictions of the Test Acts. Boswell further argued against Free and Candid Disquisitions's Puritanism, as he deemed such sentiments as responsible for "the dreadful Scene of Misery, which we suffer'd in the last Century". Another critique was published in 1751 by John White, who was a vicar in Nayland and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
Clergyman Francis Blackburne published his own pamphlet, An Apology for the Author of the Free and Candid Disquisitions, in 1750 in defence of Free and Candid Disquisitions. This led some to believe that Blackburne had been the author of the original 1749 text. Blackburne had not contributed to Free and Candid Disquisitions, but he had read it in manuscript and returned it without corrections. After reading the manuscript, Blackburne lambasted Jones for the latter's trepidation over possibly offending those in power. The second volume of Boswell's critique of Free and Candid Disquisitions was also replying to Blackburne's 1750 pamphlet and the two-volume An Appeal to Common Reason and Candor, the latter published anonymously in 1750–1751.
In 1753, A New Form of Common-Prayer was published anonymously and gave credit to Free and Candid Disquisitions on its first page. A New Form of Common-Prayer offered liturgical revisions that answered Jones's queries, submitting these proposals and the duty of finally perfecting the Reformation to the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, it is generally considered that Thomas Herring – himself the Archbishop of Canterbury – wrote A New Form of Common-Prayer. According to Jasper, Herring's motivation to accept the position of archbishop may have been theological beliefs he shared with Jones. Herring came to express uncertainty regarding pursuing reform for fear of encountering clerical and lay resistance that showed "determination and even peremptoriness". Ultimately, Convocation did not address Jones's proposals. Only one proposed alteration to the prayer book was actually accepted: in 1759, a topical prayer "for the ceasing of the distemper which lately raged among the horned cattle in this kingdom" – something Jones had specifically requested – was added.
Jones published Catholic Faith in Practice in 1765 and established a Protestant-aligned society to effect "a new Reformation in England". He died in 1770. Jones has been publicly identified as the sole author of Free and Candid Disquisitions since at least 1800. Free and Candid Disquisitions, along with Blackburne's 1766 The Confessional, proved influential upon the 1771–1774 Feathers Tavern Petition against the requirement of clerical subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles.
Free and Candid Disquisitions's appeal for unofficial revisions succeeded. Between 1751 and 1768, six people created their own formulas for revising the prayer book – including A New Form of Common-Prayer – with each demonstrating varying degrees of influence from the 1689 proposal and Jones's work. Of these six liturgies, only one expressed orthodox Anglican theology and five made reference to Free and Candid Disquisitions. Theophilus Lindsey, a Feathers Tavern petitioner who was a son-in-law of Francis Blackburne, acquired a copy of Clarke's manuscript changes to the prayer book from John Disney, another son-in-law of Blackburne. From this, Lindsey published a revised prayer book which he used at his Essex Street Chapel. Crediting both Clarke and Free and Candid Disquisitions, Lindsey's liturgy proved the dominant influence on Unitarian prayer books. John Wesley's 1784 The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America shared similarities to Lindsey's liturgy, Jones's suggestions, and the Savoy Conference's Puritan proposals.


Following the 1775–1783 American Revolution, the Episcopal Church of the United States set about revising its own edition of the prayer book. The proposed revision submitted in 1786 featured a preface of queries later described by liturgist Marion J. Hatchett as an outline of Free and Candid Disquisitions. William Smith's work in creating the 1786 proposed prayer book led some of his fellow clergymen to believe he had made the revision while consulting a copy of Free and Candid Disquisitions. The new church desired substantial change beyond simple alterations, the 1786 text was seldom used before the Episcopal Church adopted another revision submitted in 1789. Hatchett held that Jones's work was also among the influences of the 1789 American Book of Common Prayer. According to Hatchett, influences from Free and Candid Disquisitions and other early 18th-century texts that advocated for reforms acceptable to a broader set of Protestants (a belief known as latitudinarianism) were more significant in the production of the 1789 prayer book than described by other scholarship. A shortened version of the 1786 preface retaining the influence from Free and Candid Disquisitions has been used in the succeeding prayer books of the Episcopal Church through to its present, 1979-dated edition.
Richard Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, published an anonymous pamphlet in 1790 containing liturgical proposals also based on Clarke and Free and Candid Disquisitions. William Winstanley Hull published a work in 1828 that looked favourably upon the 1789 American prayer book and put forward that a royal commission or House of Commons select committee be established to reform the prayer book. Among the changes Hull submitted was a synthesis of the three Sunday morning liturgies based on Jones's proposals. Hull's proposed liturgical revisions were similar to others in the early 19th century, demonstrating a Low-Church bias and relying upon the prior works of the 1689 effort, Clarke, and Jones. Such proposals remained the norm until Tractarians later in the 19th century renewed interest in pre-Reformation ritual and prompted revisions which were intended to restore these practices.


Sir Charles William Fremantle (12 August 1834 – 8 October 1914) was a British governmental official who served 26 years as deputy master of the Royal Mint. As the chancellor of the exchequer was ex officio master of the Royal Mint beginning in 1870, Fremantle was its executive head for almost a quarter century.
Educated at Eton College, Fremantle entered the Treasury in 1853 as a clerk. He served as private secretary to several officials, lastly Benjamin Disraeli, both while Disraeli was chancellor of the exchequer, and then in 1868 while he was prime minister. Disraeli's appointment of Fremantle as deputy master of the Royal Mint excited some controversy but was supported by his political rival William Gladstone.
Fremantle began as deputy master to Thomas Graham, the master of the Mint. Graham died in September 1869, and the Treasury decided the mastership should go to the chancellor of the day, with the deputy master the administrative head of the Royal Mint. Fremantle began work to modernise the antiquated Royal Mint. Much of the work had to wait until the Royal Mint was reconstructed at its premises at Tower Hill in 1882. Fremantle sought to beautify the coinage and, believing the Mint's engraver, Leonard Charles Wyon, not up to the task, sought to do so by resurrecting classic coin designs, like Benedetto Pistrucci's depiction of St George and the dragon for the sovereign.
In 1894, at the age of sixty, Fremantle retired from the Royal Mint and thereafter spent time as a corporate director and as a magistrate. He died in 1914, just under two months after his eightieth birthday.


Charles William Fremantle was born on 12 August 1834, the third son of Sir Thomas Fremantle, Bt (later Baron Cottesloe) and his wife, the former Louisa Nugent. He was educated at Eton and then entered the Treasury as a clerk in April 1853. While there, he acted as a private secretary to several officials, successively Sir William Hayter, Sir William Hylton Jolliffe and The Honorable Sir Henry Brand, later speaker of the House of Commons.
When Benjamin Disraeli was appointed chancellor of the exchequer in 1866, Fremantle served as his private secretary. Fremantle was recommended to Disraeli by Brand, who had served as parliamentary secretary to the Treasury. In 1867, Fremantle was made secretary to the boundary commission under the Representation of the People Act. When Disraeli became prime minister in early 1868, Fremantle was one of his private secretaries, along with Montague Corry, keeping that position until appointed deputy master of the Royal Mint in December of that year.


In 1868, the deputy mastership of the Royal Mint fell vacant with the death of William Barton, and the appointment was in the gift of the prime minister, Disraeli, who appointed Fremantle. Disraeli felt that the Mint had been run by its master, the chemist Thomas Graham, with little energy or administrative skill, and would benefit from an infusion of new blood. The long-time senior clerk, Robert Mushet, desired the position, with the support of Graham and the former master, Sir John Herschel, and the appointment was questioned in parliament. Disraeli defended the appointment, denying that Fremantle was his political follower, and stating that Fremantle was chosen for his youth and experience at the Treasury. Disraeli's political rival, William Gladstone, himself a former master of the Mint, agreed with his rival Disraeli that the Royal Mint needed someone from outside who had worked in one of the great departments of state. According to the numismatic historians, G. P. Dyer and P. P. Gaspar, in The New History of the Royal Mint, "with the great men thus in agreement, the House was content to let the matter rest."
Disraeli also stated that Graham supported the appointment, though Dyer and Gaspar found it significant he was not advised in advance. According to Sir John Craig in his history of the Royal Mint, "Graham's general administration caused some unease" and Fremantle was appointed "to pull the place together".


Following a royal commission in 1848, the Royal Mint was reorganised in 1851, with the Company of Moneyers, the guild with whom the government had long indentured for production of coinage, given three months' notice, as provided for in the indenture. By the time of Fremantle's appointment, Graham (who was appointed in 1855) had gone from attempts at reform to being the target of accusations of corruption and nepotism.
Graham died on 16 September 1869. With a vacancy in the mastership, reform could be considered more readily, and Fremantle worked with Charles Rivers Wilson, a former colleague at the Treasury, on a report, submitted on 6 November. They recommended that the Royal Mint consolidate to a smaller site, either at its current premises at Tower Hill or somewhere closer to the City of London. Herschel and Graham were noteworthy scientists, but the Fremantle-Wilson report deemed this unnecessary to run the Mint. What was needed was "active and intelligent control and the application of well-trained experience in matters of business".
In a supplemental report on 17 November, Fremantle and Wilson recommended reductions of staff and salaries, proposing that Fremantle's post of deputy master be eliminated as unnecessary. Fremantle may have expected to be given Graham's title. The Treasury accepted most recommendations with a minute dated 7 January 1870, but instead of the position of deputy master being abolished, the mastership was to be held by the chancellor of the exchequer ex officio and without salary, with the Mint to be run by the deputy master. This was formalised in the Coinage Act 1870, which consolidated the laws relating to the Royal Mint to a single document, another of the recommendations. Fremantle did not initially receive the master's salary of £1500 (equivalent to £181,287 in 2023), but this followed within a few years.


In 1870, Fremantle undertook a tour of European mints in company with the newly appointed chemist of the Mint, William Chandler Roberts, and an engineer, James M. Napier. The Treasury allocated £1800 (equivalent to £217,545 in 2023) for expenses on this tour, which took place from May to July of that year. Their published report stated that the Royal Mint had fallen behind European mints in scientific research and in the application of the sciences to the Mint's work. Fremantle later stated that since the Royal Mint's current equipment had been installed in 1816, every Continental mint had updated its equipment, even that in Constantinople, making the Royal Mint the least efficient in Europe.
In the 1870 act, parliament required the deputy master to submit an annual report. These contained detailed information and statistics regarding the Mint's activities. With the first report, published in 1871, Fremantle began a series that Dyer and Gaspar described as "long and extremely helpful", and that would continue for over a century. These were published as parliamentary papers and contained lengthy appendices by Roberts and others.
Royal Mint workers were paid mostly through piece-rates, which were pooled and shared. This could work harshly in slack times. In 1870, Fremantle decreased the piece-rates while increasing weekly wages, reducing the reliance on piece payments. Piece-rates at the Royal Mint were not entirely abolished in favour of weekly wages until 1923, long after Fremantle's departure. Also in 1870, Fremantle recruited a section of mechanics to deal with machinery repair and fabricate items needed in the works; until then, all but the most minor mechanical repairs were contracted out. From 1880, the Royal Mint built automatic weighing machines to weigh newly-struck coins, with improvements by the Mint mechanics.
To Fremantle's frustration, rebuilding the Royal Mint with up-to-date equipment proved a difficult process to even begin, with the question of whether to rebuild on the existing site at Tower Hill or find new premises elsewhere in London tied up in Treasury and parliamentary red tape. These delays led to a shutdown of nearly five months in 1876 when antiquated equipment broke. So long as removal of the Royal Mint was a possibility, according to Craig, Fremantle "grumbled in vain through twelve years' search for a new site".
Negotiations for the government to acquire land at Whitefriars from the corporation of London began in 1878 but three years of discussions produced no result, and a committee of the House of Commons decided upon a reconstruction at Tower Hill. Fremantle was opposed because this would require a complete shutdown of coinage, but agreed once it appeared that the Bank of England had an abnormally large stock of gold coins, bronze coinage could be contracted from Ralph Heaton & Sons of Birmingham, and a stock of silver coins could be built up before the commencement of work on 1 February 1882. The work ran for ten months, during which time, among other accomplishments, the old beam engines were replaced by modern gear, the Mint's first electrical generation station was installed, and most of the old coinage presses were sold (and replaced with new ones), except for some retained for striking medals. There was no change in the land area occupied by the Royal Mint; the next time a move was considered, in 1922, it was because the Mint was short of space. When the work was done, Fremantle stated that the facilities compared favourably to those of any other mint.


Fremantle, described by Dyer and Gaspar as a "gentleman of cultivated taste", sought to improve the appearance of Britain's coinage, generally through the re-issuance of classic designs. In 1871, he restored Benedetto Pistrucci's design depicting Saint George and the dragon to the sovereign for the first time in almost half a century. Stated Fremantle, "it is hardly possible to over-rate the advantages accruing to a coinage from an artistic and well-executed design". Nevertheless, he considered the Royal Mint's engraver through most of his time there, Leonard Charles Wyon, competent but not outstanding in a field that might not produce a genius in every generation, and wrote in 1880 "I am sorry to say there is, in my opinion no really good English Engraver now living. Our Mint 'Modeller & Engraver', Mr Leonard C. Wyon ... is certainly the best." According to Dyer and Gaspar, Fremantle meant, "the best in a poor field".
Another engraver that Fremantle was able to recommend, in 1876, was George T. Morgan of Birmingham. This was in response to a request by the director of the United States Mint, Henry R. Linderman, who was seeking a good British engraver. Linderman hired Morgan, who emigrated to the United States, as a special assistant. Morgan went on to design the Morgan silver dollar, struck beginning in 1878.
Fremantle's next opportunity for coinage redesign at the Royal Mint came with the Jubilee coinage of 1887, which saw new designs for several denominations. This coinage was delayed by slow progress on the portrait of Queen Victoria which was to appear on them, by Joseph Boehm; on 15 January 1886, Fremantle wrote to a Treasury official to secure payment of £200 (equivalent to £27,519 in 2023) to Boehm, which Fremantle described as a moderate fee for the work of seven years. When the new coins were issued, Fremantle wrote an article for the June number of Murray's Magazine, entitled, "Our New Coins and Their Pedigree", in which he criticised the coins of the earlier part of the Victorian era, calling them "commonplace". Fremantle, though, had praise for Pistrucci's "beautiful design of St George", which was expanded to the crown, double sovereign, and five pound piece.


The new coins, which bore Boehm's portrait of Victoria and were engraved by Wyon, were released in June 1887, and were widely mocked for the small crown depicted on the Queen's head, which looked like it might fall off. Fremantle mourned, "the sad turn affairs have taken, most unexpected to me". In a letter to Robert Hunt, Deputy Master of the Sydney Mint, Fremantle stated, "without a great & skilled Engraver we shall never have a really fine head on our coinage". Fremantle took consolation in that, "at any rate they are better than the old ones". Still, in 1891, the year of Wyon's death, Fremantle sat as a member of a committee to advise on new coinage designs. The result was the Old Head coinage (1893–1901) in which particular attention was given to the crown, which Fremantle stated "left little to be desired as a work of art".
The Old Head coinage was engraved by George William de Saulles, who was given only a probationary contract. On 1 January 1894, Fremantle wrote to the Treasury to request that de Saulles be given permanent status on the ground that his work on the Old Head coins had been praised both by experts and the public. De Saulles would go on to design the coinage of King Edward VII, shortly before dying in 1903.
Fremantle was himself a coin collector, and, from 1879, a member of the Numismatic Society of London. He had the Royal Mint's collection catalogued and the catalogue published. Finding gaps in the collection, he obtained permission from the Treasury to restrike 18th- and 19th-century coins to fill them. When the new coinage designs of 1887 and 1893 were struck, he made proof sets available to the public, though at high prices. He exhibited his collection of coins at the Royal Yorkshire Jubilee Exhibition near Bradford in 1887.
Fremantle visited the mints in the United States in 1884, travelling with Roberts, and also planned to inspect the assay offices. He also visited Canada on a tour that brought members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science across the Atlantic. In Montreal, the correspondent of the New-York Tribune described Fremantle as "a man of imposing presence, tall and erect, with strong features. He is an authority on all matters pertaining to metals."
Fremantle served as a British delegate to the International Bimetallic Conference in 1881, and was at the Monetary Congress of 1889, both in Paris, also serving as a British delegate to the International Monetary Congress of 1892 in Brussels. He also served as a member of the Royal Commission on Gold and Silver in 1886, and was a member of several interdepartmental committees relating to the Civil Service.


Fremantle retired as deputy master in September 1894 and was succeeded by Horace Seymour. Fremantle's service of almost 26 years is the longest of any deputy master of modern times. The London correspondent of The Yorkshire Herald wondered at Fremantle's retirement, given he was sixty and in good health, and was the boss in a position described as "none too arduous".
In 1895, Fremantle travelled to Japan, where he was given a tour of the Osaka Mint by its director, Hasegawa Tameharu, whom he had met while the Japanese official was touring Europe. In 1897, he contributed an article entitled "The Queen's Coinages" to the Diamond Jubilee number of The Financial News.
From 1896 to 1903, Fremantle was one of the British directors on the board of the Suez Canal Company. He served as vice president of the Corporation of Foreign Bondholders. He was a member of the board of directors of, among other concerns, Parr's Bank, the Standard Bank of South Africa, the Bank of Australasia, the Eagle Insurance Company and the Egyptian Delta Light Railways. He joined the Royal Society of Arts in 1895 and was elected one of its vice presidents the same year, holding that position at the time of his death in 1914. He served as a magistrate for Middlesex, London and Westminster.
Both before and after his retirement, Fremantle was involved with the Charity Organisation Society, chairing its council in 1892 and 1893, and was chairman of the Whitechapel Charity Organisation Committee for more than twenty years. The Charity Organisation Review deemed him one of the "Fathers of our movement" and that his talents and activity "entitle Sir Charles Fremantle to an honoured place among those who have served the good cause".
Following a short illness, Fremantle died on the evening of 8 October 1914 at 4 Sloane Street, his London residence. The Daily Telegraph recorded that since his retirement from the Mint, "Sir Charles had been for the last twenty years a well-known and popular personality in the City, having been identified with various important undertakings". He had celebrated his eightieth birthday in August and had continued to attend to his positions in the City in apparent good health.


Fremantle's father, Sir Thomas Fremantle, was ennobled as Baron Cottesloe in 1874, entitling his sons to preface their names with "The Honourable". Charles was his third son; the eldest, Thomas, succeeded to his father's titles. The second son was the Very Rev. The Honourable William Henry Fremantle, dean of Ripon, and the fourth was Admiral The Honourable Sir Edmund Fremantle.
Charles Fremantle's paternal grandfather was Vice-admiral Sir Thomas Francis Fremantle, whose son (Charles's uncle) was Admiral Sir Charles Fremantle, after whom the city of Fremantle, Western Australia, is named. His maternal grandparents were Sir George Nugent, and the American-born diarist Maria Nugent.
On 20 April 1865 at St Peter's Church, Eaton Square, Fremantle married Sophia Smith, youngest daughter of Abel Smith; the marriage was performed by his uncle, Rev. William Fremantle. The couple had four sons and a daughter. Charles Fremantle was created a companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1880, and a knight commander of that order (KCB) in 1890.


Dyer and Gaspar wrote that under Fremantle, the Royal Mint of "Graham, with its haphazard administration and antiquated machinery, had given way to a modern mint which no longer relied upon others to show it the way forward". One way he did so was his encouragement of Roberts (who took the name Roberts-Austen) who in his third of a century at the Royal Mint until his death in 1902, believed that research into metals could advance the Royal Mint's abilities. "It was the achievement of Fremantle, who by his breadth of vision promoted the work of Roberts-Austen to place the Mint for a quarter of a century within the circle of the world's great scientific institutions."
The Royal Mint Museum, in their page on Fremantle, called him "without doubt one of the key figures in the development of the Royal Mint". The chancellor of the exchequer at the time of Fremantle's retirement, Sir William Harcourt, wrote of him, "Sir Charles Fremantle has served with eminent distinction first in the Treasury and afterwards as Deputy Master of the Mint. His diligence, fidelity, and remarkable capacity have, throughout a period of more than forty years, commanded the confidence and respect of all the Heads of Departments in which he served." A later deputy master, Thomas Henry Elliott, wrote of Fremantle after his death in 1914, that the experience gained from his visits to the foreign mints in 1870 and 1884 "enabled Sir Charles to carry out various reforms in the different departments of the Mint which were of the greatest value, and his arrangements in all their general principles have stood the test of time and made the task of his successors a comparatively easy one".


Freston is a Neolithic causewayed enclosure, an archaeological site near the village of Freston in Suffolk, England. Causewayed enclosures were built in England from shortly before 3700 until at least 3500 BC; they are characterised by the full or partial enclosure of an area with ditches that are interrupted by gaps, or causeways. Their purpose is unknown; they may have been settlements, meeting places, or ritual sites.
The Freston enclosure was first identified in 1969 from cropmarks in aerial photographs. At 8.55 ha (21.1 acres) it is one of the largest causewayed enclosures in Britain, and would have required thousands of person-days to construct. The cropmarks show an enclosure with two circuits of ditches, and a palisade that ran between the two circuits. There is also evidence of a rectangular structure in the northeastern part of the site, which may be a Neolithic longhouse or an Anglo-Saxon hall. In 2018, a group from McMaster University organized a research project focused on the site, beginning with a geophysical survey and a pedestrian survey to collect any items of archaeological interest from the surface of the site. This was followed by an excavation in 2019 which recovered some Neolithic material and obtained radiocarbon dates indicating that the site was constructed in the mid-4th millennium BC. Other finds included oak charcoal fragments believed to come from the palisade, and evidence of a long ditch to the southeast that probably predated the enclosure, and which may have accompanied a long barrow, a form of Neolithic burial mound. The site has been protected as a scheduled monument since 1976.


Freston is a causewayed enclosure, a form of earthwork that was built in northwestern Europe in the early Neolithic period. Causewayed enclosures are areas that are fully or partially enclosed by ditches interrupted by gaps, or causeways, of unexcavated ground, often with earthworks and palisades in some combination. The function of causewayed enclosures is debated. They may have been settlements, perhaps for a single family, or used for herding animals. The causeways are difficult to explain in military terms since they would have provided multiple ways for attackers to pass through the ditches to the inside of the enclosure, though archaeologists have suggested they could have been sally ports that defenders could emerge from to attack a besieging force. Evidence of attacks at some sites provided support for the idea that the enclosures were fortified. They may have been seasonal meeting places, used for trading. There is also evidence that the enclosures played a role in funeral rites: food, pottery, and human remains have all been found deliberately deposited in the ditches.
The construction of these sites would have required substantial labour for clearing the land, preparing trees for use as posts or palisades, and digging the ditches, and would probably have been planned for some time in advance, as the enclosures were built in a single operation. Over seventy causewayed enclosures have been identified in the British Isles, and they are one of the most common types of early Neolithic site in Western Europe. About a thousand are known in all. They began to appear at different times in different parts of Europe: dates range from before 4000 BC in northern France, to shortly before 3000 BC in northern Germany, Denmark, and Poland. The enclosures began to appear in southern Britain shortly before 3700 BC, and continued to be built for at least 200 years; in a few cases, they continued to be used as late as 3300 to 3200 BC.


The Freston enclosure is in Suffolk, near the village of Freston, south of Ipswich. It lies 31 m (102 ft) above sea level on the Shotley peninsula in southeast East Anglia, between the estuaries of the Orwell and Stour rivers. A modern road, the B1080, passes through the site from south to northeast. Farm buildings (part of Potash Farm) along the southwest part of the circuit date from the 17th century, and in the 19th century two cottages (known as Latimer Cottages) were built to the southeast of the centre of the enclosure. The site became a scheduled monument in 1976.
The ditch circuits, as revealed by cropmarks, consist of two concentric circles, with numerous gaps in the ditches. Cropmarks also show faint traces of a line between the circuits which may indicate where a palisade once stood, though this is only clear in the north and northeastern parts of the circuit. The remains of a rectangular structure, 37 by 9 m (121 by 30 ft), can be detected within the enclosure in the northeastern corner. The structure has not been dated, but it is likely to be either a Neolithic longhouse or an Anglo-Saxon hall. Few such buildings have been found, and either would make Freston a site of "potentially national importance", according to English Heritage. If it is a longhouse, it could have been built either before or after the enclosure was constructed.
The enclosure is 8.55 ha (21.1 acres) in area, which makes it one of the largest causewayed enclosures in Britain. The short sections of the ditch that have been excavated were found to be well over 2 m (6.6 ft) deep, significantly deeper than those of other nearby enclosures. The excavators calculated that, if the ditches were all equally deep, they would have taken between 2,800 and 4,200 person-days to dig, and stated that the project would have been "one of the greatest Early Neolithic engineering works of East Anglia". Freston appears to have at least two and perhaps as many as five entrances, defined as places where wide causeways line up in both circuits to make a broad path to the interior of the site. Another possible explanation for some of the gaps in the circuit, where no cropmarks can be seen, is that the spring in the centre of the site may have periodically overflowed, carving an east-west channel which has since filled in, and eliminating the cropmarks that might have appeared at the points where the stream crossed the circuit. The site has no features that are visible above ground; all banks and ditches have been levelled by ploughing, perhaps as long as 2,000 years ago.
Neolithic farmers began to reach Britain in about 4050 BC, spreading from mainland Europe across the English Channel, and reaching southeastern England, including Suffolk, early in this migration. Freston is about 13 km (8 mi) from the sea; it would have been about 18 km (11 mi) from the sea at the start of the Neolithic. The location between two river valleys would have made it more easily accessible to the groups that crossed by sea from mainland Europe, and a spring within the enclosure would have made the site attractive—for practical reasons, and perhaps also for the ritual or symbolic significance of springs.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that the inner ditch was built between 3800 and 3500 BC, with the most likely period around 3700 BC. The palisade was probably added some time after the initial construction of the enclosure, and the rectangular structure at the northeast corner of the enclosure was also probably constructed some time after the ditches were dug.


Aerial photographs taken by the Royal Air Force in 1944 showed no sign of cropmarks; the site is partly visible in a series of photographs taken in 1966 by the Ordnance Survey, but was not noticed at the time. The site was discovered in 1969 by J. K. St Joseph, who ran the Cambridge University Committee for Aerial Photography (CUCAP) program for many years; he identified it on a reconnaissance flight that year and took aerial photographs that recorded cropmarks in the northern part of the site. Further photography was undertaken in the 1970s by CUCAP and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME). The site was included on a list of sixteen possible causewayed enclosures based on observed cropmarks published in 1975. Fieldwalking (surveying the site on foot) in the winter of 1979–1980 and again in 1985 found some worked flint, including an arrowhead, pot boilers, blades, and flint flakes. In 1995 Carolyn Dyer of the Air Photography Unit of the RCHME used aerial photographs to create a map of the site showing the cropmarks overlaid on the local topography.
In 2007 a geophysical survey was performed on the northeastern quadrant of the enclosure, east of the B1080, using magnetometry and earth resistance measurements. The survey identified several possible pits, some of which could be Saxon sunken-featured buildings, though this will require excavation to confirm. The survey also found a linear feature that might be a Neolithic trackway, running past the rectangular structure in the northeast of the site. In November 2007 construction work on one of the cottages within the enclosure required archaeological monitoring, which identified a single flint from the diggings.
Although the site is a scheduled national monument, the area of the road that passes through it is not protected, and in 2010 the local electricity provider excavated a trench alongside the southern part of the road, to bury a cable that had been run overhead on telegraph poles. The excavation was monitored, and the removed soil examined for artefacts. Four sherds of pottery were found; two were thought to date to the Middle Bronze Age (about 1400 BC to 1000 BC), but the other two could not be dated. A total of 47 flints were recovered, dated from the early to late Neolithic. Three flakes were identified as a type of flint known to come from the Thames Basin.

Discovery, fieldwalking, and watching briefs


In 2018 a team from McMaster University began the Freston Archaeological Research Mission (FARM), a project designed to gather more information about the enclosure, and to contribute to the study of the cultural changes of the early Neolithic. That year Tristan Carter and Deanna Aubert of McMaster University conducted two weeks of fieldwalking on Latimer Field, a small part of which overlaps with the southeast quadrant of the site, to the east of the B1080. The finds were sparse compared to results from other Neolithic sites. Twelve flints were found, all of which were considered to date to the Early Neolithic, except for two gunflints, probably dating from the 17th or 18th century AD. Ceramic finds included a sherd of Thetford ware, dated to the 9th to 11th centuries AD, and some salt-glazed stoneware that was manufactured between 1400 and 1900 AD. Most sherds were from the 18th or 19th century. Other finds included glass from bottles, glasses, bowls and serving vessels; roof-tile fragments; and pieces of clay pipe stems. Most of the area that was surveyed lay outside the causewayed enclosure, and the low density of finds was consistent with the results of the geophysical survey in 2007, which had found "increased activity within the enclosure and very little activity outside it". The ceramic finds were spread more or less evenly across the field, rather than being more common near the cottages by the northwestern corner of the field, and this may have been from manuring practices in the 19th century. Manure from horses in London streets was swept up and sold to farms as fertiliser; the resulting product probably included street detritus such as broken pottery and clay pipe stems. Spreading the manure on a field could have resulted in the even distribution of finds seen in Latimer Field.
In 2019 a magnetometry and resistance survey was performed in the southeast quadrant, in preparation for a planned excavation of the site. The survey located both the inner and outer ditches, and a linear feature that was considered to be the remains of a palisade that ran between the two circuits. As with the 2007 survey of the northeast quadrant, multiple possible pits were identified. These were more frequent in the southern part of the survey area. The survey was limited by the presence of a metal fence which caused magnetic interference, and by the dry soil, which reduced the sensitivity of the resistance measurements. The results were used to select an area for excavation, and a more detailed resistance study was conducted on the area of the planned trench, without finding new features.
The site was excavated in 2019 by a team led by Carter. The main goals of the excavation were to prove that Freston was a causewayed enclosure, and to obtain material that could be used for radiocarbon dating. Since causewayed enclosures often have high densities of deposits at the ends of their ditches, the area of excavation was chosen to overlap a causeway in Latimer Field, so that the trench exposed the adjacent ditch termini for both the inner and outer circuit of ditches.
All four ditch termini (F1 to F4 in the diagram) were found where the cropmarks suggested they would be. The lowest layers in F1 and F2 (the termini of the inner circuit) contained clear evidence of deliberate deposits, including semi-complete pots. In F1's case, it was apparent that material had been placed in the ditch very soon after it had been dug. F4, one of the termini of the outer ditches, was partially excavated, but there was not enough time to go down past the upper layers. F11, a narrow feature in between F2 and F4, was thought to be part of the palisade trench. Four pits, labelled F5, F6, F8 and F15, were excavated; the two smallest (F8 and F15) might have been postholes, but there was not enough context to be sure of this. A ditch discovered at the south end of the trench had been identified on the geophysical survey, which showed that it ran for 70 m (230 ft). F14 was dug as a cross-section across this ditch, which runs north-to-south at that point. The ditch probably predated the causewayed enclosure and may have been dug next to a long barrow, a form of Neolithic burial mound. Several other features in the trench were either determined to be natural or could not be definitely identified as man-made.


Both F1 and F2, the inner ditch termini, were over two metres deep, and in both cases the upper half contained few finds, and probably consisted of soil that had washed into the ditches after the enclosure was abandoned. The lower half of each ditch was rich in finds.
The excavation produced 14.5 kg (32 lb) of pottery sherds, mostly from the enclosure ditches. Assessed as a ratio of finds to the length of the excavated ditch sections, this is higher than at the other causewayed enclosures in East Anglia that have been investigated: St. Osyth, Haddenham, and Kingsborough. The pottery finds included Mildenhall ware, a form of Neolithic pottery found in southern England that dates from the mid-fourth millennium BC. Flint finds mostly came from F1 and F2. Debris from knapping and retouching was plentiful, indicating that the flint tools were produced on-site, though some of this activity might have predated the construction of the enclosure. Most of the tools were blades, but four arrowheads were found, along with some other forms such as scrapers and piercers. Charcoal fragments were recovered, mostly from F5, one of the pits, but also from the other circular pits. The palisade trench F11, identified next to F2, contained oak charcoal, and it is possible that the palisade was made of oak. F15 may have been a posthole supporting one of the palisade timbers. Other plant remains included hazelnut shells and a smaller quantity of cereal grains; this is a common pattern in British Neolithic sites, but it is also possible that the acidic soil destroyed more of the grains. No animal or human bones were found, probably because of the high acidity of the soil.


The Frye Fire was a wildfire that burned 48,443 acres (19,604 ha) in Graham County, Arizona, United States, from June 7 to September 1, 2017. The fire was ignited by a lightning strike on Mount Graham, within the Coronado National Forest, and spread rapidly until it was mostly contained on July 12. The Frye Fire destroyed three buildings, briefly threatened the Mount Graham International Observatory, cost $26 million to contain (equivalent to $33 million in 2024) and suppress, and involved more than 800 firefighters. There were no fatalities, but 63 firefighters were quarantined as a result of a strep throat outbreak.
Beginning in July 2017, rains from the annual North American monsoon season washed sediments off mountain slopes in the Frye Fire's burn scar. This runoff, consisting of rainwater, ash, and debris, clogged creeks and damaged infrastructure within Graham County. The fire particularly affected the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel, whose remaining habitat on Mount Graham was devastated.


Wildfires are a natural part of the ecological cycle of the Southwestern United States. The Frye Fire was one of 2,321 wildfires that burned 429,564 acres (173,838 ha) in Arizona in 2017. Arizona State Forester Jeff Whitney expected a typical season in the state's northern forests but one with high fire potential in the state's southern grasslands because of high temperatures, low humidity, and an abundance of fuels. By August 2017, wildfires had burned the most land since the 2011 season.


On June 7, 2017, lightning struck a portion of chaparral on Mount Graham in the Coronado National Forest and Graham County, Arizona, which had not burned since the Nuttall Complex Fire in 2004. By June 9, an area of 15–20 acres (6.1–8.1 ha) was on fire, and the flames were spreading in the direction of the Frye Mesa Reservoir. The United States Forest Service (USFS) closed trails near the fire and began fire suppression, which was complicated by difficult terrain. The burned area grew from 630 acres (250 ha) by June 13 to 6,305 acres (2,552 ha) by June 18. The USFS closed all campgrounds and trails in the Pinaleño Mountains within the Coronado National Forest on June 19.
Beginning on June 18, an enlarged force of over 300 firefighters focused on preventing the Frye Fire from reaching the Mount Graham International Observatory (MGIO). Over the next day the fire spread towards but did not reach the MGIO; Pavel Gabor, Vice Director of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), stated that fires had reached to within 30 ft (9 m) of the VATT. On June 24, the Frye Fire was pushed back from the MGIO and was estimated to be 29 percent contained, but the burned area had grown to 35,569 acres (14,394 ha).
On June 23, Doug Ducey, Governor of Arizona, declared a state of emergency in Graham County, securing additional state and federal aid for containing the Frye Fire. Firefighters made progress on containing the spread of the Frye Fire on June 25 and June 26, which allowed Gabor to inspect the VATT on June 27 and report that the facility had sustained no heat or smoke damage. From June 27 to July 12 the Frye Fire grew from 38,395 acres (15,538 ha) to 48,443 acres (19,604 ha). The fire was 88 percent contained by July 12. Recreational areas within the Coronado National Forest began reopening on July 13. By July 17 the fire had not grown any further and firefighters were demobilized to contain other wildfires.


On June 17, the USFS announced that an outbreak of streptococcal pharyngitis (strep throat) had begun among the firefighters assigned to contain the Frye Fire. Tucson-based ABC affiliate KGUN-TV reported on June 18 that 21 firefighters had been quarantined; other local news organizations quoted a USFS spokesman who reported a total of 45 cases. According to a report published by the Wildfire Lessons Learned Center (WLLC), a federally-funded research database, quarantine of personnel showing strep throat symptoms, regular testing for strep throat, and regular disinfection of equipment began on June 16. No new cases were detected after June 16; 300 people were exposed to strep throat, of which 63 individuals were quarantined. During the 2020 Western United States wildfire season and the concurrent COVID-19 pandemic, the WLLC and some news publications highlighted the Frye Fire strep throat outbreak as an example of how to effectively contain outbreaks of infectious diseases in firefighting camps.


The Frye Fire burned 48,443 acres (19,604 ha) over 86 days, growing to its greatest extent on July 12, and cost $26 million (equivalent to $33 million in 2024) to suppress. Of the total area burned, 13 percent suffered total foliage mortality. Three structures were damaged or destroyed by the Frye Fire. More than 800 firefighters worked to contain the Frye Fire at its height.
By July 18, a USFS Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team began assessing the environmental and civic risks posed by the Frye Fire's burn scar. They released a report on July 20 that recommended stabilizing soil deprived of understory and the clearing of roads of drainages. At the same time, Graham County officials issued warnings about severe, damaging floods as annual monsoon rains were expected to wash unsecured, burned soil out of the Frye Fire's burn scar. Those monsoon rains arrived by July 19 and washed surface runoff laden with ash into nearby communities, prompting the Coronado National Forest to delay reopening and the closure on July 31 of Arizona State Route 366 (SR 366) after it was damaged by runoff. Two homes were damaged on July 31 when Ash Creek overflowed and was partially filled in with sediments washed out of the burn scar. On August 11, the Ash Creek flooding threatened to shut down the town of Pima's sewage system.
The Coronado National Forest secured funding for the implementation of the BAER team's suggestions on July 23, which included aerially reseeding 1,023 acres (414 ha) of the most severely burned parts of the Frye Fire burn scar. By August 10, 57,000 lb (26,000 kg) of sterile barley seeds were dropped over this area to stabilize the ground and allow native grasses to grow and replace the barley. On August 9, a bridge and culvert over Wet Canyon on Mount Graham, which had been damaged by runoff and debris from the burn scar, was demolished to open Wet Canyon as a drainage. Cleanup of Ash Creek and construction of water management infrastructure in and around Pima lasted into September 2017; SR 366 reopened on September 14. In July 2021, the USFS and Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management began to employ inmates from the Fort Grant state prison in a three-year project to restore trails on Mount Graham.


The Frye Fire had a traumatic effect on the Mount Graham red squirrel, an endangered subspecies of the American red squirrel that lost most of its habitat and population to the fire. According to a report published by the Arizona Game and Fish Department on October 17, 2017, the Mount Graham red squirrel's population had been reduced from 252 squirrels in 2016 to 35 squirrels. The Mount Graham red squirrel was expected to go extinct in 2017 because of this decimation, loss of habitat, predation, and competition with other squirrel species. Following efforts to restore its habitat in 2018, the population of Mount Graham red squirrels rose to 67. As of December 2022, the Mount Graham red squirrel has still not recovered to its pre-Frye Fire population.


Gao Qifeng (Chinese: 高奇峰; pinyin: Gāo Qífēng; 13 June 1889 – 2 November 1933) was a Chinese painter who co-founded the Lingnan School with his older brother Gao Jianfu and fellow artist Chen Shuren. Orphaned at a young age, Gao spent much of his childhood following Jianfu, learning the techniques of Ju Lian before travelling to Tokyo in 1907 to study Western and Japanese painting. While abroad, Gao joined the revolutionary organization Tongmenghui to challenge the Qing dynasty; after he returned to China, he published the nationalist magazine The True Record, which later fell afoul of the Beiyang government. Although offered a position in the Republic of China, Gao chose to focus on his art. He moved to Guangzhou in 1918, taking a series of teaching positions that culminated with an honorary professorship at Lingnan University in 1925. Falling ill in 1929, Gao left the city for Ersha Island, where he took students and established the Tianfang Studio.
In his painting, Gao blended traditional Chinese approaches with foreign ones, using Japanese techniques for light and shadow as well as Western understandings of geometry and perspective. Although he painted landscapes and figures, he is most recognized for his paintings of animals, particularly eagles, lions, and tigers. In his brushwork, he combined the vigour of his brother's technique with the elegance of Chen's. Gao taught numerous students, including Chao Shao-an and Huang Shaoqiang; he was particularly close to Zhang Kunyi, with whom he may have been romantically involved.


Gao was born Gao Weng (高嵡) in Yuangang Township, Panyu County, Guangdong, on 13 June 1889. The family was poor, and his father Boxiang died in 1895; his mother followed two years later. A sickly child, Gao was sent to live with a relative. One of six brothers, he ultimately became the ward of his brother Jianfu – ten years his elder – and followed him into the arts.
In his youth, Gao learned the water infusion and "boneless" painting techniques employed by Ju Lian. Sources disagree to the provenance of this knowledge. Gao Jianfu is known to have studied under Ju at his Xiaoyue Qin Pavilion, and thus he is often attributed as teaching them to his brother. Others have suggested that Gao Qifeng studied directly with Ju. No archival material has been found to support the latter scenario, and Ralph Croizier notes in his study of the Lingnan School that, if true, Gao studied under Ju only briefly.
Gao attended a Christian school by the age of fourteen, and later converted to Christianity. In the mid-1900s, he took an apprenticeship with Pastor Wu Shiqing, painting lampshades at his Yongming Zhai glass shop. He later worked with Wu's brother Jinghun to open another storefront. As an adult, he took the courtesy name Qifeng. On his early paintings, he used the art name Fei Pu (飞瀑); the seal with which he signed his paintings was marked Fei Pu Sketching.


In 1907, Gao travelled to Tokyo with his brother to further study art. While Jianfu was enrolled at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Gao became a student of Tanaka Raishō; he appears to have also drawn influence from artists such as Takeuchi Seihō and Hashimoto Kansetsu. All of these artists promoted the nihonga style, which blended Western techniques with Japanese ones. Through his studies, Gao learned Western approaches to perspective and sketching and became familiar with the works of the Kyoto school. He developed a style that blended these various influences, seeking to combine the naturalism of Western art with the lyricism and philosophy of traditional Chinese painting.


After returning to China in 1908, the Gao brothers moved to Nanhai. Gao Qifeng became a teacher at the Nanhai Middle School, while also learning psychology and sociology, holding that the truth, goodness, and beauty of art could better address the human condition with insight into the problems of society. Teaching art, Gao believed, would allow the transmission of a better understanding of ethics and social conditions. In 1908, he donated several paintings to a fundraiser for flooding victims in western Guangdong.
In Japan, the Gao brothers had joined the Tongmenghui, an organization established to overthrow the Qing dynasty. Gao Jianfu arranged the assassinations of several Qing leaders, with the death of General Fengshan attributed to a painter whom he had recruited; Gao Qifeng may also have been involved in this cell, and his friend and fellow revolutionary Wang Jingwei recalled him sleeping soundly in a room full of explosives. After the 1911 Revolution, the brothers were offered positions in the new Republic of China by Tongmenghui leader Sun Yat-sen, but declined.
Instead, the Gao brothers moved to Shanghai and established The True Record, a large-format magazine that consisted of pictures, paintings, cartoons, chronicle paintings, essays, reviews, and sketches. This nationalist magazine, subsidized in part by the new government, published seventeen issues between June 1912 and March or April 1913, with Gao Qifeng as the editor-in-chief. The Gaos believed that pictorials could best "arouse people's patriotic thoughts and support the order of social progress". In essays, the brothers called for the creation of a new approach to art, as well as improvements in art education; other parts of the magazine offered news and social commentary. They also decried the increasingly authoritarian Beiyang government.
Gao – writing with Xie Yingbo and Ma Xiaojin – published an article in 1913 implicating Provisional President Yuan Shikai in the assassination of nationalist leader Song Jiaoren. According to the writer Cai Dengshan, Yuan thus issued a warrant for their arrest, and Gao began a self-imposed exile in Japan. This claim is not supported universally among scholars, though Gao is thought to have spent time learning woodblock printing in Japan. As the decade continued and China's nascent democracy devolved into corruption and warlordism, Jianfu grew disenchanted with politics; the art critic Li Yuzhong suggests that Qifeng was likely influenced by his brother in this regard.
In the 1910s, the Gaos had established the Aesthetic Institute, a combined gallery, exhibition hall, and publishing house, in Shanghai. Through the bookstore, they sold reproductions of Chinese and Western paintings, including their own works. As the decade continued, Gao devoted himself exclusively to painting and teaching. He moved to Guangzhou in 1918 to lead the Art and Printmaking Department at the Class A Industrial School. He also established the Aesthetics Museum on Fuxue West Street. In 1925, Gao was made an honorary professor at Lingnan University (now part of Sun Yat-sen University). He was provided land upon which he built a studio; according to the curator Christina Chu, these were his most productive years.
Through the 1920s, Gao gained increasing recognition for his artwork, and he was frequently featured in The Young Companion, a bilingual pictorial magazine published in Shanghai. Prior to the construction of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, Gao was asked to contribute three of his works: Sea Eagle (海鷹), White Horse in the Autumn River (秋江白馬), and Lion (雄獅); during his lifetime, Sun Yat-sen had expressed a fondness for these paintings, none of which has survived.


Around 1929, Gao fell ill with pneumonia and removed himself from the city to recover, being admitted to the Zhujiang Nursing Home on Ersha Island in the Pearl River. After a year, Gao was released, choosing to establish the Tianfang Studio on the island to continue his work. There, he taught numerous students, with the seven most famous becoming known as the Tianfeng Seven. However, Gao remained sickly, and his productivity suffered; he only made one trip, to Guilin in 1931, to find new inspirations and materials.
In 1933, an exhibition of contemporary Chinese painting was scheduled in Berlin. Gao was selected as a government representative, and asked to travel to Shanghai for a preliminary meeting. On the ship from Guangzhou, Gao fell ill, and his fellow passenger Ye Gongchuo sought medical attention. Gao was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and after the ship arrived in Shanghai he was brought to Dahua Hospital.
Gao died on 2 November 1933, aged 44. Before his death, he had asked that his artworks be donated to museums and that his Tianfeng Pavilion art studio be maintained as the Qifeng Painting Academy. Per his request, funeral preparations were handled by his student Fan Tchunpi. A memorial service was held at the China Funeral Parlor on Haige Road (now Huashan Road), attended by artists such as Chen Shuren and Ye Gongchuo, as well as politicians such as Wang Jingwei, Cai Yuanpei, and Wu Tiecheng. Other tributes came from Sun Fo, Ju Zheng, and Zhang Ji. Gao's body was subsequently escorted by his student Zhang Kunyi to Guangdong, where he was interred at the Christian Cemetery in Henan; the national government contributed 2,000 yuan (equivalent to ¥197,000 in 2019) to cover expenses.
Zhang pushed for the state to give Gao recognition, finding support from numerous prominent politicians, including Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, and Yu Youren. They petitioned for Gao to be reinterred closer to the national capital in Nanjing, arguing that he deserved the recognition due to his contributions to the country as well as his artistic skill. This petition was heeded, and Gao was reinterred at Qixia Mountain on 27 December 1936. A mausoleum was erected, as was a marker bearing an inscription by then-President Lin Sen: "The Tomb of Mr. Gao Qifeng, the Sage of Painting".


Gao is recognized, together with his brother Jianfu and fellow Ju Lian student Chen Shuren, as a founder of the Lingnan School of painting. All three shared similar backgrounds, and drew on Western influences in their art, believing that synthesis was necessary to preserve Chinese tradition while creating a new style of "national painting" suited for modern times. Among Gao's students were Zhang Kunyi, Zhou Yifeng, Ye Shaobing, He Qiyuan, Rong Shushi, Huang Shaoqiang, and Chao Shao-an. These students, later known as the Tianfeng Seven as they had studied at the studio, continued to spread the influence of the Lingnan School. Several of them later settled in Hong Kong and Macau, bringing the school and its teachings to these territories.
Gao had five brothers: Guiting (桂庭), Lingsheng (灵生), Guantian (冠天), Jianfu (剑父), and Jianseng (剑僧); Lingsheng had been born to Gao Boxiang's second wife. Guantian had been a partner in the Aesthetic Institute, though he was not an artist. Another brother, Jianseng, travelled to Japan in 1911, and as with Qifeng and Jianfu developed a style that blended Japanese, Western, and traditional Chinese art. He died in 1916, not having gained the same prestige.
Gao married the Suzhou-born Yang Cuixing in 1915 and had a daughter named Liandi the following year. The marriage ended in 1921 when Gao's wife took their daughter and left. Cai Dengshan attributes this to Gao's devoting himself entirely to art.
Gao had a close relationship with his student Zhang Kunyi, who has been described as his goddaughter or adopted daughter, but was also rumoured to have been his lover. Gao dedicated several paintings to her in the late 1920s. She, meanwhile, moved in with Gao despite being married. After he became ill, she tended to him, handled the housework, and studied art under him. Cai Dengshan writes that, after Gao's death, Zhang was so distraught that she mixed her tears with powder to paint plum blossoms, using her own blood for the sepals; he attributes this to filial piety. Gao Jianfu's student Zheng Danran recalled that the Gao brothers had a falling out, which he attributed to Qifeng's relationship with Zhang. In the 1940s, Zhang arranged for ninety of Gao's works to be brought on a touring exhibition through the United States and Canada.


Stylistically, Gao Qifeng had many similarities with Gao Jianfu and Chen Shuren, the other founders of the Lingnan School. All three had learned the techniques of Ju Lian, and all three had spent time in Japan learning Japanese and Western approaches to painting. Collectively, these artists sought a balance between innovation and tradition, absorbing new ideas while keeping Chinese techniques foundational. In their early years, the Gaos both drew extensively from contemporary Japanese art, with Croizier noting "strong stylistic evidence" that Gao Qifeng had attended the Japan Fine Arts Exhibition and imitated works presented therein. All embraced, to varying extents, the "boneless" technique. Likewise, all produced works that combined traditional Chinese techniques with Western understandings of perspective and chiaroscuro, thereby blending romanticism and realism.


They also had their individual styles, with Chen remarking to Jianfu, "You partake of the strange and marvelous; I of the orthodox; Mr. Qifeng maintains a middle position." Cai Dengshan agrees, writing that, where Jianfu employed a majestic and innovative approach and Chen's style was dignified and elegant, Qifeng balanced the strengths of both of his peers. Similarly, Li notes that Gao blended the vigour of his brother's brushstrokes with the elegance of Chen's. Croizier writes that, of the three, Gao Qifeng was the most strongly influenced by their Japanese training, with a proclivity for broad ink washes and strong tonal contrasts reminiscent of the Shijō school. Each artist favoured different subjects, with Gao Qifeng being best known for his beasts, Gao Jianfu for his landscapes, and Chen for his bird-and-flower scenes.
Gao Qifeng's works tend to fetch higher prices than those of the other Lingnan masters. As of 2014, his most expensive painting is Lion (雄狮, 1915), which was sold by China Guardian in 2010 for 6.72 million yuan (US$993,000). At Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2004, his Four Landscape Screens (山水四屏) sold for 3.982 million Hong Kong dollars (US$511,300). That same year, Beijing Hanhai sold Gao's Pine and Monkey (松猿图) for 1.32 million yuan (US$159,000). The higher auction prices of Gao's works may be attributed, at least in part, to their relative paucity compared to those of his longer-lived peers.


I [...] picked out the finest points of Western art, such as the masterful strokes of the pen, composition, inking, coloring, inspiring background, poetic romance, etc. and applied them to my Chinese techniques. In short, I tried to retain what was exquisite in the Chinese art of painting, and at the same time to adopt the best methods of composition which the world's art schools had to offer, thereby blending the East and the West into a harmonious whole.
As with his peers, Gao drew from diverse sources. His paintings show the influence of Ju Lian and his relative Chao, though not as prominently as in those of Gao Jianfu. These influences are most evident in his earliest works, which employ water infusion and the "boneless" technique while leaving the backgrounds as negative space. After his interactions with the nihonga school, Gao began to blend traditional Chinese approaches to painting with foreign ones, sketching his subjects before rendering them with ink and colour. His use of light and shadow reflects Japanese tradition, while his understandings of geometry and perspective draw from Western ones. Gao's later works employed a more freehand approach, with the paintings produced after his illness being described as direct and straightforward, with reduced narrative and little diversity in colour. According to Croizier, they appear rougher yet more intimate, with meticulous detail giving way to more spontaneous imagery.
According to Li Gongming of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Gao favoured vigorous yet delicate brushwork and vivid images. He used these primarily to depict flora and fauna in a naturalistic manner; his depictions of eagles, lions, and tigers are particularly celebrated. Li Yuzhong suggests that Gao's angry lions and roaring tigers evoke a "bold and unyielding spirit", while Sun Yat-sen deemed his depictions of animals to reflect a revolutionary spirit. Croizier describes Gao as the Lingnan School's premiere painter of tigers, employing a painstaking realism that implies a deep absorption of Meiji-era techniques, though he also showed great skill with large birds.
Landscapes and figures are also attested in Gao's oeuvre. Several works depict moonlit nights and winter snows, which Cai Dengshan describes as often having a "delicate, graceful, crystal clear, and clean charm". However, pure landscapes are rare, as Gao's images of trees – some of which were completed with the assistance of his brother – and riverbanks are used as settings for animal subjects. "Boneless" colour washes are common in these works. His figures, meanwhile, are mostly religious, and include holy figures such as Bodhidharma, though a portrait of the poet Li Bai after Liang Kai is known.


On 18 February 1478, George, Duke of Clarence, was executed in the Tower of London following his conviction for high treason in parliament. Tradition has it that he was drowned in a butt of malmsey, by order of his brother, King Edward IV. Relations between Clarence and the King had been tempestuous for several years. They had fallen out in the late 1460s when the Duke defied his brother and married Isabel, daughter of Richard, Earl of Warwick, then joined the Earl's ill-fated rebellion in 1470. Although Clarence had returned to his brother's side the following year, his authority over his Midlands and Welsh March heartlands gradually declined. For this, Edward was partially responsible, as he had liberally recruited from his brother's tenantry. The King had also promoted his in-laws—personal enemies of Clarence—often at the Duke's expense.
In December 1476, Isabel died in Tewkesbury following childbirth, as did their newly-born son a few days later. Historians have speculated that Clarence now became near deranged with grief, and that he came to imagine she had been poisoned. The following April he sent an armed force to arrest one of her ladies, Ankarette Twynho, in Frome, Somerset. A servant of Clarence's, John Thursby, was accused of poisoning the Duke and Duchess's newly-born son. Another man, Roger Tocotes, was accused of harbouring them, but evaded arrest. Twynho and Thursby were found guilty and immediately executed. The following month, in response, the King ordered an investigation into possible treason among some of Clarence's closest retainers and servants. This resulted in the execution of two of the Duke's associates, Thomas Burdet and John Stacy. Clarence publicly disputed the findings of the commission, and this, and other allegations, led to his own arrest and eventual execution.
Historians have generally considered Clarence's fall from power to have been the direct result of his abuse of his feudal authority and usurping of the King's justice. While none consider Clarence's actions as justifiable, differing motives have been presented. His original attack on Twynho, Tocotes and Thursby has been variously been put down to either petulance or a lack of mental stability. The executions, in turn, were probably a symptom of his declining authority. Haemorrhaging support as his affinity was, Clarence may have intended both a show of strength and a warning to his followers not to betray him.

Fall of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence


Relations between King Edward IV of England and his brother George, Duke of Clarence, had been fraught since the late 1460s, when Clarence had drifted into the orbit of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who himself had become increasingly dissatisfied with Edward's rule. Originally Warwick's protégé—the Earl had been largely responsible for Edward's accession in 1461—Edward had become increasingly independent. In 1464, he angered Warwick by marrying Elizabeth Woodville, whom the Earl saw as being from a parvenu family, and thus a marriage against the country's interests. In 1469, Warwick had rebelled; Clarence was by now his ally, as Edward had tried to prevent the Duke's marriage to Warwick's daughter Isabel. Although Clarence had returned to Edward's side in 1471, and fought with him against Warwick at the Battle of Barnet, he was no longer fully trusted.
The Midlands was the heart of Clarence's power in the 1470s. Since 1473, it had become his primary residence, and he went out of his way to recruit local families traditionally loyal to the Beauchamp earls of Warwick. Notwithstanding the Duke's efforts, his authority was slowly being eroded, mainly through the competitive recruitment of his tenants by other nobles and the King himself. The power of William, Lord Hastings—a new favourite of the King—had been gradually increased in the Midlands at the Duke's expense, who had lost the Honour of Tutbury to him. The King appears to have been dismayed at Clarence's inability to rule the region effectively and regularly intervened to buttress his brother's power in the region. His having to do so emphasised Clarence's own ineffectualness. This regional weakness was in part due to Edward's own policy of appointing castellans to Duchy of Lancaster (i.e. royal) castles surrounding the Duke's lands, encircling him with men loyal to the King rather than the Duke. Clarence was also jealous of the power of his and Edward's younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, while the Woodvilles encroached on his Marcher lands, where they were building a regional hegemony.


By the early 1470s, suggests the historian Charles Ross, the two brothers were on "thoroughly hostile terms". The Croyland Chronicle reports that both parties had spies in the other's household—whom the chronicler calls "flatterers"—reporting back on the private conversations of the other and that Edward and Clarence "now each began to look upon the other with no very fraternal eyes".


Clarence and Isabel already had a son, Edward, and on 5 October 1476 in Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire, Isabel gave birth to another, whom they named Richard. Contemporary reports suggest she looked healthy in the period immediately after the birth. Clarence took her back to Warwick Castle on 12 November, but she may have become ill. Contemporaries—including the Abbey's own chronicler—believed Isabel to be suffering a postpartum illness. She died on 22 December 1476, aged 25. By then her death appears to have been expected. In a double blow, Richard died eight days later on 1 January.
Isabel was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, accompanied by "elaborate obsequies" and a month-long lying in state, with vigils and funerary masses. Richard was buried in Warwick Castle with less fanfare. Clarence may have been suspicious that the deaths of two people close to him―possibly by poison―in such a short space of time were not a coincidence. But if so, he did not immediately act upon his suspicions, and it is possible that he had to travel to Ireland in the meantime, where he was lord lieutenant.
It is curious, suggests the medievalist John Ashdown-Hill, that the deaths of Isabel and her son occurred at such different lengths of time following their supposed ingestion of poison. According to the later charge, Isabel was poisoned on 10 October 1476, but did not die until 22 December, a period of 73 days. Their son Richard was supposed to have been poisoned on 21 December 1476 and to have died on 1 January, a period of only 11 days. Ashdown-Hill explains this by suggesting that October was actually a scribal error for December, in which case she died the day, possibly a few hours, after her son. This would also explain why Isabel was erroneously said to have been at Warwick when she was actually in Tewkesbury.


Ankarette Twynho was seized at her house in Keyford, near Frome, on 12 April 1477; Clarence may have believed her to be a witch. The historian Michael Hicks has called the method of Twynho's arrest "highly irregular" and it has been compared to an abduction. She was taken 90 mi (140 km)—across three shires—in three days. For context, this was akin to the speed with which some of the most important political news of the previous 20 years had travelled. For example, the report of the dumping of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk's murdered body on the Dover shore on 2 May 1450 arrived in London on 4 May. This was a distance of approximately 70 mi (110 km), averaging 35 mi (56 km) a day. Similarly, in 1455, news of the murder of Nicholas Radford in Devon took five days to travel the 185 mi (298 km) from Exeter to London, averaging 37 mi (60 km) a day.


Ankarette Twynho and her husband William, who had died by 1476, were minor Somerset gentry. William had been a long-term Clarence retainer, while Twynho had been in the Duchess of Clarence's service until her death, possibly as a lady's maid. She had a role caring for Isabel after Richard's birth but seems not to have been a midwife nor involved in the birth itself. It seems unlikely that Twynho accompanied her mistress to Warwick.
Accused with Twynho was one John Thursby, a politically insignificant Warwickshire yeoman. He was charged with poisoning baby Richard, in whose service he had been. Another man, Sir Roger Tocotes, was accused by Clarence of aiding, abetting and harbouring the criminals, and possibly of orchestrating the whole plot. He managed to avoid capture. Of the three accused, Tocotes was the most important; he was brother-in-law to the influential ecclesiastic Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, whose executor he was to be. By 1477, he was a knight banneret and had twice been Member of Parliament for Wiltshire and sheriff.
Tocotes is known to have been in Clarence's inner circle from 1468. A close personal friend, "nobody was a more constant associate of the Duke of Clarence in adversity or prosperity", according to Michael Hicks. As such, Hicks suggests, "a more improbable object of Clarence's hostility it is difficult to imagine".


Clarence forbade Twynho's daughter and son-in-law from entering Warwick, and they had to await news in Stratford-upon-Avon. Twynho was stripped of her jewels and money and imprisoned in the castle. On Tuesday 15th, with Thursby, she was tried in the guildhall. She was charged with veneficium, by giving Isabel "a venomous drink of ale mixed with poison". The killing of a master or mistress by a servant was legally petty treason; Twynho pleaded not guilty. Thursby was accused of poisoning Richard, also with bad ale. The trial was brief. The Duke was present for the proceedings, and may even have led the prosecution.


Twynho and Thursby were found guilty; there was only one penalty. Sentenced to death, they were to be "led from the bar to the said lord King's gaol of Warwick aforesaid, and drawn from that gaol through the centre of that town of Warwick to the gallows at Myton, and be hanged there on that gallows until ... dead". Before Twynho was taken from the castle for the last time, several jurors visited her in remorse. They explained how being in fear of the Duke, they came to a judgment "contrary to their conscience". The Parliament Roll later recorded thatDiverse of the same Jurre, after the said Judgment goven, came to the seid Ankarette, havyng grete remorce in their consciens, knowyng they hadde goven an untrue Verdyt in that behalf, humbly and pituously asked forgefnes thereof of the seid Ankarette...
Both Twynho and Thursby were "drawn at the horse's tail" through Warwick to their execution. This had been carried out by noon; between arraignment and death less than three hours had passed.


As Warwick was the Duke's caput baroniae, it was unlikely that the accused would receive a fair trial. Clarence could bring influence to bear both on jurors—four of whom were his tenants from Warwick and Solihull—and on the justices. All of these were local men. Hicks argues that "undue pressure" was undoubtedly required to reach the verdicts Clarence wanted. The historian A. J. Pollard has called it a kangaroo court, with Clarence acting, a contemporary record says, "as though he had used a Kyng's power".
It is possible that the Duke deliberately altered the chronology of events, depending on whether October was a scribal error for December when the charges were read. Twynho was accused of committing the crime while she and Isabel were at Warwick Castle—thus allowing the Duke to try her there—although contemporaneous evidence indicates that the Duchess was at Tewkesbury until mid-November. To gain the verdicts he needed, Clarence probably engineered proceedings, and if he deliberately changed December to October in the charges, then he also fabricated evidence. Further, all the responsible officials were his men. These included not only the county clerk, but also the justices of the bench, John Hugford and Henry Boteler. The latter were the Duke's current and former retainers respectively. On these grounds, suggests the historian Christine Carpenter, the indictments were most improper.
Addressing the possibility that Clarence's suspicions were correct, Hicks considers it unlikely that Isabel was poisoned at all because it took so long for her to die: there were no contemporary poisons capable of producing such a protracted death. He suggests that the Duke was guilty of embracery at the least, and Twynho's original arrest and detention was probably illegal also since the royal commission later referred to "the unlawful taking of Ankarette through three shires". On the other hand, the speed with which proceedings had been conducted—and the swiftness to execution—"about which the petitioner also complained might have been unfair, but it was not illegal", says the legal scholar John Bellamy. Even the charge of embracery is not watertight; as a member of the Warwickshire bench, recommending a verdict to a jury was within the Duke's remit.


In what the scholar Cora Scofield calls "revenge ... in a manner scarcely less extraordinary" than the Duke's own, and what may have been a subtle warning to Clarence, the King instructed a commission of 17 lay magnates to investigate the judicial proceedings. Investigation swiftly led to an Oxford University clerk called John Stacy, a prominent alchemist, alleged astrologer and magnus necromanticus, or great sorcerer. Contemporaries suspected him of practising the dark arts, and it was known he had predicted the death of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk. Stacy—under acerrimum examen, literally, "severe examination" (i.e. torture)—in turn implicated Thomas Burdet of Arowe, a member of Clarence's household. Burdet had supposedly turned against the King after he had hunted in Burdet's park and killed his favourite white buck. Following Stacy's confession, Burdet and another Oxford clerk, Thomas Blake, were arrested. The commission condemned all three. In what Ross has called a "staged political trial", they were found guilty of "calculat[ing] by art magic, astronomy, and necromancy" the fates of the King and his heir, and thereby "'imagining and compassing' the King's death" with incantations over a three-year period. This was high treason. Blake was reprieved after a petition from the Bishop of Norwich, but Burdet and Stacy, still protesting their innocence, were taken to Tyburn the following day and hanged, drawn and quartered. The same day—and although two of the parties were by now dead—a writ of certiorari was dispatched to the sheriff of Warwick, transferring the Twynho-Thursby-Tocotes case to the King's Bench in Westminster. On learning of this writ—which removed the danger of his arrest by the Duke—Sir Roger Tocotes surrendered himself to the Marshalsea Prison; he was later acquitted of complicity in the death of the Duchess.
Clarence proclaimed Burdet innocent. Accompanied by the Minorite preacher Dr John Goddard, the Duke interrupted a royal council meeting while the King was in Windsor. Goddard read out Burdet's gallows statement. When Edward heard, reports Croyland, "he was greatly displeased and recalled information laid against his brother which he had long kept in his breast". An appeal to the King's council, however impromptu, was within the boundaries of acceptable political protest, particularly for a leading magnate. It was, though, unwise; in voicing his belief so publicly, Clarence associated himself with Burdet's treason. It was also near-treasonable to criticise the findings of a royal commission as this could be interpreted as a denunciation of royal justice, which to contemporaries was an extension of divine justice. Clarence's choice of spokesman was also unfortunate. Goddard was the priest who had publicly, and vehemently, advocated Henry VI's return to the throne in April 1470 at St Paul's Cathedral, after Edward had been forced into exile by Warwick and Clarence. Compounding his appearance of guilt, Clarence may have also been circulating rumours of the King's illegitimacy—rumours originally promulgated by him and Warwick in the late 1460s. This was also treason, as it implicitly alleged the illegitimacy of Edward's heir, thus endangering the succession.


Clarence felt that he had multiple legitimate reasons for unrest. Following his wife's death, he proposed that he should marry Duchess Mary of Burgundy. This proposal failed to gain the King's support, who prohibited the match; Croyland reports that "such an exalted destiny for an ungrateful brother was not to the liking of the King". Worse for Clarence, Edward proposed that their brother-in-law Earl Rivers marry Mary instead. While this match was never likely to come to fruition—Mary was already engaged to Maximilian, son of the Holy Roman Emperor—it furthered the Duke's discontent: Rivers was a Woodville, and to Clarence the whole family was an enemy. Worse, Edward also vetoed King James III of Scotland's suggestion—of which Clarence approved—that the Duke should marry James's sister Margaret. Hicks notes that, at this point, Clarence might justifiably have recalled how Edward had tried to prevent his first marriage too. The Duke at this point had done nothing new wrong: "the animosity was on the King's side".


In late June 1477, Clarence was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London on charges of usurping royal authority, or "violating the laws of the realm by threatening the safety of judges and jurors", states Bellamy. He remained in custody until parliament met in January 1478. Except for some minor business, this parliament—to which a large number of both royal and Woodville clients had got themselves elected—had been called expressly to attaint him of high treason. The trial and executions of Twynho and Thursby did not form part of the prosecution case, although during the course of the parliament, Roger Twynho successfully petitioned that the proceedings and verdict against his grandmother should be overturned. He was probably aided by several MPs connected to the case, who included John and William Twynho—sitting for Gloucester and Dorset respectively—and Robert Tocotes, Sir Roger's brother. Tocotes's brother-in-law, the bishop of Salisbury, was also sitting as a Lord spiritual.
The petition was politically opportune, as the King was unlikely to ignore an opportunity to discredit his brother further. Croyland reports how the parliament became a battle of wills between the brothers: "no one spoke against the Duke but the King, and no one answered but the Duke". Clarence, in desperation, offered to submit to trial by combat; his request was ignored. On top of the charges of spreading slander and usurping royal authority were further accusations. Clarence was alleged to have encouraged Edward's subjects to withdraw their allegiance from him. Clarence was also supposed to have claimed that the King poisoned his subjects—and had intended to poison the Duke—through necromancy. Clarence was accused of planning violent resistance to the King, ordering his men to be ready to fight at an hour's warning. He was also judged guilty himself of sorcery, and of scheming to usurp Edward's throne. Found guilty, Clarence was sentenced to death.
Although the King hesitated for several days, the sentence was carried out in a private execution within the Tower on 18 February 1478. Tradition has it, immortalised by Shakespeare in Richard III, that the Duke was drowned in a butt of malmsey, a sweet wine from Greece.
Although Clarence had procured the execution of Ankarette, John Twynho of Bristol seems to have remembered the Duke sympathetically despite the death of his kinswoman. In his will, proven in 1485, he left a silver cup to the Abbess of Shaftesbury inscribed venerabilis dux Clarencie ex sua benevolencia michi dedit ("given me by the Duke of Clarence in his benevolence").


Although a local affair, the Twynho case has attracted commentary from modern political and social historians. The folklorist George Kittredge called it a cause célèbre, while more recently Carpenter has described it and the subsequent arrests and execution of Burdet and Stacy as being of "considerable significance" at the time. To Hicks, Twynho's execution was judicial murder, and "one of the most flagrant abuses of noble power in late medieval England", and a blatant example of how an overmighty subject could abuse his position. Ross called it a "scandalous demonstration" of the misuse of magnate authority, while Rosemary Horrox cites Clarence's over-awing of the jury as a "classic symptom of bastard feudalism".


Clarence's degree of personal responsibility has also been discussed. Professor J. R. Lander found the charges against Twynho and Thursby too implausible to credit, calling them "fantastic". He blames Clarence's actions as the result of a "seriously disturbed mind". However, Hicks criticises this as "too facile a solution", as it effectively absolves Clarence of mens rea. He also argues that there is a contradiction, if Clarence was both sufficiently disturbed to believe in Twynho's guilt but sensible enough to recognise the weaknesses in the case and to stage-manage evidence. Conversely, David Hipshon considers Clarence to have been merely petulant (albeit to an "alarming degree").
Fleming also sees an interplay between the Twynho affair and national politics, although he considers the precise connection unclear. That previously loyal household servants such as Twynho and Thursby, and intimates as Tocotes, no longer felt the Duke's service provided security or the prospect of promotion is apparent. Members of Clarence's affinity were wavering in their loyalties; Carpenter comments that "even in this bastion of Warwick [Clarence's] power began to fall apart". It was alleged, for example, that he planned to send his son and heir, Edward, abroad to drum up support for his cause. His long-time servants John Harewood and John Tapton were supposedly to find a child, 'in likeness' of the Duke's own, and place him in Warwick Castle, and Edward taken to Ireland, Flanders or Burgundy. That Clarence could no longer rely on his word being faithfully obeyed is indicated by Harewood and Tapton's subsequent behaviour. Far from doing as the Duke requested, they immediately revealed his plans to the King. Ashdown-Hill has proposed an innocent explanation for Clarence to do so: that following the deaths of his wife and baby in quick succession, he was not only suspicious but also fearful of further deaths, and particularly the well-being of his two-year-old heir. Further indicating the loss of cohesion in Clarence's power base, Burdet—a personal squire—was himself betrayed by another Clarence retainer and "constant associate", Alexander Rushton, who had also been approached by Burdet and Stacy.
Even before their arrests, relations between Clarence and King had been under strain. Afterwards, it must have been clear that Clarence's fortunes were liable to break sooner rather than later. From the King's point of view, Clarence was proving to be completely ineffectual as a mighty lord in his own lands; now he had suborned royal justice and forced Edward's local royal officials to obey him rather than their King. This was despite Edward's having made law and order the centrepiece of his return to power in 1471.
Compared to Clarence, the Woodville family, headed by Queen Elizabeth, had grown powerful, and with the royal children growing up, their households were also increasing. For example, John Twynho, the Bristol recorder, joined the household of the Prince of Wales. Ankarette Twynho was unemployed after Isabel's death and would have presumably accepted employment with any lord or lady, while Tocotes had become Master of Game for the Queen. Hicks suggests that the possible disintegration of his affinity at the hands of his brother and in-laws was sufficient to drive Clarence to seek revenge; it also demonstrated "a talent for swift and ruthless action" in him. Carpenter agrees that the weakening of Clarence's authority in the Midlands was central to Clarence's response. He may have thought a dramatic demonstration of his power in his heartland would stop the bleeding of retainers to Hastings and Woodville. But, she comments, "if this was his purpose, the gesture was meaningless":


All Clarence had succeeded in showing was that by the use of military force near the heart of his domain he could overawe some of the middling gentry ... where, if he had been a real force, his word would normally have been law.
Hicks speculates that Clarence wanted to show he was not to be "trifled with", but in fact, by doing so, he helped prepare the way for his own downfall. Bellamy has argued that Clarence's wielding of the legal machinery for personal motives only caused the subsequent outcry it did because he was out of royal favour and with waning prospects. Clarence may have intended Twynho's execution as a lesson not just to the community at large but also a warning to his retainers on the penalties of betrayal. Bellamy also doubts whether there was any basis for the Duke's suspicions. By 1477, his behaviour was "quite irresponsible, even unbalanced". This included public insults to the King, such as ostentatiously dropping unicorn horn into his cup at a 1477 royal banquet, thus suggesting to observers that he was reluctant to trust the King. Carpenter also suggests that Clarence could quite possibly have become deranged, possibly delusional following the loss of his wife; there seems no doubt that his grief was genuine. Lander considers that Clarence's self-control—"never very strong"—completely collapsed. David Cook suggests that Clarence was motivated by "greed and resentment", while Hazel Pierce notes that Twynho could have been one of the so-called "flatterers" who reported Clarence's private statements to the King, if not directly, then possibly via men such as Tocotes. On this phenomenon, Croyland comments how You might then have seen (as such men are generally to be found in the courts of all princes), flatterers running to and fro, from the one side to the other, and carrying backwards and forwards the words which had fallen from the two brothers, even if they had happened to be spoken in the most secret closet.


DeLancey Walker Gill (July 1, 1859 – August 31, 1940) was an American drafter, landscape painter, and photographer. Gill first became noted for his landscape illustrations and watercolors, featuring subjects such as Native American pueblos in addition to his main focus on Washington, D.C. Characterized as detailed and meticulous in his landscapes, Gill captured views of working-class and rural areas of Washington not commonly depicted in art of the period. Despite his other work, he continued to paint throughout his life, and taught art classes at the Corcoran School.
Gill was employed as an illustrator and draftsman for the United States Treasury, followed by similar work for the United States Geological Survey. He was director of the Division of Illustration at the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) from 1889 to 1932. Following the resignation of two of the Smithsonian's photographers in 1898, Gill, while not trained in photography, took over these duties at the BAE. In this role, he produced thousands of photographs of Native American delegations for the Bureau, including notable figures such as Geronimo and Chief Joseph. Gill's photographic work was showcased in Smithsonian publications, the Panama–Pacific Exposition and on a 1923 postage stamp. His portraiture has been praised for its pictorialist qualities and strength of design. He frequently gave clothing (at times outdated or misattributed) to Native American delegates. While Gill's costuming of delegates was considered salvage ethnography in the period, it has been criticized in modern studies for reinforcing contemporary stereotypes and misrepresenting his subjects and their cultures.


Gill was born in Camden, South Carolina, on July 1, 1859. His father, William Harrison Gill, a merchant, was killed in action serving in the Confederate Army when DeLancey was five. Nine years later, his mother and stepfather moved to Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory. Gill chose instead to move in with an aunt in Washington, D.C. He briefly worked as a typesetter before finding employment as a draftsman for the Office of the Supervising Architect for the U.S. Treasury, specializing in ornamental ironwork and tiles.


While employed as a draftsman, Gill began a series of ink sketches and watercolor paintings, primarily of landscapes in Washington, D.C. He focused on capturing the villages of the district's rural periphery. Gill's sketches are a relatively rare depiction of poorer neighborhoods of Washington during the 1880s, including Black and immigrant communities. A detailed illustration of a shanty house, his only drawing showing an indoor environment, serves as an isolated example of the interiors of working-class housing in the city. Gill's watercolors brought acclaim, to the point that he received a greater income from art sales than his work with the Treasury. In 1881, his paintings were shown at an exhibition in New York City.


United States Geological Survey (USGS) chief of illustration William Henry Holmes hired Gill as a paleontological draftsman in 1884. Holmes, a fellow watercolor painter, came to greatly respect Gill's artistic work, later claiming that "as an illustrator in pen, pencil, and water-colour, and as a photographer, he had few equals." Gill was rapidly promoted through the USGS, due in part to Holmes's admiration. In 1889, he succeeded Holmes as chief of illustration when the latter joined the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) to direct archaeological operations. As chief of illustration, Gill managed the publication of illustrations and photography, examining all copies of printed illustrations. As John Wesley Powell was the director of both the USGS and the BAE, employees of both agencies were frequently assigned duties in the other. As such, Gill was additionally tasked with supervising the BAE's illustrations.
During his initial time with the Bureau in the late 1880s, Gill produced paintings of southwestern pueblos, departing from his prior focus on Washington. These included the Hopi pueblo of Oraibi, the ruins of Pueblo Bonito, and Zuni Pueblo. His painting of Oraibi was based on an earlier photograph by Smithsonian photographer John K. Hillers, but no photographic source is known for the other pueblos within the series. Gill accounted for climatic differences in his landscapes, making use of thin washes for his depictions of southwestern locations.
Although Gill largely stepped away from painting during a period of increased work within the BAE, he continued to paint throughout his life. In 1890, he showcased several of his paintings at an American Watercolor Society exhibition in New York. He returned to art exhibition in 1922, showcasing his paintings at the Morrey Gallery in Washington. He also pursued private illustration work, including the label for a local whiskey brand.


Gill's watercolor work was favorably received by contemporary art critics, with a reviewer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle describing his landscapes as "airy, clean, silvery" and distinct from other watercolorists. In 1983, art historians Andrew Cosentino and Henry Glassie wrote favorably of the extreme clarity and attention to detail shown in Gill's paintings. Cultural historian Lisa Goff praised his illustrations, writing in 2016 that his sketches of Washington, D.C. were "not nostalgic or sentimental, but [...] studies of a vanishing landscape", made without demeaning the working-class shanties. Like his later work, these drawings have been described by Goff as meticulous and documentative, taking "little if any artistic license".