Till Home Sail Wylekyn (Willikin's Return)

DESCRIPTION: "Till home sail Willikin, this jolly gentle sheep, All to our comely King Harry this knight is knit (?), Therefore let us all syng nowel." Willikin sails home to the Lord Prince, to the Lord Chamberlain, to the Lord "Fueryn"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1550 (British LIbrary MS. Additional 19046)
KEYWORDS: royalty ship return home MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Greene-TheEarlyEnglishCarols, #430, p. 292, "(Tyll home sull Wylekyn, this joly gentyl schepe)" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3742
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #5957
ADDITIONAL: Rossell Hope Robbins, _Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Century_, Columbia University Press, 1959, #82, pp. 198-199, "Willikin's Return" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: London, British LIbrary MS. Additional 19046, folio 74
NOTES [683 words]: This has, in its own right, absolutely no place in the Index. There is only one copy, in British Library MS. Additional 19046, which is a fifteenth century book of proverbs; this piece is written in the margins. There is no reason to think it of folk origin, and the attestation is poor. I have included it for two reasons: One is because Greene claims (p. 441) that it is "probably a close parody of a folk-song, to judge by its lilt and its use of repetitive formulas." I don't think I buy that, but the piece perhaps needs an entry so we can compare it against any other genuine folk songs of its era.
The second is that Greene suggests that this is about the 1470 "re-adaption" of King Henry VI, deposed in 1461 by Edward IV for utter incompetence (this apart from the fact that Edward IV, not Henry VI, was the heir of the old King Edward III). It was the Earl of Warwick who arranged to get Henry back on the throne (briefly -- Henry was restored only for a few months in 1470-1471 before Edward IV put paid to him permanently). Greene thinks the "Willikin" of this song is Warwick. This explanation is accepted without argument by Robbins, p. 361, who goes on to expand on Greene's explanations.
This strikes me as problematic. Warwick's name was not William; he was Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury. It's of course possible that he was called "Willikin" to conceal his identity -- but why? As long as Warwick was in charge (and he ran the government for Henry VI, who was not capable of ruling on his own), there was no need to conceal his name, and once Warwick died at the Battle of Barnet (April 14, 1471), there wasn't anything to write about.
And no one in his right mind would ever call Warwick a "sheep." A wolf in sheep's clothing, maybe, but no sheep.
What's more, although calling King Henry "comely" might be conventional, if it's meant literally, it doesn't seem to fit. We have no reliable portraits, but I can't recall any contemporary chronicle ever calling Henry particularly handsome, and when his alleged tomb was opened, he was found to have an unusually small skull. I wouldn't bet much on that corpse really being Henry, but there is a pretty good chance that he was anything but handsome.
There are two other instances, around the fifteenth century, of a King Henry coming over the sea to claim the throne. In 1399, Henry of Bolingbroke overthrew Richard II and became King Henry IV (he was Henry VI's grandfather). And in 1485, Henry Tudor overthrew Richard III and became King Henry VII.
Bolingbroke wasn't particularly associated with anyone named William; his chief supporters at the time were the father and son Henry Percy (the father being the First Earl of Northumberland and the son the famous Harry Hotspur) and Thomas Arundel, the displaced Archbishop of Canterbury. But Henry Tudor, although the leaders of his army were the de Vere Earl of Oxford and Jasper Tudor, overthrew Richard at the Battle of Bosworth mostly because of the actions of the brothers Thomas Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, and his brother Sir William Stanley. At Bosworth, it was William Stanley who swooped down with his forces and killed Richard III. (For far more about this than you probably want to know, see the notes to "The Children in the Wood" (The Babes in the Woods)" [Laws Q34] and "The Ballad of Bosworth Field.") William Stanley did not really come over the sea, but Thomas Stanley was technically King of the Isle of Man, so it's arguable that the Stanleys were "from overseas." And William Stanley was actually named William! So he would be my candidate for the Willikin of the song.
As a footnote, Sir William Stanley was Henry VII's Lord Chamberlain for a time (see Wagner, p. 257) until Henry executed him in 1495 for rebellion; the Stanleys were just too slippery!
I don't begin to claim that this is proof. I'm not sure of anything. This could be about something completely different; there is nothing in the piece which is really identifiable. But I just don't trust Greene's identification, and indexed this piece to put my objections on record! - RBW
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