Plot
During the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), Sir Daniel is a powerful, unscrupulous knight, surrounded by equally treacherous retainers, Oates, Sykes, Appleyard, and Scar. Since the white rose of the House of York is in the ascendant, Sir Daniel and his household are loyal to York and the white rose. The film takes place just before Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick's rebellion against Edward IV (1469–1471).
Some twelve years prior to this Daniel, Oates, Sykes, and Appleyard perjured themselves to attaint a nobleman, who later would go by the name of "Black Arrow". He went to France in exile while his five-year-old daughter Joanna was made a ward of Sir Daniel. Black Arrow had not seen his daughter for twelve years since she had been kept in a convent during the wars. Sir Daniel was also the guardian of his nephew Richard, who is trained to fight by Scar.
Scar and Richard are unaccountably enemies. On the eve of Richard's twenty-first birthday he is finally able to defeat Scar, although Scar is handicapped by his left hand tied behind his back. Daniel's court then hails him as Sir Richard after he takes the oath to be loyal to the white rose of the house of York.
Sir Daniel arranges for Black Arrow's now seventeen-year-old daughter Joanna to be brought from the convent to his castle to keep her from being rescued by her father. He also plans to marry her to take full possession of her inheritance.
Appleyard is sent by Sir Daniel to one of his tenants to confiscate livestock for the Earl of Warwick's upcoming visit. Richard is also sent to assist Appleyard. Appleyard surmises that Black Arrow will confront him, which he does. Black Arrow accompanied by Lawless and armed with a long bow succeeds in killing Appleyard, armed with a crossbow. Richard challenges the outlaws to a duel with staves, but he is beaten and sent back to Sir Daniel.
Joanna at Sir Daniel's castle is being prepared for marriage. She is a defiant adherent to the red rose of Lancaster, and she outrages Sir Richard by daring to wear a red rose in Sir Daniel's household. Richard angrily snatches the red rose off Joanna's dress and crushes it.
The Earl of Warwick comes to Sir Daniel's castle for a visit during which time Sir Daniel persuades him to outlaw Black Arrow. Warwick is eager to help Sir Daniel because he wants to enlist his help in his future revolt against King Edward.
Joanna overhears Sir Daniel and Warwick planning for her marriage, so she steals Sir Richard's clothing while he is bathing and escapes from the castle. Sir Richard is sent by Sir Daniel to recapture her and take her to York where Sir Daniel and Warwick have gone. Secretly Sir Daniel sends Scar and men-at-arms to kill Sir Richard and frame Black Arrow for his murder so as to take over his inheritance.
Joanna succeeds in ambushing Sir Richard, who in turn overpowers her. While this is going on Scar shoots Sir Richard in the shoulder, but Joanna comes to his rescue. Hearing the approach of Scar and his companions Joanna rides off to draw them away from where Sir Richard lies gravely wounded. She is then captured by Scar and his men and taken to York. Sir Richard is discovered by Black Arrow and his men, who subsequently capture Scar. Sir Richard recovers sufficiently to engage Scar in close combat, which ends in Scar's death.
In York, Oates reminds Sir Daniel that he will be a bigger land owner than Warwick and, then, double-crosses him by going to Warwick with the information that it was Sir Daniel that had Sir Richard killed. Oates is also fortunate in capturing Black Arrow and his companion Will, when the two arrive in York incognito to stop Joanna's marriage to Sir Daniel. Sir Richard manages to get to Warwick in York. Warwick, who is wary of Sir Daniel, grants Sir Richard's request to release Black Arrow and his companion. During Sir Daniel's wedding it is Richard, Black Arrow and Will who stand up to show just cause why Sir Daniel and Joanna should not be joined in marriage. Oates also stands up denouncing Sir Daniel as a murderer. Sir Daniel dispatches Oates with a tossed dagger. Sir Richard fights blade to blade with Sir Daniel but is disarmed and nearly killed, but Black Arrow succeeds in killing Sir Daniel with a black arrow. Sir Richard and Joanna marry and ride off into the sunset, Ostensibly headed for Sir Daniel's Castle which Sir Richard has automatically inherited.
Henry VI was King of England from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471, and disputed King of France from 1422 to 1453. The only child of Henry V, he succeeded to the English throne upon his father's death at the age of eight months; he succeeded to the French throne on the death of his maternal grandfather, Charles VI, shortly afterwards.
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, 6th Earl of Salisbury, known as Warwick the Kingmaker, was an English nobleman, administrator, landowner of the House of Neville fortune and military commander. The eldest son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, he became Earl of Warwick through marriage, and was the wealthiest and most powerful English peer of his age, with political connections that went beyond the country's borders. One of the leaders in the Wars of the Roses, originally on the Yorkist side but later switching to the Lancastrian side, he was instrumental in the deposition of two kings, which led to his epithet of "Kingmaker".
Anne Neville was Queen of England from 26 June 1483 until her death in 1485 as the wife of King Richard III. She was the younger of the two daughters and co-heiresses of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and Anne de Beauchamp. Before her marriage to Richard, she had been Princess of Wales as the wife of Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, the only son and heir apparent of King Henry VI.
The Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1938 American epic swashbuckler film from Warner Bros. Pictures. It was produced by Hal B. Wallis and Henry Blanke, directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley, and written by Norman Reilly Raine and Seton I. Miller. It stars Errol Flynn as the legendary Saxon knight Robin Hood, who in Richard I's absence in the Holy Land during the Crusades, fights back as the outlaw leader of a rebel guerrilla band against Prince John and the Norman lords oppressing the Saxon commoners. The cast also includes Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Patric Knowles, Eugene Pallette, and Alan Hale.
Joan Beaufort was the youngest of the four legitimised children and only daughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, by his mistress, later wife, Katherine de Roet. She married Ralph de Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland and in her widowhood became a powerful landowner in the north of England.
Jacquetta of Luxembourg was a prominent figure in the Wars of the Roses. Through her short-lived first marriage to the Duke of Bedford, brother of King Henry V, she was firmly allied to the House of Lancaster. However, following the emphatic Lancastrian defeat at the Battle of Towton, she and her second husband Richard Woodville sided closely with the House of York. Three years after the battle and the accession of Edward IV of England, Jacquetta's eldest daughter Elizabeth Woodville married him and became queen consort of England. Jacquetta bore Woodville 14 children and stood trial on charges of witchcraft, of which she was exonerated.
Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury KG PC was an English nobleman and magnate based in northern England who became a key supporter of the House of York during the early years of the Wars of the Roses. He was the father of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, the "Kingmaker".
John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu was a major magnate of fifteenth-century England. He was a younger son of Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury, and the younger brother of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the "Kingmaker".
Henry Beaufort, 3rd Duke of Somerset was an important Lancastrian military commander during the English Wars of the Roses. He is sometimes numbered the 2nd Duke of Somerset, because the title was re-created for his father after his uncle died. He also held the subsidiary titles of 5th Earl of Somerset, 2nd Marquess of Dorset and 2nd Earl of Dorset.
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses is an 1888 children's novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is both a historical adventure novel and a romance novel. It first appeared as a serial in 1883 with the subtitle "A Tale of Tunstall Forest" beginning in Young Folks; A Boys' and Girls' Paper of Instructive and Entertaining Literature, vol. XXII, no. 656 and ending in vol. XXIII, no. 672 —Stevenson had finished writing it by the end of summer. It was printed under the pseudonym Captain George North. He alludes to the time gap between the serialisation and the publication as one volume in 1888 in his preface "Critic [parodying Dickens's 'Cricket'] on the Hearth": "The tale was written years ago for a particular audience..." The Paston Letters were Stevenson's main literary source for The Black Arrow. The Black Arrow consists of 79,926 words.
The Battle of Northampton was fought on 10 July 1460 near the River Nene, Northamptonshire. It was a major battle of the Wars of the Roses. The opposing forces were an army led by nobles loyal to King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster, his Queen Margaret of Anjou and their six-year-old son Edward, Prince of Wales, on one side, and the army of Edward, Earl of March, and Warwick the Kingmaker on the other. The battle was the first in which artillery was used in England.
Lady Isabel Neville was the elder daughter and co-heiress of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and Anne de Beauchamp, suo jure 16th Countess of Warwick. She was the wife of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence. She was also the elder sister of Anne Neville, wife and consort of Clarence's brother, Richard III.
Patrick Hepburn, 1st Earl of Bothwell was Lord High Admiral of Scotland. He rose to political prominence after supporting James IV against his father, and was proxy at the King's marriage.
John Clifford, 9th Baron Clifford, 9th Lord of Skipton was a Lancastrian military leader during the Wars of the Roses in England. The Clifford family was one of the most prominent families among the northern English nobility of the fifteenth century, and by the marriages of his sisters, John Clifford had links to some very important families of the time, including the earls of Devon. He was orphaned at twenty years of age when his father was slain by partisans of the House of York at the first battle of the Wars of the Roses, the Battle of St Albans in 1455. It was probably as a result of his father's death there that Clifford became one of the strongest supporters of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI, who ended up as effective leader of the Lancastrian faction.
John Talbot was the 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury, 2nd Earl of Waterford, 8th Baron Talbot, KG was an English nobleman and soldier and the son of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, 1st Earl of Waterford, 7th Baron Talbot, 10th Baron Strange of Blackmere, and Maud Neville, 6th Baroness Furnivall.
Events from the 1460s in England.
Charles Guy Fulke Greville, 7th Earl of Warwick, 7th Earl Brooke, was a British peer and the last Earl of Warwick to live at the family seat Warwick Castle before its sale in 1978. He became the first British aristocrat to star in a Hollywood movie, and was later nicknamed the Duke of Hollywood by the local press.
The House of Neville or Nevill family is a noble house of early medieval origin, which was a leading force in English politics in the Late Middle Ages. The family became one of the two major powers in northern England and played a central role in the Wars of the Roses along with their rival, the House of Percy.
The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and in following centuries as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne from 1455 to 1487. The wars were fought between supporters of the House of Lancaster and House of York, two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet. The conflict resulted in the end of Lancaster's male line in 1471, leaving the Tudor family to inherit their claim to the throne through the female line. Conflict was largely brought to an end upon the union of the two houses through marriage, creating the Tudor dynasty that would subsequently rule England.
The Black Arrow is a 1948 American adventure film directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Louis Hayward and Janet Blair. It is an adaptation of the 1888 novel of the same title by Robert Louis Stevenson.
