Catigern, dearest,
Gosh I come in here for a bit of R and R and in you stomp! I sound like such a pompous bunch backed toad! If I apologize for existing will that do? I'm not posh at all, my family have been sliding down any sort of ladder you'd like to name since I can remember and anyway we talk about what we know about? Why have you such an enormous chip, nay chips on your shoulders? Aren't they heavy? Just been watching Margaret Thatcher, "Downing Street Years" and her chips drove her potty eventually! 

I don't understand, "Who do you think you are"? Because I was a nosey child, always asking about "the olden days". Sitting in a dry rot ridden, wet, damp, cold, dark, spooky vicarage where
I sprouted, full of ghosts and huge furniture, wearing hand me down clothes, which I liked, especially the tap shoes, Ivy Watkins gave them to us as Susan grew, I was happy! I don't think you'll ever understand Vicarage kids. You don't want to. We didn't know we were poor. Everyone was poor. Proud to say I met Cliff Morgan once in the Porth, we lived in grim Cymmer up the hill/mountain, a place which hasn't become less bleak even now! As I've said I know things because I was nosey, thank God, so many have died since. Then to England where everyone was rich it seemed. This Rectory didn't have ghosts. Mum told me later that there had been a mining disaster in a coal seam beneath the Vicarage and bodies hadn't been found. Maybe I was right. I knew that the skies were big and fruit grew on trees and the village school was nice but rubbish! No one knew anything compared to Cymmer! Of course you must bear in mind that I am ancient and then the 11 Plus mattered more in Wales than England. In Wales it was mental and written Arithmatic, an essay and verbal reasoning. In England it was only multiple choice verbal reasoning! Der! I never got why?
Education mattered to the Welsh.
A few days ago my step uncle vicar who went to Cambridge, suddenly turned up. After Welsh hugs he said, "books! Mind you your father was the only man I've known who could read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, a scholar priest". Did I cry? No! Was I proud? Yes! So up yours Catigern. I may be a gibbering idiot but my dad wasn't, neither was his father or my mother's father. All scholarship boys! Money is far less important than brains. I used to think you funny but nice but you aren't. And so must tell you this. A friend of mine went to Oxford whom dad tutored to do Greats. I said, "when you were at Magdelane.." He said Good God...I'm not that brainy I went to Merton"! You teach post grads there....what? I suppose it depends on the weather when your chips are not too sodden.    
         
If you can be pleasant in future I may be tempted to answer your rants. At the moment you simply bore me. But you won't go away. Like an irritating fly. To think I once liked you. Such is life.

Dear SST,
I'm glad that I made you laugh, there should be much more of it! Catigern has thrown me as usual and so as I un-grit my teeth, as a Celt whose ancestors seem to have all come from the Caermarthen area all I can do is feel sorrow. It has came to this!? Was the Red Dragon of Cadawallader, which Twdwr had no right to use, the last thing Richard III saw?  Anyway, we all know that the Ormonds, Desmonds etc., were pro York due to the way in which Richard of York simply treated them as human beings during his tenure there. The English have always behaved so badly towards anyone who was not ENGLISH.

What can one say about the Gregoty? So little, except why did she hate Anne Neville so much when even Hicks wrote a book about her saying that he did it reluctantly (oh yeah!) because so little was known about her. I still have the last two episodes of the white queen taped but can't bring myself to watch them after Ed IV's death bed scene. She's quite mad you know! She read English and can't write to save her life so what chance History? I don't want to combust. Did I tell you about her ramblings about the Fountain Court at Ragland Castle? Probably. Anyway sorry about Exeter, it looks like a good place to think and beautiful in a strangely unorthodox manner. Good on you SST! It seems ages ago that you first started posting on the BBC Boards and I thought you were interesting and would do interesting things, you've done extraordinary things! You really do love History.      
I can't see your post so am frolicking about but one thing I wanted to say, when I said that I thought you were on the right track was about RIII's character. The key to all things.

I was so confused when they found Richard in February and even more inflamed by the way in which Leicester Univ treated him. Perhaps it was more odd knowing the places his mortal remains were taken too. I had actually sat on a stool drawing things in the room the bag of bones was laid. It felt really creepy. Leicester univ has altered so little. Anyway, I joined the RIII Society to get at the articles so often referred to. I remember you recommending Bertram Field's, "Royal Blood" to someone and having read it there were so many articles I wanted to read for myself and so I joined for reduced rates. Whenever I've sent off for something there has always been a hand written note with it, often the book has been signed and it's so ...nice! I admit at my eldest's graduation in July I wore my white boar pendant rather then pearls. It came with a card from someone hoping that I liked it. So sweet!

Anyway, all I want you and everyone else if possible to do is to get The Ricardian Bulletin, March 2013 (ISSN 0308 4337) so that you may read the article, "The Man Himself", Richard III - a psychological portrait", by Professor Mark Lansdale and Julian Boon. It is one of the most insightful and interesting I've yet to read about this man. It makes sense of so much. Answers so many questions I've asked myself. Fascinating reading. Extraordinarily highly recommended by me, which I can hope is not the kiss of death!
I wish that I could see your post again SST but can't so will go. But I've always believed the personality of Richard III holds the key to so much. Character is fate. Hot foot now to try to get RIII buried at York, with a Roman Catholic Mass. Can you imagine the Queen Mother being buried in Margate as a Presbyterian? Why is her soul more important than that of RIII?
("She wasn't a kiddy killer", says Cat. Well, actually her family held huge stakes in northern coal mines where much child labour was used and died. But they don't matter being working class and all. Prove King Richard killed the princes and far more importantly that they were not illegitimate! Why argue with a closed mind?)

Catigern,
Be careful. You claim to be "doing" a Phd/D.Phil, in History I suppose, but your posts make me wonder how much you actually know about this subject. You constantly nit pick other people's posts yet you never make individual suggestions of your own, surely the very foundations upon which a post graduate degree is based, an original idea or concept? 

As someone who was fortunate to go for free to the university of Warwick way back in the 1970s having achieved the desired grades I am fully aware that my two daughters who have attended universities in London will be weighed down by the "debts" which they have incurred for many, many years to come. I was extremely fortunate to go to university when I did, my daughters have not been.

I must say that the casual attitude of people such as yourself, make me shudder. I've felt for some time, looking at the standards, attitudes and general knowledge of the subjects taught at university level today, to my children and their many contemporaries, fall far below those I had.
You appear to depend upon funny faces, ridicule and personal comments rather than tackle the main issues of the debate when "relaxed". Does your standard of incisive thought suddenly become elevated in a tutorial or seminar setting? Do you mark students according to their accents or what you believe to be their family backgrounds as opposed to their understanding of a subject?
I am yet to be convinced and it worries and concerns me greatly.

Minette Minor wrote:

 Anyway, we all know that the Ormonds, Desmonds etc., were pro York due to the way in which Richard of York simply treated them as human beings during his tenure there. The English have always behaved so badly towards anyone who was not ENGLISH.

I'm more cynical than you these days, Minette: I'd say the Ormonds, Desmonds etc. were pro-Ormond and pro-Desmond rather than pro-Yorkist. However, that said, I believe Richard III's father, the Duke of York, was greatly respected in Ireland.

It's the murderous rivalry between the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds that links into the politics of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. Gerald Fitzgerald, 8th Earl of Kildare, was a fascinating character - one of the few men, English or Irish, who got the better of Henry VII. This is only from Wiki, but it's accurate enough (I think):

He presided over a period of near independence from English rule between 1477 and 1494. This independence ended when his enemies in Ireland seized power and had him sent to London as a traitor. He suffered a double blow: he was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and his wife died soon after. He was tried in 1496, and used the trial to convince Henry VII that the ruling factions in Ireland were "false knaves". Henry immediately appointed him as Lord Deputy of Ireland, saying "All Ireland cannot govern this Earl; then let this Earl govern all Ireland"; and allowed him to marry as his second wife Elizabeth St. John, a distant cousin of the King. Gearóid returned to Ireland in triumph.

These feudal Anglo-Irish barons were, according to Susan Brigden (another girly historian), "the arbiters and keepers of peace. In England, war was the king's war, peace the king's peace; not so in Ireland where Ormond and Desmond (Butler and Fitzgerald) waged private war into the later sixteenth century."

And Kildare had fancied himself as Kingmaker in 1486/87. He was one to be wary of, surely: Brigden says that "though he might have looked like a high king come again, his lordship depended on the powers eventually entrusted to him as governor by the Lord of Ireland, Henry VII, a king who was always unwilling to send those whom he trusted and to trust those whom he sent."

The 8th Earl of Kildare's power may have come from the Lord of Ireland sitting rather shakily on his newly-acquired throne in London, but a fair bit also came, surely, through Fitzgerald's personal lordship over the Palesmen, his clients, vassals and allies in Leinster and over many Gaelic and Anglo-Irish lords far beyond the Pale - and to "the bureaucratic control of Dublin, who paid tribute to him in return for his protection."

An Irish Tony Soprano, in short. No wonder he and Henry VII hit it off (sort of) - if you can't beat them, join them, has always been a successful English tactic.

PS But then it was also important to keep the Butlers happy too. Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond, didn't do too badly: Margaret Beaufort may have been the great-grandmother of Elizabeth I, but then so was the daughter of this Irish earl: Lady Margaret Butler married one William Boleyn, the son of an up-and-coming family from Norfolk. And had Cardinal Wolsey had his way, Anne Boleyn, that "foolish girl yonder in the court", would have been packed off to Ireland with James Butler, her cousin and the son of another Irish nuisance, Piers Butler. James Butler was, confusingly, also the grandson of the 8th Earl of Kildare (James's mother was Gerald Fitzgerald's daughter, Margaret - don't quite know how that union came about - must have been a marriage to help patch up a peace). English history might have been very different had those Wolsey/Howard/Boleyn/Butler marriage negotiations succeeded.

But that's another story...

PPS Yes, I do love history, Minette. Wish I'd done it properly all those years ago, but never mind, it's a nice little hobby for me now I'm in my dotage...

PPPS Gerald Fitzgerald had a dollop of Tudor - or Tewdwr - blood in him: he was, like Henry Tudor, descended from Rhys ap Tewdwr. So the Irish and the English in this story were actually Welsh (well, sort of Welsh...)  .

Minette Minor wrote:

Anyway, all I want you and everyone else if possible to do is to get The Ricardian Bulletin, March 2013 (ISSN 0308 4337) so that you may read the article, "The Man Himself", Richard III - a psychological portrait", by Professor Mark Lansdale and Julian Boon. It is one of the most insightful and interesting I've yet to read about this man. It makes sense of so much. Answers so many questions I've asked myself. Fascinating reading. Extraordinarily highly recommended by me, which I can hope is not the kiss of death!
I wish that I could see your post again SST but can't so will go. But I've always believed the personality of Richard III holds the key to so much. Character is fate. Hot foot now to try to get RIII buried at York, with a Roman Catholic Mass. Can you imagine the Queen Mother being buried in Margate as a Presbyterian? Why is her soul more important than that of RIII?

That's re-whetted my appetite, Minette - my membership of the Society had lapsed, but I've just re-joined. I'm looking forward to reading the article you mention.

Like you, I'd like to see Richard buried at York.

Just a heap of old bones, of course - does it matter? Does anything matter? Discuss...

PS Two new Josephine Wilkinson books about Richard coming out soon, one of which examines the whole PITT mystery. Should be good, but will she have anything new to offer?

EDIT: Re article mentioned by Minette:

Professor Mark Lansdale, Head of the University’s School of Psychology, and forensic psychologist Dr Julian Boon have put together a psychological analysis of Richard III based on the consensus among historians relating to Richard’s experiences and actions.

They found that, while there was no evidence for Shakespeare’s depiction of Richard III as a psychopath, he may have had “intolerance to uncertainty syndrome” – which may have manifested in control freak tendencies.

The academics presented their findings on Saturday, March 2 at the University of Leicester.

Their analysis aims to humanise Richard – to flesh out the bones and get to the character of the man who became one of the most controversial kings in English history.

Firstly, they examined one of the most persistent and critical depictions of Richard’s personality – the suggestion that he was a murdering psychopath. This reputation – portrayed most famously in Shakespeare’s play – does not seem to have any basis in the facts we have about his life.

He showed little signs of the traits psychologists would use to identify psychopaths today – including narcissism, deviousness, callousness, recklessness and lack of empathy in close relationships.

However, the academics speculate that Richard may have exhibited a common psychological syndrome know as an intolerance to uncertainty.

Professor Mark Lansdale said: “This syndrome is associated with a need to seek security following an insecure childhood, as Richard had. In varying degrees, it is associated with a number of positive aspects of personality including a strong sense of right and wrong, piety, loyalty to trusted colleagues, and a belief in legal processes - all exhibited by Richard.




http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2013/march/was-king-richard-iii-a-control-freak

Quote :

Just a heap of old bones, of course - does it matter? Does anything matter? Discuss...

OK then!

Richard is indeed now a heap of old bones.  Whether or not he is buried in Leicester or York matters not one jot to him.  The reason we have funerals is to provide comfort to those left behind.  Min probably can't see it, but the reason why we treat the Queen Mother differently to Good King Richard is because the Queen Mother's immediate family is still with us and to see their dead relative treated with respect and in accordance with their wishes (so far as is possible - I'm guessing that I couldn't be buried at York Minster just because I wanted to be) is an important part of helping them come to terms with their loss.  

By contrast, Richard has no surviving immediate family.  There is therefore no useful social purpose to be served by insisting that his mortal remains are interred in any particular place, especially if poor sods like me have to fund it out of tax revenues.  This whole hoo-ha about where he should be buried is much less about him and much more about massaging the self-image of those folk who are daft and selfish enough to waste Court time and taxpayers' money in bringing silly legal challenges.  It's not "look at poor Richard" so much as "look at me."

Why Richard of all kings brings this strain of self-righteous piety out in people is beyond me, but there you have it.  It isn't about "truth" (Lord knows there are plenty of other figures who have unfairly received either the historical hatchet job or the historical pat on the back and the Ricardians don't appear to give two hoots about them).  It isn't about royalty either (or, at least, it isn't for folk such as Min, whose apparent dislike of privilege as exhibited by anyone other than Good King Richard is palpable).  I think what it is about, at least in part, is the enduring British* love affair with supporting the underdog and getting behind a hopeless cause.  It just so happens that of all the historic hopeless causes in all the bars in the world, it is this one which has persisted.  Personally, I blame that in no small measure on an inability of my fellow northerners to differentiate between the Houses of York and Lancaster on the one hand and the modern counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire on the other.

Regards,

AR

*  Yes - I know that not everyone in here is British.  Thus the use of the words "in part".

Well AR at least in the case of Richard we are now fairly certain it actually is the man ...... 
 
In the royal sepulcher of St Denis in Paris, where nearly all the French kings were buried, there are the tombs of Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette ....each supposedly containing the royal couple’s reinterred remains. 

Louis was guillotined in 1793, but since he had after all been king, he was permitted a coffin. Just about ever other beheaded noble was simply bundled into a common mass grave, dug as an on-going trench in the Madeleine cemetery - which was the nearest to the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution (under Revolutionary Government law one still had to be buried in the same parish that one had died ... hence the Madeleleine cemetary for all those that died under the guillotine). Louis’ coffin was buried in a separate but unmarked plot in the Madeleine graveyard. Marie-Antoinette followed her husband to the scaffold 9 months later. She was not given a coffin but was buried alone in an unmarked grave separate from Louis. (That she was permitted a personal grave rather than being dumped in the common mass grave apparently caused some problems since the grave-digger hadn’t been paid in advance for this extra service and so her body was left lying in the open for quite some time, perhaps as much as several days according to some accounts!).

Luckily it so happened that a Royalist lawyer had lived on the street directly opposite the cemetery and he had made a note of the locations where the King and Queen were buried. In 1796 the cemetery was closed and it became private land, and in 1802 this same loyal gentleman purchased the little grave plot, and probably without telling anyone the reason, planted two weeping willows and four cypresses on the locations of the royal graves.

When the Bourbon monarchy was restored in 1815 one of the first acts of Louis XVIII was to try and locate the bodies of his executed family. The plot was now marked by mature trees but otherwise the graves had lain unmarked for 20 years amongst many other unmarked graves. When excavated little remained of Louis’ body but since it was in a coffin with the head placed at the feet it was almost certainly the ex-King. However all that could be found of Marie-Antoinette was a femur around which was the decayed remains of a ladies’ garter, and a skull. This was positively identified as being the Queen’s by a witness, François-René Chateaubriand, who publicly declared that the skull’s toothy grimace was one and the same as the queen’s smile that he remembered from his one and only visit to court some 30 years previously, when the Queen had passed him in a corridor and graciously smiled in his direction!   

Of course cynics might point out that Monsieur Chateaubriand was well rewarded for giving Louis XVIII just what he wanted: a positive identification, and it probably suited everybody in the newly established royal court that a body (any body?) could be re-interred within a splendid marble tomb in the Royal basilica.

To date the church authorities refuse to allow DNA testing of the M-A’s supposed remains. But whether or not it really is Marie-Antoinette, it has suited everybody since to go along with it.



Louis XVI's tomb in St Denis ... but is it really Marie-Antoinette next to him?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/04/richard-iii-roundworm-infection-scientists

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2410255/Was-Richard-III-troubled-medical-condition-dying-days-Analysis-reveals-suffering-ROUNDWORM.html



Oh no, not worms as well as a hump. I expect Catigern will be greatly amused at this latest discovery about Richard III. He can add "worm-riddled" to his list of insults. Awful to think that it was a common medical condition in the 15th century: if kings were infected, what hope for the general population?  


According to The Times, "a lively panoply of worms roamed England in the 15th century". I presume they mean roamed the intestines of the English in the 15th century. This is the history we don't get in all the romantic fiction, of course. I seem to remember a picture from either the 15th or 16th century of some wretch (in hell, I think) with a worm coming out of his or her eye. Sort of thing you think was the product of a morbid imagination, but it possibly wasn't. Pretty horrible. Golden age, anyone?

Just when I thought all the dreadful worm tales couldn't get any worse, they do. Can what Professor Brooker says really have happened at the Battle of Bosworth? If it wasn't just Richard who was infected (most of the population at the time was, apparently), then the whole battlefield must have been alive with traumatised worms trying to run for it. Cowards.

It's also possible Richard's worms made a gruesome appearance when he died on the battlefield in 1485 as the last English king killed in war. In adults infected with roundworm, traumatic events like car crashes can cause the worms to pop out of peoples' noses and ears.

"The worms get shocked and they move quickly," said Simon Brooker, a professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who was not part of the study. He said it was possible the many blade injuries suffered by Richard before his death could have prompted the worms in his body to make a hasty exit.

I really don't want anyone to answer but, how could the worms get from the gut to the nose quite so quickly? I'd have thought that there was a much more convenient orifice from which to escape. Don't worms cause a dreadful itch in the nether regions? 
Now I have a vision of poor Richard desperately trying to fend off his attackers with one hand while scratching his bum with the other.

Probably why it was called hand to hand combat and not hands to hands combat. One hand was always occupied elsewhere.

ferval wrote:

I really don't want anyone to answer but, how could the worms get from the gut to the nose quite so quickly? I'd have thought that there was a much more convenient orifice from which to escape. Don't worms cause a dreadful itch in the nether regions? 
Now I have a vision of poor Richard desperately trying to fend off his attackers with one hand while scratching his bum with the other.

I don't think Richard would necessarily have had an itchy bottom, ferval, although one can never tell. Perhaps there is some confusion here - Richard apparently was infected with roundworms (ugh), not threadworms. Kids get threadworms all the time, even today (as I'm sure you know) - tiny little things that do make young bottoms very itchy. Roundworms are different and are perfectly revolting, as anyone who has seen a puppy voiding them can testify. If you read the links above (I don't advise it - I've been feeling sick since yesterday), you will discover how roundworms do not stay in the gut; they like to go exploring and often end up in the lungs and air passages - hence the quick exit via the nose or ears.

I'm worming everything that moves at the moment, just as a precaution...

PS Doesn't proper history destroy one's illusions about everything and everybody? I can cope with my tragic hero having a deformed spine, but not his having roundworms. That no doubt says more about me than it does about Richard of Gloucester. I wonder if Henry Tudor had worms too? Probably.

Some interesting facts about historic worms here (no revolting details or pictures). Seems Richard the Lionheart and his Crusaders were also troubled by these parasites.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/richard-iii-roundworms-8C11067779

In June this year, researchers showed that Richard the Lionheart's crusading armies were being cut down from within — waging and losing a war with gut parasites on their travels.

The fact that Richard (or the poor nun who everyone is assuming might be Richard) had intestinal parasites merely places the body of its time. In an age when faecal matter and subsequently ingested matter were never, and in fact could not really be, kept at a healthy distance from one another, the list of both sufferers of the consequences and of the range of parasites, bacterial infections and other nasties must have included just about everyone in the population as well as every such infection type known to medical science. The darling little princes who occupy the title of this thread (though who make only infrequent guest appearances therein) are as likely to have been riddled with these unwelcome guests as their wicked, wicked uncle (and indeed their wicked, wicked brother-in-law).

Somewhere I recall reading (was it an essay by Edward W. Said?) an interesting take on the Crusades. In a time when mobility was an extreme liability with regard to infection the fatalities inflicted on the indigenous populations of the Levant by the crusaders were nothing when compared to the fatalities from pandemic infections the same crusaders inflicted on their own people back home upon returning. Had Saladin understood biological warfare he would never have delayed such a return on the part of his opponents for the length of time he did - way beyond the incubation period required to wipe out a third of Europe.

Yes, we live in a very hygiene-obsessed world in this era, and it makes it hard to imagine the conditions people had no choice but to put up with in previous times.  You would imagine people must have suffered almost constant diarrhoea, though perhaps they became immune to lots of bugs.  And I am always amazed at how soldiers can fight at all, with generally what seem like starvation diets, route marches on sore/trench feet, flies everywhere, and frequently tummy upsets.

Mind you even today there are notices home to parents constantly about kids having lice and nits in their hair (schools here are apparently not allowed to do anything about this, including check for them, even with parental permission). It seems gross to think about (my kids got them once, and then I did, and then my mother-in-law did! It was very shocking.).  There were no lice in kids' hair when I was a child, though a generation before that there were.  I don't know where they disappeared to, and then arrived back from.  Is it the same in Britain or wherever?

In Norway headlice are accepted as a normal and fairly regular occurrence in schools. There is a rather swift and no-nonsense system from notification to all-clear should lice be discovered (by parents who are encouraged to check regularly), including provision of free anti-lice conditioner for everyone in the class when it happens (including the teacher). Headlice can often come and go without anyone noticing, I imagine. It is apparently only 1 in 50 people who develop irritation so unless they inform anyone it can well all be over before anyone knew an infestation had occurred (once the larvae hatch it's over anyway).

A statistical analysis of standing or professional armies regarding fatalities due to ill health, I imagine, would reveal poor hygiene to be historically as lethal a force as any conventional weapons that might have pertained at the time, no matter how destructive or effective they may have been. Soldiery, by virtue of being poorly billetted and much more mobile than their civilian contemporaries, would have been by definition prey to just about any infection going. And nor is this an ancient phenomenon - an estimated third of the axis forces' circa 5 million casualties in the Eastern Front campaign during WWII have been attributed to causes other than being killed in action or malnutrition. Starvation didn't help, but even taking it into account as a substantial causative factor in the remaining deaths, that still leaves well over 1.5 million soldiers who died of ill health during the course of the campaign, a comparable number to those who died of ordnance injuries.

Caro wrote:

Mind you even today there are notices home to parents constantly about kids having lice and nits in their hair (schools here are apparently not allowed to do anything about this, including check for them, even with parental permission). It seems gross to think about (my kids got them once, and then I did, and then my mother-in-law did! It was very shocking.).  There were no lice in kids' hair when I was a child, though a generation before that there were.  I don't know where they disappeared to, and then arrived back from.  Is it the same in Britain or wherever?

In England, the nurse who came to check the children's (and teachers') hair for nits was traditionally referred to as Nitty Nora, the Bug Explorer. Kids on the whole are quite unfazed by nits: I think they realise that anyone can get them and that they are easily treated. No shame about nits anymore.

One playtime (break), I came upon some little Year Seven (First Years in old money) boys who appeared to be going through a very bizarre ritual. Six of them were taking it turns to rub heads with a boy from the year above: they looked rather like young male deer who rub heads before their antlers have grown. When I asked them what on earth they were doing they all looked extremely guilty and sheepish, and at length confessed that the other boy had "a worm on his head" and they were trying to catch it because "it got you sent home". I think money had exchanged hands. I marched the lot of them off to the school nurse who confirmed that the older boy was indeed suffering from the fungal infection tinea capitis (ringworm). The younger boys were most disappointed to be told that their parents would be informed to take them to their doctors if symptoms developed,  but that there was no need for time off school once treatment had started. The older boy was warned to cease his ringworm racket forthwith. He did get sent home. What amazed me was that they thought an actual worm was involved and that it was worth becoming a host to such a parasite in order to avoid school.

EDIT:  "...and that they are easily treated." I am sadly out-of-date it would seem: nits have indeed made a dramatic and determined come-back and are now fiercely resistant to the usual treatments - see article (link below) from the Times Educational Supplement.

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6032830

Bring back Nitty Nora!

All manner of parasites are rampant in the sub continent and on my recommendation to many disbelieving but later grateful parents children hosted many of them. A rather nasty foreign mum said that it was unlikely because her son had Dettol in his bathwater. She got ever so annoyed when I asked if he drank it. Still, later I was proven correct and he passed 5 of the best and longest. Nits change heads in planes and I upset a BA area manager by saying this after his children became heavily infested following several trips swanning about on the cheap. Still, always a useful topic to enliven a dull dinner party - it  is unlikely you would be invited there again anyway.

I think matters may be becoming log-jammed. Worms. The smallest aspect of Richard III's death seems to have been recorded by someone...But where did this pre-occupation with worms originate? I feel quite sure that if RIII had them we'd have been told all about them in glorious techni-colour.
It most probably began with Henry V! That wonderful, warlike, ridiculous man,whom Shakespeare taught us all to adore.
When he died in France, having killed so many thousands because he was "the scourge of God", (leaving a baby of nine months to rule England and France, Henry VI,) no one dared approach his dead body. Worms were coming out of his eyes, nose and mouth. Not knowing what to do, his body was boiled, the flesh falling away and his bones were sent back to England in special boxes for burial.
It's a recorded "fact" that few historians like to talk about. If RIII had been subjected to such nastiness, it would have been shouted about from the roof tops! 
Incidentally, mentioning things which rarely are,what about Henry VII's Horse? We all know thanks to Shakespeare that RIII's horse, White Surrey, was killed from beneath him and he attempted to make his cowardly escape by shouting out for another. "My horse," etc., And yet,we also know that RIII was offered other mounts and refused them.So where did this rumour come from? 
On the eve of Bosworth we also know that Henry Tudor went missing, fed up and worried by his step father and uncle, the Stanley Brothers, un-decidedness. After all Tudor had never been in a battle before, The Earl of Oxford always took the strain! All Tudors would make others kill for them, HVIII wasn't allowed to practice in the Lists until daddy died in 1509, such a warrior prince?
But I've come across quite a few accounts which say that when Henry Tudor saw Richard and his men, all battle hardened warriors, bearing down on him at Bosworth, it was his mount that suddenly decided it wanted to make for the Stoke Golding Road and possibly a new set of under-garments.
Henry and his un-named horse were unused to actually fighting and facing real battle at Bosworth. It unnerved/scared them both. Richard III and his famous destrier, White Surrey, were not. Hall and Hollinshed may have got wind of this and the tables were turned. Shakespeare lapped it up and so History is written. Heroditus, the Father of History and the Father of Lies and so to received "wisdom".

Hate to go on about this but aren't we being very naive? Look up the reason for HV's death and it will be dysentary probably caused at the siege of Harfleur. Nothing of worms. We obviously know that matters of hygene were probably terrible in the c15th,of course they must have been, as they have been until comparatively recently. How can we be shocked?
Years ago I became fascinated by the Bronte sisters and family. The Revd, Partrick Bronte outlived his wife, his five daughters and son but at Howarth in Yorkshire he was adding to the problem. Eliza and Maria died at school (re-enacted by Charlotte in, "Jane Eyre") but all the time he was adding to the problem. Each time he buried a body in his Churchyard, which seems to have been constantly, the local Water Table was so high, everyone locally was drinking water from dead corpses. It's something for, "The Lancet" to tackle. God only knows what the locals actually died from. It makes the Cholera outbreaks of London and the stopping of water mains in Carnaby Street look simple!
 
When I was young Nordmann, I couldn't understand why you had to be "fit" to go to war. Wouldn't it be more sensible to send poorly people, if they were to die anyway? Of course a high percentage of soldiers etc., die from their wounds but during WW1 many more died of sexually transmitted diseases. Untreated of course. Correct me if I'm wrong, as you will, but wasn't the recruitment Data for the Boar War, so shocking that some steps were made to improve the nation's health? Was Juliuas Ceasar right when he said, "weedy, weeny and weaky"? I'm scatter-gunning but if we can't get the basics right, then what hope for Richard III or the fate of the princes? The truth matters and justice delayed is justice denied as I'm sure you will agree.
Cheers Minette.

Minette Minor wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, as you will, but wasn't the recruitment Data for the Boar War, so shocking that some steps were made to improve the nation's health?

At last!   Minette, my Sweet, you've almost got something about History   correct, for once! Many congratulations!

One of the factors that persuaded the British 'Powers That Be'   to establish the germ of a welfare state in the the early 20th century was that an alarmingly high proportion of those who volunteered to fight   in South Africa were unfit for service due to things like undernourishment (rickets etc). Now, all we have to do is remember that the enemy in that war were Afrikaaner farmers ('Boers'), not wild pigs...  

Arwhe thingy,
Sorry it isn't  a Welsh name, (n) would would have made the difference, sort of, but let's face it,
History is not your...thing. History is, more about the living than the dead? Ok!...So why not study Sociology? Fascinating subject. According to your rules, do we stop studying History when the immediate members of the family are no longer living? Where do you draw the Line? Romans, Greeks or Etruscans? You say that many dead people are worthy of such notice and I agree. But unless we set some sort of precedence they won't have a course for redress let alone order.
Please bear in mind I am really Welsh and believe Owain Glyndwr to be far more worthy of a Hollywood Blockbuster than Sir William Wallace, "Braveheart". But that will take up pages! I am also a cynic and I've attempted to introduce you to the extraordinary world of c15th England, to no avail. But then again all I can say is that you really, really don't "get" History! You care little about the truth, which the study of it is all about and personally I believe in the existence of souls. My relations know that I want to be cremated and that my name is inscribed on a small wall plaque in a certain church together with that of my parents, brother and sister. And a King, Richard III made his wishes along these lines clear too. He wished to be buried at York, a simple request for a Crowned Monarch to make. And yet they are to be ignored. Why?
      
You speak like the Prime Minister from Finchley, Thatcher, whose husband Denis payed her taxes.  Don't worry a great deal of money is being made from the bones of Richard III. Perhaps someone like you could get the body of Princess Diana on display, somewhere. Only Bones after all. Money always talks louldly. But How sad you are. 
You remind me of Jack Nicholson in his speech in, "All Good Men". "The truth, you couldn't handle the truth"! Simply because you don't want to. Your mind is set in glue. 
What worries me is that you say you come from Yorkshire, let's be specific, and you don't understand your fellow northerners. All I can say to this is perhaps you should take up a subject you do understand and at least attempt to summon up some empathy. But give History a miss.
History demands empathy.
Minette Minor.

Catigern wrote,
Good Lord! You have something right at last! Minette says she dislikes not liking you but you are a pain in the neck!
But if Minette has something correct about a certain matter, perhaps she has her wits about her concerning other matters! You simply don't wish to hear them.
Gone off track for too long, they concern ......The Princes in the Tower and a "Blush" Queen called Elizabeth Woodville, Lady Elizabeth Grey of Groby and Queen Elizabeth!
Are you not sleeping too?

Catigern and SST,
Please take note of post 118. 
Whose horse?The one on the way to Stoke Golding, look at a map.

In Norway there is also a tradition that trolls come out only at night. Should they once be exposed to the harsh scrutiny of daylight they immediately become fossilised relics vaguely approximating a recognisably human form, though forever doomed to serve as mere grotesque caricatures of humanity and its aspirations to communicate, think, feel and learn.

When tempted to levy allegations against another, especially allegations regarding empathy, it is always worth a small trip to the kitchen first to check the colour of one's pot and one's kettle and hopefully catch them both in mid-conversation.

On the subject of where these nun's bones should be buried, given that everyone has by now moved on from critical analysis of their association with a dead king and placidly accepts manipulated media soundbites as factual data, then it strikes me that the Catholic Church - of which Richard of Gloucester was a devout member - has always had a rather neat solution to such dilemmas. Those who flock to diverse places of worship as far afield as Dublin, Rocquemaure, Prague, Valetta and Glasgow's Gorbals on February 14th every year to be near the body parts of their favourite object of devotion might emulate him somewhat and advise Ricardians and anti-Ricardians everywhere - "All You Need Is Love".

But of course Henry never bolted it to Stoke Golding. The "Golding" bit wasn't there before 1505. He made it to a village of about 100 people grandiosely named "Stok" or "Stokke" (cattle enclosure). It is believed the gilding of the place appears to have been part of the Tudor retrospective reinvention of their history as Harry later settled into the swing of things.

I nearly bought a bungalow in Stoke Golding, but having read nordmann's message I'm glad I didn't.

I am very drunk (Harvest Festival lunch).

Temperance wrote:

I am very drunk (Harvest Festival lunch).

Oh dear, Temp, not you as well! Isn't one alcaholic   enough for this board...?

Anyway, here is some proof that even *genuine* kings   (as well as foul, treacherous, grasping, hunchbacked, militarily incompetent, worm-infested usurpers) don't always get the burials they'd like...

Dead Jockinese Imperialist

Catigern wrote:

Temperance wrote:

I am very drunk (Harvest Festival lunch).

Oh dear, Temp, not you as well! Isn't one alcaholic   enough for this board...?

Anyway, here is some proof that even *genuine* kings   (as well as foul, treacherous, grasping, hunchbacked, militarily incompetent, worm-infested usurpers) don't always get the burials they'd like...

Dead Jockinese Imperialist

You are right, Catigern: I should not have had that second helping of sherry trifle. I feel dreadful today.

But seriously, thank you for the link to that article about James IV - really interesting. Poor James. I knew his body had been brought to England; indeed Catherine of Aragon wanted to send it (not just the surcoat) to Henry in France, but was advised against it. "Our Englishmen's hearts would not suffer it," she was told. Seems they would suffer leaving him unburied for ages, though.

So now there's a pub (head) and a golf course (rest of him) to dig up.

PS You've spelt alcoholic incorrectly, and I suspect it wasn't a typo. Not as amusing as Minette's wild spelling though (that's said with affection, not malice) - I doubt anyone here will ever surpass her  reference to Henry VII's gambol at Bosworth. I always think of Henry skipping happily around Stoke Golding shouting, "I've won! I've won! Mummy is going to be so pleased! I'm a good boy! I'm a good boy!"

More coffee now.

 

Bosworth: The Aftermath

Temperance wrote:

PS You've spelt alcoholic incorrectly...

So I have! It must be the crystal meth...

Getting back to the worms, no wonder Richards Queen was so sickly as she had TB and the worms would have been eating away at her as well, and of course his son would have been a victim also  probably of their respected cook, and then after death this gives Medusa a whole new meaning.
It seems most people were affected back then.

Getting away from the worms and back to the deformity of the spine, I have just read something interesting in Leanda de Lisle's new book, Tudor: the Family Story (de Lisle actually starts the "story" in 1437). In her notes to chapter five, "Enter Richard III", this writer, commenting on the scoliosis discovered in the Leicester skeleton, tells us:

Scoliosis is often hereditary, so it may be relevant that not only was Richard's great-great-nephew Edward VI described as having one shoulder higher than another, but that his great-great-great niece Lady Mary Grey* was described as extremely short, 'crookbacked and ugly'.

I knew Mary Grey was so small as to be considered almost dwarf-like, but I had no idea she was "crookbacked" and I have never come across that information about Edward VI before. Annoyingly, de Lisle does not give her source.

Seems then there was a rogue gene, presumably passed to these two Tudors via Elizabeth of York. I wonder how many other scoliosis sufferers there were among the aristocracy of England, so many of whom had Plantagenet blood?

*The sister of Lady Jane Grey.

Temperance wrote:

...their Plantagenet grandmother (Edward VI) and great-grandmother (Mary Grey)...

OK, so I can't spell 'alkihollik', but at least I don't imagine Edward VI to have been a grandmother...

Because I am a well brung-up Christian(ish) lady, I shall resist the temptation to say, "Up yours, Catigern!"

I shall also eschew the childish tongue-out emoticon.

I have, however, corrected the ambiguous syntax.

Haven't used this for a while . He (the horse) is my favourite after the bouncing Henry VII.

No it's not Nordmann! Been there got the T shirt. My dad was Rector of Stoke Bruerne, where we lived and being a language sort of person, he learned why it was so named. William de Bruere came over with the Conqueror and simply set up a settlement, Stoke, there. As a Norman he didn't have to cleave to Saxon rules. The Normans conquered and re-wrote history. Does this mean I'm a Trolle?

I often come back here and think I've been rude and have been shocked, often relieved, that I have not been. I'm such a dull Vicar's daughter, taught to behave politely BUT SST I back you up with Cat.
Haven't you come across the Stoke Golding issue before now Nordmann? Odd, but isn't all info about Richard III? It's not as though anyone has had the chance or reason to fiddle with it. Such is life. But
please let us return to the Princes in the Tower and what about how good a king Richard III would have been having looked at his new laws written in English for all to assess and long last read!
Cheers, Minette

Minette Minor wrote:

I often come back here and think I've been rude and have been shocked, often relieved, that I have not been. I'm such a dull Vicar's daughter, taught to behave politely

Obviously not taught well enough Minette, you were incredibly rude to Arwereghed in that shameful (and completely undeserved) personal attack above. And not for the first time.

So write out one hundred times:

I must not be rude.

I must not be rude.

I must not be rude.

I must not be rude.

I must not be rude.

 

But are we all allowed to be rude to Catty? He likes it!

Back to PITT. I've read something NEW AND INTERESTING. And it's proper history - about research in wills and things.

Back in a bit.

Minnie wrote:

Haven't you come across the Stoke Golding issue before now Nordmann?

What on earth are you blathering about, ma'am? A Stoke Golding issue? All I said was that that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah. I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

The Golding bit was added after Henry crowned himself nearby. If, as you said, he retreated to a place already called Stoke Golding then you are implying that the locals were rather presumptive about the outcome of the battle.

Minette Minor wrote:

But please let us return to the Princes in the Tower

Okay dokey.

As mentioned above, I've been reading Leanda de Lisle's latest book, Tudor: The Family Story.

In her chapter Securing the Succession, de Lisle notes that during her research for the book she "uncovered no references to public prayers or Masses being said for the dead Princes." In her notes to the chapter she adds, "This includes the wills of their grandmother, mother or aunts.* I also looked at Little Malvern Priory and Canterbury Cathedral, both of which had stained glass windows depicting the princes commissioned in 1482, but found nothing."**

As de Lisle goes on to say, praying for the dead was a crucial part of medieval religion. In December 1485, when Henry VII issued a special charter refounding his favourite religious order, the ascetic Observant friars at Greenwich, he noted that offering Masses for the dead was "the greatest work of piety and mercy, for through it souls would be purged". It was unthinkable not to help the souls of loved ones pass from purgatory to heaven with prayers and masses. On the other hand "it was akin to a curse to say a requiem for a living person - you were effectively praying for their death."

So the obvious question posed by the lack of prayers for the Princes was, were they still alive - known to be still alive, or believed to be still alive?

* I wondered about Elizabeth of York and the other sisters of the PITT, but I believe that wives could not make wills - only widows (femmes soles?) could?

** de Lisle, again in the notes to the chapter, found only one reference to prayers for (unnamed) children of his friend, Edward IV:

"The nearest I found was associated with the chantry set up originally by William Hastings...Hastings made his will on 27th June 1481 when the children were still alive. He directed his body to be buried in the place assigned to him by the king, and for Mass and divine service 'at the awter next to the place where my body shall be buried.' However, when the full chantry was established in 1504, the children were (probably) dead. The terms of the grant of the manors of Farmanby and East Hallgarth were that every 10th June Mass was to be said for the souls of William, late Lord Hastings, Katherine his wife, Edward, now Lord Hastings, Mary, his wife, for their fathers and mothers, and for the souls of King Edward IV, Queen Elizabeth, his wife, and for their children (unnamed) and all Christian souls. An annual obituary was established in which the children, presumably also Edward V and Richard, Duke of York, were to be included. Then there was to be in addition daily Mass said at the altar at the chapel where Lord Hastings was buried and for all souls abovesaid. It would seem that although not specifically mentioned, Edward V and Richard were to be included in the daily prayers and annual obituary said by the Hastings chantry priest." (Windsor Archives, St George's Chapel, Windsor. MSS refs SGC IV 8.2; SGC XV 58 C 17.)

But this was in 1504 - nothing before. Surely this is significant?

Temperance wrote:

It was unthinkable not to help the souls of loved ones pass from purgatory to heaven with prayers and masses. On the other hand "it was akin to a curse to say a requiem for a living person - you were effectively praying for their death."

So the obvious question posed by the lack of prayers for the Princes was, were they still alive - known to be still alive, or believed to be still alive?

No, the obvious questions are 'How on earth can we expect anyone to have been so certain that the PITT were dead   that they wanted to pray for them, given that the Wormridden Usurper [in all probability] murdered them in secret?', and 'How daft would it have been to pray for the PITT publicly, and thereby implicitly accuse the Hunchback of their murder, while said Bloodthirsty Yorkist Tyrant remained on the throne?'.

In answer to your other question, Temperance, 'Yes - you're allowed to be nasty to me', because I believe that Freedom of Expression should extend to the most vicious of insults  , and because I'm as vicious as anyone else. Your habit of turning a blind eye to totally unwarranted and utterly obnoxious hysterical broadsides directed against those who are more restrained than I (eg Andrew Spencer and Arwe Rheged), however, renders your claim to be a christian highly dubious, since Christian doctrine   holds that Evil   is not a force in itself, but rather arises from the absence of Good...

Why, Catigern, I think I've upset you. I am sorry - really, chuck. I thought you'd laugh at the idea of us all being rude to you. Oh dear, and I said you had horns and a pitchfork on another thread. That was just a joke too. I don't think you've got horns.  Thank goodness you haven't seen that comment.

The ideas quoted above about prayers/masses for the Princes related to wills etc. after 1485 - I obviously didn't make that clear. I thought it was jolly interesting, but obviously not.

I know Minette can upset people - she once said I was devious like Margaret Beaufort (Mental Margaret) and I was very cross indeed for a bit. But then I decided it was actually a great compliment - MM was a tough cookie (which, alas, I am not - I'm more a softy Jaffa Cake) and a survivor.

I have never claimed to be a "Christian" - it makes one sound so dreadfully like Cliff Richard.

I am a High-Church-Anglican-Agnostic-Gnostic - with a elements of Neo-Platonism thrown in, usually when I've had too much to drink. I've said it enough times. I've been officially told I can't be a proper Christian by some proper Christians, because I have such "odd" ideas. But I really do try to be kind. I'm sorry if I've been unkind to you.

Temperance.

You haven't upset me at all, Temperance, and I hope I manage to find the horns/pitchfork accusation, which sounds like my idea of Fun .

Catigern wrote:
You haven't upset me at all, Temperance..

Such a relief, Catigern.  

PS You must admit Leanda de Lisle has made a good point - why did Henry VII himself, and all the sisters of Edward V and Prince Richard - the queen, Elizabeth of York, Cecily of York, Anne of York, Catherine of York and Bridget of York (not to mention the boys' mother, Elizabeth Woodville) - not order prayers and masses for the souls of these children who, as everyone knew, had been so cruelly and foully murdered by England's Herod? Surely once the blood-soaked tyrant was dead, that was the obvious thing to do?

Actually, several of the York girls were still living when the Hastings chantry was set up in 1504 - I wonder if the execution of Perkin Warbeck, aka Richard, Duke of York, in 1499 was of any significance in the mention of the souls of the children (unnamed) of King Edward IV being prayed for? Just a thought. Elizabeth of York, had, of course, died in 1503, so she was a good "excuse" to mention the children, I suppose. But I admit I have no idea how these things were usually done.

I need admit no such thing, Temperance! If de Lisle ever comes up with a point that isn't based on a hole in the evidence  , and doesn't depend so utterly on 'presumably' and 'it would seem', then I'll give it more thought, but, for the moment, all I see is another Ricardian   jumping through hoops woven from wishful thinking...

... and based on willed indulgence and mass requests. The top people didn't really have to depend on such bequests - they paid for them by what you might call a "direct debit" system. Those climbing the system were the really extravagant willers -top notch had it paid up front and only made public if there was political mileage to be gained out of it. If the princes got masses said for them then part of the deal, whoever's account was being debited, would have been to get them said in very private chapel in a very exclusive monastery. The spiritual Swiss banks of their day and where all the politically volatile stuff ended up.

I wrote:

But I admit I have no idea how these things were usually done.

Which is why I posted the stuff I'd found in the de Lisle book - I was hoping for more information. Thank you, nordmann, for bothering to give some.

Well, every Ricardian bemoans the "disappearance" of Richard's will (which after all might even well have included masses for the nephews, so maybe they should really be grateful). However the inference is that it was disappeared by that nasty Tudor man whereas the much more likely explanation could well have been that, as with a lot of politically awkward wills, it was reviewed privately, the terms still legally bestowable bestowed, and the  whole thing done in the vaults of the spiritual Swiss bank referred to above. No nasty Tudor then, just a careful one, with the church as usual holding the stakes. It could generally be trusted as it played the long game, while its rich customers played fast and hard for immediate gain.

This business with wills is driving me nuts, mainly because I have no idea where to look for information. I have googled like mad since the early hours , but have come up with nothing of any real value.

So if the Church (pre-Reformation), acted as a kind of Swiss bank vaults facility for the safe-keeping of the wills of really important Englaish people, where were they actually put away until needed? In England - or in Rome? What might be stored away in the archives of the Vatican to this day? Are (ordinary) historians allowed in there to ferret around? Or is that a daft question?

Did Richard III's will go missing too? Or was his will a legal irrelevance - all his lands, goods etc. presumably being forfeit to the new Crown? Wasn't Richard simply stripped of everything - attainted - acquiring the legal status of a non-person? I know Edward IV's will did indeed go missing, but I had no idea that Richard's also disappeared. Here's Charles Ross about Edward's will. Not even Catigern can knock me back for quoting him, surely?

"Edward IV's last will, and the codicils which he added to it on his deathbed, have not survived, but it seems reasonably certain that he intended to place these responsibilities upon Duke Richard until Edward came of age. Not to have appointed him, given his power and proximity of blood, would have been a recipe for trouble, since neither he nor many others wished for a Woodville-dominated minority. Equally, the Woodvilles could be expected to resist all attempts to deprive them of their control of the princes..."

Did the Woodvilles have a hand in the "disappearance" of Edward's will?

Tampering with wills, or destroying them. Surely the Church authorities would never collude with such actions - or is that an utterly naïve thing to say?

And women's wills - am I right that women such as the York girls - all married -  were not allowed to  make wills? Margaret Beaufort - Ms. Stanley - was an exception, as she was granted - unusually - the rights of a "femme sole" by her son. Bridget of York became a nun, so obviously she really was a "femme sole". But did nuns, even aristocratic or royal ones, have any property to bequeath? Were all rights to property relinquished when vows were taken?

A muddled message, but all this is fascinating me. Must keep looking for more info about how wills were drawn up, stored away until needed, and then proved. Who "proved" royal wills? A pretty important task, surely.

PS Only from Wiki - about "probate":

Historically during many centuries a paragraph in Latin of standard format was written by scribes of the particular probate court below the transcription of the will, commencing with the words (for example): Probatum Londini fuit huismodi testamentum coram venerabili viro (name of approver) legum doctore curiae prerogativae Cantuariensis... ("A testament of such a kind was proved at London in the presence of the venerable man ..... doctor of law at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury..."). The earliest usage of the English word was in 1463, defined as "the official proving of a will".