Quote :

You are being quite absurd to say that because Alison Weir, "fingers" Richard III (an unpleasant expression) as the killer of the Princes I don't like her or believe she is an historian, how wrong you are.

OK - so would you have made the comments you made about Leicester if, for argument's sake, the City Council had actively advocated sending Richard's remains to York for burial? My belief is that you wouldn't, but I might be wrong.

Quote :

I don't believe she is an historian for so many reasons. I don't agree with Hicks, Starkey, Armstrong, Ross, even John Guy on occassion, but I admire them as Historians, they carry out indepth research and know their subjects well.

Fair enough.

Quote :

I am deeply offended that you believe I am so shallow that I could actually dislike someone like her simply because she doesn't agree with me!

Again, see your comments on Leicester and the Tudors en masse. This is why I thought your issues with Weir might be because of her views on Richard. It appears that this isn't the case, but I don't think you can criticise me for making that connection.

Quote :

You simply don't seem to "get it".

I really do get it. The Ricardian position is, for the most part, a faith based one. There is no evidence strong enough to convict Richard of the murders of PITT and no evidence strong enough to exonerate him. The Ricardian position does sometimes seem to present the chap as a angel without the wings. The position is therefore a reaction to what is perceived to be the "establishment" position. Leaving aside the obvious difficulties in defining precisely what (or who) this establishment consists of, we therefore have a position which declares itself implicity to be anti-establishment. And anti-establishment is very often groovy.

Quote :

Yet you say you know little about this period, (which theoretically begins in 1453 with the Wars of the Roses and ends possibly with the death of HVIII, 1547) but unfortunately, you go on to prove it.

Not that it needed proving given that I openly admitted it, surely?

Quote :

The execution of William Stanley is quite extraordinary because not only was he Henry VII's step uncle but was also one of the new king's inner circle so presumably he should have known what was what; was there a search for the Princes? If not why? Were they considered to have been killed by Richard? If they were, then why wasn't the Tower searched for their bodies so that they could be buried as Henry VI had been? Thus proving RIII's wickedness AND preventing all possible "pretenders" from coming forward in the future!
William Stanley had been richly rewarded for his part at the battle of Bosworth BUT still he was prepared to fight for the person History records as the obvious imposter, Perkin Warbeck, the obviously murdered duke of York. The question must be asked WHY risk all for such a stupid lost cause IF the princes were KNOWN to have been murdered at the time, as of course we do today? You can't glibly dismiss this.

But I can glibly dismiss this. Because this is all self serving "evidence" and therefore not evidence at all. One hears this sort of thing in Court all the time. It runs thus:-

"If I really had been responsible for assaulting that man, why would I have left the weapon in my utility room for the police to find? I would have got rid of it, wouldn't I? Ergo, I am innocent. Someone must have planted it."

Quote :

You may demand answers Arwe, but you will not get them.

I don't believe that I have demanded anything. All I am trying to do is to understand what it is about this one man which is so singular.

Quote :

Good luck with your "fave period",

Thanks - it's going well.

Quote :

Shotter, Halsall and Higham deal with far, far earlier periods anyway.

I know. My point was simply that professional, academic historians can be trusted. One might not agree with their conclusions, but one will be able to see how they have got there and be satisfied that there has been some intellectual rigour involved.

Quote :

Are you used to be being obeyed? It must be nice.

It's a curate's egg, to be honest with you.

Regards,

AR

Triceratops wrote:

23rd May, Temp, you can rush out and buy this one;

Hi Trike,

I'm trying not to buy any more books; I've already got too many and, as I've inexplicably developed a dust mite allergy, I now have to vacuum my various bookshelves every day. If I don't, I start sneezing and get red, itchy, swollen eyes. It is a cruel affliction for someone who loves books, especially old ones.

However, I did go to the library today and checked out Skidmore's book - Devon Library Services have ordered five copies apparently (has it just been published?), but none have arrived yet. I'm down for one when they do arrive - one's bound to be for Exeter.

Chaps, any chance we can all stop arguing about - whatever it is you are arguing about - and get back to discussing Richard and things? I'd rather like to talk about Perkin Warbeck. I'm reading Ann Wroe's brilliant biography of him again at the moment - a nice fresh library copy, I should add, not the dusty old thing that has been on my shelf for years and which is no doubt full of dust mite droppings ( it is apparently dust mite *poo* that causes problems, not the little mites themselves - thought you'd all like to know that). If I am honest, Perkin mystifies me; as Minette has said, if only *his* bones could be located and tested, history could indeed be turned around. But I rather think he could have been Richard, Duke of York. PW was hanged by the Liberator in 1499 for trying to escape from the Tower. Poor, wretched Warwick was condemned with him; he, of course, was given the easier, aristocratic death - by decapitation. Both, incidentally, had been set up - allowed to "escape". As Catherine of Aragon later said, her marriage (to Prince Arthur) was cursed because it was made in blood - Plantagenet blood.

I do hope your "bye bye" to nordmann was not a general farewell to us all, Minette! Heaven forbid! Bugger both Bognor and the beastly Catigern! Please come back, mon vieux, and tell us what you think about "the Child" - and his Aunty Margaret in Burgundy.

Hi Trike,

I'm trying not to buy any more books; I've already got too many and, as I've inexplicably developed a dust mite allergy, I now have to vacuum my various bookshelves every day. If I don't, I start sneezing and get red, itchy, swollen eyes. It is a cruel affliction for someone who loves books, especially old ones.

However, I did go to the library today and checked out Skidmore's book - Devon Library Services have ordered five copies apparently (has it just been published?), but none have arrived yet. I'm down for one when they do arrive - one's bound to be for Exeter.


Temp, the book is due out on the 23rd of May. Sorry to hear about your allergy, completely spoil your enjoyment of old books.

Re Perkin Warbeck, there are two other books in addition to Anne Wroe's. One by Ian Arthurson [he was an impostor] and one by Diana Kleyn [he was Richard IV]

http://www.richardiii-nsw.org.au/?page_id=28

may be time to get a Kindle?

Quote :

Chaps, any chance we can all stop arguing about - whatever it is you are arguing about - and get back to discussing Richard and things?

Right you are!

Quote :

I'd rather like to talk about Perkin Warbeck. But I rather think he could have been Richard, Duke of York.

I suspect we will never know. The problem for poor old Warmneck is that he quickly became a pawn in much bigger games. Yorkists - and any other faction hostile to the king - could happily support his claims even if they didn't really think he was Little Richard as he provided a focus. Lancastrians clearly wanted to expose him as a fraud and his confession - doubtless exacted under torture - is therefore not worth the paper it is written on. Warmneck may have genuinely been Little Richard. He may well have genuinely - but wrongly - believed he was Little Richard. He may have been a complete chancer with a far more tenuous (or non-existent) link to the House of Yark. But nothing in the actions of any of the players in this drama can be said to be evidence that he must have been Little Richard.

Not knowing much about Warmneck, did he ever offer an explanation for what he stated had happened to him in the years since he went AWOL in the Tower. Did he ever say what happened to his brother. I assume he must have done.

Regards,

AR

Arwe Rheged wrote:

Not knowing much about Warmneck, did he ever offer an explanation for what he stated had happened to him in the years since he went AWOL in the Tower. Did he ever say what happened to his brother. I assume he must have done.

He said surprisingly little about his brother's death. The most detailed account appears in his letter to Isabella of Castile in 1493:

"Most gracious and excellent Princess, my most noble Lady and cousin, I commend myself entirely to your majesty.

When the Prince of Wales, eldest son of Edward, King of England of pious memory, my very Dear lord and father, was put to death, a death to be pitied, and I myself, at the age of about nine, was also delivered up to a certain lord to be killed, it pleased divine clemency that this lord, pitying my innocence, should preserve me alive and unharmed. However, he forced me first to swear upon the sacred body of Our Lord that I would not reveal (my) name, lineage or family to anyone at all until a certain number of years (had passed). Then he sent me abroad..."

That's all. At no point, then or later, did Richard/Perkin describe *exactly* how his brother had died. In fact in his proclamation of 1496, Richard ignored his brother's fate entirely; the late Prince of Wales - or Edward V - didn't even get a mention. Odd. Wroe, interestingly, notes that the verb Richard used in his letter for the killing of Edward - and for his own near-murder - was extinguere, to quench or snuff out a light: a word suggesting neither dagger nor sword nor blood, but not *so* specific as to indicate the traditional suffocation.

Wroe agrees with you about this business - that there is no answer. We will never know the truth. I actually like her conclusion - one that has been criticised by many for its vagueness - that in the end Richard/Perkin didn't know the truth either. Who was he really? What was he? Seems no one was quite certain, least of all the boy himself.

In haste. More (probably next week) about Richard's "lost" years. But maybe not - perhaps it's time to give all this a rest. We'll see. I'm hopping about (like the unfortunate Alison Weir) beween the 15th and the 16th centuries at the moment. It is all a bit confusing, especially when you can't stop sneezing (pollen and dust mites are a lethal combination).

Trike - yes, a Kindle is the obvious answer, but I'm resisting. I like books, even ones I'm allergic to!

I resist Kindles too, for similar reasons. I have bought so many second-hand classics and semi-classics over the years that it would seem wasteful just to be able to call them up on a machine. Anyway I don't generally like reading long passages on a computer (though the Kindles I have seen do seem much easier to read).

I haven't even really got to grips with my old cell-phone let alone a Kindle. And last night I dreamt I had put down Wolf Hall on a book stall and it got swept away by the owners. I got myself in a state and was lost in the city having searched high and low for Wolf Hall and now searching for my husband. So I remembered the cell phone and couldn't use it - the girl sitting at the table took it and was rather scathing about people unable to work out their cellphone! The odd thing was that among all this dreaming I woke up and with relief realised Wolf Hall was beside my bed and all was well, but I went back to sleep and the dream continued.

Sorry, nothing to do with RIII or Perkin Warbeck (though maybe that's not totally a bad thing!)

Hi Caro, I come here every day but since we put our clocks back and everyone else has put theirs forward, all I find is echoing silence, you are always so inventive and seem able to chat along, however I do read everything here especially in the RIII thread.

We have an absolutely fabulous library since all the councils joined up, so dont need a Kindle but I can sympathise with the telephone problems.

Caro wrote:

So why don't people feel as outraged by Shakespeare's depiction of Macbeth, which is just as false? Maybe more so. There don't seem to be Macbeth societies or people raging over the unfairness to him.

There's David Greig's 2010 play Dunsinane, a sequel to Macbeth which turns Shakepeare's story on its head.

I must seek that out, Vizzer. Plays are good to read - they only take a couple of hours and you feel you've made a real achievement. (Not like Wolf Hall, which at the rate I read it, will take 100 days, even though I am enjoying it very much.)

Gran, I didn't quite get to answer a couple of your replies, due to the very problem you mention. If I don't answer immediately (and I often procrastinate about this) then in the hours I am in bed discussion moves on and things either don't seem relevant or do seem trivial or don't fit where the discussion has gone. (Nice to be called, however inaccurately 'inventive' - thanks!) I never answered your message about Noma. When I read about the 100 best restaurants of this year they said Noma probably hadn't gained the top spot because of the food poisoning scare earlier, but they didn't mention that it had closed down.

I've been a 'Barbarian' for yonks now. Do you think Nordmann would let me be a Circus Lion for a change - the kind that eats Christians...?

I've found you an avatar, Catigern, to go with your splendid new title - he's a born-again lion!



Then again, he might just be biding his time until he can get a really good swipe at that ridiculous thing that's bouncing up and down just above his head...

But, returning to our hero and to the possible fate of his young nephews...

Trike, thank you for that link which mentions Richard of England by D.M. Kleyn. I hadn't come across it before. I gave in in the end and ordered a copy last week: it arrived this morning. I've been sneezing over it all day in the garden (dust mites inside, pollen outside - you can't win) and it is really good. Kleyn was not an academic, but she was the daughter of a distinguished father who was both an historian and a genealogist. She dedicates her book to this father "who first told me what I am convinced is the truth about King Richard III".

In her Introduction to her beautifully written study of Perkin Warbeck, a study which so eloquently argues that "the boy" was indeed Richard of England, Kleyn, who died in 1996, says this:

"To those people who, hearing of my labours, pose the questions, 'Why bother?' and 'Does it really matter after five hundred years?', I cannot do better than take the words from the lips of a very dear friend, herself a lecturer in history, who replied, 'If certain things are evidently - or even just possibly - not true, then it is time we stopped recording them as history.' "

And that surely is something all of us engaged in this debate should agree on.

Richard of England (which should perhaps be Perkin of England) is a cracking read - highly recommended.

I would want to read such a book with another one refuting or at least querying her evidence and conclusions. I am easily persuaded by good arguments in matters I know little about, so need some balancing to be sure things can't be seen in a quite different light.

Temp, this book collection of yours will be getting ever larger.

Personally, my own view is that the two skeletons found in 1674 were the two princes, but until they are DNA tested we will not know. The Palace of Westminster is against this in case we end up with royal bodies being disinterred left, right and centre.

Attempting to stop doing this. Takes up valuable time and it can hurt, strangely. Anyway, to Wroe. In my opnion, can't think why people read her. She begins by woffling on about Perkin Warbeck, then all that Mills and Boons stuff about him posing for a painting/charcoal sketch, preening etc.. as an "obvious imposter" and so why spend the next 300 pages ( a heavy paperback!) backing up what she's told us to begin with?
"I hate Perkin Warbeck because..." Ends.
A waste of time, unless you want to or must read it.

Diane Kleyn, a different kettle of fish. She worked for "Special Ops" during the War and could probably kill you with one fatal blow. She says what she means, no, "He picked up a mirror and wondered at his jewels"...Wroe stuff. I suppose that's why she is so shocking. No loose words, all facts suported and when she comes to the conclusion she does, it's truly shocking.
Kleyn says she was inspired by Audrey Williamson who proceeded her. I think they should be read in tandum.
Incisivly written, full of facts and I can't think why they are not standard texts.

Why does the BBC History Magazine tell us to wade through Hicks, boots stuck to the floor with heavy text, wading through thick illogical "facts" emerging at the end with bruises to keep yourself awake, when there are works like this?

I've been astounded to see how many people have read this site, I can't think why? I've always felt I'm in the Dog House for what I've written. Anyway simply wanted to give Kleyn and Williamson a boost.
I used to suffer from Hayfever really badly SST and it suddenly left! Good luck.

History is about, The Truth and Justice.
Unless you are Richard III.
Ends......

You have just got your Law Degree A. You are trying out "techniques". It won't work here. The key to History is knowledge, not how to frame a question. Good luck.

Minette Minor wrote:

History is about, The Truth and Justice.
Unless you are Richard III.
Ends......

Er no. There is never any absolute truth in history, therefore no justice either.

History can only ever be about a perception which is influenced by a future, which in turn, is merely based on another perception of the person who originally recorded it.

No definite black and whites I'm afraid Minette, just infinite shades of grey.

Minette Minor wrote:

Anyway, to Wroe. In my opnion, can't think why people read her. She begins by woffling on about Perkin Warbeck, then all that Mills and Boons stuff about him posing for a painting/charcoal sketch, preening etc.. as an "obvious imposter" and so why spend the next 300 pages ( a heavy paperback!) backing up what she's told us to begin with?
"I hate Perkin Warbeck because..." Ends.
A waste of time, unless you want to or must read it.

Oh, what rubbish you talk sometimes, Minette - hardly "Mills and Boon". Wroe is a brilliant historian/writer - have you read the *whole* book? Or did you hurl it (with great force) across the room after reading the Prologue, assuming, wrongly, that Wroe was going to argue that Perkin was no Prince? She does nothing of the sort. Her biography is all about the elusive nature of identity - how we all "invent" ourselves (sometimes several times in a lifetime) and how none of us really knows quite who or what we are. It's also a perceptive study of the "invention" of historical characters. Wroe did a similar thing with Pontius Pilate. Her "Pilate: the Biography of an Invented Man" is also superb, and shows how "history" can be the fabrication of each generation. (See "All History is Modern History" thread). Wroe recounts the "lives of all our Pilates", from early Christian times to the present day (Tony Blair has him, surprise, surprise, as a wriggling modern pragmatist whose dilemma over what to do with the tiresome Jesus is 'a timeless parable of political life') and she shows how, in his struggles with fate and free will (whether or not any of it actually happened), "Pilate's story has also become the story of ourselves." Fascinating stuff.

Is this what has happened/is happening with Richard III? Is Richard's story (should that be stories?) also that of an "invented man", a man who keeps on being re-invented? And how will Richard develop now, I wonder? What will we make him next?

Minette Minor wrote:

I used to suffer from Hayfever really badly SST and it suddenly left! Good luck.

Thank you. Sneeze.

PS Ann Wroe got a first-class degree (History) from Oxford, and her doctorate in medieval history was awarded by the same university. She is a senior editor at "The Economist". She is definitely not a Barbara Cartland!

RAAAA! I am a LION!

Temperance wrote:

Ann Wroe got a first-class degree (History) from Oxford, and her doctorate in medieval history was awarded by the same university.

Couldn't she get in anywhere decent...?

Catigern wrote:

Oxford ... Couldn't she get in anywhere decent...?

Ouch! ... Meeow! ....

A bit sharp, but then Catigern that is what we expect (and like) from you ....

So Tybalt ... it's looking like you're more Catty and less Lionheart, eh?



Me? ... I'm more of a dawg!

Woof!

Catigern wrote:

RAAAA! I am a LION!

Actually, I think he's made you a sort of zoo-keeper. You're the one who gets to say, "Treat today, lads - Whiskas with Jellymeat Christian!" Then you decide who's the jellymeat.

If you still badly want to be an actual lion, I suppose you could always dress up in a furry suit - they do Tigger ones, so I bet you could get a lion one somewhere. Nobody here would mind, I'm sure.

Lenny the Lion was lovely; he was my favourite after Sooty.

steady on temps... lenny the lion i thought was way before your time... it would make you.... old.

Oh Catigern, please say you aspire to be Lenny, or even Clarence, and not Aslan.

If Clarence was cross-eyed and Gloucester was crook-backed then does that mean that Edward IV was maybe bow-legged or gap-toothed or some such?

I am no mere zookeeper! I have particular responsibility for casting those treacherous Christians before the most Ferociously Bestely Bestes! This gives me the opportunity to view our noble allies close-up, leaving me streaks ahead of the rest of you when it comes to being an actual LION! GRRRRR! (Gro, gras, grat, gramus, gratis, grant...)


Rest assured, Ferval, that I's scratch Aslan's eyes out in a moment. He is utterly wet and a weed and I diskard him...

[Temp, I keep forgetting to ask how you got on with MacDougall's 'James III' ?]

If I might take a step back...

...I'm quite unconvinced by the oft-repeated claim by the silly Ricardians that the Tudors villified the Hunchback after Bosworth in order to secure their hold on the throne. The strength or not of Dickon Kiddiethrottle's claim ceased to be even remotely relevant to the Tudor position the moment his death was confirmed. He could have been the legitimate son of St George and Boadicea for all it mattered - he wasn't about to come back to life! Given that the Hunchback had covered his tracks effectively when he murdered his nephews, what Henry the Liberator had to worry about was that a believable pretender claiming to be a living son of Edward IV would appear. What would have made sense in cynical, political terms would have been for the Tudors to *uphold* the claims made in Titulus Regius, in order to undermine any such pretender , and relied on the inherent superiority of the Lancastrian claim, combined with irrefutable right of conquest , in order to deal with Richard Nephewsbane's now-defunct claim. Yet, as we know, Henry the Liberator came out all guns blazing against Tit. Reg., effectively asserting the claim of the sons of Edward IV, which was only going to endear him to those Yorkists whom Richard had alienated so long as the Poor, Murdered Ickle Princeth remained 'disappeared', and was bound to backfire otherwise...

Perhaps we should see Richard the Monster not as the creation of an all-powerful Tudor propaganda machine, but as a pre-existing figure in the English national imagination, the general wave of revulsion against which carried Tudor historiography along with it, despite the hypothetical danger it posed to that dynasty's position...

Lancastrian??? The House of Lancaster was extinct after 1471.

Catigern wrote:

and Boadicea

Haven't stopped laughing yet. B. needs to get herself to Rigby and Peller: if you are going to terrorise the Romans, you really should do it wearing a decent sports bra.

How could the Liberator uphold Titulus Regius? To do so would have been to admit the truth: that he was a usurper who had stolen the crown from the rightful King of England. And Henry had already promised to marry the lovely Elizabeth of Dolorous Guard who, if legitimate, was the Yorkist heiress. No point in marrying her if she were no more than just another of Edward IV's bastards. Tydder had - at first - to pretend he was going along with all the crap about joyfully uniting the red and white roses. Mind you, he prevaricated around the (rose) bush all right - had *himself* crowned on 30th October, 1485 and then unkindly kept poor Lizzy dangling before he finally - after much Yorkist chivvying - married her (18th January, 1486). The official excuse for the delay was that he was waiting for papal dispensation. That didn't fool anyone. Significant too that Edward IV's relegitimised daughter was not actually crowned until she had proved herself fertile. Puny little Prince Arthur was born on 20th September, 1486, but his mother's coronation didn't take place until over a year later (and over *two* years after Bosworth): on 25th November, 1487. Tudor and his canny mother were showing just who was boss. But that male heir, Edward IV's grandson, should have been Tydder's ace of trumps and yet...

Repealing Titulus Regius was a necessary, calculated risk; but I agree it was in effect the issuing of a Pretenders' Charter.

I've just been reading again Perkin Warbeck/Richard IV's Proclamation, made from Scotland in 1496. I wonder if it contains the fairest assessment of Richard of Gloucester?

"For King Richard, our unnatural uncle, although desire of rule did blind him, yet in his other actions, like a true Plantagenet, was noble, and loved the honour of the realm and the contentment and comfort of his nobles and people."

But of Henry Tudor he says: "a false usurper of the crown of England...hath not only deprived us of our kingdom, but likewise by all foul and wicked means sought to betray us and bereave us of our life. Yet if his tyranny only extended itself to our person...it should be less to our grief. But this Tudor, who boasteth himself to have overthrown a tyrant, hath, ever since his first entrance into his usurped reign, put little in practice but tyranny and the feats thereof...(he) hath trodden underfoot the honour of this nation..."

I find it strange that Perkin/Richard should speak so mildly of Richard III in this Proclamation. PW savagely condemns Henry, the man who had honestly believed that the Duke of York and his brother Edward, the rightful King of England, were dead, and who had therefore - with his French friends - so valiantly invaded England, risking life and limb in battle in order to make Elizabeth of York, the Plantagenet heiress, Queen. Yet the false usuper who had murdered Edward and who had so nearly succeeded in murdering little Richard himself? This man is praised, described as "noble". Given the circumstances, things were bound to be a bit awkward with brother-in-law Henry, but why say anything nice about wicked Uncle Richard? Odd.

Temperance wrote:

How could the Liberator uphold Titulus Regius? To do so would have been to admit the truth: that he was a usurper who had stolen the crown from the rightful King of England.

That's a Ricardian, possibly a Yorkist opinion of Henry, not an objective truth. To the Lancastrians who threw their lot in with Our Henry, he was the rightful heir of Henry VI, and to all observers with their heads this side of the clouds he was also de Facto king, and de Jure king by right of conquest. Why shouldn't the heir acknowledged by the Lancastrians take the throne by force of arms ? That's what Edward IV did (twice), what Henry VI (Part II) did, what Henry IV did, and even what Henry II, England's original Plantagenet monarch, also did.

The fact that Henry the Liberator took his time over marrying and crowning Little Lizzie goes to show that he didn't really need her Yorkist claim to feel secure.

Temperance wrote:

... that male heir, Edward IV's
grandson, should have been Tydder's ace of trumps...

No. Military victory was his ace of trumps.

Temperance wrote:

I find it strange that Perkin/Richard
should speak so mildly of Richard III in this Proclamation. PW savagely
condemns Henry... Given the circumstances, things were bound to be a bit awkward
with brother-in-law Henry, but why say anything nice about wicked Uncle
Richard? Odd.

It's hardly odd if one bears in mind the crucial difference between living causes and dead ones. Pumpkin Warbeck *had* to condemn the Hunchback's seizure of the throne, obviously, but his main target was the Tudor regime because it was the Tudor regime he was up against, not the Ricardian one. Being mild about Richard Nephewsbane was a way of undermining Henry the Liberator , obviously (I'd have thought...).

Quote :

To do so would have been to admit the truth: that he was a usurper who had stolen the crown from the rightful King of England

I'm still unsure on what basis RIII could be said to be the rightful king of England. TR was a fudge designed to disinherit the, erm, rightful kings of England. But even the princes had no greater "right" to rule than any other aristocratic maniac with a sword an an army. As Categirn states, Henry's right was achieved by force of arms. This is precisely the same means by which the Plantaganets - and indeed every other dynasty ever recorded in these islands from the Beaker People through to the Tudors - established their "right".

The notion of kingship as a divinely ordained or heriditary office is not a fixed concept. There are hints that in the Early Medieval period, kings were basically chosen from the warrior elite, in much the same way that bees in a hive choose the queen. To base an argument on "right to rule" on either bloodline or God's will (and I accept that no-one in this thread has tried the latter) is therefore a false premise.

None of this makes RIII a murderer, but I think it will help us get at Minette's elusive Truth (and perhaps even Justice) if we reject loaded, emotive phrases such as "usurper" and "rightful king" and concentrate on what actually happened.

Regards,

AR

Fudge! Fudge! Balderdash and piffle, sir!

Got to go out now, but back later with a refutation of this nonsense.

Nah - on second thoughts, can't be bothered. I'll leave it to Minette.

Temp, I was so waiting your reply to the balderdash!!!

Catigern wrote:

No. Military victory was his ace of trumps.

Surely his 'ace of trumps' was the fact that the Princes were dead.

If there is no conclusive proof that either Richard III or Henry VII killed the boys then perhaps it is the case that neither of them did. There are other suspects - such as the sweating sickness. This previously unknown affliction suddenly struck England almost immediately after the Battle of Bosworth. The battle was in August and the outbreak of disease was in September. It's likely to have been brought in with Henry's army although (just to confuse the issue) on the continent the disease became known as 'the English Sweat'.

So severe was the epidemic that it carried off no fewer than three Lords Mayor of London in quick succession during the Autumn of 1485 - Thomas Hill, Sir William Stocker and John Ward. In fact 1485 holds the record for having the most (4) Lords Mayor of London in one calendar year. By comparison no Lord Mayor of London died during the Black Death of 1348-9 and neither did a Lord Mayor die during the Great Plague of 1665-6.

So if the sweating sickness could fell three Mayors and numerous other Aldermen in Guildhall then it's not inconceivable that the same could also do for two Princes half a mile away in the Tower. All Henry needed to do was to ensure that news of their death was covered up (not hard to do during the chaos of a serious epidemic) and then simply backdate the event to pin the blame on Richard.

Temperance wrote:

Nah - on second thoughts, can't be bothered. I'll leave it to Minette.

That's a shame - I was looking forwards to that!

But what can Minette or indeed anyone say? One of three things, I suspect:-

1. RIII can be shown to be a direct line descendant of ....erm...who? Henry II? William the Conqueror? Aethelred the Unready? Cnut? Athelstan? Alfred? Cerdic and Cynric? Woden? Who is the person who we can all agree was the "rightful" ruler from whom all legitimacy springs? I argue that that person does not exist. All anyone can show is pretty much perpetual dynastic conflict since records began.

2. RIII's legitimacy stems from the fact that everybody loved him and he therefore had some sort of mandate which legitimises his position as rightful king. Not an easy argument to make when you are dealing with a heriditary monarchy, methinks. And it's an argument that applies equally to any other popular monarch, irrespective of how they came to power

3. RIII was legitimised by Parliament, which speaks on behalf of the people. Again, not an easy argument to make when dealing with a heriditary monarchy. And it's an argument that applies equally to any other monarch validated by any other Parliament, irrespective of how they came to power.

On Vizzer's point - if the lads had died of sweating sickness, one assumes that it would have become public knowledge. It would certainly have suited Richard to have declared it, would it not? Difficult to see how Henry really could have put the cat back in the bag.

Regards,

AR

Vizzer wrote:

Surely his 'ace of trumps' was the fact that the Princes were dead.

No. Henry became king once he won at Bosworth , not once the Poor Ickle Pwintheth dithappeared.

What was that from Temperance? Why, I do believe it was a big, Ricardian flounce out of the room...

Catigern wrote:

What was that from Temperance? Why, I do believe it was a big, Ricardian flounce out of the room...

It wasn't a Ricardian flounce exactly; I just sort of came over all weary of it all. But I'll be back - not this evening, but sometime soon. To be honest, I'm actually into the Tudors again at the moment: I'm reading "The Pilgrimage of Grace: the Rebellion That Shook Henry VIII's Throne" by Geoffrey Moorhouse. And there are lots of Tudor treats coming up on the BBC over the next three weeks: The Last Days of Anne Boleyn (as mentioned by ferval); The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England (Melvyn Bragg on my hero, William Tyndale); The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England; and Henry VIIi's Enforcer: the Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell.

On the downside, we're also being subjected to a re-run of The Tudors and lots of "guest" appearances by that woman.

I would hate to think of what a Ricardian flounce looks like anyway. The bind moggles!

Poor lad could hardly walk.

nordmann wrote:

I would hate to think of what a Ricardian flounce looks like anyway. The bind moggles!

Poor lad could hardly walk.

It would be a wobbly rather than a flounce then.

Arwe Rheged wrote:

if the lads had died of sweating sickness, one assumes that it would have become public knowledge. It would certainly have suited Richard to have declared it, would it not? Difficult to see how Henry really could have put the cat back in the bag.

Their death did not become public knowledge. That's the point. They simply disappeared from history. Being in the Tower was seemingly key to this. Whether they died by smothering in September 1483 or whether they died by sweating in September 1485 the story was definitely able to be kept in the bag.

It's not clear how Richard could have declared that the boys died of the sweating sickness when Richard himself was already dead. He died at Bosworth in August whereas the sweating sickness broke out in London in September.

Catigern wrote:

Henry became king once he won at Bosworth

Not quite. Henry backdated his reign to the day before the Battle of Bosworth - 21 August 1485. In other words he was seeking not to claim the throne by right of conquest. If he had been, then he may as well have dated his reign from 6th August, the day he landed at Milford Haven. Significantly this backdating took place after his coronation on 30 October and even after the newly summoned Parliament met on 7th November. In other words something significant seems to have happened in the time between 23 August and 7th November which made Henry feel a lot more secure about his position.

Vizzer wrote:

Not quite. Henry backdated his reign to the day before the Battle of Bosworth - 21 August 1485.

Actually it seems he didn't - or rather he tried to do this, but Parliament wasn't having it.

I was first alerted to this (like everyone else, I assumed Henry *had* backdated his reign) when I came across the following in John Ashdown-Hill's excellent book, The Last Days of Richard III:


"Henry VII is often portrayed by Richard III's defenders as an innately unpleasant character. One piece of evidence adduced in support of this portrayal is Henry's reported cynical attempt to date his reign from the day before the Battle of Bosworth (21st August)...in fact, there is no evidence that Henry VII antedated his succession. Certainly it was subsequently 22nd August, not 21st, which was calculated as the new king's accession day for the purpose of calculating his regnal years."


But it seems he did *try*, and that Parliament was not at all comfortable with the Liberator's attempt to rewrite history. The happy idea of having August 21st as the first day of his reign - which of course meant that legally Henry could indict Richard of Gloucester and most of his followers of treasonable rebellion against their lawful Sovereign, thus neatly bringing a vast number of estates and honours into the royal exchequer by attainder - was simply too much. As Thomas Penn, in his recent biography of Henry VII notes, this legislation "sent a palpable tremor of unease through the Commons". Even the Croyland Chronicler was aghast, sourly recording: "What security shall our kings have henceforth, that in the day of battle they may not be deserted by their subjects?"

What security indeed? Henry apparently realised this and backed down. D.M. Kleyn comments that "the obstinacy of the English in resisting tyranny succeeded in this instance: when it came to Henry's turn to face insurrection, he had to alter his own law in this respect."

I would so like to check this out for myself. How do you historians do this? How does one access the necessary Parliamentary records? Are they available online? I'm assuming the law about the dating of his reign was altered in 1487 - before the Battle of Stoke? But I don't know, and and I don't know how to find out. I can only *assume* that what Ashdown-Hill and Kleyn are saying is correct, and it doesn't do, of course, to assume anything in this history lark.

About the sweating sickness. Edward V could well have died of natural causes. He was, according to Dr Argentine, the physician who attended the boys in the Tower, a sickly youth, and he would therefore have been vulnerable to any opportunistic bug that was doing the rounds. It's surely significant that Edward appears to drop out of the story after 1483: people who went about pretending always pretended to be Edward, Earl of Warwick or Richard, Duke of York. No one wanted to play at being Edward V. The sweating sickness theory is therefore as good a speculation as any, certainly more rational than the recent "Tower polar bear ate my brother" headline. I've often wondered how the Sun would have reported the tumultuous events of 1483 - 1485.

PS Arwe Rheged - Richard was the rightful king because Parliament had so decreed. Until Titulus Regius was repealed, that was the law. Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, put it in a nutshell. When questioned after Bosworth by a very cross Tydder, who demanded to know why the Howards had been loyal to Richard III, the Earl defended himself saying it was "because he was my crowned king, and if the parliamentary authority of England set the crown on a stock, I will fight for that stock. And as I fought for him, I will fight for you when you are established by the same said authority."

Henry may have won a battle, but he still had to watch his step. Parliament - especially the Lords - were not to be bullied too much - well, not yet.

Temperance wrote:

I would so like to check this out for myself. How do you historians do this? How does one access the necessary Parliamentary records? Are they available online? I'm assuming the law about the dating of his reign was altered in 1487 - before the Battle of Stoke? But I don't know, and and I don't know how to find out. I can only *assume* that what Ashdown-Hill and Kleyn are saying is correct, and it doesn't do, of course, to assume anything in this history lark.

Temp - the document to see is the roll for Henry's first parliament 1485-6. Parliamentary rolls are indeed available online but there is normally a subscription charge levied by the institutions which have digitised them:

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=1241&page=6&sort=1

http://www2.le.ac.uk/library/find/databases/p/parliamentrollsofmedievalengland

As can be seen, the University of Leicester is one of them which makes John Ashdown-Hill's assertion somewhat baffling.

You can also get a glimpse of the relevant text in this clip from the BBC program Henry VII - Winter King:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p017g7w8

Thank you so much for those links, Vizzer.

It's really frustrating that i) I still can't access the parliamentary records (will see if the library can help) and that ii) the Penn programme about Henry VII is no longer available on iPlayer. I don't know how I missed that one - I really enjoyed Penn's "Winter King", his biography of Henry Tydder. That tantalising little clip is very interesting.

I'm baffled by what John Ashdown-Hill has said. I think he's simply got it wrong, but how he missed the written proof that Penn (and everyone else) seems to have seen is very worrying. But he definitely does say that "there is no evidence that Henry VII antedated his succession". It's there on page 85 (in Chapter 9, "A Sorry Spectacle", of his "The Last Days of Richard III"). I hate to say this, but it does makes one wonder what else he has missed.

Is Ashdown-Hill suggesting that the date of 21st, rather than 22nd August, was slipped into the legislation that Parliament passed after the Battle of Bosworth - that it was perhaps just some sort of clerical error? Surely not! The change of date may well have been just "slipped in", but it was no mistake. Richard Rex (he's Director of History at Queen's College, Cambridge and reader in Reformation History at the same university; so I, with my usual old-fashioned and no doubt naïve respect for academic authority, assume that he knows what he's talking about) uses an interesting phrase that would back up that interpretation:

"Henry took possession of London, summoned Parliament, and backdated his reign to the day before Bosworth: a legislative sleight of hand which enabled him to pass an act of attainder against those who had opposed him..."

"Sleight of hand" suggests that the matter was not openly debated: Parliament was not given the chance to oppose this move perhaps? But then members clearly knew what was going on and they did not like it. Henry was - deliberately and with real calculation - altering history. Penn, in the clip, talks of "a ripple of unease", and in his book he says the sleight of hand "sent a palpable tremor of unease through the Commons".

I'm still trying to ascertain if D.M. Kleyn's comment that "when it came to Henry's turn to face insurrection, he had to alter his own law in this respect" is accurate. If Kleyn is correct, it would indicate that Henry realised that he'd gone too far; that his rewriting of history had set an extremely dangerous precedent, and one that would have made the nobility reluctant to support *him* against any possible pretender.

I know it's only a small point, but it's driving me crazy (how sad is that - haven't I got better things to fret about ?). Did the accession date just revert to August 21st around the time of the Lambert Simnel uprising/Battle of Stoke? If Henry did indeed "alter his own law", it must be somewhere in the parliamentary records?

PS Richard Rex doesn't like Richard of Gloucester very much. Another eminent historian for Minette's hit list!

Quote :

Richard was the rightful king because Parliament had so decreed. Until Titulus Regius was repealed, that was the law. Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, put it in a nutshell. When questioned after Bosworth by a very cross Tydder, who demanded to know why the Howards had been loyal to Richard III, the Earl defended himself saying it was "because he was my crowned king, and if the parliamentary authority of England set the crown on a stock, I will fight for that stock. And as I fought for him, I will fight for you when you are established by the same said authority."

Thanks for that, Temp.

So, by the same argument, can we agree that Henry VII was also the rightful king?

Quote :

Their death did not become public knowledge.
That's the point. They simply disappeared from history. Being in the
Tower was seemingly key to this. Whether they died by smothering in
September 1483 or whether they died by sweating in September 1485 the
story was definitely able to be kept in the bag.

Sorry - perhaps I didn't make my point terribly clear. What I was suggesting was that if the lads had died in entirely innnocent circumstances, is it not likely that the fact of their death would have been announced and a big funereal fuss made as befits a prince?

It suited Richard, as if they had died of sickness in 1483 (two years before Richard died, ergo no big difficulty for him to announce the fact), he no longer had to rely on the fudge of TR to legitimise his own hold on power.

I may well be wrong on both these points, of course.

Regards,

AR

Arwe Rheged wrote:

Quote :

Richard was the rightful king because Parliament had so decreed. Until Titulus Regius was repealed, that was the law. Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, put it in a nutshell. When questioned after Bosworth by a very cross Tydder, who demanded to know why the Howards had been loyal to Richard III, the Earl defended himself saying it was "because he was my crowned king, and if the parliamentary authority of England set the crown on a stock, I will fight for that stock. And as I fought for him, I will fight for you when you are established by the same said authority."

Thanks for that, Temp.

So, by the same argument, can we agree that Henry VII was also the rightful king?

Absolutely - once Parliament said he was.

But there was nothing necessarily permanent about the new arrangement, and everyone knew that. Henry VII was the rightful king for the time being - just as Richard III had been - until the next legalized usurper took over. You seem to forget, AW, that I have never denied that Richard took the crown by an act of usurpation. But it was a necessary usurpation - the choosing of a new and more suitable "queen bee" (your very apt analogy) in 1483. Turned out to be a very bad choice, though, and the nobles decided Richard had to go. What they didn't realise was that their new chosen "queen bee" - the apparently reasonable, sensible and grateful young man from France - would prove to be an even bigger mistake: no one seemed, in 1485, to realise exactly what sort of cat they'd got by the tail in Henry Tydder. They were soon to find out. The old aristocratic warrior elite you mention in your earlier post was to prove to be no match in the coming war against the new Machiavellian elite (Henry, Bray, Morton and Fox).

So, yes, being declared "rightful" King of England by Parliament was very nice; but managing to stay put where Parliament had agreed to put you was quite another. All these noble adventurers - Henry IV, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII - knew that; and, despite Richard II's bleatings, they also knew that being anointed with holy oil didn't count for much either. May I quote from Richard Rex again? I do like this neat little paragraph of his:

"For all the trouble Henry took to bolster his dubious legitimacy, his reign was always overshadowed by the fact that he was little more than a noble adventurer who got lucky: the first dozen years of his reign were spent scheming and fighting against pretenders whose claims were only slightly more ridiculous than his own. Henry VII was haunted by an awareness of the political realities of his own success, as we can see in the suspicion, verging at times on paranoia, with which he viewed the governing class of his own country."

What a nightmare it must have been for these usurpers/adventurers/newly-made rightful kings. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" indeed, as that unhappy insomniac, Henry IV, complained. Dear old Willy WobbleWeapon - he always summed up everything so succinctly.

PS As for "fudges" - isn't the whole history of England a history of fudges? It's what makes it all so interesting.

It's hardly surprising that Henry the Liberator should wait a while - long enough to confirm that the Ickle Pwintheth had disappeared, before deciding just what legalistic gloss to put on his victory . For all he knew at the time of Bosworth, the Woodville Brats might have turned out to be alive and well, if a little sun-starved, in the Tower, in which case coming out all guns blazing against Titulus Regius might not have seemed such an attractive idea. Also, by dating his reign's beginning as late as possible, Henry was being accommodating to all those who might have appeared to be Ricardian up until the crucial point at which they had to decide whether or not to fight for the Hunchback (but did not in fact do so), whom he could afford to accommodate because Dickon Kiddiethrottle was safely dead .

Temperance wrote:

Richard was the rightful king because Parliament had so decreed. Until Titulus Regius was repealed, that was the law.

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

If you believe Tit. Reg. was valid in 1484, then Henry's parliament wasn't legitimate, and couldn't repeal it. If you accept the Tudor repudiation of Tit. Reg., then it was *never* valid. There is simply NO logical and consistent case that can be made for Tit. Reg. to have been valid until the Hunchback's death, but not thereafter. Such 'laws' are merely the propaganda of victorious parties while they are ascendant.

RAAAAAAAA!

Quote :

You seem to forget, AW, that I have never denied that Richard took the crown by an act of usurpation.

But in all fairness, when you talked about HVII not wanting to admit the truth, namely that he was a usurper who took the crown from the rightful king, you weren't exactly flagging that point up. Quite the contrary, in fact. That said, you have now clarified your position, and full respect for that. I agree with you. Both Richard and Henry were usurpers, in that they nabbed the crown for themselves in circumstances where otherwise folk might have expected it to go elsewhere.

Quote :

But it was a necessary usurpation - the choosing of a new and more suitable "queen bee" (your very apt analogy) in 1483.

This is, I suppose, a matter of opinion. "One man's terrorist" and all that. However, the notion of a necessary usurpation is a significant departure from the notion of the "rightness" of a heriditary monarchy (usually cited by Ricardians in support of their anti-Tudor rantings) and opens up all sorts of interesting points. Not least of which is the argument that Henry's victory at Bosworth Field demonstrates that, in fact, he was even more of a suitable queen bee than Richard, ergo his usurpation was also necessary. A point which I think you almost concede by implication.

Quote :

The old aristocratic warrior elite you mention in your earlier post was to prove to be no match in the coming war against the new Machiavellian elite (Henry, Bray, Morton and Fox).

This might be true, but raises the question "so what?". Why are violent, capricious, aristocratic thugs preferable to intelligent, shadowy and capricious advisors? A bad choice for the knuckleheads isn't necessarily a bad choice for everyone else, is it?

Quote :

What a nightmare it must have been for these usurpers/adventurers/newly-made rightful kings. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown" indeed, as that unhappy insomniac, Henry IV, complained. Dear old Willy WobbleWeapon - he always summed up everything so succinctly.

Agreed!

Quote :

PS As for "fudges" - isn't the whole history of England a history of fudges? It's what makes it all so interesting.

Also agreed! I think we have reached an accord!

Regards,

AR

AR wrote:

Also agreed! I think we have reached an accord!

How boring! I do apologise for being so reasonable, AR.

But here's something I prepared earlier, as Fanny Craddock used to say; the site wouldn't let me preview or post it this morning. Really a response to Catigern - in reply to his silly apoplectic roaring.

Catigern wrote:

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!

Calm yourself, Leonard.

Catigern wrote:

There is simply NO logical and consistent case that can be made for Tit. Reg. to have been valid until the Hunchback's death, but not thereafter.

But I didn't say that TR was valid until Richard of Gloucester's death: I said that TR was valid - was the law - until Parliament repealed it, the first Parliament of Henry's reign, which was called in November 1485. Was that Parliament legitimate? What an interesting point. Surely it was, because the old king was well dead and in his parking lot, and Henry was by then the rightful king. I may not like that, but it was true: Tydder had been "acclaimed, crowned and anointed" as king, and had been "called by the Commons to that dignity". Just as Richard had been.

According to David Starkey and Edmund Plowden ("Treatise on Succession" - see below), it was the acclamation, crowning and anointing - "the very diamond" - that had made Henry king on October 30th, and his Parliament did therefore "have the competence" to repeal any law passed by the previous regime. Until that was done, TR stood. But it was all a farce, I agree; albeit a legal and accepted farce (again, see below).

Catigern wrote:

Such 'laws' are merely the propaganda of victorious parties while they are ascendant.

RAAAAAAAA!

Do you really think I don't understand that, Catigern - this abuse of Parliament's authority? But there were already - even in the late 15th/early 16th centuries - decent Parliamentarians who were uneasy about the relationship between monarch and Parliament: members of the Commons were already murmuring about Parliament being in effect no more than a rubber stamp for the monarch's whims. And wasn't the judicial authority of Parliament effectively by-passed by Henry VII's detested Council Learned in the Law, a situation which caused even more unease? Things were, of course, going to get much worse under Henry VIII.

Decades before Peter Wentworth - that early Puritan Parliamentarian firebrand who dared challenge Elizabeth I's prerogative - Thomas More was writing "Utopia", the brilliant piece of satire that was a searing critique of the first Tudor's regime. Published in 1516, it was a warning, aimed at the second Tudor, against tyranny and the abuse of power.

PS Re Starkey and Plowden's "Treatise on Succession" - here's a message I posted yonks ago (when I've found it - will post it in a sec.). But it's a bad sign when I start repeating myself and repeating myself and repeating myself. I seem to remember saying about four years ago (on the BBC) that we kept going round and round Thomas More's mulberry bush with all this. We've been round it a fair few times since. 12,000 views of this thread, but perhaps time to give it all a rest.