Not much on the face of it, that’s why an article mentioning both aroused my curiosity.  It’s on a blog called Conservative History Journal.  The blogger’s political convictions do not come into this article, so any Ricardian, irrespective of  your own political sympathies, can enjoy its message on King Richard III.

The blogger, who calls himself Tory Historian, tells us that he went a while ago to Leicester to visit an exhibition of German Expressionist works and also explored the city.  While we know that the city of York remembered with “great heaviness” “our good king Richard [who was] piteously slain and murdered”, we learn that King Richard III also enjoys a lot of loyal following in the city where his body was taken after the Battle of Bosworth.   We don’t know where the body ended up after the dissolution of the monasteries and it might have been “thrown into the ditch just outside [the city] in the charming way those Tudors behaved”.  Ricardians can surely share that sentiment towards the Tudors!

Our blogger goes on to report that there are several memorials as well as streets and schools named after the last Plantagenet King.  His comment in describing the Richard III statue without any sign of a hump is:  “Eat your heart out, Will.”

He also tells us about a board, put up in 1985, at the 500th anniversary of the year when two kings visited Leicester.  Here he tells us:

It is quite clear which one the city saw and still sees as the rightful one: Richard III is described as King of England who rode into Leicester some time before the fateful battle of Bosworth Field; Henry VII came to the city on the evening of August 22, after he had “vanquished” Richard and brought his body with him. One can imagine the sullen burghers of Leicester watching the arrogant invader as he rode in with the body of the rightful King in the baggage van.

Thank you to Tudor Historian for telling us about this and thank you to the citizens of Leicester for their loyalty.  And should you be able to visit Leicester before 3 May of this year, go and have a look at the exhibition as well, it promises to be a real treat.

Tags: Art, Bosworth, Henry Tudor, Richard III

4 March 1461

Investiture of Edward, Earl of March (eldest son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and Cecily Neville) as King Edward IV of England.   Edward seized the crown on three counts:  descent from Edward III through the male line, descent from Edward III through the female line and the nomination of the childless Richard II’s of his Mortimer cousins as his heirs.

Tags: Edward IV

In January the team of conservators at Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire, made a surprise discovery:  when removing the Henry Hyde Monument from a wall in order to repair and clean it, they found hidden behind the monument the remains of some beautifully written English text.  The monument marks the grave of Sir Henry Hyde, who was executed in 1650 by Parliament for supporting King Charles I and was erected soon after 1660.

There are several lines of a large textual inscription, which had subsequently been whitewashed over making it difficult to read but the good gothic lettering is clearly visible.  Due to the age of the monument the writing was originally thought to be from the 16th century, when the nave was fitted out with high pews for people to sit in to listen to the ‘new’ sermons preached there.  Inscriptions of the bible, the Word of God, would have been written on the inside walls of the building following the Reformation, having been translated into English in Cranmer’s bible.

John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Grounds, c.1825

However, it has now been established that the text is actually from the 15th century, which means it was written before the Reformation, a period when English was, for the very first time, being used just occasionally in preference to Latin which was then ‘the norm’.  And although the clergy still stuck to Latin, English was increasingly spoken by wider society, including the ruling class.  The royal court used the language from 1413 onwards.

So far experts have not been able to decipher the inscription.  One line reads: “and we are c…” but the rest remains illegible and they have not been able to work out more.   Tim Tatton Brown, the cathedral’s Consultant Archaeologist, added, “So for now the basic questions of what exactly the words are and why the text was written on the cathedral wall, remain unanswered. It would be wonderful for us to solve the mystery.”
In the meantime the work on the Hyde Monument has been completed, the monument put back on the wall and the text once again hidden from view.

We would like to thank Susan Higginbotham from the American Branch to bring this fascinating discovery to our attention.

For more information you can read the article on mail online as well as  the press releases of Salisbury Cathedral here and here.

Tags: Medieval Life, Religious Life

1 March 1484

Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters leave sanctuary at Westminster Abbey and were reconciled with Richard III.

Tags: Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth Woodville, Richard III

Late February 1436

Birth of Eleanor Talbot, daughter of John Talbot, 1st earl of Shrewsbury, and Margaret Beauchamp at Blakemere, Shropshire.  She is said to have entered probably some time after March 1461 into a clandestine marriage with Edward IV, which made his subsequent, also clandestine, marriage to Elizabeth Woodville bigamous.

Tags: Edward IV, Eleanor Talbot, Elizabeth Woodville

23 February 1447

Death of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, aged 56.  He was the youngest son of Henry IV, brother of Henry V and Lord Protector to his young nephew Henry VI, who was only nine months when he succeeded his father.  Humphrey is buried at St Albans Cathedral.

As newcomers to the Richard III Society my husband and I are still learning the basics of the 15th century milieu, and the lore surrounding Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester. Having read two Ricardian books together, The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Penman and Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, we were very sympathetic to a man treated unjustly over 500 years ago, and had wanted to join with others to learn more about him and celebrate the known achievements of his brief reign.

The Society program scheduled for the 13 February 2010 promised to be very interesting. The guest speaker was Dr Carole Cusack, from the Department of Religion at the University of Sydney, a mainstay for the local press seeking commentary regarding any happening in the religious realm. We were unaware of her reputation or stature when we attended, but came away astonished at the level of discourse to which we had been treated. My head was reeling from the new ideas and connections that had been made by this most erudite of scholars, and I was all fired up to learn all I could about the works she referred to.

Her topic was the sources available regarding the life and times of Richard III, from his era and after. She introduced us to names and works we had never heard of (e.g. Friar Dominic Mancini, The Croyland Chronicle) along with the names already on our list to read (Paul M. Kendall, Polydore Virgil, etc). Dr Cusack’s explanation of the transition from the medieval to the reformation worldviews was enough to make me gasp with admiration. I would dearly love to know enough to make those brilliant connections myself, but failing that, hearing such genuine knowledge and insight from someone else was very gratifying.

The Sydney Mechanics’ Institute meeting room was filled to capacity with members as well as guests from the Plantagenet Society and general public; and there was only one slide – but a slide so rich with information that it could fuel months of extracurricular follow-up study, being a bibliography of the literature referred to in her talk.  Dr Cusack’s speaking style is idiosyncratic, rocking with nervous energy and intellectual excitement while holding her unsipped coke and making wonderful pronouncements, the result of decades of intimacy with the source material. Her thesis was, in short, that we cannot know whether or not ‘our Richard’ was innocent of the murder of the princes in the tower from the surviving manuscripts available to us.

This Richard III Society event was one of the most interesting events I have ever attended, and I encourage readers to take any opportunity they can to hear this local treasure!

Note: Read the full text of Dr Cusack’s talk here.

Tags: Richard III, Sources

The Times informed us today that the real location of the Battle of Bosworth has finally been uncovered.  Today it was revealed that the battle took place “round the back of Alf Oliver’s arable farm, just off the old Roman road from Atherstone to Leicester in a field as featureless as any in England”. The newly identified site is approx. 2 miles from the Bosworth visitor centre on Ambion Hill.  To get there you drive south and west from the visitor centre, passing a farm enterprisingly selling “battlefield beef”.

Glenn Foard, the archaeologist who headed the team searching for the true battlefield site, explained:   “My best guess is that Richard’s last charge came down the Roman road there”, pointing to where occasional cars passed one side of the field. “He is then driven back into the mire and killed somewhere near here.”

Mr Foard also showed a gilt solid silver boar, which was found by Carl Dawson, a retired university lecturer with a metal detector.  Only 1½in (38mm), it is a thing of beauty: a snarling beast rippling with muscle definition and with gilded highlights on its tusks, tail and bristles. As we know, the boar was the emblem of Richard III. Only one similar one is known, in the British Museum.  He went on to point out: “If we were looking for any artefact at all and if there’s any location we might want to find that artefact, then it’s the white boar badge of Richard III next to the marsh. This is almost certainly from a knight in Richard’s retinue, who rode with him to his death on that last charge.”

Following the article are several comments on it.  Two are particularly poignant pointing out how different history would have unfolded had Richard III won the day instead of the usurper Henry Tudor.

So now we know where “on this day [22 August 1485] was our good king Richard piteously slain and murdered to the great heaviness of the city [of York]”.

Loyaulte me Lie.

Note:  read the full article from The Times as well as the comments here. You can watch a video of the site on the BBC website, which also includes a picture of the found boar badge and a map showing the new location.  Thank you to our friends from the American branch for bringing this to our attention.

Tags: Bosworth, Henry Tudor, Richard III

18 February 1478

Execution of George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV and Richard III.  He had been condemned of treason.  There is a rumour that he was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine, this might refer to him being a heavy drinker.  Though wine butts were also large enough for a person to be drowned in.

Tags: George of Clarence