Introduction

One well known publisher has commented that a book on Richard III can be published every year and this has certainly proved the case over recent years as is evidenced in the bibliography section. Richard also gets mentioned in non-Ricardian books as the Print Retrospective will demonstrate.

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Monsters book review

Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women, Simon Sebag Montefiore (Quercus History 2008)

I was intrigued by this book which is beautifully produced. The back cover announces that within are true stories that everyone should know and warnings from history no one should forget. In this book I would find tyrants and empresses, conquerors and cannibals, molls and megalomaniacs, torturers and serial killers, temptresses and traitors. Great fun, I thought and it must be great fun for a respected historian like Simon Sebag Montefiore to dip into history and pick out such colourful characters to explore. However, he is extremely damning in his generalisation of all these people being pure evil and when I started to look through the book, I did wonder if he was being just a little harsh on some of the people he chose to highlight. Unfortunately my knowledge of many of these people is limited so I am in no position to argue with him but with one historical personage I can take issue and I wish to do so here.

Richard III and his 'grotesque and pitiless ambition' appear chronologically towards the centre of the book. I was disappointed enough to see this re-hash of the old John Rous/Thomas More/William Shakespeare version of history, especially from a historian who had studied at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, but my disappointment (and surprise) was even more compounded by the blatant errors in Montefiore's research. The first line starts with the incorrect statement that Richard was the second son of Richard, duke of York and Cecily Neville. Richard was in fact their eleventh child and the fourth and youngest son to survive infancy. Next Richard was an "ugly child, deformed and with protruding teeth…". Where is the evidence for this, except for John Rous who was writing to please the new Tudor king? Also, where in his writings does Rous say that Richard had protruding teeth? Montefiore would seem to let his imagination run away with him. Interestingly enough, the picture of Richard to accompany the article is the famous portrait by an unknown artist which is housed in the National Portrait Gallery, London which shows a decent looking man with no hint of an ugly childhood!

To be fair, Richard's loyalty to his brother, Edward IV is highlighted, along with his reputation as an "able general and skilled administrator" and Montefiore even goes so far as to admit that Richard "earned a reputation for fairness and justice" whilst he ruled the north for his brother between 1471 and 1483. Yet we are never far away from the traditional myth, as spun by More and co. According to Montefiore, Richard was quite possibly already scheming for the crown as early as 1478 and he is accused of removing his brother, George, Duke of Clarence to clear the way. If Montefiore had seriously researched this sad episode in the York family tale, he would have found out, as others have, that it was Edward IV, possibly urged on by the Woodvilles (but I speculate myself here) who had his brother executed, not Richard. Richard may not have done much to prevent it (and George was indeed a loose cannon who could well have done much damage to the Yorkist dynasty) but he certainly was not the one who engineered it. Edward gained a contemporary reputation for brutality after this episode which he was never to lose.

Then we are projected into the well-trodden and rather predictable tale of the usurpation, with the loyal Richard suddenly 'turning coat' and aiming for the crown as soon as he heard of the death of his brother in April 1483. The "hackneyed" assertion that Richard had his nephews, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York "imprisoned" in the Tower is trotted out when it is common knowledge that the Tower was a royal palace and the correct place for a king to be whilst he awaited his coronation. Again I was disappointed in the lack of serious research. The accusation of bastardy against the boys was based on the testimony of "an unnamed bishop", says Montefiore. Really? I thought Robert Stillington was that bishop? The Act of Titulus Regius was not 'forced' through Parliament to clear the way for Richard to ascend the throne, as Montefiore asserts. It was passed quite legitimately by Parliament in 1484, some time after he ascended the throne. 

Montefiore refers to a 'brief uprising' against Richard before he is crowned. I presume he is referring to the alleged Hastings conspiracy but I think 'uprising' is a little exaggerated. Another exaggeration is: "To secure his position, Richard seized and brutally murdered several barons who might oppose his accession." Indeed three noblemen, Anthony, Lord Rivers, Thomas Vaughan and Richard Grey were executed after the 'coup' at Stony Stratford but they were tried beforehand. Hastings on the other hand did have a summary dismissal. It was, to be fair, not Richard's finest hour but these were uncertain times with everyone jockeying for position. Richard was very likely defending his position as Protector and very probably his life rather than purely aiming for the crown.

Montefiore is correct in his assertion that the boys went missing in the summer of 1483 but this does not necessarily mean that they were murdered. There is as much evidence that can support that the boys were not murdered by Richard III as there is to prove that he did murder them. It was also not universally "accepted as true during his reign" that Richard had murdered his nephews. Certainly there were rumours in the south, probably encouraged by Henry Tudor's agents but there is no evidence to prove that the whole country believed it. Montefiore rightly states that Henry Tudor "later launched an organized campaign to blacken Richard's name and present him as monster…" but why did he not accuse Richard directly of the boys' murders in 1485? Why did he only hint at child murder until much later in his reign? The answer was because he did not know what had happened to the boys. Would Henry have given so much credence to the two Pretenders, Lambert Simnel and especially Perkin Warbeck if he had known the fate of the boys? No, it was only when he had to prove to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain that the boys were definitely dead and no threat to his throne (in order for them to allow their Infanta, Katherine, to marry Prince Arthur) did Henry Tudor suddenly accuse Richard directly of the crime and manipulate a case.

Finally we come to the Battle of Bosworth. Montefiore concedes (as other critics of Richard's have done) that Richard fought bravely to the end. However, here too his research is hazy. He cites both Thomas, Lord Stanley and Sir William Stanley as joining the fray against Richard when it was only Sir William Stanley who actually rode against Richard. Thomas, like Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, sat on the sidelines to watch the outcome. I know this might seem to be a bit nit-picking but when I know that the author is an eminent historian, I do expect an accurate account where possible.

Montefiore concludes with a revisiting of Richard's supposed deformities. He states that they could have been exaggerated as, to contemporary chroniclers, "deformity was [a] sign of an evil character and Richard's actions in 1483 evoked the image of the startlingly ugly creature they described…". However, compare Montefiore's description of Richard with that of a contemporary bishop, Thomas Langton, writing to a friend in 1483 (just after the usurpation): "He contents the people wherever he goes… for many a poor man that suffered wrong has been helped by him… In many great cities and towns he refused great sums of money... God has sent him to us for the good of us all." This is hardly the description of a monster.

I appreciate that this book is 'popular' history and therefore 'light' in tone. However, I was disappointed to find such lazy and inaccurate research. Even if Montefiore had others researching for him (and the book does cover an awful lot of history), he should have demanded research worthy of a historian of his obvious stature. To rely on the "hackneyed" - and largely disproved - traditional history of Richard III, as told by John Rous, Thomas More and William Shakespeare is very unimaginative. I have to say that there are several other historical personages who I doubt should be included in this book either. I wonder whether they have suffered from the same lazy approach to history. I do hope that, if so, there will be others to champion their cause.

Jane Trump

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Print Retrospective

Winter 2005

New Books, ‘We met the author’, Guy Pringle meets up with Marika Cobbold:  ‘Q: Which are your three favourite literary villains and what is the secret of their appeal ?’ ‘A: … Richard III … Richard is also an arch bloke.  When he says to Elizabeth, who understandably is a little peeved at the fact that he’s murdered her sons, “Harp not on that string, Madam, that is past”, he sounds to me like just about everyman.’

Autumn 2005

Flashman on the March – George Macdonald Fraser, published April 2005, note 2 to page 3 (although this is a work of fiction, the notes are always factual).  One of the characters, who has a major problem, talks of being ‘in Dickie’s Meadow’. The note reads: ‘’Dickey’, meaning shaky or uncertain, has a currency centuries old, but ‘in Dickie’s Meadow’, meaning in serious trouble is, or was, a North Cumbrian expression, and it has been suggested that, since Richard III was in his younger days Warden of the West March with his headquarters in Carlisle, where he is commemorated in one of the city’s principal streets, Rickergate, the proverbial ‘meadow’ may be Bosworth Field’.
Contributed by JC Knights

From:  G K Chesterton The Flying Inn, Chapter XI:  Vegetarianism in the Drawing-room:  ‘Misysra Ammon knew, what next to none of the English present knew, that Richard III was called a ‘boar’ by an eighteenth-century poet and a ‘hog’ by a fifteenth-century poet.  What he did not know was the habit of sport and of heraldry. He did not know (what Joan knew instantly, though she had never thought of it before in her life) that beasts courageous and hard to kill are noble beasts, by the law of chivalry. Therefore the boar was a noble beast;  and a common crest for great captains.  Misysra tried to show that Richard had only been called a pig after he was cold pork at Bosworth’.
Contributed by Kirstin Fletcher

Summer 2005

Extract from Swimming with my father:  a memoir, Tim Jeal. Keith comments: ‘the extract relates to a reference to the author’s mother, Norah Pasley, daughter of Sir Thomas Pasley, Baronet, and his wife Constance Wilmot Annie Hastings, daughter of the 13th Earl of Huntingdon. The extract is quite interesting in terms of the stance the Hastings family appear to have towards Richard III and in the context of verbally transmitted recollection passed through the generations’.

“ .... my mother told me that her mother’s surname .. had been Hastings, and that her ancestor, William, Lord Hastings, had been the king’s Lord Chamberlain and his best friend. “It was during the Wars of the Roses” said my mother  ... “Then the king died and poor Hastings’s head was chopped off”. ... “But had he done something really bad?” ‘Quite the reverse.  He tried to stop the dead king’s brother, Duke Richard, from murdering the Princes in the Tower – they were the old king’s children. ... Richard wanted to be king himself and knew he couldn’t be if the children stayed alive.  So he decided to kill Hastings who would have tried to save them.” “Did the children die too, mummy?” “I’m afraid so”.  ... This true story was scarier and nastier ...  One moment Hastings had been walking about in his furs and fine clothes, being important and looking after the princes, and the next, a savage, unbelievable thing had been done to him when he wasn’t expecting it.  Realising she had upset me, my mother tried to soften the blow by telling me that Hastings’s grandson was made an earl to make up for what had happened, and that this reward for his family explained why four hundred years later my granny had been ‘a lady from birth’.  This was no comfort.  My grandmother was long dead, but I was alive and soon having nightmares. On several nights, I dreamed that the head was lying on the ground with its eyes wide open, staring at the spurting blood.”
Contributed by Keith Stenner

From Execution, a guide to the ultimate penalty, Geoffrey Abbott, Summersdale, 2005,  chapter  on ‘Suffocation’ – uses the story of the princes, based on More and the 1933 examination of the bones, claiming that this proves that Richard was the instigator, although the outset of the chapter states: ‘While their deaths were classed as murder rather than judicial execution, the instigator was nevertheless a king of England, his true identity still unproven’.   Interestingly in light of other references to John Howard, it also claims that Richard’s grants of the ‘vacant titles’ of Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Norfolk suggests that he knew the children were dead, and exhibits some confusion on Anne Mowbray:  ‘not only did the king confiscate the older boy’s property but also the property of the girl, a princess of the House of Plantagenet, the prince had been contracted to marry’
Contributed by Sylvia Sherwood

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Richard’s Marriage Dispensation

A recent discovery by Peter D Clarke has solved a long-standing mystery about Richard’s marriage to Anne Neville. For Research Officer Peter Hammond takes up the story:

Most of the details surrounding Richard’s marriage are unclear, including the date.  However an article in the most recent issue of the English Historical Review (‘English Royal Marriages and the Papal Penitentiary in the Fifteenth Century’, Peter D Clarke, vol. 120, pp.1014-1029) has thrown some light on the matter and on three other marriages of interest to us.

The new information comes from work in the Vatican archives, in the records of the Papal Penitentiary, the functionary who dealt with everything relating to matters of conscience that appeared before the Pope.  These were matters that were reserved to the Pope for absolution and included dispensations from the provisions of canon law prohibiting marriage between couples related within four degrees of blood or marriage (this is second cousin or nearer). This was almost always the case with royal marriages in the fifteenth century.

The four marriages discussed in Clarke’s paper are those between Margaret of York and Charles of Burgundy, Anne Neville and Edward of Lancaster, Anne Neville and Richard of Gloucester and between Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor, all of great interest.  There has never been any doubt that the first two and the last marriages had received dispensations although this paper sheds much light on the politics surrounding the requests for dispensations. I will only mention here that, while we knew that Henry and Elizabeth had received a dispensation in early 1486 after the battle of Bosworth, Clarke’s research reveals that one was granted to them as early as 27 March 1484, nearly 18 months before Bosworth.

However the marriage concerning us here is that between Anne Neville and Richard.  They were certainly related within the normally forbidden degrees of kinship and since there appeared to be no record of a dispensation there has been speculation that they married without one.  This has always seemed unlikely since without a dispensation marriage within the forbidden degrees was always open to challenge.  The provision in the act dividing the Neville estates between Richard and his brother George saying that if Richard and Anne be subsequently divorced Richard could retain the estates whether or not they remarried (provided he did not remarry any one else) has been interpreted to mean that no dispensation had been obtained.  However speculation is now at an end. Richard and Anne did apply and one was granted to them on 22 April 1472.  It released them from the impediment of being related within the third and fourth degrees of kinship, for which relationship they also needed a littera declaratoria, also granted.  Richard was described as dux Glouirestere, laicus Lincolniensis diocesis (duke of Gloucester, layman of the Lincoln diocese) and Anne as Anna Nevile, mulier Eboracensis diocesis (woman of the York diocese).  Normally the diocese is the birth one.  Richard’s is correct, Fotheringhay is in the Lincoln diocese, but Anne was born in Warwickshire in the Worcester diocese.  She may have been described as from York because the Neville estates obtained by Richard were largely in Yorkshire.  These dispensations sometimes are very vague as to who the parties are, deliberately so in politically sensitive marriages.  For example in the first dispensation of Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor they are described as Henry Richemont and Elizabeth Plantageneta.

Although Richard and Anne received their dispensation on 22 April we still do not really know when they were married. In the religious sense they were free to marry from that date but political considerations, i.e. the question of the division of the Neville estates, might have prevented it and they may not have married until the dispute was finally settled in 1474.  At least we now know that they did receive a dispensation from the church to do so.

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Recent Publications

Richard III: The Maligned King by Annette Carson
For more details please click here.

The Three Richards: Richard I, Richard II and Richard III by Nigel Saul. 2005. Hambledon and London. London and New York £29.95

The Hollow Crown: A History of the Britain in the Late Middle Ages by Miri Rubin. 2005. Allen Lane. London £25

Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by Colin Richmond who commented ‘the two pages on the critical months between the death of Edward IV and Richard’s coronation in July are a tissue of nonsense’.

History of King Richard III by Thomas More. 2005. Hesperus, pbk, £6.99, (introduction by Sister Wendy Beckett. ‘... the received story was used to make a political point too dangerous to publish. .. It is famous for its tear-jerking account of the death of the princes, which may or may not have been based on an actual confession. ... Neither a source for the history of Richard III, nor a piece of Tudor propaganda;  it is quite simply sui generis’ – as reviewed by Tony Pollard in BBC History, April 2005)

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The Catesbys of Ashby St Ledgers and their brasses
by Members of the Monumental Brass Society and Others
Edited by Jerome Bertram

The latest in the MBS’s series of occasional publications arose from the MBS Study Day held in May 2003 at the church of Ashby St. Ledgers, Northamptonshire, at which leading authorities in the field presented important new research on the church, the Catesby family and brasses to family members spanning the period 1404 to 1553. Most of the brasses are now in imperfect condition, but details of lost components are recorded in 17th and 18th century antiquarian notes transcribed in full in the volume.

Two brasses currently in Northamptonshire Record Office were newly identified as coming from Ashby, and as a result of this research are to be restored to the church. All known brasses from Ashby are studied in the volume and an overview given of their significance. In addition information is provided on an important lost heraldic glazing scheme which once graced the church. The whole is set in context by an essay on the family, incorporating information from hitherto unpublished sources. The volume is copiously illustrated in colour, with the contents comprising:

• Introduction

• Catalogue of Brasses at Ashby St Ledgers

• List of Coats of Arms

• ‘Never desire to be great about princes, for it is daungeros’: the rise and fall of the fifteenth-century Catesbys.  By Simon Payling

• The One(s) that got Away.  By Jane Houghton

• Nearly Headless Bill: The Mutilation of the Brasses in Ashby St Ledgers.  By Jerome Bertram

• Magnificence Faded: The brass of Sir Richard Catesby, died 1552/3. By Robert Hutchinson

• The Catesbys’ Taste in Brasses, By Sally Badham and Nigel Saul

• The Brass of Thomas Stokes and his Wife.  By Nigel Saul

• The Brass of William Smyght.  By Jon Bayliss

• Appendix: the Church Notes for Ashby St Ledgers 1590-1721, transcribed and annotated by John A. Goodall.

The volume will be published in spring 2006 at a price of £20, but members of the Society are invited to subscribe at the pre-publication price of £10 (plus £5 postage and packing).  

All names and address of subscribers will be printed in the volume if remittances and details are received prior to 10 March 2006.

Visitors to the site who are interested in purchasing this volume click here for a downloadable flyer.

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