Long live the King

This interesting tome has finally appeared in paperback. The opening Parts read like an abridged biography of the story familiar to us through Warner’s The Unconventional King, but to be read with an open mind as to whether Edward II survived his “official death” today in 1327 or not. The reader will re-learn the events…

THE TRIAL OF RICHARD III, PART 1

REBLOGGED FROM A MEDIEVAL POTPOURRI SPARKYPUS.COM The statue of Justice, Old Bailey, London. Way back in  1980 the late Jeremy Potter,  Chairman of the Richard III Society,  and producer Richard Drewitt discussed King Richard III at length and an idea was born.    That was to put Richard  on trial for a heinous murder he had…

Another one (denialists’ myth) bites the dust

Another subject that Cairo dwellers frequently pontificate about is Henry “Tudor”‘s marriage to Elizabeth of York. We do know that he promised, on Christmas Day in 1483 at Rennes Cathedral, to wed her and we know that he obtained a dispensation for the purpose. The denialists claim that this shows her and her mother’s knowledge…

A highlight from the quincentenary …

… of Richard’s accession was Channel Four’s 1984 “The Trial Of King Richard The Third”, presided over by Lord Elwyn-Jones. A YouTube poster has sliced it into 22 segments so enjoy the show, particularly part ten, in which a young Starkey implodes. Pollard and Lady Wedgwood (Pamela Tudor-Craig) also feature, as do Anne Sutton and…

They don’t like it up ’em?

It seems that some of the denialists are becoming even more sensitive than before and dislike being called Cairo dwellers. One Michael Hicks acolyte went to the point of giving Matthew Lewis well-researched biography of Richard III a one-star review. Sadly for “Alex Brondarbit”, the introduction to his own latest book (below) by the Professor…

Loyalty Binds Me reviewed

See Sarah Bryson’s review of this biography here . Or, if you would prefer to judge it by our criteria for a post-Kendall biography of Richard, read here. Lewis is already the author of a volume on the “Princes” but approaches the pre-contract and Portuguese marriage negotiations well, thereby scoring highly on the three most important points.

More than one target for the Cairo dwellers?

21 September 1327 is the traditional date of death for Edward II at Berkeley Castle and various myths about it and his life have passed through these 690 years almost unquestioned. They are repeated by quite a few notable people without real evidence as well. If this sounds familiar, it is because certain individuals have…

A 19th century British reference to the Portuguese marriage

The facts of the proposed marriages of Richard III to Joana of Portugal and of Manoel of Beja to Elizabeth of York had, of course, been known in Portugal for a long time, before being published by Domingos Mauricio Gomes dos Santos in 1963. Arthur Kincaid picked up on this and mentioned the marriages in…

On the preservation of sources beyond our shores

Our post on Thursday (https://murreyandblue.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/the-book-kendall-could-write-today-4-two-little-boys/) showed that Jehan de Wavrin’s comments on the relative sizes of George and Richard in 1461 are available to us because Wavrin’s “Recueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bretaigne” (p.357) was composed in Burgundy. It was, therefore, beyond the reach of the “Tudor” agent known as the…

More Cairo fun

It seems as if those denialists, rather than give up and concede that the evidence*since Kendall is favourable to Richard, are descending into self-parody. Apart from someone, with a name that is quite valuable at Scrabble, resurfacing after five years, we have had some new claims. The Calais garrison were suggested to have defected to…