1484 – TITULUS REGIUS: FACT OR FICTION?

  Introduction ‘ ‘This is indeed a mystery’ I remarked.’ What do you think it means?’‘I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suite theories, instead of theories to suite facts.’   In Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story A Scandal…

Was Lord Stanley present when Hastings was arrested….?

Tomorrow is the 534th anniversary of the council meeting in the Tower that culminated in the arrest of Hastings. There have always been inconsistencies in accounts of that day, but the one I am concerned with is whether or not that treacherous snake, Thomas Stanley, was present. You see, according to whose version one reads, at…

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…

A 1950’s Kids’ Book with a Different View

We tend to think of anything relating to Richard  III prior to the last  forty years to be biased towards traditional views, with the exceptions of Josephine Tey’s novel, Paul Murray Kendall’s biography, a few other novels like Patrick Carlton’s Under the Hog, and the early  ‘defenders’ such as Buck, Markham and Halsted. Children’s books…

STILL LOOKING FOR RICHARD

Introduction According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the noun Ricardianism means ‘support for or advocacy of Richard III’. Even though I have been a supporter of king Richard III for almost six decades, I am reluctant to describe myself as a Ricardian since it implies a narrow interest in one man. I prefer to…

The Tragedy of King Richard 111 (not by William Shakespeare)

Part 4 – “… the corruption of a blemished stock “ “ A beauty-waning and distressed widow,    Even in the afternoon of her best days,    Made prize and purchase of his wanton eye    Seduced the pitch and height of his degree    To base declension and loathed bigamy. “    (William Shakespeare)…

The Fotheringhay Boar(s)

In all my travels to England, I had yet to visit Fotheringhay, the place where Richard III was born on October 2, 1452, and where his grand-uncle, father, mother and brother Edmund are buried. So, when planning our latest trip this past October, I made it a high priority that my husband and I should…