re Josephine Wilkinson
re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-10 17:35:59
Richard The Young King to Be
by Josephine Wilkinson
A review.
by Paul Trevor Bale
The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
Wilkinsonýs Richard The Young King to Be?ý is that it is a hard
read, and I admit to struggling at times.
One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
Ricardians, who donýt need to read yet again the date, details and
circumstances, of Richardýs birth, though any book has to appeal to
the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
ýPottedý is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
reader, of little interest.
In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
whatsoever.
At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
when he was alive, but after the kingýs death changing his story
completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
fiction!
Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
Hicks ýpoints out that Richard did not speak with a northern accentý,
discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
very far into Richardýs story, and eve make them wonder whoýs story
they are in fact reading!
I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
about our Richard!
Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
"though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
of the moors, for instance"
Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
the treatment of his fatherýs head Wilkinson writes :-
"that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
deepest dreams"
and
"in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
living"
The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
Kendall wrote!
All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
"Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
marriage began, and the author uses More again as ýa reliable sourceý
this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
boy would have been ale to judge!
The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesnýt make a lot of
sense.
At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard.
But up against the flowery descriptions of ýhis ducal coronet,
beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
shoulders, framing his handsome faceý, we find the accusation that
Richardýs removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
the ýeý) to sanctuary was ýtantamount to rapeý, yes, Hicks has a lot
to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
she did not come with her inheritance.
This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, ýRichardýs dark secretý,
not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
of the cartulary is in Richardýs own hand.
Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
discussion of the Countess of Oxfordýs land division, has the author
arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
in this, a lot of it was driven by Richardýs early insecure years, by
Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
settlement, as well as by Anneýs own wish to keep hold of her share
of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
in with a hatchet.
Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
don't recall reading before. Thereýs also a marvellous section
describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
a knight, and later try himself.
Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
is to be the most perfect knight, has ýtant le souvienneý written in
it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
more and more like stuffing.
By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
point. There's that much waffle!
All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
Annette Carsonýs marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
Paul Trevor Bale
Richard liveth yet
by Josephine Wilkinson
A review.
by Paul Trevor Bale
The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
Wilkinsonýs Richard The Young King to Be?ý is that it is a hard
read, and I admit to struggling at times.
One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
Ricardians, who donýt need to read yet again the date, details and
circumstances, of Richardýs birth, though any book has to appeal to
the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
ýPottedý is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
reader, of little interest.
In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
whatsoever.
At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
when he was alive, but after the kingýs death changing his story
completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
fiction!
Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
Hicks ýpoints out that Richard did not speak with a northern accentý,
discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
very far into Richardýs story, and eve make them wonder whoýs story
they are in fact reading!
I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
about our Richard!
Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
"though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
of the moors, for instance"
Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
the treatment of his fatherýs head Wilkinson writes :-
"that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
deepest dreams"
and
"in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
living"
The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
Kendall wrote!
All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
"Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
marriage began, and the author uses More again as ýa reliable sourceý
this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
boy would have been ale to judge!
The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesnýt make a lot of
sense.
At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard.
But up against the flowery descriptions of ýhis ducal coronet,
beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
shoulders, framing his handsome faceý, we find the accusation that
Richardýs removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
the ýeý) to sanctuary was ýtantamount to rapeý, yes, Hicks has a lot
to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
she did not come with her inheritance.
This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, ýRichardýs dark secretý,
not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
of the cartulary is in Richardýs own hand.
Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
discussion of the Countess of Oxfordýs land division, has the author
arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
in this, a lot of it was driven by Richardýs early insecure years, by
Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
settlement, as well as by Anneýs own wish to keep hold of her share
of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
in with a hatchet.
Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
don't recall reading before. Thereýs also a marvellous section
describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
a knight, and later try himself.
Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
is to be the most perfect knight, has ýtant le souvienneý written in
it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
more and more like stuffing.
By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
point. There's that much waffle!
All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
Annette Carsonýs marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
Paul Trevor Bale
Richard liveth yet
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-10 17:49:12
Paul Trevor Bale <[email protected] [on Wilkinson's book]: ..."Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
Hicks "points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent",
discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!"
*LOL* No doubt covering over those 18 lost minutes of the Nixon tapes. ;-)
Joan
---
This Time, ISBN-13: 978-0-9824493-0-1
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
Hicks "points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent",
discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!"
*LOL* No doubt covering over those 18 lost minutes of the Nixon tapes. ;-)
Joan
---
This Time, ISBN-13: 978-0-9824493-0-1
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-10 17:51:50
--- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote:
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale
>
Great review Paul, in the sense it gives me a clear idea of what to expect. I think I'll be asking the library to get this for me.
Loved the reference to Richard's voice on tape! Of course he wasn't a northerner, but that's one of the amazing things about him, that he was accepted in an area where even today they tend to mutter darkly about 'off-comers' in the public bars...
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale
>
Great review Paul, in the sense it gives me a clear idea of what to expect. I think I'll be asking the library to get this for me.
Loved the reference to Richard's voice on tape! Of course he wasn't a northerner, but that's one of the amazing things about him, that he was accepted in an area where even today they tend to mutter darkly about 'off-comers' in the public bars...
A word the the Wilkinson review and Richard's accent
2009-09-10 21:58:40
Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote: "
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale"
What an excellent review, Paul. I particularly like how you set our
expectations. Now I know what parts to skim over when I do get around to
this tome.
"...Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks "points out that Richard did not speak with a northern
accent", ..."
However, I couldn't resist one more comment on Richard's possible
accent.
I had to deal with what I thought might have been his accent in my book
(This Time) just published. Instead of writing about Richard's life, I
ended up speculating as to what type of man he'd become if he were to be
brought into the 21st-century. The book became two parallel stories, one
investigating specific aspects about his past (mostly about the princes
in the Tower) and the other his adaptation to modern life and the type
of person he might become. Since I brought him to life today, I had to
invent certain personal properties, such as what I thought his accent
might be. Based on the limited research I did and information I got from
people knowledgeable about linguistics, I came up with an American
Appalachian accent with overtones of a Northern English burr. One of the
things I had learned a while ago and confirmed while writing this book
was that a more-or-less pure form of a 16th-century English accent could
still be found in some isolated pockets of the Appalachias in the
Southern US. I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired some of
those speech patterns.
Joan
---
This Time, ISBN-13: 978-0-9824493-0-1
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale"
What an excellent review, Paul. I particularly like how you set our
expectations. Now I know what parts to skim over when I do get around to
this tome.
"...Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks "points out that Richard did not speak with a northern
accent", ..."
However, I couldn't resist one more comment on Richard's possible
accent.
I had to deal with what I thought might have been his accent in my book
(This Time) just published. Instead of writing about Richard's life, I
ended up speculating as to what type of man he'd become if he were to be
brought into the 21st-century. The book became two parallel stories, one
investigating specific aspects about his past (mostly about the princes
in the Tower) and the other his adaptation to modern life and the type
of person he might become. Since I brought him to life today, I had to
invent certain personal properties, such as what I thought his accent
might be. Based on the limited research I did and information I got from
people knowledgeable about linguistics, I came up with an American
Appalachian accent with overtones of a Northern English burr. One of the
things I had learned a while ago and confirmed while writing this book
was that a more-or-less pure form of a 16th-century English accent could
still be found in some isolated pockets of the Appalachias in the
Southern US. I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired some of
those speech patterns.
Joan
---
This Time, ISBN-13: 978-0-9824493-0-1
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-10 23:12:43
Joan, glad to see you get the sense of humour thrown in amongst the
criticism! :-)
Paul
On 10 Sep 2009, at 17:48, u2nohoo wrote:
> Paul Trevor Bale <[email protected] [on Wilkinson's
> book]: ..."Amongst the numerous sources making their first
> appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks "points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent",
> discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!"
>
> *LOL* No doubt covering over those 18 lost minutes of the Nixon
> tapes. ;-)
>
> Joan
> ---
> This Time, ISBN-13: 978-0-9824493-0-1
> website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
Richard liveth yet
criticism! :-)
Paul
On 10 Sep 2009, at 17:48, u2nohoo wrote:
> Paul Trevor Bale <[email protected] [on Wilkinson's
> book]: ..."Amongst the numerous sources making their first
> appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks "points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent",
> discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!"
>
> *LOL* No doubt covering over those 18 lost minutes of the Nixon
> tapes. ;-)
>
> Joan
> ---
> This Time, ISBN-13: 978-0-9824493-0-1
> website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
Richard liveth yet
Re: A word the the Wilkinson review and Richard's accent
2009-09-10 23:20:57
On 10 Sep 2009, at 21:58, u2nohoo wrote:
> I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
> part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired
> some of
> those speech patterns.
So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to. Friend of mine
was speaking with an American accent after only 3 months in New York.
Another has lived there years and is still as English as I am. As
Richard was frequently at court or dealing with his brother I doubt
he would have used any northern characteristics in is normal way of
speaking, only resorted to them when dealing with the locals in the
north.
Paul
Richard liveth yet
> I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
> part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired
> some of
> those speech patterns.
So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to. Friend of mine
was speaking with an American accent after only 3 months in New York.
Another has lived there years and is still as English as I am. As
Richard was frequently at court or dealing with his brother I doubt
he would have used any northern characteristics in is normal way of
speaking, only resorted to them when dealing with the locals in the
north.
Paul
Richard liveth yet
Re: A word the the Wilkinson review and Richard's accent
2009-09-10 23:32:02
Of course it's all conjecture. Part of the reason I thought he might have picked up some northern patterns was because when he was at Middleham under Warrick. I did base this on my own experience of moving from Brooklyn, NY to Bridgeport, CT when I was ten. While I still have a trace of a New York accent, my speech is more New England based.
Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote: "...So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
> depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to...."
Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote: "...So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
> depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to...."
Re: A word the the Wilkinson review and Richard's accent
2009-09-10 23:49:07
--- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote:
>
>
> On 10 Sep 2009, at 21:58, u2nohoo wrote:
>
> > I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
> > part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired
> > some of
> > those speech patterns.
>
> So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
> depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to. Friend of mine
> was speaking with an American accent after only 3 months in New York.
> Another has lived there years and is still as English as I am. As
> Richard was frequently at court or dealing with his brother I doubt
> he would have used any northern characteristics in is normal way of
> speaking, only resorted to them when dealing with the locals in the
I would imagine that Richard could also read and write Latin and read, write, and speak French.
Katy
>
>
> On 10 Sep 2009, at 21:58, u2nohoo wrote:
>
> > I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
> > part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired
> > some of
> > those speech patterns.
>
> So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
> depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to. Friend of mine
> was speaking with an American accent after only 3 months in New York.
> Another has lived there years and is still as English as I am. As
> Richard was frequently at court or dealing with his brother I doubt
> he would have used any northern characteristics in is normal way of
> speaking, only resorted to them when dealing with the locals in the
I would imagine that Richard could also read and write Latin and read, write, and speak French.
Katy
Re: A word the the Wilkinson review and Richard's accent
2009-09-11 09:46:30
As Paul says, picking up accents is a very individual thing. I pick them up quite fast, and my accent naturally gravitates towards that of the people I'm speaking to. So Richard might not have been putting a northern accent on when communicating to the local yokels, it may have been a much more instinctive process.
I've been in Cheshire over 20 years and although I don't get out much now, it is many years since I have been spotted as a southern interloper! But I can still be pure southern when in the south. But I was turned thirty when I made the move.
I suppose we'd all like to think Richard is rather like ourselves, but we don't have any concrete evidence as to how much of a northern accent he'd picked up. I don't believe he came north at ten. It's pretty widely accepted now that he was sent to Warwick's household AFTER the Woodville marriage and stayed there till late 1468 - all the evidence points in that direction. There are people who can move to a different part of the country that young and not pick up the accent - if Frank Dobson was to be believed when he ran for London mayor claiming to be a real "Loondoner" as, though born in York, he had come down to "Loondon" at the age of twelve and been there ever since.
Contrast that with Henry VII, who entered French-speaking territory for the first time only at the age of 14, but remained happier speaking French than English for the rest of his life.
Certainly Richard would have learnt some Latin and French - including French conversation. We know he could follow Latin speech - the Scottish ambassador's speech to him was in Latin, and Von Poppelau spoke to him and his nobles in Latin. Later, Richard drew him aside and "He answered me through an interpreter [Jan van Bergen], in the Latin language – though in rather simple words". The interpreter was Dutch (Jan van Bergen), so it sounds as though Richard was speaking in simple Latin and getting Van Bergen to translate it into German as a matter of courtesy to his guest. A word of warning about the "rather simple words" in that Von Poppelau was showing off about his own Latin, and how amazed Richard was at his eloquence in the language.
BUT Richard knew enough Low German (the ancestor of Dutch and Flemish) to use it to greet Von Poppelau warmly ('Ick heit ju wilkom, und sit bey mir free wilkom'). So he had obviously picked up a bit of basic holiday Flemish during his few months in Bruges, although he could probably have got by perfectly well with English, French and Latin.
My feeling is that is not a man who would have failed to pick up any Yorkshire patois during all his years up there, even though he could probably have turned it on and off like a tap.
Marie
--- In , "oregonkaty" <oregon_katy@...> wrote:
>
> --- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 10 Sep 2009, at 21:58, u2nohoo wrote:
> >
> > > I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
> > > part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired
> > > some of
> > > those speech patterns.
> >
> > So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
> > depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to. Friend of mine
> > was speaking with an American accent after only 3 months in New York.
> > Another has lived there years and is still as English as I am. As
> > Richard was frequently at court or dealing with his brother I doubt
> > he would have used any northern characteristics in is normal way of
> > speaking, only resorted to them when dealing with the locals in the
>
>
> I would imagine that Richard could also read and write Latin and read, write, and speak French.
>
> Katy
>
I've been in Cheshire over 20 years and although I don't get out much now, it is many years since I have been spotted as a southern interloper! But I can still be pure southern when in the south. But I was turned thirty when I made the move.
I suppose we'd all like to think Richard is rather like ourselves, but we don't have any concrete evidence as to how much of a northern accent he'd picked up. I don't believe he came north at ten. It's pretty widely accepted now that he was sent to Warwick's household AFTER the Woodville marriage and stayed there till late 1468 - all the evidence points in that direction. There are people who can move to a different part of the country that young and not pick up the accent - if Frank Dobson was to be believed when he ran for London mayor claiming to be a real "Loondoner" as, though born in York, he had come down to "Loondon" at the age of twelve and been there ever since.
Contrast that with Henry VII, who entered French-speaking territory for the first time only at the age of 14, but remained happier speaking French than English for the rest of his life.
Certainly Richard would have learnt some Latin and French - including French conversation. We know he could follow Latin speech - the Scottish ambassador's speech to him was in Latin, and Von Poppelau spoke to him and his nobles in Latin. Later, Richard drew him aside and "He answered me through an interpreter [Jan van Bergen], in the Latin language – though in rather simple words". The interpreter was Dutch (Jan van Bergen), so it sounds as though Richard was speaking in simple Latin and getting Van Bergen to translate it into German as a matter of courtesy to his guest. A word of warning about the "rather simple words" in that Von Poppelau was showing off about his own Latin, and how amazed Richard was at his eloquence in the language.
BUT Richard knew enough Low German (the ancestor of Dutch and Flemish) to use it to greet Von Poppelau warmly ('Ick heit ju wilkom, und sit bey mir free wilkom'). So he had obviously picked up a bit of basic holiday Flemish during his few months in Bruges, although he could probably have got by perfectly well with English, French and Latin.
My feeling is that is not a man who would have failed to pick up any Yorkshire patois during all his years up there, even though he could probably have turned it on and off like a tap.
Marie
--- In , "oregonkaty" <oregon_katy@...> wrote:
>
> --- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 10 Sep 2009, at 21:58, u2nohoo wrote:
> >
> > > I added the burr because Richard did spend a significant
> > > part of his life in the north of England and would have acquired
> > > some of
> > > those speech patterns.
> >
> > So did I and I speak without any northern patterns or usages. It
> > depends on the person what they pick up or adapt to. Friend of mine
> > was speaking with an American accent after only 3 months in New York.
> > Another has lived there years and is still as English as I am. As
> > Richard was frequently at court or dealing with his brother I doubt
> > he would have used any northern characteristics in is normal way of
> > speaking, only resorted to them when dealing with the locals in the
>
>
> I would imagine that Richard could also read and write Latin and read, write, and speak French.
>
> Katy
>
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-11 11:28:18
I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage. But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommon and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIV was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of his life.
Ann
________________________________
From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
Richard The Young King to Be
by Josephine Wilkinson
A review.
by Paul Trevor Bale
The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
Wilkinson's Richard The Young King to Be? is that it is a hard
read, and I admit to struggling at times.
One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
Ricardians, who don't need to read yet again the date, details and
circumstances, of Richard's birth, though any book has to appeal to
the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
Potted is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
reader, of little interest.
In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
whatsoever.
At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
when he was alive, but after the king's death changing his story
completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
fiction!
Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
Hicks points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent ,
discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
very far into Richard's story, and eve make them wonder who's story
they are in fact reading!
I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
about our Richard!
Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
"though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
of the moors, for instance"
Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
the treatment of his father's head Wilkinson writes :-
"that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
deepest dreams"
and
"in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
living"
The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
Kendall wrote!
All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
"Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
marriage began, and the author uses More again as a reliable source
this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
boy would have been ale to judge!
The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn't make a lot of
sense..
At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
But up against the flowery descriptions of his ducal coronet,
beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
shoulders, framing his handsome face , we find the accusation that
Richard's removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
the e') to sanctuary was tantamount to rape', yes, Hicks has a lot
to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
she did not come with her inheritance.
This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, Richard's dark secret ,
not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
of the cartulary is in Richard's own hand.
Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
discussion of the Countess of Oxford's land division, has the author
arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard's early insecure years, by
Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
settlement, as well as by Anne's own wish to keep hold of her share
of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
in with a hatchet.
Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
don't recall reading before. There's also a marvellous section
describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
a knight, and later try himself.
Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
is to be the most perfect knight, has tant le souvienne' written in
it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
more and more like stuffing.
By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
point. There's that much waffle!
All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
Annette Carson's marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
Paul Trevor Bale
Richard liveth yet
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
Ann
________________________________
From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
Richard The Young King to Be
by Josephine Wilkinson
A review.
by Paul Trevor Bale
The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
Wilkinson's Richard The Young King to Be? is that it is a hard
read, and I admit to struggling at times.
One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
Ricardians, who don't need to read yet again the date, details and
circumstances, of Richard's birth, though any book has to appeal to
the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
Potted is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
reader, of little interest.
In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
whatsoever.
At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
when he was alive, but after the king's death changing his story
completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
fiction!
Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
Hicks points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent ,
discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
very far into Richard's story, and eve make them wonder who's story
they are in fact reading!
I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
about our Richard!
Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
"though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
of the moors, for instance"
Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
the treatment of his father's head Wilkinson writes :-
"that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
deepest dreams"
and
"in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
living"
The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
Kendall wrote!
All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
"Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
marriage began, and the author uses More again as a reliable source
this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
boy would have been ale to judge!
The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn't make a lot of
sense..
At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
But up against the flowery descriptions of his ducal coronet,
beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
shoulders, framing his handsome face , we find the accusation that
Richard's removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
the e') to sanctuary was tantamount to rape', yes, Hicks has a lot
to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
she did not come with her inheritance.
This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, Richard's dark secret ,
not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
of the cartulary is in Richard's own hand.
Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
discussion of the Countess of Oxford's land division, has the author
arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard's early insecure years, by
Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
settlement, as well as by Anne's own wish to keep hold of her share
of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
in with a hatchet.
Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
don't recall reading before. There's also a marvellous section
describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
a knight, and later try himself.
Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
is to be the most perfect knight, has tant le souvienne' written in
it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
more and more like stuffing.
By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
point. There's that much waffle!
All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
Annette Carson's marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
Paul Trevor Bale
Richard liveth yet
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-11 11:38:15
The teeth thing An is just another case of a writer approaching
Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove he
may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had a
deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as an
insult to Richard, and not very good history.
Paul
On 11 Sep 2009, at 11:26, A LYON wrote:
> I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage.
> But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommon
> and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIV
> was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of his
> life.
>
> Ann
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
> Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
> Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale
>
>
> The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
> Wilkinson's Richard The Young King to Be? is that it is a hard
> read, and I admit to struggling at times.
>
> One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
> chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
> Ricardians, who don't need to read yet again the date, details and
> circumstances, of Richard's birth, though any book has to appeal to
> the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
> subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
>
> Potted is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
>
> I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
> myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
> each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
> York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
> Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
> reader, of little interest.
>
> In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
> astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
> at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
> charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
> and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
> may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
> whatsoever.
>
> At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
> to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
> changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
> when he was alive, but after the king's death changing his story
> completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
> astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
> Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
> Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
> he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
>
> There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
> that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
> The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
> that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
> laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
> Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
> Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
> Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
> mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
> fiction!
>
> Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent ,
> discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
>
> All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
> on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
> very far into Richard's story, and eve make them wonder who's story
> they are in fact reading!
>
> I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
> mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
> talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
> details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
> lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
> about our Richard!
>
> Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
> "though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
> Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
> of the moors, for instance"
>
> Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
>
> Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
> the treatment of his father's head Wilkinson writes :-
>
> "that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
> casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
> deepest dreams"
>
> and
>
> "in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
> the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
> living"
>
> The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
> dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
> Kendall wrote!
>
> All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
> I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
> to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
> calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
> England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
> I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
> lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
> Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
> "Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
>
> Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
> religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
>
> BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
> finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
> Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
> his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
> focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
> marriage began, and the author uses More again as a reliable source
> this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
> body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
> only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
> description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
> boy would have been ale to judge!
>
> The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
>
> There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
> University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
> is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
> knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
> three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
>
> While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
> seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
> does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn't make a lot of
> sense..
>
> At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
> But up against the flowery descriptions of his ducal coronet,
> beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
> shoulders, framing his handsome face , we find the accusation that
> Richard's removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
> the e') to sanctuary was tantamount to rape', yes, Hicks has a lot
> to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
> and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
> she did not come with her inheritance.
> This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, Richard's dark secret ,
> not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
> and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
> BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
> exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
> have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
> able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
> scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
> on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
> every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
> of the cartulary is in Richard's own hand.
>
> Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
> discussion of the Countess of Oxford's land division, has the author
> arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
> in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard's early insecure years, by
> Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
> settlement, as well as by Anne's own wish to keep hold of her share
> of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
>
> However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
> was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
> typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
> though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
> the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
> he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
>
> I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
> interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
> doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
> could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
> in with a hatchet.
>
> Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
> and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
> countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
> hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
> The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
> there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
> don't recall reading before. There's also a marvellous section
> describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
> a knight, and later try himself.
>
> Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
> should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
> is to be the most perfect knight, has tant le souvienne' written in
> it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
> fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
> Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
> Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
> and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
> histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
> someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
> more and more like stuffing.
>
> By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
> here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
> point. There's that much waffle!
>
> All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
> that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
> Annette Carson's marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
>
> Paul Trevor Bale
>
> Richard liveth yet
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
Richard liveth yet
Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove he
may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had a
deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as an
insult to Richard, and not very good history.
Paul
On 11 Sep 2009, at 11:26, A LYON wrote:
> I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage.
> But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommon
> and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIV
> was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of his
> life.
>
> Ann
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
> Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
> Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale
>
>
> The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
> Wilkinson's Richard The Young King to Be? is that it is a hard
> read, and I admit to struggling at times.
>
> One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
> chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
> Ricardians, who don't need to read yet again the date, details and
> circumstances, of Richard's birth, though any book has to appeal to
> the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
> subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
>
> Potted is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
>
> I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
> myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
> each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
> York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
> Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
> reader, of little interest.
>
> In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
> astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
> at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
> charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
> and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
> may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
> whatsoever.
>
> At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
> to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
> changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
> when he was alive, but after the king's death changing his story
> completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
> astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
> Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
> Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
> he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
>
> There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
> that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
> The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
> that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
> laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
> Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
> Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
> Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
> mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
> fiction!
>
> Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent ,
> discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
>
> All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
> on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
> very far into Richard's story, and eve make them wonder who's story
> they are in fact reading!
>
> I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
> mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
> talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
> details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
> lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
> about our Richard!
>
> Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
> "though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
> Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
> of the moors, for instance"
>
> Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
>
> Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
> the treatment of his father's head Wilkinson writes :-
>
> "that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
> casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
> deepest dreams"
>
> and
>
> "in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
> the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
> living"
>
> The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
> dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
> Kendall wrote!
>
> All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
> I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
> to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
> calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
> England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
> I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
> lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
> Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
> "Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
>
> Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
> religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
>
> BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
> finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
> Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
> his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
> focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
> marriage began, and the author uses More again as a reliable source
> this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
> body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
> only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
> description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
> boy would have been ale to judge!
>
> The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
>
> There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
> University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
> is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
> knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
> three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
>
> While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
> seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
> does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn't make a lot of
> sense..
>
> At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
> But up against the flowery descriptions of his ducal coronet,
> beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
> shoulders, framing his handsome face , we find the accusation that
> Richard's removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
> the e') to sanctuary was tantamount to rape', yes, Hicks has a lot
> to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
> and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
> she did not come with her inheritance.
> This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, Richard's dark secret ,
> not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
> and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
> BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
> exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
> have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
> able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
> scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
> on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
> every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
> of the cartulary is in Richard's own hand.
>
> Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
> discussion of the Countess of Oxford's land division, has the author
> arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
> in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard's early insecure years, by
> Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
> settlement, as well as by Anne's own wish to keep hold of her share
> of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
>
> However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
> was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
> typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
> though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
> the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
> he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
>
> I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
> interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
> doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
> could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
> in with a hatchet.
>
> Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
> and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
> countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
> hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
> The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
> there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
> don't recall reading before. There's also a marvellous section
> describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
> a knight, and later try himself.
>
> Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
> should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
> is to be the most perfect knight, has tant le souvienne' written in
> it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
> fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
> Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
> Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
> and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
> histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
> someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
> more and more like stuffing.
>
> By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
> here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
> point. There's that much waffle!
>
> All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
> that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
> Annette Carson's marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
>
> Paul Trevor Bale
>
> Richard liveth yet
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
Richard liveth yet
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-11 16:00:59
--- In , A LYON <A.Lyon1@...> wrote:
>
> I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage. But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommon and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIV was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of his life.
>
> Ann
I was born with two teeth (central lower incisors), which fell out after a week or two. Later normal baby teeth appeared in the same place.
Katy
>
> I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage. But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommon and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIV was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of his life.
>
> Ann
I was born with two teeth (central lower incisors), which fell out after a week or two. Later normal baby teeth appeared in the same place.
Katy
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-12 14:08:25
Paul
The point I'm making is that it is not impossible that Richard was born with one or two teeth, and that does not imply anything medically peculiar. The tale then became wildly exaggerated to produce a full set of teeth.
Regards
Ann
________________________________
From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
To:
Sent: Friday, 11 September, 2009 11:37:58 AM
Subject: Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
The teeth thing An is just another case of a writer approaching
Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove he
may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had a
deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as an
insult to Richard, and not very good history.
Paul
On 11 Sep 2009, at 11:26, A LYON wrote:
> I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage.
> But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommon
> and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIV
> was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of his
> life.
>
> Ann
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
> Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
> Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale
>
>
> The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
> Wilkinson's Richard The Young King to Be? is that it is a hard
> read, and I admit to struggling at times.
>
> One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
> chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
> Ricardians, who don't need to read yet again the date, details and
> circumstances, of Richard's birth, though any book has to appeal to
> the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
> subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
>
> Potted is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
>
> I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
> myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
> each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
> York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
> Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
> reader, of little interest.
>
> In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
> astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
> at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
> charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
> and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
> may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
> whatsoever.
>
> At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
> to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
> changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
> when he was alive, but after the king's death changing his story
> completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
> astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
> Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
> Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
> he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
>
> There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
> that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
> The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
> that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
> laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
> Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
> Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
> Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
> mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
> fiction!
>
> Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent ,
> discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
>
> All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
> on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
> very far into Richard's story, and eve make them wonder who's story
> they are in fact reading!
>
> I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
> mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
> talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
> details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
> lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
> about our Richard!
>
> Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
> "though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
> Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
> of the moors, for instance"
>
> Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
>
> Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
> the treatment of his father's head Wilkinson writes :-
>
> "that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
> casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
> deepest dreams"
>
> and
>
> "in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
> the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
> living"
>
> The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
> dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
> Kendall wrote!
>
> All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
> I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
> to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
> calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
> England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
> I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
> lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
> Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
> "Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
>
> Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
> religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
>
> BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
> finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
> Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
> his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
> focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
> marriage began, and the author uses More again as a reliable source
> this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
> body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
> only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
> description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
> boy would have been ale to judge!
>
> The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
>
> There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
> University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
> is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
> knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
> three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
>
> While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
> seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
> does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn't make a lot of
> sense..
>
> At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
> But up against the flowery descriptions of his ducal coronet,
> beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
> shoulders, framing his handsome face , we find the accusation that
> Richard's removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
> the e') to sanctuary was tantamount to rape', yes, Hicks has a lot
> to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
> and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
> she did not come with her inheritance.
> This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, Richard's dark secret ,
> not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
> and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
> BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
> exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
> have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
> able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
> scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
> on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
> every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
> of the cartulary is in Richard's own hand.
>
> Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
> discussion of the Countess of Oxford's land division, has the author
> arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
> in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard's early insecure years, by
> Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
> settlement, as well as by Anne's own wish to keep hold of her share
> of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
>
> However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
> was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
> typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
> though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
> the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
> he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
>
> I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
> interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
> doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
> could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
> in with a hatchet.
>
> Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
> and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
> countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
> hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
> The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
> there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
> don't recall reading before. There's also a marvellous section
> describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
> a knight, and later try himself.
>
> Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
> should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
> is to be the most perfect knight, has tant le souvienne' written in
> it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
> fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
> Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
> Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
> and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
> histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
> someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
> more and more like stuffing.
>
> By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
> here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
> point. There's that much waffle!
>
> All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
> that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
> Annette Carson's marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
>
> Paul Trevor Bale
>
> Richard liveth yet
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
Richard liveth yet
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
The point I'm making is that it is not impossible that Richard was born with one or two teeth, and that does not imply anything medically peculiar. The tale then became wildly exaggerated to produce a full set of teeth.
Regards
Ann
________________________________
From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
To:
Sent: Friday, 11 September, 2009 11:37:58 AM
Subject: Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
The teeth thing An is just another case of a writer approaching
Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove he
may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had a
deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as an
insult to Richard, and not very good history.
Paul
On 11 Sep 2009, at 11:26, A LYON wrote:
> I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage.
> But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommon
> and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIV
> was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of his
> life.
>
> Ann
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
> Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
> Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
>
>
> Richard The Young King to Be
> by Josephine Wilkinson
> A review.
> by Paul Trevor Bale
>
>
> The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
> Wilkinson's Richard The Young King to Be? is that it is a hard
> read, and I admit to struggling at times.
>
> One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
> chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
> Ricardians, who don't need to read yet again the date, details and
> circumstances, of Richard's birth, though any book has to appeal to
> the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
> subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
>
> Potted is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
>
> I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
> myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
> each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
> York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
> Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
> reader, of little interest.
>
> In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
> astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
> at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
> charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
> and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
> may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
> whatsoever.
>
> At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
> to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
> changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
> when he was alive, but after the king's death changing his story
> completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
> astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
> Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
> Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
> he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
>
> There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
> that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
> The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
> that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
> laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
> Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
> Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
> Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
> mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
> fiction!
>
> Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> Hicks points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accent ,
> discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
>
> All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
> on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
> very far into Richard's story, and eve make them wonder who's story
> they are in fact reading!
>
> I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
> mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
> talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
> details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
> lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
> about our Richard!
>
> Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
> "though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
> Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
> of the moors, for instance"
>
> Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
>
> Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
> the treatment of his father's head Wilkinson writes :-
>
> "that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
> casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
> deepest dreams"
>
> and
>
> "in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
> the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
> living"
>
> The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
> dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
> Kendall wrote!
>
> All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
> I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
> to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
> calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
> England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
> I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
> lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
> Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
> "Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
>
> Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
> religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
>
> BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
> finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
> Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
> his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
> focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
> marriage began, and the author uses More again as a reliable source
> this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
> body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
> only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
> description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
> boy would have been ale to judge!
>
> The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
>
> There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
> University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
> is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
> knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
> three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
>
> While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
> seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
> does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn't make a lot of
> sense..
>
> At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
> But up against the flowery descriptions of his ducal coronet,
> beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
> shoulders, framing his handsome face , we find the accusation that
> Richard's removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
> the e') to sanctuary was tantamount to rape', yes, Hicks has a lot
> to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
> and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
> she did not come with her inheritance.
> This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, Richard's dark secret ,
> not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
> and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
> BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
> exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
> have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
> able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
> scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
> on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
> every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
> of the cartulary is in Richard's own hand.
>
> Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
> discussion of the Countess of Oxford's land division, has the author
> arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
> in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard's early insecure years, by
> Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
> settlement, as well as by Anne's own wish to keep hold of her share
> of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
>
> However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
> was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
> typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
> though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
> the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
> he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
>
> I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
> interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
> doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
> could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
> in with a hatchet.
>
> Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
> and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
> countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
> hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
> The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
> there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
> don't recall reading before. There's also a marvellous section
> describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
> a knight, and later try himself.
>
> Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
> should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
> is to be the most perfect knight, has tant le souvienne' written in
> it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
> fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
> Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
> Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
> and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
> histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
> someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
> more and more like stuffing.
>
> By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
> here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
> point. There's that much waffle!
>
> All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
> that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
> Annette Carson's marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
>
> Paul Trevor Bale
>
> Richard liveth yet
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
Richard liveth yet
------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-12 17:27:45
--- In , A LYON <A.Lyon1@...> wrote:
>
> Paul
>
> The point I'm making is that it is not impossible that Richard was born with one or two teeth, and that does not imply anything medically peculiar. The tale then became wildly exaggerated to produce a full set of teeth.
>
> Regards
>
> Ann
Actually, Rous doesn't specify how many teeth, just that he came out "cum dentibus". Really, it's just the "shock! horror!" in the way he tells its that makes it sound like the sign of great abnormalities to come. The fact that being born with a couple of teeth, and/or a good growth of hair, is not uncommon and by no means untoward is what suggests to me that it may have been true. If a conniving turncoat were starting from scratch making up the details of an abnormal birth he could surely have thought up something much worse.
And, before anybody reminds me about Rous's claimed 2-year gestation: although impossible, as I have suggested on this forum many times it was probably Rous' mad interpretation of the two-year gap between Richard, and Cecily's previous child, Thomas. She'd been having annual pregnancies for many years up till then.
These are matters he was well placed to know about, given his long and close association with the house of Warwick. I don't think making things up from scratch was the way he worked - he was too much of a small-minded pedant. He had to do a hatchet job to help plead the Countess of Warwick's case with Henry VII, as I have suggested on the forum before - it was nothing to do with personal ambition; he was an old man. Interestingly, I've just read Martin Lowry's article 'John Rous and the Survival of the Neville Circle,' and he had come to precisely the same conclusion.
Marie
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> To:
> Sent: Friday, 11 September, 2009 11:37:58 AM
> Subject: Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
>
> The teeth thing An is just another case of a writer approachingÂ
> Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove heÂ
> may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had aÂ
> deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as anÂ
> insult to Richard, and not very good history.
> Paul
>
> On 11 Sep 2009, at 11:26, A LYON wrote:
>
> > I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage.Â
> > But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommonÂ
> > and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIVÂ
> > was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of hisÂ
> > life.
> >
> > Ann
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> > To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
> > Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
> > Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
> >
> >
> > Richard The Young King to Be
> > by Josephine Wilkinson
> > A review.
> > by Paul Trevor Bale
> >
> >
> > The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
> > Wilkinson’s Richard The Young King to Be?â€Â is that it is a hard
> > read, and I admit to struggling at times.
> >
> > One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
> > chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
> > Ricardians, who don’t need to read yet again the date, details and
> > circumstances, of Richard’s birth, though any book has to appeal to
> > the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
> > subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
> >
> > “Potted†is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
> >
> > I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
> > myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
> > each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
> > York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
> > Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
> > reader, of little interest.
> >
> > In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
> > astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
> > at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
> > charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
> > and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
> > may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
> > whatsoever.
> >
> > At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
> > to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
> > changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
> > when he was alive, but after the king’s death changing his story
> > completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
> > astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
> > Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
> > Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
> > he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
> >
> > There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
> > that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
> > The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
> > that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
> > laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
> > Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
> > Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
> > Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
> > mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
> > fiction!
> >
> > Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> > chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> > until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> > Hicks “points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accentâ€,
> > discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
> >
> > All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
> > on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
> > very far into Richard’s story, and eve make them wonder who’s story
> > they are in fact reading!
> >
> > I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
> > mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
> > talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
> > details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
> > lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
> > about our Richard!
> >
> > Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
> > "though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
> > Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
> > of the moors, for instance"
> >
> > Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
> >
> > Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
> > the treatment of his father’s head Wilkinson writes :-
> >
> > "that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
> > casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
> > deepest dreams"
> >
> > and
> >
> > "in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
> > the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
> > living"
> >
> > The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
> > dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
> > Kendall wrote!
> >
> > All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
> > I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
> > to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
> > calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
> > England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
> > I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
> > lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
> > Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
> > "Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
> >
> > Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
> > religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
> >
> > BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
> > finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
> > Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
> > his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
> > focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
> > marriage began, and the author uses More again as “a reliable sourceâ€
> > this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
> > body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
> > only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
> > description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
> > boy would have been ale to judge!
> >
> > The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
> >
> > There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
> > University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
> > is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
> > knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
> > three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
> >
> > While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
> > seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
> > does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn’t make a lot of
> > sense..
> >
> > At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
> > But up against the flowery descriptions of “his ducal coronet,
> > beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
> > shoulders, framing his handsome faceâ€, we find the accusation that
> > Richard’s removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
> > the ‘e’) to sanctuary was ‘tantamount to rape’, yes, Hicks has a lot
> > to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
> > and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
> > she did not come with her inheritance.
> > This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, “Richard’s dark secretâ€,
> > not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
> > and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
> > BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
> > exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
> > have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
> > able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
> > scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
> > on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
> > every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
> > of the cartulary is in Richard’s own hand.
> >
> > Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
> > discussion of the Countess of Oxford’s land division, has the author
> > arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
> > in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard’s early insecure years, by
> > Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
> > settlement, as well as by Anne’s own wish to keep hold of her share
> > of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
> >
> > However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
> > was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
> > typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
> > though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
> > the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
> > he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
> >
> > I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
> > interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
> > doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
> > could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
> > in with a hatchet.
> >
> > Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
> > and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
> > countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
> > hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
> > The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
> > there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
> > don't recall reading before. There’s also a marvellous section
> > describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
> > a knight, and later try himself.
> >
> > Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
> > should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
> > is to be the most perfect knight, has ‘tant le souvienne’ written in
> > it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
> > fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
> > Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
> > Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
> > and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
> > histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
> > someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
> > more and more like stuffing.
> >
> > By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
> > here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
> > point. There's that much waffle!
> >
> > All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
> > that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
> > Annette Carson’s marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
> >
> > Paul Trevor Bale
> >
> > Richard liveth yet
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>
> Richard liveth yet
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Paul
>
> The point I'm making is that it is not impossible that Richard was born with one or two teeth, and that does not imply anything medically peculiar. The tale then became wildly exaggerated to produce a full set of teeth.
>
> Regards
>
> Ann
Actually, Rous doesn't specify how many teeth, just that he came out "cum dentibus". Really, it's just the "shock! horror!" in the way he tells its that makes it sound like the sign of great abnormalities to come. The fact that being born with a couple of teeth, and/or a good growth of hair, is not uncommon and by no means untoward is what suggests to me that it may have been true. If a conniving turncoat were starting from scratch making up the details of an abnormal birth he could surely have thought up something much worse.
And, before anybody reminds me about Rous's claimed 2-year gestation: although impossible, as I have suggested on this forum many times it was probably Rous' mad interpretation of the two-year gap between Richard, and Cecily's previous child, Thomas. She'd been having annual pregnancies for many years up till then.
These are matters he was well placed to know about, given his long and close association with the house of Warwick. I don't think making things up from scratch was the way he worked - he was too much of a small-minded pedant. He had to do a hatchet job to help plead the Countess of Warwick's case with Henry VII, as I have suggested on the forum before - it was nothing to do with personal ambition; he was an old man. Interestingly, I've just read Martin Lowry's article 'John Rous and the Survival of the Neville Circle,' and he had come to precisely the same conclusion.
Marie
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> To:
> Sent: Friday, 11 September, 2009 11:37:58 AM
> Subject: Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
>
> The teeth thing An is just another case of a writer approachingÂ
> Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove heÂ
> may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had aÂ
> deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as anÂ
> insult to Richard, and not very good history.
> Paul
>
> On 11 Sep 2009, at 11:26, A LYON wrote:
>
> > I've not seen the book so will not comment further at this stage.Â
> > But infants being born with teeth is not actually all that uncommonÂ
> > and doesn't necessarily indicate any curious syndromes. Louis XIVÂ
> > was born with two teeth and enjoyed robust health for most of hisÂ
> > life.
> >
> > Ann
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
> > To: RichardIIISociety forum <>
> > Sent: Thursday, 10 September, 2009 5:34:42 PM
> > Subject: re Josephine Wilkinson
> >
> >
> > Richard The Young King to Be
> > by Josephine Wilkinson
> > A review.
> > by Paul Trevor Bale
> >
> >
> > The first thing that everyone seems to agree with about Josephine
> > Wilkinson’s Richard The Young King to Be?â€Â is that it is a hard
> > read, and I admit to struggling at times.
> >
> > One reader was already bored to tears by the end of the first
> > chapter, mainly because so much of the material is well known to us
> > Ricardians, who don’t need to read yet again the date, details and
> > circumstances, of Richard’s birth, though any book has to appeal to
> > the general reader, who may well know nothing at all about the
> > subject, so a potted history of the times has to be included.
> >
> > “Potted†is however something Wilkinson seems unable to achieve.
> >
> > I was less than 30 pages into the book when the question I had asked
> > myself, why publish this history in two volumes, was answered, as
> > each and every saint whose name was given to a scion of the House of
> > York is given a full history. What this has to do with why Richard
> > Plantagenet became the man he became is beyond me, and, to this
> > reader, of little interest.
> >
> > In this first chapter the author also spends a long time explaining
> > astrological charts, what they entail, and what, if Richard was born
> > at such and such a time, his personality would have been like. Such
> > charts are of course a generalisation of how a person's personality
> > and their traits may be, and although in Richard's time astrology
> > may have been a more important issue, many today have no belief in it
> > whatsoever.
> >
> > At length the writer tells us what 15th century writer John Rous had
> > to say about Richard, without explaining how the unprincipled Rous
> > changed his history of Richard twice, hugely complimentary of him
> > when he was alive, but after the king’s death changing his story
> > completely. We are given some pseudo-psychology wrapped up with the
> > astrology, based on Rous' statement that Richard was born when
> > Scorpio was rising on October 22nd 1452. The 22nd note, not the 2nd!
> > Lets face it, if Rous couldn't get the date of Richard's birth right,
> > he would hardly know the exact time he was born.
> >
> > There follows, again at length, a discussion about the Rous story
> > that Richard was two years in the womb and born with hair and teeth.
> > The medical theories included here, about this include one suggestion
> > that he had Pierre Robin Syndrome being, an expert informs me,
> > laughable. Natal teeth are associated with Pierre Robin, so,
> > Wilkinson reasons, Richard must have had the syndrome. But Pierre
> > Robin Syndrome patients have underdeveloped lower jaws. The fact that
> > Richard's portraits all show him with a strong jaw line is not
> > mentioned, or that the natal teeth and hair tale is just that, a
> > fiction!
> >
> > Amongst the numerous sources making their first appearance in this
> > chapter are Michael Hicks, and the sainted More. More wasn't born
> > until 1472 so could not possibly know anything about Richard, while
> > Hicks “points out that Richard did not speak with a northern accentâ€,
> > discovered no doubt from those tape recordings he has found!
> >
> > All this in the first chapter which along with the lengthy discourse
> > on the lives of the saints will put many readers off before they are
> > very far into Richard’s story, and eve make them wonder who’s story
> > they are in fact reading!
> >
> > I was sitting on the bus reading more of the book when the writer
> > mentioned someone called Richard, and I had to ask myself who she was
> > talking about as I had by then almost forgotten, amongst the endless
> > details of the lives of those involved in the Wars of the Roses, and
> > lives of their favourite saints, that this is supposed to be a book
> > about our Richard!
> >
> > Whereas historical novelist Susan Higginbottom in her review says :-
> > "though highly sympathetic to Richard, it avoided the romanticism of
> > Paul Murray Kendall - no escaping with Anne to breathe the free air
> > of the moors, for instance"
> >
> > Incorrect, say I. What we do get is stuff like this:-
> >
> > Referring to our Richard after the news of Wakefield and the fate of
> > the treatment of his father’s head Wilkinson writes :-
> >
> > "that mocking crown would haunt him like a half-remembered nightmare,
> > casting its dark shadow over his waking thoughts and troubling his
> > deepest dreams"
> >
> > and
> >
> > "in the hushed , numbed days following the death of his father, as
> > the winter snows buried the dead and the icy winds whispered to the
> > living"
> >
> > The first suggests she knows what Richard was thinking, and what his
> > dreams were about, and the second is just as fruity as anything
> > Kendall wrote!
> >
> > All the chronicle quotes in the book are in the original spelling, so
> > I soon realised my thoughts that Wilkinson was writing for a novice
> > to the period reader could be wrong. But then throughout the book she
> > calls Queen Margaret 'Marguerite', not the name she was called in
> > England, so perhaps there is a degree of pretentiousness here, which
> > I find very annoying. And after the earlier pages and pages on the
> > lives of the saints, in chapter 4, straight after the death of the
> > Duke of York, comes something that had me groaning out loud?
> > "Richard of York's choice of favourite saints is worthy of comment"
> >
> > Another two pages of the lives of the saints follow! She must be a
> > religious of some kind to have such a deep interest!
> >
> > BUT in spite of numerous reservations about this book, at chapter 6 I
> > finally found something to like. This chapter is full of detail about
> > Richard's childhood, his education, where he went, what he did, and
> > his duties once created Duke of Gloucester. At last the book has
> > focused on Richard I thought. Then discussion of King Edward's
> > marriage began, and the author uses More again as “a reliable sourceâ€
> > this time for the king's appearance. Edward is said to have been 'of
> > body mighty, strong, and clean made'. She does say More was probably
> > only 5 or 6 when he died, but finds nothing wrong with saying his
> > description of the King is valid. Clearly something any 6 year old
> > boy would have been ale to judge!
> >
> > The sainted Sir Thomas though couldn't even get Edward's age right!
> >
> > There are a number of other obvious mistakes, describing the
> > University of Cambridge as the University of Canterbury, Fotheringhay
> > is not in Cambridgeshire, and she states that Richard's father was
> > knighted when he was eleven, which I make was in 1422, then says that
> > three years later, in 1429, he attended Henry VI's coronation!
> >
> > While dealing with the Stanley/Harrington Hornby castle issue must be
> > seen as a plus, it needs to be explained clearly, which the writer
> > does not do. In fact the way she tells it it doesn’t make a lot of
> > sense..
> >
> > At times during the book I do get the feeling that she likes Richard..
> > But up against the flowery descriptions of “his ducal coronet,
> > beneath which his long brown locks flowed in waves about his
> > shoulders, framing his handsome faceâ€, we find the accusation that
> > Richard’s removing Anne Neville (always spelled in the book without
> > the ‘e’) to sanctuary was ‘tantamount to rape’, yes, Hicks has a lot
> > to answer for, and follows this with a quotation from Shakespeare,
> > and the statement that Richard had no interest in Anne whatsoever if
> > she did not come with her inheritance.
> > This lands issue is, according to Wilkinson, “Richard’s dark secretâ€,
> > not the later disappearance of his nephews, but his acquisitiveness
> > and lust for land and property, and uses the cartulary Cotton Julius
> > BXII as proof. I see this as being the natural wish to discover
> > exactly what a lord of his high rank and dignity, and workload, will
> > have to use each and every year to discharge his tasks, and later be
> > able to leave his descendants. Wilkinson paints a portrait of Richard
> > scurrying round the country scribbling down into a book, a big grin
> > on his face, and a twinkle in his eye, details of every inch of land,
> > every penny of income. Then says that of course though, not one word
> > of the cartulary is in Richard’s own hand.
> >
> > Later on a dissection of the Warwick inheritance issue, and a
> > discussion of the Countess of Oxford’s land division, has the author
> > arguing that, although Richard was acquisitive, and at times ruthless
> > in this, a lot of it was driven by Richard’s early insecure years, by
> > Clarence in his greed, by Edward in his search for a political
> > settlement, as well as by Anne’s own wish to keep hold of her share
> > of the Warwick inheritance. Interesting arguments here.
> >
> > However a lurid description of a typical wedding night that she says
> > was probably like that of Richard and Anne, [based on the hardly
> > typical marriage of James IV of Scotland!] is unnecessary, even
> > though balanced against a lengthy, detailed, but very useful list of
> > the people and their functions, Richard took into his affinity when
> > he and Anne went to live at Middleham.
> >
> > I've come to the conclusion that there is actually a good and
> > interesting book inside "Richard the Young king to be", and that
> > doubtless the second volume will be much the same. Together they
> > could make one good volume, on condition that a serious editor comes
> > in with a hatchet.
> >
> > Richard's early life within the York family is full of detail, well
> > and convincingly described. As is Middleham and the surrounding
> > countryside, in spite of the odd flight of purple prose of 'a lonely
> > hawk floating in the summer sky seeking out its prey' and the such.
> > The castle itself as it would have been seen when Richard first went
> > there is particularly well described, bringing it to life in a way I
> > don't recall reading before. There’s also a marvellous section
> > describing the armour Richard would have been trained to help put on
> > a knight, and later try himself.
> >
> > Talking of Richard's books, one I haven't heard of, though doubtless
> > should have, the Ipomodon, a story of a young knight whose ambition
> > is to be the most perfect knight, has ‘tant le souvienne’ written in
> > it in Richard's own hand. But all this is spoiled by the flights of
> > fantasy, and diversions the writer is so fond of. Straight after the
> > Ipomodon section, we are told Richard may have met Sir Thomas
> > Mallory, and we run off into a biography of the man and how and why
> > and when he may have written 'Le Mort D'Arthur'. Like with the
> > histories of all those saints earlier in the book, this writer needs
> > someone to pull her back from all these wanderings that to me look
> > more and more like stuffing.
> >
> > By the half way mark I had seen enough to know there is a good book
> > here, but the half way mark, had I edited it, would be the quarter
> > point. There's that much waffle!
> >
> > All in all another lost opportunity to update Richard's reputation,
> > that can only suffer compared to the writing style and content of
> > Annette Carson’s marvellous recent book Richard III The Maligned King.
> >
> > Paul Trevor Bale
> >
> > Richard liveth yet
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>
> Richard liveth yet
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
Re: re Josephine Wilkinson
2009-09-12 17:37:23
--- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote:
>
> The teeth thing An is just another case of a writer approaching
> Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove he
> may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had a
> deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as an
> insult to Richard, and not very good history.
> Paul
I don't think anyone is trying to prove it, since that would be impossible unless a letter from Cecily Neville, complaining about the difficulty in keeping a wet-nurse for baby Richard, since he was born with teeth, turns up somewhere.
More was trying to imply that Richard was an unnatural creature who had had an unnatural birth. (I'm surprised he didn't include a forked tail.) Since it is not terribly uncommon for babies to be born with a few teeth, or covered in lanugo -- fine silky hair -- the joke would have been on More if he thought he was racking up evidence that Richard was a monster from birth. I think many members of his readership would think "Hey, my sister Agnes's daughter Joan had a baby with teeth, and he grew up to be a fine man."
Or maybe not. Maybe most of the people who could read the History of King Richard III that More said he wrote were men like him, rather far removed from the earthy realities of how babies were born and what they looked like before they were washed and swaddled and presented to their fathers, who had left the house to avoid all that screaming and carrying on.
More was a city boy, most definitely. He was an atrocious horseman who literally had to have his horse led by a groom in processions, and he was absolutely amazed at the way a newly-hatched chick or gosling will imprint on the first moving thing it sees -- whether it is its mother, or a human being, a dog, or a wheelbarrow -- and follow it with great devotion.
Katy
>
> The teeth thing An is just another case of a writer approaching
> Richard through the layers of Tudor mythology. Why try to prove he
> may have been born with teeth, or as others have, that he had a
> deformity, when it is all just part of the myth? I see it as an
> insult to Richard, and not very good history.
> Paul
I don't think anyone is trying to prove it, since that would be impossible unless a letter from Cecily Neville, complaining about the difficulty in keeping a wet-nurse for baby Richard, since he was born with teeth, turns up somewhere.
More was trying to imply that Richard was an unnatural creature who had had an unnatural birth. (I'm surprised he didn't include a forked tail.) Since it is not terribly uncommon for babies to be born with a few teeth, or covered in lanugo -- fine silky hair -- the joke would have been on More if he thought he was racking up evidence that Richard was a monster from birth. I think many members of his readership would think "Hey, my sister Agnes's daughter Joan had a baby with teeth, and he grew up to be a fine man."
Or maybe not. Maybe most of the people who could read the History of King Richard III that More said he wrote were men like him, rather far removed from the earthy realities of how babies were born and what they looked like before they were washed and swaddled and presented to their fathers, who had left the house to avoid all that screaming and carrying on.
More was a city boy, most definitely. He was an atrocious horseman who literally had to have his horse led by a groom in processions, and he was absolutely amazed at the way a newly-hatched chick or gosling will imprint on the first moving thing it sees -- whether it is its mother, or a human being, a dog, or a wheelbarrow -- and follow it with great devotion.
Katy
Re: A word the the Wilkinson review and Richard's accent
2009-09-15 23:19:28
You folks might appreciate this. Tangier Island is not too far from where I live (by American standards). About 2.5 hours by car plus the ferry. It's not easy to get to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E
or
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=64426
(it's the same video)
Cheers,
Mishka
www.mishkajaeger.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E
or
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=64426
(it's the same video)
Cheers,
Mishka
www.mishkajaeger.com
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