Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III

I'm returning to this forum after a long absence to ask a question. Does anyone have any theories as to why Sir Thomas More would begin his so-called history with the seemingly precise yet provably false statement that Edward IV was fifty-three years, seven months, and five days old when he died? (He was, in fact, nineteen days short of his forty-first birthday, which translates to forty years, eleven months, and eleven days, if my math is right.) Surely, More would have had access to the correct information, through Vergil if no one else, since Edward IV was Henry VIII's maternal grandfather and documents concerning him would not have been destroyed or suppressed.

Carol, who has her own ideas on the subject but just wants to know whether anyone else has thought about it

That's an excellent point, Carol. Perhaps it was purposely done to
indicate that the "history" was a tongue-in-cheek affair/satire and
since he couldn't say anything good about Richard, that he used that to
signal the blatant propaganda. He was also friends with Henry VIII, so
maybe Henry asked him to write it in the first place--it's something
that has crossed my mind in the past and this maybe adds fuel to that
supposition?

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "justcarol67"
<justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> I'm returning to this forum after a long absence to ask a question.
Does anyone have any theories as to why Sir Thomas More would begin his
so-called history with the seemingly precise yet provably false
statement that Edward IV was fifty-three years, seven months, and five
days old when he died? (He was, in fact, nineteen days short of his
forty-first birthday, which translates to forty years, eleven months,
and eleven days, if my math is right.) Surely, More would have had
access to the correct information, through Vergil if no one else, since
Edward IV was Henry VIII's maternal grandfather and documents concerning
him would not have been destroyed or suppressed.
>
> Carol, who has her own ideas on the subject but just wants to know
whether anyone else has thought about it
>

--- In , "Joan" <u2nohoo@...> wrote:
>
> That's an excellent point, Carol. Perhaps it was purposely done to
> indicate that the "history" was a tongue-in-cheek affair/satire and
> since he couldn't say anything good about Richard, that he used that to
> signal the blatant propaganda. He was also friends with Henry VIII, so
> maybe Henry asked him to write it in the first place--it's something
> that has crossed my mind in the past and this maybe adds fuel to that
> supposition?
>
> Joan


Hi,

It certainly was an excellent question, Carol. However, More seems to have been "improving on" Vergil, as Vergil had written that Edward was about fifty years old when he died.

You would think these early "historians" could have discovered the true ages of members of the royal famiily, wouldn't you? but Vergil also claims that Edward Earl of Warwick was 15 at the time of Bosworth.

Marie


> ---
> author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
> website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
> ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
>
> --- In , "justcarol67"
> <justcarol67@> wrote:
> >
> > I'm returning to this forum after a long absence to ask a question.
> Does anyone have any theories as to why Sir Thomas More would begin his
> so-called history with the seemingly precise yet provably false
> statement that Edward IV was fifty-three years, seven months, and five
> days old when he died? (He was, in fact, nineteen days short of his
> forty-first birthday, which translates to forty years, eleven months,
> and eleven days, if my math is right.) Surely, More would have had
> access to the correct information, through Vergil if no one else, since
> Edward IV was Henry VIII's maternal grandfather and documents concerning
> him would not have been destroyed or suppressed.
> >
> > Carol, who has her own ideas on the subject but just wants to know
> whether anyone else has thought about it
> >
>
>
>
>
>

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> I'm returning to this forum after a long absence to ask a question. Does anyone have any theories as to why Sir Thomas More would begin his so-called history with the seemingly precise yet provably false statement that Edward IV was fifty-three years, seven months, and five days old when he died? (He was, in fact, nineteen days short of his forty-first birthday, which translates to forty years, eleven months, and eleven days, if my math is right.) Surely, More would have had access to the correct information, through Vergil if no one else, since Edward IV was Henry VIII's maternal grandfather and documents concerning him would not have been destroyed or suppressed.
>
> Carol, who has her own ideas on the subject but just wants to know whether anyone else has thought about it

Hint for when writing fiction. Include some extreme detail, it makes the story more convincing. Of course it helps if the detail is factually correct, but many readers are convinced simply by detail and never dig deeper. In More's time it was much harder for the casual reader to check out Edward IV's birth date; in fact for most people it would be impossible.

More's work is fiction as far as I am concerned, not history. Although for a long time no real distinction was made between what we now call academic history and what we now call historical fiction. As far as I'm concerned the minute an invented speech goes in, it's fiction.

Brian W

I totally agree with you, Brian, that the idea of a written history current in that era was what we would now call fiction, and therefore none of these works is any use to us. And, you are right that the people for whom More was writing could easily have checked Edward IV's birthdate, and he had of course died seeming far older than his years.
More does give himself away with his scenes and conversations, but those are the very things that do, indeed, actually make his account superficially convincing.
But it is amazing how many historians still swear by Vergil because of his serious academic credentials and more restrained style.
The problem is, these works give copious detail regarding important events for which we have no genuine eyewitness accounts, and sometimes even Ricardians still succumb to turning to More - the latest Bulletin even has an example, in discussion of Edward V's behaviour (as reported by More) at Stony Stratford. The writer admitted it wasn't a great source to have to use, but nature abhors a vacuum.

Edward IV's age at death a great assertion of More's & Vergil's to use to show up their inaccuracy, but sadly I don't think the Tudor histories are going to just go away without a lot of item-by-item counter-argument, because although largely* composed of junk calories their superficial richness makes them so more-ish.

Marie







--- In , "Brian" <wainwright.brian@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> >
> > I'm returning to this forum after a long absence to ask a question. Does anyone have any theories as to why Sir Thomas More would begin his so-called history with the seemingly precise yet provably false statement that Edward IV was fifty-three years, seven months, and five days old when he died? (He was, in fact, nineteen days short of his forty-first birthday, which translates to forty years, eleven months, and eleven days, if my math is right.) Surely, More would have had access to the correct information, through Vergil if no one else, since Edward IV was Henry VIII's maternal grandfather and documents concerning him would not have been destroyed or suppressed.
> >
> > Carol, who has her own ideas on the subject but just wants to know whether anyone else has thought about it
>
> Hint for when writing fiction. Include some extreme detail, it makes the story more convincing. Of course it helps if the detail is factually correct, but many readers are convinced simply by detail and never dig deeper. In More's time it was much harder for the casual reader to check out Edward IV's birth date; in fact for most people it would be impossible.
>
> More's work is fiction as far as I am concerned, not history. Although for a long time no real distinction was made between what we now call academic history and what we now call historical fiction. As far as I'm concerned the minute an invented speech goes in, it's fiction.
>
> Brian W
>

Carol earlier:
<snip>
> Does anyone have any theories as to why Sir Thomas More would begin his so-called history with the seemingly precise yet provably false statement that Edward IV was fifty-three years, seven months, and five days old when he died? (He was, in fact, nineteen days short of his forty-first birthday, which translates to forty years, eleven months, and eleven days, if my math is right.) Surely, More would have had access to the correct information, through Vergil if no one else, since Edward IV was Henry VIII's maternal grandfather and documents concerning him would not have been destroyed or suppressed.
<snip>

Joan responded:
>
> That's an excellent point, Carol. Perhaps it was purposely done to indicate that the "history" was a tongue-in-cheek affair/satire and since he couldn't say anything good about Richard, that he used that to signal the blatant propaganda.

Carol again:

That's exactly what I was thinking. It also ties in with some of his other tactics, such as the use of rumor and comments such as "It is for truth reported," which seems to signal a figurative eyebrow skeptically raised. Anyone, I'm delighted to see that I'm not the only person thinking along these lines.

Joan wrote:
> He was also friends with Henry VIII, so maybe Henry asked him to write it in the first place--it's something that has crossed my mind in the past and this maybe adds fuel to that supposition?

Carol:
I'm not so sure that "friends" is the right term. He certainly had high hopes for the young Henry VIII after Henry VII (whom he did *not* like) died, but at one point he resigned as Henry VIII's chancellor, and there's that little matter of religious differences that led to More's death. I haven't checked the date of composition; I've just had this idea in the back of my mind for a very long time that the elaborately false date is a signal to the reader that what follows should be taken with a grain of salt and wanted to see if anyone else had a similar impression.

Clearly, if that was his plan, the strategy hasn't worked. It's amazing how many readers ignore even his outright statements that he's heard other rumors than the ones he builds into fully developed dramatic scenes.

Carol, who needs to read the other responses before saying any more

Marie wrote:
> It certainly was an excellent question, Carol. However, More seems to have been "improving on" Vergil, as Vergil had written that Edward was about fifty years old when he died.
>
> You would think these early "historians" could have discovered the true ages of members of the royal famiily, wouldn't you? but Vergil also claims that Edward Earl of Warwick was 15 at the time of Bosworth.

Carol responds:
Thanks, Marie. But there's a difference, I think. Vergil is clearly writing propaganda for Henry's benefit and approval. Claiming that the Earl of Warwick was fifteen at the time of Bosworth makes him seem more like an adult instead of the child he was (rather like Shakespeare's making Edmund Earl of Rutland into a helpless child instead of a seventeen-year-old, but in reverse). More, on the other hand, never finished his work (perhaps he couldn't stomach the idea of making Henry VII into the savior of England?), and made no attempt to publish it, which leads me to suspect that he wrote it for his own entertainment.

As for improving on Vergil, I think you're right that he had Vergil in mind, but he may have been pointing out with his seeming precision just how far from the mark Vergil was--in other words, calling attention to errors and absurdities in his sources--without, perhaps, daring to show his manuscript to anyone who would know what he was doing.

At any rate, Vergil's error in misreporting Edward's is probably deliberate, just as the error in Warwick's age almost certainly is.

What would he accomplish by changing Edward's age? For one thing, he could disguise the age difference between Edward and Richard, making it look as if Richard was only about two year younger than Edward, with George immediately between them (assuming that Vergil neglected to mention Edmund of Rutland; I don't have time to check). That would make Richard about forty-eight at the time he "usurped" the throne, having bided his time all those years. It would also make him a man of about thirty-five rather than a youth of eighteen when he supposedly killed Henry VI (if my math is right). In other words, it would make him a more credible villain.

If More also believed in Richard's guilt--or was using him as a cardboard tyrant for a humanist treatise--he might have had a similar motive for distorting Edward's (and by extension, Richard's) age. But that being the case, why the seeming precision in years, months, and days unless he knew what Vergil was doing and was poking fun at it.

Anyway, I'm just tossing out ideas here. I haven't come to any hard-and-fast conclusions, which would involve much more research than I have time to do. (In fact, I'm taking time off work now to post. Shame on me!)

Carol

Brian wrote:
> Hint for when writing fiction. Include some extreme detail, it makes the story more convincing. Of course it helps if the detail is factually correct, but many readers are convinced simply by detail and never dig deeper. In More's time it was much harder for the casual reader to check out Edward IV's birth date; in fact for most people it would be impossible.
>
> More's work is fiction as far as I am concerned, not history. Although for a long time no real distinction was made between what we now call academic history and what we now call historical fiction. As far as I'm concerned the minute an invented speech goes in, it's fiction.

Carol responds:
Oh, absolutely, it's fiction. Renaissance historians were following classical historians in using invented dialogue, and Vergil was writing a humanist tract on Henrys and Richards (Henry VII, savior of England from the "usurper" Richard III, restores the peace after the bloodshed caused when the usurper Henry IV deposed and killed Richard II.) And, of course, he's exaggerating both Henry Tudor's goodness and Richard III's "tyranny" in the process.

But More is another matter. His "history" is a great deal more entertaining than Vergil's, and it (More's work) does read very much like a novel if you ignore all the references to rumor and other asides ("some wise men ween" and "it is for truth reported," for example). Funny how so many readers tune those phrases out and remember only the all too vivid details.

I'm all too aware that many readers from Hall and Holinshed onward have taken "the sainted Sir Thomas" at his word, ignoring provably false elements such as the "secret page" introducing Sir James Tyrrell to Richard and assuming that the scene in which Richard arrests Hastings is more or less accurate, withered arm, strawberries and all--at least as it was reported to More by the (highly biased) eyewitness Bishop Morton and that the Sir James Tyrell scene is based, if not on Sir James's "confession," then on what the king (Henry VII) "gave out."

I suspect that both scenes have a great deal more to do with what Sir Thomas More imagined. But my specific concern here is with Edward IV's age, which anyone who had been alive during his reign would have known was false. (Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, didn't die until 1524, when he was around eighty.) And, of course, Henry VIII, had he read More's manuscript, would have immediately detected the all too conspicuous alteration in his grandfather's age. (I wonder if his physicians dared to remind him that his grandfather died prematurely thanks to overindulgence?)

Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just wondering what More was up to with that particular detail. No one can prove whether strawberries were or were not involved in the Hastings arrest scene (I suspect that they weren't), but anyone with access to baptismal documents can prove the error (or deliberate falsification) in Edward's age.

Carol

And, you are right that the people for whom More was writing could easily have checked Edward IV's birthdate, and he had of course died seeming far older than his years.


Whoops! I had meant to write "you are right that few of the people for whom More was writing could easily have checked Edward's birthdate"

Hi - If you haven't yet read Alison Hanham's "Richard III and his Early Historians, 1483-1535" (Clarendon Press, 1975), I suggest you delve into her chapter on 'Sir Thomas More's Satirical Drama'. As a historiographer she not only knows her history but can also offer a scholarly analysis of More's writing, both the English and the Latin, and draws conclusions from it that throw light on his little tricks of the trade. Some of her conclusions have already been mirrored in comments by Carol, Marie, Brian et al, but you will find she goes more deeply into aspects of them that show up in More's language and rhetorical techniques. Inter alia she makes a case for this being an exercise in pastiche or send-up of the kind of material that people like Vergil were writing, and this takes you further into the realms of ridicule-by-extreme-detail, to pick up Brian's point. If one is looking for an item-by-item refutation of the believability of More's 'History of Richard III' as history, no one does it better than Hanham, and I particularly like to cite her because she is no Ricardian and has no axe to grind. One may not agree with her 100%, but she is authoritative in her arguments as to the text, the style, and the literary milieu and conventions within which More was writing. So ... read or re-read Hanham's 'Early Historians': it's a treasure-trove! ISBN 0 19 822434 6.
Regards, Annette


----- Original Message -----
From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 12:50 AM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III



Brian wrote:
> Hint for when writing fiction. Include some extreme detail, it makes the story more convincing. Of course it helps if the detail is factually correct, but many readers are convinced simply by detail and never dig deeper. In More's time it was much harder for the casual reader to check out Edward IV's birth date; in fact for most people it would be impossible.
>
> More's work is fiction as far as I am concerned, not history. Although for a long time no real distinction was made between what we now call academic history and what we now call historical fiction. As far as I'm concerned the minute an invented speech goes in, it's fiction.

Carol responds:
Oh, absolutely, it's fiction. Renaissance historians were following classical historians in using invented dialogue, and Vergil was writing a humanist tract on Henrys and Richards (Henry VII, savior of England from the "usurper" Richard III, restores the peace after the bloodshed caused when the usurper Henry IV deposed and killed Richard II.) And, of course, he's exaggerating both Henry Tudor's goodness and Richard III's "tyranny" in the process.

But More is another matter. His "history" is a great deal more entertaining than Vergil's, and it (More's work) does read very much like a novel if you ignore all the references to rumor and other asides ("some wise men ween" and "it is for truth reported," for example). Funny how so many readers tune those phrases out and remember only the all too vivid details.

I'm all too aware that many readers from Hall and Holinshed onward have taken "the sainted Sir Thomas" at his word, ignoring provably false elements such as the "secret page" introducing Sir James Tyrrell to Richard and assuming that the scene in which Richard arrests Hastings is more or less accurate, withered arm, strawberries and all--at least as it was reported to More by the (highly biased) eyewitness Bishop Morton and that the Sir James Tyrell scene is based, if not on Sir James's "confession," then on what the king (Henry VII) "gave out."

I suspect that both scenes have a great deal more to do with what Sir Thomas More imagined. But my specific concern here is with Edward IV's age, which anyone who had been alive during his reign would have known was false. (Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, didn't die until 1524, when he was around eighty.) And, of course, Henry VIII, had he read More's manuscript, would have immediately detected the all too conspicuous alteration in his grandfather's age. (I wonder if his physicians dared to remind him that his grandfather died prematurely thanks to overindulgence?)

Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just wondering what More was up to with that particular detail. No one can prove whether strawberries were or were not involved in the Hastings arrest scene (I suspect that they weren't), but anyone with access to baptismal documents can prove the error (or deliberate falsification) in Edward's age.

Carol

Hi Annette,

Yes, I do take your point, and I well recall Alison Hanham's argument to that effect in the Ricardian many eons ago. I think we here are all pretty much agreed that More is not a reliable source.

My viewpoint is simply that Alison Hanham's argument, despite its undoubted merits, has been around for a very long time and hasn't stopped More being quoted, so we can't really avoid getting our hands dirty and scrutinising his individual statements as they are used. His sources for some items are quite easy to identify, and doing so should at least force historians to use those sources next time (no matter how flawed these might be themselves!)
One reason for the continued use of More may be the popularity of Ms Weir's little book with its spirited attempt to rehabilitate him, and the existence of traditionalist historians other than Ms Hanham who simply don't find More rib-tickling at all, just yummily detailed.

Another reason he may keep popping up is that it is tempting for people to use his ready-made scenes to fill in gaps in the recordwhether they credit him or not (with health warnings in many cases); and I don't think there's anyone who hasn't at some point fallen back on a less than perfect source, simply because we're so hard up for reliable accounts for this period.
The question is how less than perfect should we go? - in other words, it isn't just about More or no More, but about other narrative sources as well. And does an added health warning provide adequate insurance against misleading the reader? Those who know me will be aware that I tend to be very suspicious indeed of narrative sources in general and try to look at them last of all.
A third reason, sadly, why More continues in use may be that his text is currently more accessible online than a lot of preferable sources.

Also, it would be a fair point to ask, if More was SIMPLY having a laugh, why did he invent scenes involving real people who lived in his city? I hesitate to suggest it in present company, but I think some of these scenes, such as the Pottier one, may actually have been based on something that happened back in 1483, however garbled the story had become. More's motives for including this particular item must, I think, remain speculative.
But whether it's pure invention or gossip with much hindsight, such sources can shed no light on the actual political history of the time - though, if the latter, they would be of interest on their own account, in say a history of gossip and folklore, and I find the possible origin of this particular story of great intrinsic interest.

Perhaps there should be a separate branch of social history called More's Tittle-tattle Studies.


Marie



--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Hi - If you haven't yet read Alison Hanham's "Richard III and his Early Historians, 1483-1535" (Clarendon Press, 1975), I suggest you delve into her chapter on 'Sir Thomas More's Satirical Drama'. As a historiographer she not only knows her history but can also offer a scholarly analysis of More's writing, both the English and the Latin, and draws conclusions from it that throw light on his little tricks of the trade. Some of her conclusions have already been mirrored in comments by Carol, Marie, Brian et al, but you will find she goes more deeply into aspects of them that show up in More's language and rhetorical techniques. Inter alia she makes a case for this being an exercise in pastiche or send-up of the kind of material that people like Vergil were writing, and this takes you further into the realms of ridicule-by-extreme-detail, to pick up Brian's point. If one is looking for an item-by-item refutation of the believability of More's 'History of Richard III' as history, no one does it better than Hanham, and I particularly like to cite her because she is no Ricardian and has no axe to grind. One may not agree with her 100%, but she is authoritative in her arguments as to the text, the style, and the literary milieu and conventions within which More was writing. So ... read or re-read Hanham's 'Early Historians': it's a treasure-trove! ISBN 0 19 822434 6.
> Regards, Annette
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: justcarol67
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 12:50 AM
> Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III
>
>
>
> Brian wrote:
> > Hint for when writing fiction. Include some extreme detail, it makes the story more convincing. Of course it helps if the detail is factually correct, but many readers are convinced simply by detail and never dig deeper. In More's time it was much harder for the casual reader to check out Edward IV's birth date; in fact for most people it would be impossible.
> >
> > More's work is fiction as far as I am concerned, not history. Although for a long time no real distinction was made between what we now call academic history and what we now call historical fiction. As far as I'm concerned the minute an invented speech goes in, it's fiction.
>
> Carol responds:
> Oh, absolutely, it's fiction. Renaissance historians were following classical historians in using invented dialogue, and Vergil was writing a humanist tract on Henrys and Richards (Henry VII, savior of England from the "usurper" Richard III, restores the peace after the bloodshed caused when the usurper Henry IV deposed and killed Richard II.) And, of course, he's exaggerating both Henry Tudor's goodness and Richard III's "tyranny" in the process.
>
> But More is another matter. His "history" is a great deal more entertaining than Vergil's, and it (More's work) does read very much like a novel if you ignore all the references to rumor and other asides ("some wise men ween" and "it is for truth reported," for example). Funny how so many readers tune those phrases out and remember only the all too vivid details.
>
> I'm all too aware that many readers from Hall and Holinshed onward have taken "the sainted Sir Thomas" at his word, ignoring provably false elements such as the "secret page" introducing Sir James Tyrrell to Richard and assuming that the scene in which Richard arrests Hastings is more or less accurate, withered arm, strawberries and all--at least as it was reported to More by the (highly biased) eyewitness Bishop Morton and that the Sir James Tyrell scene is based, if not on Sir James's "confession," then on what the king (Henry VII) "gave out."
>
> I suspect that both scenes have a great deal more to do with what Sir Thomas More imagined. But my specific concern here is with Edward IV's age, which anyone who had been alive during his reign would have known was false. (Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, didn't die until 1524, when he was around eighty.) And, of course, Henry VIII, had he read More's manuscript, would have immediately detected the all too conspicuous alteration in his grandfather's age. (I wonder if his physicians dared to remind him that his grandfather died prematurely thanks to overindulgence?)
>
> Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just wondering what More was up to with that particular detail. No one can prove whether strawberries were or were not involved in the Hastings arrest scene (I suspect that they weren't), but anyone with access to baptismal documents can prove the error (or deliberate falsification) in Edward's age.
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Was More simply having a laugh? That's a question, isn't it? I suspect
not entirely, which is why I suggested his possible friendship with
Henry VIII.

One speculation that I've made is Henry asked More to prove that Richard
III murdered the princes and More remembered things he heard from Morton
and maybe even went to him to expand what he had heard. I also remember
reading somewhere (although not corroborated and probably apocryphal)
that H8 tried to find the bodies in the tower based on what More had
written, but they couldn't find bones.

If H8 was More's target audience, then making E4's age 13 years older
than it was when E4 died, would be signaling his target audience to take
the text with an ocean of salt.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Hi - If you haven't yet read Alison Hanham's "Richard III and his Early Historians, 1483-1535" (Clarendon Press, 1975), I suggest you delve into her chapter on 'Sir Thomas More's Satirical Drama'. As a historiographer she not only knows her history but can also offer a scholarly analysis of More's writing, both the English and the Latin, and draws conclusions from it that throw light on his little tricks of the trade. Some of her conclusions have already been mirrored in comments by Carol, Marie, Brian et al, but you will find she goes more deeply into aspects of them that show up in More's language and rhetorical techniques. Inter alia she makes a case for this being an exercise in pastiche or send-up of the kind of material that people like Vergil were writing, and this takes you further into the realms of ridicule-by-extreme-detail, to pick up Brian's point. If one is looking for an item-by-item refutation of the believability of More's 'History of Richard III' as history, no one does it better than Hanham, and I particularly like to cite her because she is no Ricardian and has no axe to grind. One may not agree with her 100%, but she is authoritative in her arguments as to the text, the style, and the literary milieu and conventions within which More was writing. So ... read or re-read Hanham's 'Early Historians': it's a treasure-trove! ISBN 0 19 822434 6.
> Regards, Annette
>
Carol responds:
Thanks, Annette. I read her book a long time ago when I first became interested in Richard III. I was taking a course in Shakespeare at the time and I knew that Shakespeare's Richard couldn't possibly represent an actual historical figure (not to mention that he had Richard as Duke of Gloucester fighting in a battle that occurred when he was eight years old), so I used her as one of my sources in a paper on the historical Richard. My professor informed me that I should join the richard III Society!

Sorry for the digression; my point is only that I read her book ages ago (I think it was 1981). I did notice the anti-Richard bias (how could I miss it?), but I also thought it was interesting that even she understood that Shakespeare and More had contributed to the legend. It's possible that my lingering feeling that More's "History" is some sort of satire rather than a humanist treatise combined with propaganda like Vergil's work owes something to her.

It would also be interesting to see how much of it she actually believes given that she knows it's an exercise in rhetoric and what she says, if anything, about Edward's age as More presents it.

Carol, who unfortunately no longer has access to the university library but could probably find it somewhere in Tucson

Marie wrote:
<snip>
> One reason for the continued use of More may be the popularity of Ms Weir's little book with its spirited attempt to rehabilitate him, and the existence of traditionalist historians other than Ms Hanham who simply don't find More rib-tickling at all, just yummily detailed.
>
> Another reason he may keep popping up is that it is tempting for people to use his ready-made scenes to fill in gaps in the record whether they credit him or not <snip>

Carol responds:
Yes. It's amazing how many people think that the details can only come from an eyewitness account faithfully reported to More, never mind the notorious unreliability of eyewitness accounts and their built-in bias or the equally imaginative details necessary to write a good historical novel.

But the problem goes beyond that, I think. Few people credit More with either imagination or a sense of humor. I think it's important to examine the rhetorical strategies and determine, if possible, his intended audience and purpose (I sound like the freshman composition teacher I used to be--sorry!) if we want to refute him specifically and deter others from falling into the temptation you point out of accepting his ready-made scenes to fill in gaps in the record.

Two other points I want to make. First, some writers assume that More's source for most of the material is Morton and that therefore it's essential factual but biased. (No one who holds this view seems to realize the unlikelihood of Morton's remembering a conversation of thirty years previously word for word or repeating it truthfully and accurately even if he could remember it verbatim.) Second, I think that because More was martyred by Henry VIII, people mistake his "saintliness" in that regard with an inability to lie, invent, or distort the truth for his own purposes. And they assume, despite repeated statements in prefaces and introductions (which, perhaps, many readers skip) that his idea of "history" corresponds with ours--presenting the facts as he knew them as objectively as possible. (Of course, a number of modern historians fail in that regard, too, but at least they're ostensibly trying to achieve that goal.)

Anyway, I think that More is second to Shakespeare as a reason for the longevity of the Richard III myth--and, of course, Shakespeare's own version wouldn't be nearly so memorable if he hadn't had More as a source.

On another point, addressed to the group at large, is anyone familiar with an article in an old Ricardian (1977, I think) by Susan Leas called "As the King Gave Out"? I'm hoping that she argues that Henry VII didn't "give out" anything at all--certainly nothing like More's version of Tyrell's "confession." I don't have access to the article, but I'd be grateful to anyone who can sum up her arguments.

Carol

"Joan" wrote:
>
> Was More simply having a laugh? That's a question, isn't it? I suspect not entirely, which is why I suggested his possible friendship with Henry VIII.

Carol responds:
Do we know when the English and Latin versions were written? His relationship with Henry VIII (again, I wouldn't call it a friendship; it's not as if he were an old jousting partner like Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk) changed over the years, especially as he must have realized that Henry VIII was a tyrant on a grand scale, a far cry from the golden prince that More welcomed to the throne.

Joan:
> One speculation that I've made is Henry asked More to prove that Richard III murdered the princes and More remembered things he heard from Morton and maybe even went to him to expand what he had heard. I also remember reading somewhere (although not corroborated and probably apocryphal) that H8 tried to find the bodies in the tower based on what More had written, but they couldn't find bones.

Carol:
That doesn't sound plausible to me given that Henry VII would have told his son everything that Morton "knew" or had conveyed to him. After all, Morton was *his* counselor (although Henry VII would have taken care to conceal anything favorable that he or Morton knew about Richard--it was important that Henry and Arthur, while he lived, believe implicitly in the Tudor's "right" to the throne). And it's clear that Morton knew nothing at all of the fate of the so-called Princes in the Tower (except that he was probably responsible for spreading the rumor that they had been "done away with, none knew how"). If he knew that they were dead, who killed them, and where they were buried, Henry VII would have announced it on the day of his accession instead of resorting to the vague and unprovable "shedding of infants' blood."

I think that Morton's role as a source has probably been exaggerated and More's own imagination undercredited.

Joan:
> If H8 was More's target audience, then making E4's age 13 years older than it was when E4 died, would be signaling his target audience to take the text with an ocean of salt.

Carol:
Exactly. In fact, he probably would have read no further than that opening line. Besides, Henry VII had had Vergil to research whatever documents he could find (and alter them as necessary to maintain the Tudor version of the facts). I doubt that he expected More to find any new material. (Too bad none of them had access to the Titulus Regius!)

Carol, who suspects that one of the reasons Henry VII sheltered his sons as if they were daughters was too protect their innocent ears from the truth about Richard

English professors have a lot to answer for! Mine recommended his students to read "The Daughter of Time" to get a more truthful historical perspective on Richard III - and that in a lecture series on Shakespeare's history plays. And that is why I'm here today.


Cheers, Dorothea




________________________________
From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
To:
Sent: Wed, 24 March, 2010 9:57:38 AM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III




--- In richardiiisocietyfo rum@yahoogroups. com, "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@.. .> wrote:
>
> Hi - If you haven't yet read Alison Hanham's "Richard III and his Early Historians, 1483-1535" (Clarendon Press, 1975), I suggest you delve into her chapter on 'Sir Thomas More's Satirical Drama'. As a historiographer she not only knows her history but can also offer a scholarly analysis of More's writing, both the English and the Latin, and draws conclusions from it that throw light on his little tricks of the trade. Some of her conclusions have already been mirrored in comments by Carol, Marie, Brian et al, but you will find she goes more deeply into aspects of them that show up in More's language and rhetorical techniques. Inter alia she makes a case for this being an exercise in pastiche or send-up of the kind of material that people like Vergil were writing, and this takes you further into the realms of ridicule-by- extreme-detail, to pick up Brian's point. If one is looking for an item-by-item refutation of the believability of More's 'History of
Richard III' as history, no one does it better than Hanham, and I particularly like to cite her because she is no Ricardian and has no axe to grind. One may not agree with her 100%, but she is authoritative in her arguments as to the text, the style, and the literary milieu and conventions within which More was writing. So ... read or re-read Hanham's 'Early Historians': it's a treasure-trove! ISBN 0 19 822434 6.
> Regards, Annette
>
Carol responds:
Thanks, Annette. I read her book a long time ago when I first became interested in Richard III. I was taking a course in Shakespeare at the time and I knew that Shakespeare' s Richard couldn't possibly represent an actual historical figure (not to mention that he had Richard as Duke of Gloucester fighting in a battle that occurred when he was eight years old), so I used her as one of my sources in a paper on the historical Richard. My professor informed me that I should join the richard III Society!

Sorry for the digression; my point is only that I read her book ages ago (I think it was 1981). I did notice the anti-Richard bias (how could I miss it?), but I also thought it was interesting that even she understood that Shakespeare and More had contributed to the legend. It's possible that my lingering feeling that More's "History" is some sort of satire rather than a humanist treatise combined with propaganda like Vergil's work owes something to her.

It would also be interesting to see how much of it she actually believes given that she knows it's an exercise in rhetoric and what she says, if anything, about Edward's age as More presents it.

Carol, who unfortunately no longer has access to the university library but could probably find it somewhere in Tucson

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> "Joan" wrote:
> >
> > Was More simply having a laugh? That's a question, isn't it? I suspect not entirely, which is why I suggested his possible friendship with Henry VIII.
>
> Carol responds:
> Do we know when the English and Latin versions were written? His relationship with Henry VIII (again, I wouldn't call it a friendship; it's not as if he were an old jousting partner like Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk) changed over the years, especially as he must have realized that Henry VIII was a tyrant on a grand scale, a far cry from the golden prince that More welcomed to the throne.
>
> Joan:
> > One speculation that I've made is Henry asked More to prove that Richard III murdered the princes and More remembered things he heard from Morton and maybe even went to him to expand what he had heard. I also remember reading somewhere (although not corroborated and probably apocryphal) that H8 tried to find the bodies in the tower based on what More had written, but they couldn't find bones.
>
> Carol:
> That doesn't sound plausible to me given that Henry VII would have told his son everything that Morton "knew" or had conveyed to him. After all, Morton was *his* counselor (although Henry VII would have taken care to conceal anything favorable that he or Morton knew about Richard--it was important that Henry and Arthur, while he lived, believe implicitly in the Tudor's "right" to the throne). And it's clear that Morton knew nothing at all of the fate of the so-called Princes in the Tower (except that he was probably responsible for spreading the rumor that they had been "done away with, none knew how"). If he knew that they were dead, who killed them, and where they were buried, Henry VII would have announced it on the day of his accession instead of resorting to the vague and unprovable "shedding of infants' blood."
>
> I think that Morton's role as a source has probably been exaggerated and More's own imagination undercredited.



Marie:
I agree with all the above, Carol. I don't think that More's work can have been commissioned by Henry VIII or any other very powerful man in order to improve on Vergil's explanation of the disappearance of the princes, because if it had been More would have completed his account, not mentioned the uncertainty and conflicting rumours about the manner of the Princes' end, and the thing would have been loudly published. Since he seems to have started it about 1515 (just referring to Maligned King here), kept tinkering with different versions all his life and never published, it would look to be a private project and one with which he was never satisfied.

Also, since Vergil had already claimed that Edward IV was around fifty when he died, the exact age ascribed to him by More would not have alerted prospective readers - ever further in time from Edward IV's reign as More's dithering over his text went on - to the fictional nature of the work, but rather tended to convince them of its veracity. And in't that just what happened when the work was finally published in the 1540s?

I'm sorry hat I haven't had much time to contribute to this strand. I see that nobody else but me has fessed up to having to hand a copy of Hanham's "Early Historians", which I admit is somewhat anorakish of me, but necessary of course if one is picking one's way through the minefields represented by conflicting sources. So I have trawled my way through her section on More to see if the matter of Edward IV's age is specifically discussed, and I'm afraid it isn't.

I would like to quote liberally from Hanham's insightful work, but have found it impossible to limit my quotes since there is valuable comment on every page, so I can only recommend getting hold of the book. It occurred to me to offer to provide a scan, but her discussion of More is nearly 40 pages, not to mention her appendix of over 20 more pages discussing the various texts. As an author myself I wouldn't be thrilled by anyone copying and distributing 40 - 60 pages of a book of mine, but then all my books are still accessible to buy new or second-hand in both the UK and USA, whereas I assume that the difficulty of getting hold of Hanham means that even second-hand copies are now rare, so there can be less objection to copying. Mind you, if anyone has access to a print-on-demand machine, this may well be the solution. I saw a machine in London last year, and as far as I can see the finished versions are not at all expensive.

Anyway, with regard to Carol's enquiry about when the English and Latin versions were written, Hanham's conclusion is that he seems to have dotted about from one to the other. Here I think I can quote something to indicate her thinking (pp.206-7). I have substituted A, B, C, etc rather then her descriptions of different versions, the key being as follows:
A = a lost original draft in English; B = Latin version in Arundel MS; C = Rastell's English MS published 1557; D = Latin MS printed in 1565; E = Grafton (Chronicle of John Hardyng); F = Hall (Union of the Two Houses):

"The original draft [A] probably dealt only with Richard's usurpation, and coincided for that period very closely with [C], so that [B] and [C] also largely coincide. [C] shows some alteration of the original draft, as translated in [B], however. ....... [D] is a reworking of [B] - the only version of the 'History' that More brought to a state in which it was publishable on its own. This (like [B]) concluded with Richard's attainment of his ambition ..... Some time after completing this [D], however, More seems to have renewed his interest ..... and to have formed the more ambitious project of expanding his work into a history of the rise and fall of Richard and perhaos the reign of Henry VII as well. He therefore looked out his English draft [A] and continued the story with an account of the murder of the princes ..... Again, however, he stopped and put the work aside. It was a fair copy of the draft at this stage that came to William Rastell [C]."

By comparing the texts, Hanham is able to conclude that [E] and [F] were later versions of More's tinkering than [C], albeit published earlier; and that More's nephew Rastell was in error when he thought in all honesty that his [C] was the best and latest MS, writing in his preface that [E/F] were 'very much corrupt in many places'.

Carol says <snip> <I think that Morton's role as a source has probably been exaggerated and More's own imagination undercredited.>

This comment is entirely in accord with what Hanham has to say. However, Hanham has lumped together all shades and nuances relating to various theories about Morton and dismissed them all as absurdities. It does indeed seem absurd to suggest that Morton either authored the 'History' himself, or wrote the Latin which More simply translated, or provided More with source information during More's stay in his household as a boy. However, I contend that there is less justification for dismissing the theory (Zeefeld, Kincaid et al) that More got hold of a copy of a tract hostile to Richard which was written by Morton before his death, and that this inspired More's 'Richard III' as the quintessential villain. The antiquaries of the early 1600s with their huge collections and libraries of documents were not the gullible chroniclers of the Tudor age who simply parrotted each other's juicy stories - they had started the Society of Antiquaries, a learned society which was committed to crediting only those facts about the past for which they were able to find evidence, and there are specific references recorded by its members to the existence of Morton's tract. Plus Sir George Buck's 'Richard III' (1619) in two places quotes Morton as a direct source for material that does not occur in More.

This of course takes us further than the 'early historians' of 1483-1535 with which Hanham dealt in her book, and is departing from Carol's original concern to investigate why More wrote what he did about Edward IV's age!

Although I don't claim to have a monopoly on the truth, I would like to think that we could be open-minded as to how much influence Morton had on More's 'Richard III', especially since some 17th-century antiquaries had seen Morton's tract and were convinced that it came into More's possession. I will quote just one source for this, a marginal note written by Sir George Buck against the entry for John Morton in Buck's personal copy of Godwin's 'Bishops of England' (Bodleian Library): 'This Morton wrote in Latin the life of K.R. 3. which goeth in S. Th. More's name - as S. Ed. Hoby saith & yt S. W. Roper hath the originall.' Thus I believe it is worth giving some thought to the possibilities offered by this scenario, which are best explained by Kincaid, and are outlined in 'Maligned King'.
Regards, Annette

--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:

a marginal note written by Sir George Buck against the entry for John Morton in Buck's personal copy of Godwin's 'Bishops of England' (Bodleian Library): 'This Morton wrote in Latin the life of K.R. 3. which goeth in S. Th. More's name - as S. Ed. Hoby saith & yt S. W. Roper hath the originall.' Thus I believe it is worth giving some thought to the possibilities offered by this scenario, which are best explained by Kincaid, and are outlined in 'Maligned King'.


William Roper was More's son-in-law. He moved into More's household as a young student and never left -- he married More's eldest daughter and favorite child, Margaret, and remained in the More household for 16 years, till it was dissolved by More's execution. He adored More. He published More's works and himself wrote an extremely flattering biography of the man that is the kernel of the whole "sainted More" business. He was literally trying to get More sanctified, attributing actual miracles to him.

More turned against Henry VII at about the time that Henry VIII was crowned. He wrote some very critical little jibes about H7 in his epigrams for H8's coronation. More liked to think he was very clever, and he would throw in allusions and secondary meanings and puns that gave a contrary subtext to what he was overtly saying.

Henry VII was born 28 January 1457, and died 21 April 1509. Therefore he died at the age of 52 years, 2 months, and 24 days. Not quite the 53 years, 7 months, and 5 days More gives as Edward IV's age at his death, but much closer, since in fact E4 died at age 40.

Fifty-three years, 7 months, 5 days from the date of H7's birth gives the date of 2 September 1510, well after H8's coronation on 24 June 1509. I wonder if there is some reason that More would feel that H7's reign (of influence?) ended on that date rather than when he actually died the previous year. Is that date linked to something H8 did that would make More think it was the end of an era? I'll leave that to better researchers than I am.

But my notion is that More used that absurd figure for E4's death quite calculatedly and was sending one of his sly "secret" messages to the elite, the cognoscenti in his view, that way...that it was code: "I'll say that this tale of ruthless ambition and conniving is about Richard III, but I'll make a big point of the throwing in a wildly incorrect number by which to calculate, as a clue to my real target."

Katy

--- In , "oregonkaty" <oregon_katy@...> wrote:

I didn't properly offset what Annette's information from my reply. My comments begin with "William Roper..."

Katy
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@> wrote:
>
> a marginal note written by Sir George Buck against the entry for John Morton in Buck's personal copy of Godwin's 'Bishops of England' (Bodleian Library): 'This Morton wrote in Latin the life of K.R. 3. which goeth in S. Th. More's name - as S. Ed. Hoby saith & yt S. W. Roper hath the originall.' Thus I believe it is worth giving some thought to the possibilities offered by this scenario, which are best explained by Kincaid, and are outlined in 'Maligned King'.
>
>
> William Roper was More's son-in-law. He moved into More's household as a young student and never left -- he married More's eldest daughter and favorite child, Margaret, and remained in the More household for 16 years, till it was dissolved by More's execution. He adored More. He published More's works and himself wrote an extremely flattering biography of the man that is the kernel of the whole "sainted More" business. He was literally trying to get More sanctified, attributing actual miracles to him.
>
> More turned against Henry VII at about the time that Henry VIII was crowned. He wrote some very critical little jibes about H7 in his epigrams for H8's coronation. More liked to think he was very clever, and he would throw in allusions and secondary meanings and puns that gave a contrary subtext to what he was overtly saying.
>
> Henry VII was born 28 January 1457, and died 21 April 1509. Therefore he died at the age of 52 years, 2 months, and 24 days. Not quite the 53 years, 7 months, and 5 days More gives as Edward IV's age at his death, but much closer, since in fact E4 died at age 40.
>
> Fifty-three years, 7 months, 5 days from the date of H7's birth gives the date of 2 September 1510, well after H8's coronation on 24 June 1509. I wonder if there is some reason that More would feel that H7's reign (of influence?) ended on that date rather than when he actually died the previous year. Is that date linked to something H8 did that would make More think it was the end of an era? I'll leave that to better researchers than I am.
>
> But my notion is that More used that absurd figure for E4's death quite calculatedly and was sending one of his sly "secret" messages to the elite, the cognoscenti in his view, that way...that it was code: "I'll say that this tale of ruthless ambition and conniving is about Richard III, but I'll make a big point of the throwing in a wildly incorrect number by which to calculate, as a clue to my real target."
>
> Katy
>

Hi Katy - That's very interesting. I didn't actually make the connection with Margaret More's Roper because Buck was writing (presumably) in the early years of the 1600s, or maybe the closing years of the 1590s. Do we know how long William Roper lived? If not him, could be a son.
Regards, Annette


----- Original Message -----
From: oregonkaty
To:
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III





--- In , "oregonkaty" <oregon_katy@...> wrote:

I didn't properly offset what Annette's information from my reply. My comments begin with "William Roper..."

Katy
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@> wrote:
>
> a marginal note written by Sir George Buck against the entry for John Morton in Buck's personal copy of Godwin's 'Bishops of England' (Bodleian Library): 'This Morton wrote in Latin the life of K.R. 3. which goeth in S. Th. More's name - as S. Ed. Hoby saith & yt S. W. Roper hath the originall.' Thus I believe it is worth giving some thought to the possibilities offered by this scenario, which are best explained by Kincaid, and are outlined in 'Maligned King'.
>
>
> William Roper was More's son-in-law. He moved into More's household as a young student and never left -- he married More's eldest daughter and favorite child, Margaret, and remained in the More household for 16 years, till it was dissolved by More's execution. He adored More. He published More's works and himself wrote an extremely flattering biography of the man that is the kernel of the whole "sainted More" business. He was literally trying to get More sanctified, attributing actual miracles to him.
>
> More turned against Henry VII at about the time that Henry VIII was crowned. He wrote some very critical little jibes about H7 in his epigrams for H8's coronation. More liked to think he was very clever, and he would throw in allusions and secondary meanings and puns that gave a contrary subtext to what he was overtly saying.
>
> Henry VII was born 28 January 1457, and died 21 April 1509. Therefore he died at the age of 52 years, 2 months, and 24 days. Not quite the 53 years, 7 months, and 5 days More gives as Edward IV's age at his death, but much closer, since in fact E4 died at age 40.
>
> Fifty-three years, 7 months, 5 days from the date of H7's birth gives the date of 2 September 1510, well after H8's coronation on 24 June 1509. I wonder if there is some reason that More would feel that H7's reign (of influence?) ended on that date rather than when he actually died the previous year. Is that date linked to something H8 did that would make More think it was the end of an era? I'll leave that to better researchers than I am.
>
> But my notion is that More used that absurd figure for E4's death quite calculatedly and was sending one of his sly "secret" messages to the elite, the cognoscenti in his view, that way...that it was code: "I'll say that this tale of ruthless ambition and conniving is about Richard III, but I'll make a big point of the throwing in a wildly incorrect number by which to calculate, as a clue to my real target."
>
> Katy
>

Carol wrote: On another point, addressed to the group at large, is anyone familiar with an article in an old Ricardian (1977, I think) by Susan Leas called "As the King Gave Out"? I'm hoping that she argues that Henry VII didn't "give out" anything at all--certainly nothing like More's version of Tyrell's "confession." I don't have access to the article, but I'd be grateful to anyone who can sum up her arguments.

From Annette: I haven't heard of this article, which sounds very interesting (the quote, 'As the king gave out' comes of course from Walpole's 'Historic Doubts', which I expect Carol knew but maybe one or two others didn't). Carol, if you're a member of the Richard III Society, which I take it you are since you're on this forum ;-) then you can get a copy of the article from the Barton papers librarian, Gillian Paxton: contact her at RichardIII@.... Usually the only charge involved is copying and/or postage.

--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Katy - That's very interesting. I didn't actually make the connection with Margaret More's Roper because Buck was writing (presumably) in the early years of the 1600s, or maybe the closing years of the 1590s. Do we know how long William Roper lived? If not him, could be a son.
> Regards, Annette


Probably a grandson, maybe great-grandson. William Roper was born in the late 1490s and died in 1578. William and Margaret's first child was a son they named (of course) Thomas. I don't know what other children they had.

Incidentally, Giles Heron, who was similarly devoted to burnishing More's image, and published and distributed how works on the Continent, was another of More's sons-in-law, having married his daughter Cecily.

(More's daughters were named Elizabeth, Margaret, Cecily, which I find interesting. None were named after More's wife, Jane, or his mother, Agnes. He had a son, John, named for More's father.)

Katy

Marie wrote:
><snip>
>
> Also, since Vergil had already claimed that Edward IV was around fifty when he died, the exact age ascribed to him by More would not have alerted prospective readers - ever further in time from Edward IV's reign as More's dithering over his text went on - to the fictional nature of the work, but rather tended to convince them of its veracity. And in't that just what happened when the work was finally published in the 1540s?
>
Carol responds:
Clearly, it didn't alert Hall and Holinshed, who didn't question it--or anything else in the so-called history--presumably because of More's credentials as martyr and scholar. (I wonder whether they *could* have checked Edward's age and what they would have thought of the "error" [deliberate distortion] if they'd discovered it.) But it wasn't written for publication or More would have finished it and published it himself. He knew that it was a work of fiction, whatever his motives in writing it.

But while Edward's age has not alerted modern historians or other readers steeped in the tradition that More's "history" helped shape,
it might have alerted prospective readers who knew Edward's true age and knew the conventions of humanist history, including invented dialogue and details (and distortions of people's ages). I've already explained why I don't think he was writing for Henry VIII. It seems more likely to me that he was writing either for himself or for fellow humanists who would appreciate his rhetoric and irony in what amounts to a parody of humanist "historical" writing. Only one person that I can think of fits the bill: Polydore Vergil himself.

Could Polydore Vergil be the intended reader of More's "History"? Maybe it was a private joke between humanists? More had a sense of humor though readers who take his "History" as a serious work fail to see it. The question is whether Polydore Vergil had one and, especially, whether he could laugh at himself.

I'm not saying that either of them thought that Richard was a good guy, but they (or at least, Vergil) must have been aware of his legislation--and certainly they were aware of the absurdity of Rous's "two years in his mother's womb" idea. And they both knew that Hanry VII, far from being the savior of England, was himself a tyrant. (Whether they would have seen the 24-year-old Henry VIII's potential as a tyrant in 1515, I don't know.)

At any rate, Polydore Vergil is probably the only person besides More himself who would have seen the "history" for what it was if Hanham is right that it was a satirical comment on humanist historians--or, to put it in stronger terms, a spoof of humanist history.

The problem for Ricardians is, of course, the uses to which More's work has been put, but my interest for the moment is in his intentions, as far as they can be determined. I still think that he must have intended that deliberately distorted age--so seemingly precise; so completely wrong on all counts--as a signal to his intended reader that the whole "history" was a work of imagination. And who but Vergil himself, the very man who had first deliberately altered Edward IV's age, could correctly read the signal (along with all the variations on "as the common fame runneth")?

If, of course, Polydore Vergil had no sense of humor, especially no capacity for laughing at himself, More's spoof (if that's what it was) must have been solely for his own amusement, in which case the "fifty-three years, seven months, and six days" is inexplicable.

Carol, just exploring ideas here

Carol earlier:
On another point, addressed to the group at large, is anyone familiar with an article in an old Ricardian (1977, I think) by Susan Leas called "As the King Gave Out"? I'm hoping that she argues that Henry VII didn't "give out" anything at all--certainly nothing like More's version of Tyrell's "confession." I don't have access to the article, but I'd be grateful to anyone who can sum up her arguments.
>
Annette responded:

I haven't heard of this article, which sounds very interesting (the quote, 'As the king gave out' comes of course from Walpole's 'Historic Doubts', which I expect Carol knew but maybe one or two others didn't). Carol, if you're a member of the Richard III Society, which I take it you are since you're on this forum ;-) then you can get a copy of the article from the Barton papers librarian, Gillian Paxton: contact her at RichardIII@... Usually the only charge involved is copying and/or postage.

Carol responds:
Hi, Annette. I confess to being an ex-member who dropped out of the society for two reasons, time and money (I was working on my doctoral dissertation at the time). I do intend to rejoin at some point and to buy myself a copy of your book as a birthday present. I have a whole file box of old Ricardians that I need to go through, but the Susan Leas article is too early to be included. (I joined belatedly some time in the 1980s or 1990s and stopped paying dues when finances got tight in about 1995.)

Actually, "as the king gave out" is from Francis Bacon's "Henry VII" and was picked up by Walpole, who ridiculed it. Bacon says that Henry, needing to prove that Perkin Warbeck was a "counterfeit," arranged to arrest Sir James Tyrrell and John Dighton, the only two people remaining alive (according to Bacon) who knew the details of the murder of the Duke of York. After Henry examined the two, according to Bacon, they "agreed both in a tale, as the king gave out to this effect," after which Bacon summarizes More's version of the murder of the "princes." He reports correctly that Tyrrell was beheaded (without giving the real reason, his association with Edmund de la Pole, Warbeck having been executed three years earlier in 1499) and states that Dighton, "who, it seemeth, spake best for the king," was set at liberty to spread the tale that he and Tyrrell had (supposedly) agreed upon.

Walpole, writing in 1768 and using Bacon as a source, picks up the phrase "as the king gave out," taking for granted that the story is Henry's, not More's, and that he did indeed "give it out" when Tyrrell was arrested at the time of Warbeck's rebellion. (Oops.)
Walpole than comments: "In truth, every step of this pretended discovery, as it stands in lord Bacon, warns us to give no heed to it. Dighton and Tirrel agreed both in a tale, as the king gave out. Their confession therefore was not publickly made, and as Sir James Tirrel was suffered to live;(24) but was shut up in the Tower, and put to death afterwards for we know not what reason. What can we believe, but that Dighton was some low mercenary wretch hired to assume the guilt of a crime he had not committed, and that Sir James Tirrel never did, never would confess what he had not done; and was therefore put out of the way on a fictitious imputation?"

Walpole, operating on logic alone without knowing why Tyrrell or when Tyrrell was arrested and executed, rightly states that we should not believe a word of the pretended confession but assumes (as others have done since) that the king did actually "give it out" in roughly that form (and use the possibly fictitious Dighton to spread the tale).

If, as I suspect, the whole story was invented by Sir Thomas More (who knew that Vergil has Sir James Tyrrell riding sorrowfully to London to carry out Richard's command), Henry could not have "given it out." At most, he might have claimed that Sir James Tyrrell confessed to the crime (which, of course, no one could disprove). I seriously doubt, however, that he invented the whole absurd story down to the "secret page" and "Black Will," or some version of it would have appeared in Polydore Vergil's version of events. That's why I'm eager to read the Leas article, hoping Leas argues that Henry didn't "give out" anything.

At any rate, the phrase comes from Bacon, whose version of events Walpole believes with regard to Tyrrell's execution and its timing. His quarrel is with Henry, whom he credits with inventing the improbable tale of Tyrrell, Dighton, and the conveniently dead priest who moved the bodies. His arguments are sound as far as they go, but he repeats Bacon's errors and perpetuates the idea that Henry VII "gave out" a detailed confession after Tyrrell's execution.

Carol, who suspects that this post isn't as clear as it ought to be

Sorry, you're quite right, the quote is Bacon repeated by Walpole (I quickly rushed to check whether I had it right in "Maligned King", and thank goodness I did!) - the problem is that I have a copy of Walpole on my bookshelf, but not Bacon. You cast an interesting light on what it actually was, or might have been, that the king gave out. I expect the article addresses this. Since my membership is current, I will ask Gillian to try to find it and will report back on what success I have.
Regards, Annette


----- Original Message -----
From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 11:38 PM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III



Carol earlier:
On another point, addressed to the group at large, is anyone familiar with an article in an old Ricardian (1977, I think) by Susan Leas called "As the King Gave Out"? I'm hoping that she argues that Henry VII didn't "give out" anything at all--certainly nothing like More's version of Tyrell's "confession." I don't have access to the article, but I'd be grateful to anyone who can sum up her arguments.
>
Annette responded:

I haven't heard of this article, which sounds very interesting (the quote, 'As the king gave out' comes of course from Walpole's 'Historic Doubts', which I expect Carol knew but maybe one or two others didn't). Carol, if you're a member of the Richard III Society, which I take it you are since you're on this forum ;-) then you can get a copy of the article from the Barton papers librarian, Gillian Paxton: contact her at RichardIII@... Usually the only charge involved is copying and/or postage.

Carol responds:
Hi, Annette. I confess to being an ex-member who dropped out of the society for two reasons, time and money (I was working on my doctoral dissertation at the time). I do intend to rejoin at some point and to buy myself a copy of your book as a birthday present. I have a whole file box of old Ricardians that I need to go through, but the Susan Leas article is too early to be included. (I joined belatedly some time in the 1980s or 1990s and stopped paying dues when finances got tight in about 1995.)

Actually, "as the king gave out" is from Francis Bacon's "Henry VII" and was picked up by Walpole, who ridiculed it. Bacon says that Henry, needing to prove that Perkin Warbeck was a "counterfeit," arranged to arrest Sir James Tyrrell and John Dighton, the only two people remaining alive (according to Bacon) who knew the details of the murder of the Duke of York. After Henry examined the two, according to Bacon, they "agreed both in a tale, as the king gave out to this effect," after which Bacon summarizes More's version of the murder of the "princes." He reports correctly that Tyrrell was beheaded (without giving the real reason, his association with Edmund de la Pole, Warbeck having been executed three years earlier in 1499) and states that Dighton, "who, it seemeth, spake best for the king," was set at liberty to spread the tale that he and Tyrrell had (supposedly) agreed upon.

Walpole, writing in 1768 and using Bacon as a source, picks up the phrase "as the king gave out," taking for granted that the story is Henry's, not More's, and that he did indeed "give it out" when Tyrrell was arrested at the time of Warbeck's rebellion. (Oops.)
Walpole than comments: "In truth, every step of this pretended discovery, as it stands in lord Bacon, warns us to give no heed to it. Dighton and Tirrel agreed both in a tale, as the king gave out. Their confession therefore was not publickly made, and as Sir James Tirrel was suffered to live;(24) but was shut up in the Tower, and put to death afterwards for we know not what reason. What can we believe, but that Dighton was some low mercenary wretch hired to assume the guilt of a crime he had not committed, and that Sir James Tirrel never did, never would confess what he had not done; and was therefore put out of the way on a fictitious imputation?"

Walpole, operating on logic alone without knowing why Tyrrell or when Tyrrell was arrested and executed, rightly states that we should not believe a word of the pretended confession but assumes (as others have done since) that the king did actually "give it out" in roughly that form (and use the possibly fictitious Dighton to spread the tale).

If, as I suspect, the whole story was invented by Sir Thomas More (who knew that Vergil has Sir James Tyrrell riding sorrowfully to London to carry out Richard's command), Henry could not have "given it out." At most, he might have claimed that Sir James Tyrrell confessed to the crime (which, of course, no one could disprove). I seriously doubt, however, that he invented the whole absurd story down to the "secret page" and "Black Will," or some version of it would have appeared in Polydore Vergil's version of events. That's why I'm eager to read the Leas article, hoping Leas argues that Henry didn't "give out" anything.

At any rate, the phrase comes from Bacon, whose version of events Walpole believes with regard to Tyrrell's execution and its timing. His quarrel is with Henry, whom he credits with inventing the improbable tale of Tyrrell, Dighton, and the conveniently dead priest who moved the bodies. His arguments are sound as far as they go, but he repeats Bacon's errors and perpetuates the idea that Henry VII "gave out" a detailed confession after Tyrrell's execution.

Carol, who suspects that this post isn't as clear as it ought to be

--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Sorry, you're quite right, the quote is Bacon repeated by Walpole (I quickly rushed to check whether I had it right in "Maligned King", and thank goodness I did!) - the problem is that I have a copy of Walpole on my bookshelf, but not Bacon. You cast an interesting light on what it actually was, or might have been, that the king gave out. I expect the article addresses this. Since my membership is current, I will ask Gillian to try to find it and will report back on what success I have.
> Regards, Annette

Carol responds:

Thanks, Annette.I appreciate that. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter of how much, if anything, Henry VII "gave out" after Tyrrell's execution? Vergil's version of the supposed murder might give a better indication than More's.

Carol, who can never call Henry "the king" without wishing that he had lost Bosworth!

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@> wrote:
> >
> > Sorry, you're quite right, the quote is Bacon repeated by Walpole (I quickly rushed to check whether I had it right in "Maligned King", and thank goodness I did!) - the problem is that I have a copy of Walpole on my bookshelf, but not Bacon. You cast an interesting light on what it actually was, or might have been, that the king gave out. I expect the article addresses this. Since my membership is current, I will ask Gillian to try to find it and will report back on what success I have.
> > Regards, Annette
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Thanks, Annette.I appreciate that. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter of how much, if anything, Henry VII "gave out" after Tyrrell's execution? Vergil's version of the supposed murder might give a better indication than More's.
>
> Carol, who can never call Henry "the king" without wishing that he had lost Bosworth!
>


From Marie:

Hi all,

I left a message yesterday but I'm afraid it's got lost as I hadn't realised my daughter had been on my computer and signed me in as herself. So here we are again.

1) I do recall the article "As the King Gave Out". I think the jist was that there is no reason to suppose there was any confession - I don't remember whether she queried the king giving out as well, but I do seem to remember it was a worthwhile read. I still have my old Ricardians but won't have access to them for some months, unfortunately, so I'd recommend ordering through the Society.
My own view, if views are being canvassed, is that since we hear nothing about it till Vergil, the idea of pinning the blame on Tyrell was probably Henry VIII's. Despite "Warbeck's" "confession", Henry VII seemed to simply behave as though everything was done & dusted princes-wise after he executed "Warbeck", as if both he and the populace believed what they could not say - ie that "Warbeck" had actually been the last surviving of Edward's sons. Maybe Henry VIII was more uncomfortable with this solution and wanted to nail the responsibility firmly on Richard.

2) I do find More's Richard III hilarious (particularly the idea of Richard planning the murder of the princes on the toilet), and I can't help but think it was meant to be funny, at least in parts. I also like the idea that More was at times parodying Vergil in his work, but I do have a real problem believing that the entire 18 years' work, various amendments of five drafts, etc, could all have been done to amuse one colleague. I would say that, even if Vergil had fond it funny to start with, the joke would have worn off just a bit over all the years of redrafting ('Hey, Poly, it's really funny this time').
My feeling is that it is probably a mistake to look for a single consistent purpose in a work that was tinkered with over such a long period. I know whenever I've had something on the go for a number of years its purposes grow with me, and with what I learn on the way, which is what necessitates the constant redrafting. It can also be that a project can't make progress because the aim was never clear in the first place.
Also, although I am 100% with Alison Hanham on her latest interpretation of Crowland (unusually simple for her - ie that, perhaps bar the last couple of pages, it is just a monastic chronicle after all), she does have a bit of a track record of complicated, erudite-sounding but basically mistaken theories on texts. I can't comment on her arguments about More, but I do remember she had a theory once about the Crowland Chronicle which involved a lost original the pages of which had got reassembled in the wrong order. She was also responsible for a long-running attempt to rehabilitate 21st June as the date of Hastings' execution - later proved false when another source turned up. And recently she suggested that Edward's precontract with Eleanor Butler may have consisted of just a (lost, again) written contract drawn up by their parents when they were children agreeing to their later marriage; her argument showed a lack of understanding of the meaning of the word precontract as well as medieval marriage law. So whilst I'm not saying she is wrong about More – evidently she is a very learned lady in her own field - I still feel we are better off just doing the boring thing and analysing his scenes, their sources and potential purposes, one by one.
3) Mancini. Katy's got a very good point - why do we believe Mancini spoke no English? Why do we assume he therefore understood no English? If he really did have no English, I would question whether he had been sent over on a spying mission or just happened to be in the country at the time; even if he'd come over on his own business, though, he would have had to bring someone with him who could do the necessary interpreting. Also, even if he had not a word of English when he arrived, he could well have picked up quite a bit by the time he left - no quicker way to learn a language than going to the country.
We know he spoke to Argentine because he tells us about his conversation with the "doctor of Strasbourg" who had treated Edward V; but that was after he returned to France (Argentine also having left England). He does not tell us whom he met and communicated whilst whilst in England. What always strikes me when I read Mancini is how his sympathies change from Hastings' execution onwards. His account starts off rather pro-Gloucester, but he was obviously appalled by Hastings' execution.
But how did he get the details of that so wrong? He is the original reverser of the order of York's removal from sanctuary vis a vis Hastings' death, and he has Hastings run through during the scuffle, by soldiers under Buckingham's command, where all the other sources - even contemporary ones - have him beheaded.
Mancini finished his account on 1st December, but we don't know how long it took him to write or whether he made any notes whilst in England.
4) Question for Annette: Is it thought that a version of Mancini's text might have been available to the early Tudor historians? I ask because they all reverse the order of York's removal/ Hastings' death as well, and because I've recently noticed that More's version of Stony Stratford is very close to Mancini's - really just a dramatisation of Mancini - whereas Vergil does not give a detailed account of that event at all.

Marie
like Carol, just putting out ideas

Marie wrote:
<snip>
>
> 2) I do find More's Richard III hilarious (particularly the idea of Richard planning the murder of the princes on the toilet), <snip>

Carol responds:

You'd think that detail alone (combined with the "secret page" who understands everyone's motivations and wants to help the good but ambitious Sir James by suggesting that he'll willingly murder the sons of Edward IV) would be sufficient to show the absurdity of the story.I can only assume that no one reading More's "history" after it was posthumously published credited him with either a sense of humor or an imagination.

Marie wrote:

> 3) Mancini. Katy's got a very good point - why do we believe Mancini spoke no English? <snip>
> We know he spoke to Argentine because he tells us about his conversation with the "doctor of Strasbourg" who had treated Edward V; but that was after he returned to France (Argentine also having left England).

Carol responds:
I think it's assumed that he spoke no English because his only named informant is Dr. Argentine, a fellow Italian. It seems clear that he didn't speak to any people close to Richard (Dr. Argentine was, of course, a member of the Woodville faction), and he got certain details wrong (such as Richard's being on his Gloucester estates) when he heard the news of Edward's death.

His Occupatio is, of course, written in Latin, but don't know whether he could have conversed in that language (if so, his informants would probably have been priests, some of whom, like Morton and Rotherham, were also hostile to Richard). Most likely, he also spoke French, since he was working for Angelo Cato in France and because French was a language of diplomacy, whereas English was not regularly taught outside the British Isles, as far as I know. (Charles the Bold spoke it, but most rulers and diplomats would see no need to learn it.) I imagine that most of his conversations were in French and that any rumors he heard were conveyed to him (by persons hostile to Richard or friendly to France) in that language.

Does anyone know anything about Angelo Cato? I can't find any information on him other than that he commissioned Mancini's work, was Archbishop of Vienne, was Louis XI's physician and astrologer, and was also associated with Commynes. Would he have had an interest in promoting Henry Tudor's interests (or merely in stirring up trouble in England, the traditional enemy of France, during a new and potentially unstable regime)? He would have had no reason other than Richard's opposition to the Treaty of Picquigny to be personally hostile to Richard.

Carol, who thinks that Mancini's inability to speak or understand English is a valid assumption

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> Marie wrote:
> <snip>
> >
> > 2) I do find More's Richard III hilarious (particularly the idea of Richard planning the murder of the princes on the toilet), <snip>
>
> Carol responds:
>
> You'd think that detail alone (combined with the "secret page" who understands everyone's motivations and wants to help the good but ambitious Sir James by suggesting that he'll willingly murder the sons of Edward IV) would be sufficient to show the absurdity of the story.I can only assume that no one reading More's "history" after it was posthumously published credited him with either a sense of humor or an imagination.
>
> Marie wrote:
>
> > 3) Mancini. Katy's got a very good point - why do we believe Mancini spoke no English? <snip>
> > We know he spoke to Argentine because he tells us about his conversation with the "doctor of Strasbourg" who had treated Edward V; but that was after he returned to France (Argentine also having left England).


> Carol responds:
> I think it's assumed that he spoke no English because his only named informant is Dr. Argentine, a fellow Italian.

Marie:
Hi Carol.
By checking my copy of Mancini, I see that this assumption goes right back to Armstrong's Introduction. This is his actual reasoning:
"... nothing could be less like a traveller's diary than Mancini writing on political events. He omitted, quite intentionally, a description of Edward IV's funeral or of Richard III's coronation. He excluded the details of public affairs.... It must be assumed that Mancini did not readily understand English, perhaps not at all, so that he had no capacity to summarize the proclamation cried in London to which he refers and which would have been such precious historical evidence." (pp. 15-16)
Whilst it is true that Mancini could have communicated with Argentine in Italian, according to the ODNB, Argentine was an Englishman, born at Bottisham in Cambridgeshire. After doing an MA at Cambridge and starting a career in royal service, in 1473 he had gone off to Italy for three years to further his studies.


>[Carol] It seems clear that he didn't speak to any people close to Richard (Dr. Argentine was, of course, a member of the Woodville faction), and he got certain details wrong (such as Richard's being on his Gloucester estates) when he heard the news of Edward's death.

Marie:
This is not exactly the mistake it appears to be. Mancini was simply assuming that Richard's estates and title matched, as they normally did in continental practice. He corrently states that these estates were 200 miles from London. Gloucester is only 100 miles away. He made the same mistake about Edward V, stating that he was actually in Wales (rather than on the English side of the border, as he was), as Wales "always falls to the lot of kings' eldest sons, and gives to these princes their appellation." His text suggests he did not believe Richard and Edward V were out in the same direction, although Gloucestershire actually borders Wales. In fact, his text gives no hint that he had any idea which way any of these places were.


>
> [Carol] His Occupatio is, of course, written in Latin, but don't know whether he could have conversed in that language (if so, his informants would probably have been priests, some of whom, like Morton and Rotherham, were also hostile to Richard).

Marie:
Well, I'd dispute that most priests were hostile to Richard (if that is what you meant). On the other point, Mancini has left us several Latin texts, and since universities taught through Latin, and scholars disputed in that language rather than the vernacular, it can surely be assumed he was a fluent Latin speaker.

[Carol] Most likely, he also spoke French, since he was working for Angelo Cato in France and because French was a language of diplomacy, whereas English was not regularly taught outside the British Isles, as far as I know. (Charles the Bold spoke it, but most rulers and diplomats would see no need to learn it.) I imagine that most of his conversations were in French and that any rumors he heard were conveyed to him (by persons hostile to Richard or friendly to France) in that language.


Marie:
I think all that is clear, and the CLASS of people Mancini might have conversed with without English has of course been discussed in print. I understood that what Joan was asking for was additional names, which we don't have.
The other obvious group to whom Mancini might have spoken would be fellow Italians in London. There were a couple of famous scholars among them, quite apart from the large Italian merchant community who would have been a good source of hot gossip. Argentine is certainly not the only Italian speaker Mancini could have found, and my feeling is that he was mentioned by name because of his intimate connection with Edward V. He is mentioned only in the context of what he had to say about Edward's state of mind before Argentine was dismissed from his side, and there is no reason to suppose he was the source of everything Mancini had to say. In fact, as he was Edward's physician, wouldn't he have been with him at Ludlow when King Edward died? If so, of course, then he could well have been the source of Mancini's detailed account of Stony Stratford, but the information about events before the King's arrival in London, for instance, must have come from other informants.
The problem is, we know nothing about Mancini prior to 1482 (when he was in France and, according to himself, already old) except for the fact of his Italian birth. Were it not for the Occupatio, we wouldn't know he had been in England in 1483. He could have been to London several times before for all we know – or perhaps spent time in the Low Countries where he might have picked up Flemish, which would in turn have helped him in picking up English.
At any rate, he must as I suggested before have at least had an English speaker in his entourage for practical purposes, and he was over for several months, perhaps as many as eleven; there is nothing like being immersed in a language to aid the learning process, and one can learn an amazing amount in just a few weeks in a country, a valid point that so far as I'm aware hadn't been raised before Katy pointed it out.
If he didn't speak English, then I think we have to seriously question the common (though not universal) assumption that Cato had sent him over on a spying mission. There is nothing Mancini says about his instruction from Cato to write an account of what he had observed that is inconsistent with that instruction having been made after his return to France.
(It's perhaps worth making a comparison with Argentine himself. His academic studies in Italy would all have been conducted through Latin, and he surely didn't speak Italian before he left England, but after three years in Italy he was sufficiently at home with the language to be annotating his own work in the Venetian dialect. Richard spent only a few months in Bruges, but clearly came back with `holiday Flemish' and was able to use it to greet Von Poppelau. Surely nobody without a flair for languages could have become a Latin poet and found employment in France.


>
> [Carol] Does anyone know anything about Angelo Cato?

Marie:
Armstrong includes a section on Cato in his Introduction.

[Carol] I can't find any information on him other than that he commissioned Mancini's work, was Archbishop of Vienne, was Louis XI's physician and astrologer, and was also associated with Commynes. Would he have had an interest in promoting Henry Tudor's interests (or merely in stirring up trouble in England, the traditional enemy of France, during a new and potentially unstable regime)? He would have had no reason other than Richard's opposition to the Treaty of Picquigny to be personally hostile to Richard.

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> >
> > Marie wrote:
> > <snip>
> > >
> > > 2) I do find More's Richard III hilarious (particularly the idea of Richard planning the murder of the princes on the toilet), <snip>
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > You'd think that detail alone (combined with the "secret page" who understands everyone's motivations and wants to help the good but ambitious Sir James by suggesting that he'll willingly murder the sons of Edward IV) would be sufficient to show the absurdity of the story.I can only assume that no one reading More's "history" after it was posthumously published credited him with either a sense of humor or an imagination.
> >
> > Marie wrote:
> >
> > > 3) Mancini. Katy's got a very good point - why do we believe Mancini spoke no English? <snip>
> > > We know he spoke to Argentine because he tells us about his conversation with the "doctor of Strasbourg" who had treated Edward V; but that was after he returned to France (Argentine also having left England).
>
>
> > Carol responds:
> > I think it's assumed that he spoke no English because his only named informant is Dr. Argentine, a fellow Italian.
>
> Marie:
> Hi Carol.
> By checking my copy of Mancini, I see that this assumption goes right back to Armstrong's Introduction. This is his actual reasoning:
> "... nothing could be less like a traveller's diary than Mancini writing on political events. He omitted, quite intentionally, a description of Edward IV's funeral or of Richard III's coronation. He excluded the details of public affairs.... It must be assumed that Mancini did not readily understand English, perhaps not at all, so that he had no capacity to summarize the proclamation cried in London to which he refers and which would have been such precious historical evidence." (pp. 15-16)

Katy: Wow. The assumption Armstrong admits he makes is one of those feats of jumping to a conclusion that I think historians should really try to avoid.

The conclusion to which I, a non-historian, would jump would be that the reason Mancini didn't write of the era-marking occasions such as E4's funeral and R3's coronation and associated public affairs is that he did write about those things...separately. If he had been sent on a spy or observation mission, what he discovered in that capacity would go to his sponsor, and he would write a ditzy little travelogue for other consumption, since anyone visiting a foreign country would be likely to do some sort of memoir for the folks back home, and it would seem odd if he did not. Further, I'd even speculate that mistakes such as those about the Duke of Gloucester's holdings being in Gloucester were deliberate, to indicate that Mancini was just a tourist and maybe didn't even speak English. Who would think that such an error-prone, self-described old, man would be on a spy mission?

Katy

--- In , "oregonkaty" <oregon_katy@...> wrote:
>
>
> > Marie:
> > Hi Carol.
> > By checking my copy of Mancini, I see that this assumption goes right back to Armstrong's Introduction. This is his actual reasoning:
> > "... nothing could be less like a traveller's diary than Mancini writing on political events. He omitted, quite intentionally, a description of Edward IV's funeral or of Richard III's coronation. He excluded the details of public affairs.... It must be assumed that Mancini did not readily understand English, perhaps not at all, so that he had no capacity to summarize the proclamation cried in London to which he refers and which would have been such precious historical evidence." (pp. 15-16)
>
> Katy: Wow. The assumption Armstrong admits he makes is one of those feats of jumping to a conclusion that I think historians should really try to avoid.
>
> The conclusion to which I, a non-historian, would jump would be that the reason Mancini didn't write of the era-marking occasions such as E4's funeral and R3's coronation and associated public affairs is that he did write about those things...separately. If he had been sent on a spy or observation mission, what he discovered in that capacity would go to his sponsor, and he would write a ditzy little travelogue for other consumption, since anyone visiting a foreign country would be likely to do some sort of memoir for the folks back home, and it would seem odd if he did not. Further, I'd even speculate that mistakes such as those about the Duke of Gloucester's holdings being in Gloucester were deliberate, to indicate that Mancini was just a tourist and maybe didn't even speak English. Who would think that such an error-prone, self-described old, man would be on a spy mission?
>
> Katy
>



Katy again:

Further thoughts on the same subject: the more I think about it, the less likely I find it that Mancini made no comments on E4's funeral or R3's coronation because he spoke no English and therefore didn't know what was going on. He wouldn't have to know what was going on -- he could have been stone deaf -- and still would have had plenty to talk about in simply describing what he saw. A funeral and, especially, a coronation involve ceremony and decorations and ritual. And they'd be the most interesting events that occurred during his sojourn in England.

I think that if he didn't write about them, there was a reason for it, and it's naive to think that that reason is that he didn't speak English. Surely he could have found someone who shared a language with him, during the whole time things were going on, to ask wqhat was gong on.

My conclusion-leap, therefore, is that since the memoir or report of his that is extant doesn't even mention the most conspicuous events that occurred during his visit, he did write about them elsewhere, and that report is lost.

Katy

Marie: Please scroll to bottom.

--- In , "oregonkaty" <oregon_katy@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "oregonkaty" <oregon_katy@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Marie:
> > > Hi Carol.
> > > By checking my copy of Mancini, I see that this assumption goes right back to Armstrong's Introduction. This is his actual reasoning:
> > > "... nothing could be less like a traveller's diary than Mancini writing on political events. He omitted, quite intentionally, a description of Edward IV's funeral or of Richard III's coronation. He excluded the details of public affairs.... It must be assumed that Mancini did not readily understand English, perhaps not at all, so that he had no capacity to summarize the proclamation cried in London to which he refers and which would have been such precious historical evidence." (pp. 15-16)
> >
> > Katy: Wow. The assumption Armstrong admits he makes is one of those feats of jumping to a conclusion that I think historians should really try to avoid.
> >
> > The conclusion to which I, a non-historian, would jump would be that the reason Mancini didn't write of the era-marking occasions such as E4's funeral and R3's coronation and associated public affairs is that he did write about those things...separately. If he had been sent on a spy or observation mission, what he discovered in that capacity would go to his sponsor, and he would write a ditzy little travelogue for other consumption, since anyone visiting a foreign country would be likely to do some sort of memoir for the folks back home, and it would seem odd if he did not. Further, I'd even speculate that mistakes such as those about the Duke of Gloucester's holdings being in Gloucester were deliberate, to indicate that Mancini was just a tourist and maybe didn't even speak English. Who would think that such an error-prone, self-described old, man would be on a spy mission?
> >
> > Katy
> >
>
>
>
> Katy again:
>
> Further thoughts on the same subject: the more I think about it, the less likely I find it that Mancini made no comments on E4's funeral or R3's coronation because he spoke no English and therefore didn't know what was going on. He wouldn't have to know what was going on -- he could have been stone deaf -- and still would have had plenty to talk about in simply describing what he saw. A funeral and, especially, a coronation involve ceremony and decorations and ritual. And they'd be the most interesting events that occurred during his sojourn in England.
>
> I think that if he didn't write about them, there was a reason for it, and it's naive to think that that reason is that he didn't speak English. Surely he could have found someone who shared a language with him, during the whole time things were going on, to ask wqhat was gong on.
>
> My conclusion-leap, therefore, is that since the memoir or report of his that is extant doesn't even mention the most conspicuous events that occurred during his visit, he did write about them elsewhere, and that report is lost.
>
> Katy
>


From Marie:
Hi Katy & Carol

I think the conclusion I'd jump to is twofold:-

1) Mancini didn't describe the ceremonial because it wasn't the purpose of is account. Yes, we do have great sources for those things, but they are either letters home from travellers or heralds' accounts, and the heralds' purpose was specifically to record these events because they were in charge of making sure they were carried out correctly - next time there was a royal funeral or coronation, for instance, the accounts of previous ones could be pulled out for reference.
Mancini's set task was to explain the political events leading up to Richard becoming king, and that is what he did. As you say, Katy, language would be no barrier to describing visual display.

2) Mancini was not sent over as a spy, but went over to England whilst on leave from Cato for his own reasons. After Richard took the throne Cato, wanting to understand more about what had gone on, called him back and asked him to write an account.
This scenario would explain many of the the errors, such as the transposition of Hastings' death and York's removal from sanctuary (logical with the hindsight of one who had come to believe Richard had been aiming at the crown all along - the brain doesn't store memories chronologically, but reconstructs the chronology from logic), and indeed the jaundiced hindsight which permeates the account. It would also explain why he could produce no copy of Richard's proclamation. Mancini, you see, had I think taken no notes whilst he was in England because he was not expecting to have to write about these events.
His information from Argentine must have been obtained retrospectively in France, because Argentine's dismissal from Edward V's service, referred to by Mancini, postdated Mancini's own return.

As regards understanding of English, Mancini is unusually good for a foreign account in his rendition of the names of the English protagonists.

Marie

Hello fellow members, and I see there has been a lot of very valuable discussion on More and Mancini. I would just like to interpolate a couple of points to round out the commentary.

First, according to my researches, More is the first and only source that gives the full Shakespearean story of the princes being murdered in their beds, and that says James Tyrell confessed to it (later Tudor chronicles and Shakespeare of course copied More). Vergil goes into greater detail about Richard's alleged first attempt to have them murdered (by Brackenbury) than he does about Tyrell's involvement. The relevant page is 188, and Richard has arrived in York where he has been 'joyfully received' and held his royal ceremonies. He then learns that Brackenbury has deferred performing the 'horrible commission' in the hope that Richard will change his mind, so he despatches Tyrell from York to 'hasten the slaughter': ". . . Tyrrell, who, being forcyd to do the kings commandment, rode sorowfully to London, and, to the woorst example that hath been almost ever hard of, murderyd those babes of thyssew royall.Thys end had Prince Edward and Richarde his brother; but with what kinde of death these sely chyldren wer executed yt is not certainely known."

I know Vergil has almost as bad a rap as More as far as Ricardians are concerned, but I have a lot more time for Vergil because he made attempts to research what he was writing. Admittedly he was misinformed and misled, but I like to look at the small details about which there was no particular reason to give him a sanitised version. There are two such details in this passage.

First, Vergil pinpoints the murder of the princes as occurring very specifically after Richard's ceremonies took place in York. Since there seems no particular reason to lie about the date of their disappearance, which many must have still remembered thirty years later, and which would have been easy to fudge had it been sensitive information, I take this to be a clue as to its actual timing (plus it coincides with other records).

And second, almost mirroring Mancini's words, Vergil says, in the present tense, 'it is not certainly known' how the children were killed. From this I draw the conclusion that Vergil was NOT fed the story that Tyrell had come up with that full and colourful confession as recounted in More's drama. But, as Marie correctly says, he WAS told that Tyrell was the perpetrator. And Vergil, like More, also heard the story that Richard needed two attempts before the job was done to his satisfaction. (I have occasionally toyed with the idea of writing a book on the subject of what really happened to Edward V and his brother, and if ever I should do so, these are details that I would want to take into account.)

Francis Bacon, writing his admiring biography of Henry VII in 1621, was unlikely to have had evidence of an actual confession that wasn't available to Vergil - who was writing within a few years of Tyrell's execution, and who actually arrived in England in 1502, the year of the execution itself. Given the objective for which Vergil was commissioned to write his Anglica Historia, and the need of the Tudors to give themselves sanctity and credibility, especially after the death of Prince Arthur, it is difficult to believe that if Tyrell and Dighton had genuinely confessed the full details of the murder, this wouldn't have been made very public indeed in 1502.

As for Alison Hanham, I like her precisely because she is willing to risk thinking outside the box (a hackneyed expression, but an accurate one). Her early ideas about the Crowland manuscript were not untoward back in the 1970s, given that the original is lost and all that remains is a copy, and she was trying to reconcile the fact that (IIRC) every account of the year 1483 with the exception of Crowland places the death of Hastings (13 June) before the emergence of Richard, Duke of York from sanctuary (16 June). She was the first to pick up on this curious fact and try to figure out why. Her conclusion that Hastings wasn't executed until 20 June was based on documentary evidence that was later shown to have been mistaken by Richard Firth Green's discovery of the Historical Notes in the 1980s, therefore the collection from which her evidence came must have been (ahem) assembled out of order.

I think Dr Hanham didn't endear herself because, as well as thinking Richard was a bad lot, she was one of those academics (and we know a few, don't we?) who launch their new ideas with unwarranted certainty and take up the cudgels with vehemence when opposed.

For me, however, her theory of More's 'Richard III' appeals because it provides elegant answers to my own questions. Why is it so full of colour, dialogue, vivid description and dramatic mise-en-scène complete with knockabout comedy? Because More loved the theatre and wanted to try his hand at something really theatrical. Why is it full of 'men say this' and 'as I have heard', and even outright contradictions? Because he was renowned for his sharp and sardonic wit throughout his everyday life, and he is taking the mickey out of all the serious old men who credit rumour and superstition, and recount it as readily as they do fact. Why is Richard such a pantomime villain? Because the work isn't about a real person, its a moralistic piece about an archetypal tyrant. These are generalities, of course, but as Carol has pointed out, it's difficult to get to grips with a single detail, such as Edward IV's mis-stated age at death, without wondering about the underlying purpose of writing it. Look at it as Shakespeare, and there's an immediate reason for specifying an invented age right down to the last day - dramatic verisimilitude. Look at it as history, and Master More is revealed as a shoddy researcher. And, by the way, there's a lot that Shakespeare got right, just as More did.

At this point I have mused more than enough. As for whether any of the Tudor writers had access to Mancini's report, I have never heard any opinions expressed on this. According to Armstrong, the manuscript he found in the municipal library of Lille is not Mancini's holograph, but a copy in a late 15th, more probably early16th century French gothic hand. A 16th-century mark of ownership indicates the name of Paul Aemilius, who went to France about 1483 and died in 1529. The next date indicated is by a bookplate of Denys Godefroy (1615-81), historiographer to the king of France, who on the conquest of French-speaking Flanders became director of the archives which had been assembled at Lille by the Burgundian and Hapsburg rulers. Thus the repository of this MS at Lille goes back a long way. But of course, if this was a copy, there may have been others. And what happened to the original? Armstrong suggests that the denunciation of Richard by the French chancellor in January 1484 may have been sparked by Mancini's report to Cato. I am doubtful about this - if it was, he took matters a good deal further than Mancini's statement that he couldn't find out what happened to the princes!
Regards, Annette

----- Original Message -----
From: mariewalsh2003
To:
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III





--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@> wrote:
> >
> > Sorry, you're quite right, the quote is Bacon repeated by Walpole (I quickly rushed to check whether I had it right in "Maligned King", and thank goodness I did!) - the problem is that I have a copy of Walpole on my bookshelf, but not Bacon. You cast an interesting light on what it actually was, or might have been, that the king gave out. I expect the article addresses this. Since my membership is current, I will ask Gillian to try to find it and will report back on what success I have.
> > Regards, Annette
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Thanks, Annette.I appreciate that. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter of how much, if anything, Henry VII "gave out" after Tyrrell's execution? Vergil's version of the supposed murder might give a better indication than More's.
>
> Carol, who can never call Henry "the king" without wishing that he had lost Bosworth!
>

From Marie:

Hi all,

I left a message yesterday but I'm afraid it's got lost as I hadn't realised my daughter had been on my computer and signed me in as herself. So here we are again.

1) I do recall the article "As the King Gave Out". I think the jist was that there is no reason to suppose there was any confession - I don't remember whether she queried the king giving out as well, but I do seem to remember it was a worthwhile read. I still have my old Ricardians but won't have access to them for some months, unfortunately, so I'd recommend ordering through the Society.
My own view, if views are being canvassed, is that since we hear nothing about it till Vergil, the idea of pinning the blame on Tyrell was probably Henry VIII's. Despite "Warbeck's" "confession", Henry VII seemed to simply behave as though everything was done & dusted princes-wise after he executed "Warbeck", as if both he and the populace believed what they could not say - ie that "Warbeck" had actually been the last surviving of Edward's sons. Maybe Henry VIII was more uncomfortable with this solution and wanted to nail the responsibility firmly on Richard.

2) I do find More's Richard III hilarious (particularly the idea of Richard planning the murder of the princes on the toilet), and I can't help but think it was meant to be funny, at least in parts. I also like the idea that More was at times parodying Vergil in his work, but I do have a real problem believing that the entire 18 years' work, various amendments of five drafts, etc, could all have been done to amuse one colleague. I would say that, even if Vergil had fond it funny to start with, the joke would have worn off just a bit over all the years of redrafting ('Hey, Poly, it's really funny this time').
My feeling is that it is probably a mistake to look for a single consistent purpose in a work that was tinkered with over such a long period. I know whenever I've had something on the go for a number of years its purposes grow with me, and with what I learn on the way, which is what necessitates the constant redrafting. It can also be that a project can't make progress because the aim was never clear in the first place.
Also, although I am 100% with Alison Hanham on her latest interpretation of Crowland (unusually simple for her - ie that, perhaps bar the last couple of pages, it is just a monastic chronicle after all), she does have a bit of a track record of complicated, erudite-sounding but basically mistaken theories on texts. I can't comment on her arguments about More, but I do remember she had a theory once about the Crowland Chronicle which involved a lost original the pages of which had got reassembled in the wrong order. She was also responsible for a long-running attempt to rehabilitate 21st June as the date of Hastings' execution - later proved false when another source turned up. And recently she suggested that Edward's precontract with Eleanor Butler may have consisted of just a (lost, again) written contract drawn up by their parents when they were children agreeing to their later marriage; her argument showed a lack of understanding of the meaning of the word precontract as well as medieval marriage law. So whilst I'm not saying she is wrong about More - evidently she is a very learned lady in her own field - I still feel we are better off just doing the boring thing and analysing his scenes, their sources and potential purposes, one by one.
3) Mancini. Katy's got a very good point - why do we believe Mancini spoke no English? Why do we assume he therefore understood no English? If he really did have no English, I would question whether he had been sent over on a spying mission or just happened to be in the country at the time; even if he'd come over on his own business, though, he would have had to bring someone with him who could do the necessary interpreting. Also, even if he had not a word of English when he arrived, he could well have picked up quite a bit by the time he left - no quicker way to learn a language than going to the country.
We know he spoke to Argentine because he tells us about his conversation with the "doctor of Strasbourg" who had treated Edward V; but that was after he returned to France (Argentine also having left England). He does not tell us whom he met and communicated whilst whilst in England. What always strikes me when I read Mancini is how his sympathies change from Hastings' execution onwards. His account starts off rather pro-Gloucester, but he was obviously appalled by Hastings' execution.
But how did he get the details of that so wrong? He is the original reverser of the order of York's removal from sanctuary vis a vis Hastings' death, and he has Hastings run through during the scuffle, by soldiers under Buckingham's command, where all the other sources - even contemporary ones - have him beheaded.
Mancini finished his account on 1st December, but we don't know how long it took him to write or whether he made any notes whilst in England.
4) Question for Annette: Is it thought that a version of Mancini's text might have been available to the early Tudor historians? I ask because they all reverse the order of York's removal/ Hastings' death as well, and because I've recently noticed that More's version of Stony Stratford is very close to Mancini's - really just a dramatisation of Mancini - whereas Vergil does not give a detailed account of that event at all.

Marie
like Carol, just putting out ideas

Oh, dear, wouldn't you know I would get something wrong! What I said was that Hanham tried to reconcile the fact that accounts of the year 1483 "placed the death of Hastings (13 June) before the emergence of Richard, Duke of York from sanctuary (16 June). She was the first to pick up on this curious fact and try to figure out why." What I should have written was the reverse, of course: the death of Hastings (13 June) was placed AFTER the emergence of the young Duke of York from sanctuary (16 June). This was what Hanham tried to find a reason for.
Sorry, Annette


----- Original Message -----
From: Annette Carson
To:
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III



Hello fellow members, and I see there has been a lot of very valuable discussion on More and Mancini. I would just like to interpolate a couple of points to round out the commentary.

First, according to my researches, More is the first and only source that gives the full Shakespearean story of the princes being murdered in their beds, and that says James Tyrell confessed to it (later Tudor chronicles and Shakespeare of course copied More). Vergil goes into greater detail about Richard's alleged first attempt to have them murdered (by Brackenbury) than he does about Tyrell's involvement. The relevant page is 188, and Richard has arrived in York where he has been 'joyfully received' and held his royal ceremonies. He then learns that Brackenbury has deferred performing the 'horrible commission' in the hope that Richard will change his mind, so he despatches Tyrell from York to 'hasten the slaughter': ". . . Tyrrell, who, being forcyd to do the kings commandment, rode sorowfully to London, and, to the woorst example that hath been almost ever hard of, murderyd those babes of thyssew royall.Thys end had Prince Edward and Richarde his brother; but with what kinde of death these sely chyldren wer executed yt is not certainely known."

I know Vergil has almost as bad a rap as More as far as Ricardians are concerned, but I have a lot more time for Vergil because he made attempts to research what he was writing. Admittedly he was misinformed and misled, but I like to look at the small details about which there was no particular reason to give him a sanitised version. There are two such details in this passage.

First, Vergil pinpoints the murder of the princes as occurring very specifically after Richard's ceremonies took place in York. Since there seems no particular reason to lie about the date of their disappearance, which many must have still remembered thirty years later, and which would have been easy to fudge had it been sensitive information, I take this to be a clue as to its actual timing (plus it coincides with other records).

And second, almost mirroring Mancini's words, Vergil says, in the present tense, 'it is not certainly known' how the children were killed. From this I draw the conclusion that Vergil was NOT fed the story that Tyrell had come up with that full and colourful confession as recounted in More's drama. But, as Marie correctly says, he WAS told that Tyrell was the perpetrator. And Vergil, like More, also heard the story that Richard needed two attempts before the job was done to his satisfaction. (I have occasionally toyed with the idea of writing a book on the subject of what really happened to Edward V and his brother, and if ever I should do so, these are details that I would want to take into account.)

Francis Bacon, writing his admiring biography of Henry VII in 1621, was unlikely to have had evidence of an actual confession that wasn't available to Vergil - who was writing within a few years of Tyrell's execution, and who actually arrived in England in 1502, the year of the execution itself. Given the objective for which Vergil was commissioned to write his Anglica Historia, and the need of the Tudors to give themselves sanctity and credibility, especially after the death of Prince Arthur, it is difficult to believe that if Tyrell and Dighton had genuinely confessed the full details of the murder, this wouldn't have been made very public indeed in 1502.

As for Alison Hanham, I like her precisely because she is willing to risk thinking outside the box (a hackneyed expression, but an accurate one). Her early ideas about the Crowland manuscript were not untoward back in the 1970s, given that the original is lost and all that remains is a copy, and she was trying to reconcile the fact that (IIRC) every account of the year 1483 with the exception of Crowland places the death of Hastings (13 June) before the emergence of Richard, Duke of York from sanctuary (16 June). She was the first to pick up on this curious fact and try to figure out why. Her conclusion that Hastings wasn't executed until 20 June was based on documentary evidence that was later shown to have been mistaken by Richard Firth Green's discovery of the Historical Notes in the 1980s, therefore the collection from which her evidence came must have been (ahem) assembled out of order.

I think Dr Hanham didn't endear herself because, as well as thinking Richard was a bad lot, she was one of those academics (and we know a few, don't we?) who launch their new ideas with unwarranted certainty and take up the cudgels with vehemence when opposed.

For me, however, her theory of More's 'Richard III' appeals because it provides elegant answers to my own questions. Why is it so full of colour, dialogue, vivid description and dramatic mise-en-scène complete with knockabout comedy? Because More loved the theatre and wanted to try his hand at something really theatrical. Why is it full of 'men say this' and 'as I have heard', and even outright contradictions? Because he was renowned for his sharp and sardonic wit throughout his everyday life, and he is taking the mickey out of all the serious old men who credit rumour and superstition, and recount it as readily as they do fact. Why is Richard such a pantomime villain? Because the work isn't about a real person, its a moralistic piece about an archetypal tyrant. These are generalities, of course, but as Carol has pointed out, it's difficult to get to grips with a single detail, such as Edward IV's mis-stated age at death, without wondering about the underlying purpose of writing it. Look at it as Shakespeare, and there's an immediate reason for specifying an invented age right down to the last day - dramatic verisimilitude. Look at it as history, and Master More is revealed as a shoddy researcher. And, by the way, there's a lot that Shakespeare got right, just as More did.

At this point I have mused more than enough. As for whether any of the Tudor writers had access to Mancini's report, I have never heard any opinions expressed on this. According to Armstrong, the manuscript he found in the municipal library of Lille is not Mancini's holograph, but a copy in a late 15th, more probably early16th century French gothic hand. A 16th-century mark of ownership indicates the name of Paul Aemilius, who went to France about 1483 and died in 1529. The next date indicated is by a bookplate of Denys Godefroy (1615-81), historiographer to the king of France, who on the conquest of French-speaking Flanders became director of the archives which had been assembled at Lille by the Burgundian and Hapsburg rulers. Thus the repository of this MS at Lille goes back a long way. But of course, if this was a copy, there may have been others. And what happened to the original? Armstrong suggests that the denunciation of Richard by the French chancellor in January 1484 may have been sparked by Mancini's report to Cato. I am doubtful about this - if it was, he took matters a good deal further than Mancini's statement that he couldn't find out what happened to the princes!
Regards, Annette

----- Original Message -----
From: mariewalsh2003
To:
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@> wrote:
> >
> > Sorry, you're quite right, the quote is Bacon repeated by Walpole (I quickly rushed to check whether I had it right in "Maligned King", and thank goodness I did!) - the problem is that I have a copy of Walpole on my bookshelf, but not Bacon. You cast an interesting light on what it actually was, or might have been, that the king gave out. I expect the article addresses this. Since my membership is current, I will ask Gillian to try to find it and will report back on what success I have.
> > Regards, Annette
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Thanks, Annette.I appreciate that. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter of how much, if anything, Henry VII "gave out" after Tyrrell's execution? Vergil's version of the supposed murder might give a better indication than More's.
>
> Carol, who can never call Henry "the king" without wishing that he had lost Bosworth!
>

From Marie:

Hi all,

I left a message yesterday but I'm afraid it's got lost as I hadn't realised my daughter had been on my computer and signed me in as herself. So here we are again.

1) I do recall the article "As the King Gave Out". I think the jist was that there is no reason to suppose there was any confession - I don't remember whether she queried the king giving out as well, but I do seem to remember it was a worthwhile read. I still have my old Ricardians but won't have access to them for some months, unfortunately, so I'd recommend ordering through the Society.
My own view, if views are being canvassed, is that since we hear nothing about it till Vergil, the idea of pinning the blame on Tyrell was probably Henry VIII's. Despite "Warbeck's" "confession", Henry VII seemed to simply behave as though everything was done & dusted princes-wise after he executed "Warbeck", as if both he and the populace believed what they could not say - ie that "Warbeck" had actually been the last surviving of Edward's sons. Maybe Henry VIII was more uncomfortable with this solution and wanted to nail the responsibility firmly on Richard.

2) I do find More's Richard III hilarious (particularly the idea of Richard planning the murder of the princes on the toilet), and I can't help but think it was meant to be funny, at least in parts. I also like the idea that More was at times parodying Vergil in his work, but I do have a real problem believing that the entire 18 years' work, various amendments of five drafts, etc, could all have been done to amuse one colleague. I would say that, even if Vergil had fond it funny to start with, the joke would have worn off just a bit over all the years of redrafting ('Hey, Poly, it's really funny this time').
My feeling is that it is probably a mistake to look for a single consistent purpose in a work that was tinkered with over such a long period. I know whenever I've had something on the go for a number of years its purposes grow with me, and with what I learn on the way, which is what necessitates the constant redrafting. It can also be that a project can't make progress because the aim was never clear in the first place.
Also, although I am 100% with Alison Hanham on her latest interpretation of Crowland (unusually simple for her - ie that, perhaps bar the last couple of pages, it is just a monastic chronicle after all), she does have a bit of a track record of complicated, erudite-sounding but basically mistaken theories on texts. I can't comment on her arguments about More, but I do remember she had a theory once about the Crowland Chronicle which involved a lost original the pages of which had got reassembled in the wrong order. She was also responsible for a long-running attempt to rehabilitate 21st June as the date of Hastings' execution - later proved false when another source turned up. And recently she suggested that Edward's precontract with Eleanor Butler may have consisted of just a (lost, again) written contract drawn up by their parents when they were children agreeing to their later marriage; her argument showed a lack of understanding of the meaning of the word precontract as well as medieval marriage law. So whilst I'm not saying she is wrong about More - evidently she is a very learned lady in her own field - I still feel we are better off just doing the boring thing and analysing his scenes, their sources and potential purposes, one by one.
3) Mancini. Katy's got a very good point - why do we believe Mancini spoke no English? Why do we assume he therefore understood no English? If he really did have no English, I would question whether he had been sent over on a spying mission or just happened to be in the country at the time; even if he'd come over on his own business, though, he would have had to bring someone with him who could do the necessary interpreting. Also, even if he had not a word of English when he arrived, he could well have picked up quite a bit by the time he left - no quicker way to learn a language than going to the country.
We know he spoke to Argentine because he tells us about his conversation with the "doctor of Strasbourg" who had treated Edward V; but that was after he returned to France (Argentine also having left England). He does not tell us whom he met and communicated whilst whilst in England. What always strikes me when I read Mancini is how his sympathies change from Hastings' execution onwards. His account starts off rather pro-Gloucester, but he was obviously appalled by Hastings' execution.
But how did he get the details of that so wrong? He is the original reverser of the order of York's removal from sanctuary vis a vis Hastings' death, and he has Hastings run through during the scuffle, by soldiers under Buckingham's command, where all the other sources - even contemporary ones - have him beheaded.
Mancini finished his account on 1st December, but we don't know how long it took him to write or whether he made any notes whilst in England.
4) Question for Annette: Is it thought that a version of Mancini's text might have been available to the early Tudor historians? I ask because they all reverse the order of York's removal/ Hastings' death as well, and because I've recently noticed that More's version of Stony Stratford is very close to Mancini's - really just a dramatisation of Mancini - whereas Vergil does not give a detailed account of that event at all.

Marie
like Carol, just putting out ideas

Hi Annette,

Just a nit-picking point - having been interested in Richard for several years before Alison Hanham wrote her argument in favour of 20th June as date of Hastings' execution - I can surely confirm that she was not by any means the first to notice that Crowland disagreed with Mancini and the Tudor sources on this, but Crowland's version had come to be accepted by modern historians as the correct one - partly perhaps because of the date of death given in the diem clausit extremum (I think, from memory), and partly on the evidence of the Stallworth letter. Hanham was trying to turn the clock back and reinstate the much more damning Tudor order of events. The crux of her argument, as I recall, was that when Stallworth wrote that Hastings' execution took place on "Friday last" he meant 'yesterday', rather than 'a week ago yesterday' as generally assumed, even though her proposal was very unidiomatic and meant setting aside the evidence of the writ of diem clausit extremum [?]. There were, as you correctly say, a lot of response and counter-response articles in the Ricardian, with Alison Hanham not budging an inch.
I'm all for people thinking outside the box, but those putting forward alternative views should take the trouble to ensure these accord with the facts and not simply hammer the facts into a shiny new ill-fitting box. The simple answer to the Stallworth puzzle is now viewable by anyone who has looked at the letter itself, as a photograph of it now appears in Cunningham's Richard III: it was, quite simply, written at several sittings, with clear changes of ink and nib (and even of handwriting), so almost certainly the reference to Hastings' execution was written before Saturday 21st, when 'Friday last' really was the 13th. This point was first made on the forum some years back by another member who had taken the trouble to view the original before Cunningham's book came out.

It's partly because Vergil and More follow Mancini's incorrect chronology on this matter that I wonder whether a copy was available to them, even though it was later lost and forgotten. I was also amazed to see how closely More's version of Stony Stratford accords with Mancini's.

I quite agree that things like More's very precise and wildly incorrect date of death for Edward IV gives us cause to wonder. But we in 2010 perhaps take knowing the facts of Edward IV's birth too much for granted. And to have a question is not necessarily to have an answer. It has been suggested on this forum both that More did it to alert his readers to the unreliability of his account, and that he did it to persuade them of its reliability. You pays your money and you takes your pick - or you reserves your money and your judgement.

Worth remembering that Tyrell may have made a trip to London from York, but if so it was an extremely hurried errand to the Wardrobe to deliver and return the order for the investiture regalia. The order was dated 31st August, York, and the investiture took place on 8th September. The items included stuff to be worn on the occasion by Tyrell himself. I don't actually think the letter names the carrier, but it is usually said to have been Tyrell himself (whether based on Vergil or some other source, I'm afraid I don't know off hand); if the order did go down by Tyrell, therefore, then in order to attend the investiture he must have come straight back again - it's a 420-mile round trip.

At any rate, Vergil had Tyrell go from York to see the Princes murdered (More, who as you say did no proper research, had Tyrell despatched rather earlier, from Warwick).
Yes, More is indeed the originator of the written version of the smothering in the beds story, and he gives us his source quite openly - gossip.

I'd agree that Vergil was actually trying to research, but couldn't report accurately.


Best,
Marie



--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Oh, dear, wouldn't you know I would get something wrong! What I said was that Hanham tried to reconcile the fact that accounts of the year 1483 "placed the death of Hastings (13 June) before the emergence of Richard, Duke of York from sanctuary (16 June). She was the first to pick up on this curious fact and try to figure out why." What I should have written was the reverse, of course: the death of Hastings (13 June) was placed AFTER the emergence of the young Duke of York from sanctuary (16 June). This was what Hanham tried to find a reason for.
> Sorry, Annette
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Annette Carson
> To:
> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 1:50 PM
> Subject: Re: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III
>
>
>
> Hello fellow members, and I see there has been a lot of very valuable discussion on More and Mancini. I would just like to interpolate a couple of points to round out the commentary.
>
> First, according to my researches, More is the first and only source that gives the full Shakespearean story of the princes being murdered in their beds, and that says James Tyrell confessed to it (later Tudor chronicles and Shakespeare of course copied More). Vergil goes into greater detail about Richard's alleged first attempt to have them murdered (by Brackenbury) than he does about Tyrell's involvement. The relevant page is 188, and Richard has arrived in York where he has been 'joyfully received' and held his royal ceremonies. He then learns that Brackenbury has deferred performing the 'horrible commission' in the hope that Richard will change his mind, so he despatches Tyrell from York to 'hasten the slaughter': ". . . Tyrrell, who, being forcyd to do the kings commandment, rode sorowfully to London, and, to the woorst example that hath been almost ever hard of, murderyd those babes of thyssew royall.Thys end had Prince Edward and Richarde his brother; but with what kinde of death these sely chyldren wer executed yt is not certainely known."
>
> I know Vergil has almost as bad a rap as More as far as Ricardians are concerned, but I have a lot more time for Vergil because he made attempts to research what he was writing. Admittedly he was misinformed and misled, but I like to look at the small details about which there was no particular reason to give him a sanitised version. There are two such details in this passage.
>
> First, Vergil pinpoints the murder of the princes as occurring very specifically after Richard's ceremonies took place in York. Since there seems no particular reason to lie about the date of their disappearance, which many must have still remembered thirty years later, and which would have been easy to fudge had it been sensitive information, I take this to be a clue as to its actual timing (plus it coincides with other records).
>
> And second, almost mirroring Mancini's words, Vergil says, in the present tense, 'it is not certainly known' how the children were killed. From this I draw the conclusion that Vergil was NOT fed the story that Tyrell had come up with that full and colourful confession as recounted in More's drama. But, as Marie correctly says, he WAS told that Tyrell was the perpetrator. And Vergil, like More, also heard the story that Richard needed two attempts before the job was done to his satisfaction. (I have occasionally toyed with the idea of writing a book on the subject of what really happened to Edward V and his brother, and if ever I should do so, these are details that I would want to take into account.)
>
> Francis Bacon, writing his admiring biography of Henry VII in 1621, was unlikely to have had evidence of an actual confession that wasn't available to Vergil - who was writing within a few years of Tyrell's execution, and who actually arrived in England in 1502, the year of the execution itself. Given the objective for which Vergil was commissioned to write his Anglica Historia, and the need of the Tudors to give themselves sanctity and credibility, especially after the death of Prince Arthur, it is difficult to believe that if Tyrell and Dighton had genuinely confessed the full details of the murder, this wouldn't have been made very public indeed in 1502.
>
> As for Alison Hanham, I like her precisely because she is willing to risk thinking outside the box (a hackneyed expression, but an accurate one). Her early ideas about the Crowland manuscript were not untoward back in the 1970s, given that the original is lost and all that remains is a copy, and she was trying to reconcile the fact that (IIRC) every account of the year 1483 with the exception of Crowland places the death of Hastings (13 June) before the emergence of Richard, Duke of York from sanctuary (16 June). She was the first to pick up on this curious fact and try to figure out why. Her conclusion that Hastings wasn't executed until 20 June was based on documentary evidence that was later shown to have been mistaken by Richard Firth Green's discovery of the Historical Notes in the 1980s, therefore the collection from which her evidence came must have been (ahem) assembled out of order.
>
> I think Dr Hanham didn't endear herself because, as well as thinking Richard was a bad lot, she was one of those academics (and we know a few, don't we?) who launch their new ideas with unwarranted certainty and take up the cudgels with vehemence when opposed.
>
> For me, however, her theory of More's 'Richard III' appeals because it provides elegant answers to my own questions. Why is it so full of colour, dialogue, vivid description and dramatic mise-en-scène complete with knockabout comedy? Because More loved the theatre and wanted to try his hand at something really theatrical. Why is it full of 'men say this' and 'as I have heard', and even outright contradictions? Because he was renowned for his sharp and sardonic wit throughout his everyday life, and he is taking the mickey out of all the serious old men who credit rumour and superstition, and recount it as readily as they do fact. Why is Richard such a pantomime villain? Because the work isn't about a real person, its a moralistic piece about an archetypal tyrant. These are generalities, of course, but as Carol has pointed out, it's difficult to get to grips with a single detail, such as Edward IV's mis-stated age at death, without wondering about the underlying purpose of writing it. Look at it as Shakespeare, and there's an immediate reason for specifying an invented age right down to the last day - dramatic verisimilitude. Look at it as history, and Master More is revealed as a shoddy researcher. And, by the way, there's a lot that Shakespeare got right, just as More did.
>
> At this point I have mused more than enough. As for whether any of the Tudor writers had access to Mancini's report, I have never heard any opinions expressed on this. According to Armstrong, the manuscript he found in the municipal library of Lille is not Mancini's holograph, but a copy in a late 15th, more probably early16th century French gothic hand. A 16th-century mark of ownership indicates the name of Paul Aemilius, who went to France about 1483 and died in 1529. The next date indicated is by a bookplate of Denys Godefroy (1615-81), historiographer to the king of France, who on the conquest of French-speaking Flanders became director of the archives which had been assembled at Lille by the Burgundian and Hapsburg rulers. Thus the repository of this MS at Lille goes back a long way. But of course, if this was a copy, there may have been others. And what happened to the original? Armstrong suggests that the denunciation of Richard by the French chancellor in January 1484 may have been sparked by Mancini's report to Cato. I am doubtful about this - if it was, he took matters a good deal further than Mancini's statement that he couldn't find out what happened to the princes!
> Regards, Annette
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: mariewalsh2003
> To:
> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 1:18 PM
> Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III
>
> --- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Sorry, you're quite right, the quote is Bacon repeated by Walpole (I quickly rushed to check whether I had it right in "Maligned King", and thank goodness I did!) - the problem is that I have a copy of Walpole on my bookshelf, but not Bacon. You cast an interesting light on what it actually was, or might have been, that the king gave out. I expect the article addresses this. Since my membership is current, I will ask Gillian to try to find it and will report back on what success I have.
> > > Regards, Annette
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > Thanks, Annette.I appreciate that. Anyone else have thoughts on the matter of how much, if anything, Henry VII "gave out" after Tyrrell's execution? Vergil's version of the supposed murder might give a better indication than More's.
> >
> > Carol, who can never call Henry "the king" without wishing that he had lost Bosworth!
> >
>
> From Marie:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I left a message yesterday but I'm afraid it's got lost as I hadn't realised my daughter had been on my computer and signed me in as herself. So here we are again.
>
> 1) I do recall the article "As the King Gave Out". I think the jist was that there is no reason to suppose there was any confession - I don't remember whether she queried the king giving out as well, but I do seem to remember it was a worthwhile read. I still have my old Ricardians but won't have access to them for some months, unfortunately, so I'd recommend ordering through the Society.
> My own view, if views are being canvassed, is that since we hear nothing about it till Vergil, the idea of pinning the blame on Tyrell was probably Henry VIII's. Despite "Warbeck's" "confession", Henry VII seemed to simply behave as though everything was done & dusted princes-wise after he executed "Warbeck", as if both he and the populace believed what they could not say - ie that "Warbeck" had actually been the last surviving of Edward's sons. Maybe Henry VIII was more uncomfortable with this solution and wanted to nail the responsibility firmly on Richard.
>
> 2) I do find More's Richard III hilarious (particularly the idea of Richard planning the murder of the princes on the toilet), and I can't help but think it was meant to be funny, at least in parts. I also like the idea that More was at times parodying Vergil in his work, but I do have a real problem believing that the entire 18 years' work, various amendments of five drafts, etc, could all have been done to amuse one colleague. I would say that, even if Vergil had fond it funny to start with, the joke would have worn off just a bit over all the years of redrafting ('Hey, Poly, it's really funny this time').
> My feeling is that it is probably a mistake to look for a single consistent purpose in a work that was tinkered with over such a long period. I know whenever I've had something on the go for a number of years its purposes grow with me, and with what I learn on the way, which is what necessitates the constant redrafting. It can also be that a project can't make progress because the aim was never clear in the first place.
> Also, although I am 100% with Alison Hanham on her latest interpretation of Crowland (unusually simple for her - ie that, perhaps bar the last couple of pages, it is just a monastic chronicle after all), she does have a bit of a track record of complicated, erudite-sounding but basically mistaken theories on texts. I can't comment on her arguments about More, but I do remember she had a theory once about the Crowland Chronicle which involved a lost original the pages of which had got reassembled in the wrong order. She was also responsible for a long-running attempt to rehabilitate 21st June as the date of Hastings' execution - later proved false when another source turned up. And recently she suggested that Edward's precontract with Eleanor Butler may have consisted of just a (lost, again) written contract drawn up by their parents when they were children agreeing to their later marriage; her argument showed a lack of understanding of the meaning of the word precontract as well as medieval marriage law. So whilst I'm not saying she is wrong about More - evidently she is a very learned lady in her own field - I still feel we are better off just doing the boring thing and analysing his scenes, their sources and potential purposes, one by one.
> 3) Mancini. Katy's got a very good point - why do we believe Mancini spoke no English? Why do we assume he therefore understood no English? If he really did have no English, I would question whether he had been sent over on a spying mission or just happened to be in the country at the time; even if he'd come over on his own business, though, he would have had to bring someone with him who could do the necessary interpreting. Also, even if he had not a word of English when he arrived, he could well have picked up quite a bit by the time he left - no quicker way to learn a language than going to the country.
> We know he spoke to Argentine because he tells us about his conversation with the "doctor of Strasbourg" who had treated Edward V; but that was after he returned to France (Argentine also having left England). He does not tell us whom he met and communicated whilst whilst in England. What always strikes me when I read Mancini is how his sympathies change from Hastings' execution onwards. His account starts off rather pro-Gloucester, but he was obviously appalled by Hastings' execution.
> But how did he get the details of that so wrong? He is the original reverser of the order of York's removal from sanctuary vis a vis Hastings' death, and he has Hastings run through during the scuffle, by soldiers under Buckingham's command, where all the other sources - even contemporary ones - have him beheaded.
> Mancini finished his account on 1st December, but we don't know how long it took him to write or whether he made any notes whilst in England.
> 4) Question for Annette: Is it thought that a version of Mancini's text might have been available to the early Tudor historians? I ask because they all reverse the order of York's removal/ Hastings' death as well, and because I've recently noticed that More's version of Stony Stratford is very close to Mancini's - really just a dramatisation of Mancini - whereas Vergil does not give a detailed account of that event at all.
>
> Marie
> like Carol, just putting out ideas
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Carol earlier:
> > His Occupatio is, of course, written in Latin, but don't know whether he could have conversed in that language (if so, his informants would probably have been priests, some of whom, like Morton and Rotherham, were also hostile to Richard).
>
> Marie:
> Well, I'd dispute that most priests were hostile to Richard (if that is what you meant). On the other point, Mancini has left us several Latin texts, and since universities taught through Latin, and scholars disputed in that language rather than the vernacular, it can surely be assumed he was a fluent Latin speaker.

Carol responds:
Sorry to be unclear. I didn't mean to imply that all priests were hostile to Richard, only to indicate that he would be able to converse in three languages: Latin, French, and Italian. Even if he picked up some English, he would not have been fluent in it when he first arrived and would not have chosen it as his primary language, nor would he have sought information (in my opinion) from people who primarily spoke that language. Probably that wouldn't be much of a handicap. True, only Argentine would have spoken Italian, but he could have conversed in Latin with the priests and in French with the courtiers.

That he's operating in at least some cases on assumptions is indicated by the references to Richard's Gloucester estates and to Edward V as having been in Wales rather than Ludlow at his father's death.

I think you're right that Argentine is his source for the events at Stony Stratford, which would account for the assumption that Richard intended from the moment of Edward's death to take the throne and that he might have "done away with" Edward V (no mention of Richard Duke of York as having possibly been "done away with").

I wonder, though, what Cato's assumptions were in sending him to England. I'm guessing that it wasn't so much anti-Richard as anti-England. It puts me in mind of Louis XI's machinations with regard to Warwick and Margaret of Anjou. Maybe Cato was trying to discover information that Louis could use against England. I don't unfortunately, have access to Armstrong's introduction at the moment (unless it's online--I'll check in a moment), but I do recall that he's hostile to Richard and shares the assumption that Richard was aiming at the throne (hence his translation of Mancini's neutral "occupatio" as "usurpation").

My impression on reading Mancini (which I admittedly haven't done for some time--I'm operating on memory here) is that his informants were, like Argentine, for the most part hostile to Richard, which is why I mentioned Morton and Rotherham as among the priests he might have talked to (before Morton's arrest; Rotherham was freed in mid-July but I don't know whether Mancini was still in England at that point). Also, of course, both of them were members of Edward's council and Mancini would have regarded them as valuable (if partisan) sources of information. Russell, I think, would have been more neutral. (I don't believe that he was the Croyland/Crowland chronicler though I know that argument has been made.)

Of course, the whole Hastings affair would have looked from Mancini's outsider's perspective like an invented plot to destroy enemies, but he may have had informants who shared that view (including Rotherham after he was freed?)--and he may also have been telling Cato what Cato (and Louis XI) wanted to hear--information that Louis could use against Richard as an excuse to back an invasion of England by Henry Tudor (who had a better claim to the throne of France as the grandson of Catherine of Valois than he did to the throne of England as the son of a female Beaufort and was, of course, an expensive burden to the French court).

Anyway, I'm just trying to account for Mancini's assumptions regarding Richard's motives. I see no indication that he talked to any of Richard's supporters, or, if he did, he may have dismissed their views as partisan justification of Richard's actions.

Carol, just looking for informed opinions at the moment

Katy wrote:
>
> Further thoughts on the same subject: the more I think about it, the less likely I find it that Mancini made no comments on E4's funeral or R3's coronation because he spoke no English and therefore didn't know what was going on. He wouldn't have to know what was going on -- he could have been stone deaf -- and still would have had plenty to talk about in simply describing what he saw. A funeral and, especially, a coronation involve ceremony and decorations and ritual. And they'd be the most interesting events that occurred during his sojourn in England.
>
> I think that if he didn't write about them, there was a reason for it, and it's naive to think that that reason is that he didn't speak English. Surely he could have found someone who shared a language with him, during the whole time things were going on, to ask wqhat was gong on.
>
> My conclusion-leap, therefore, is that since the memoir or report of his that is extant doesn't even mention the most conspicuous events that occurred during his visit, he did write about them elsewhere, and that report is lost.

Carol responds:
Alternatively, Cato wasn't interested in the details of funerals and coronations, rituals that no doubt resembled those he'd seen many times. I think he was interested in Richard's motivations and events related to his assumption of the crown.

For that reason, Mancini would have talked to Argentine and anyone else close to those events (though it seems from his perspective that he didn't talk with, say, John Howard or the Earl of Lincoln or Francis Lovell). I still think that his inability to speak English is a valid assumption since English was not the language of diplomacy and an Italian would have no motivation to learn it, but I don't base that assumption on the missing reports of the funeral and coronation.

Carol, who does think that Mancini was a spy

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> Carol earlier:
> > > His Occupatio is, of course, written in Latin, but don't know whether he could have conversed in that language (if so, his informants would probably have been priests, some of whom, like Morton and Rotherham, were also hostile to Richard).
> >
> > Marie:
> > Well, I'd dispute that most priests were hostile to Richard (if that is what you meant). On the other point, Mancini has left us several Latin texts, and since universities taught through Latin, and scholars disputed in that language rather than the vernacular, it can surely be assumed he was a fluent Latin speaker.
>
> Carol responds:
> Sorry to be unclear. I didn't mean to imply that all priests were hostile to Richard, only to indicate that he would be able to converse in three languages: Latin, French, and Italian. Even if he picked up some English, he would not have been fluent in it when he first arrived and would not have chosen it as his primary language, nor would he have sought information (in my opinion) from people who primarily spoke that language. Probably that wouldn't be much of a handicap. True, only Argentine would have spoken Italian, but he could have conversed in Latin with the priests and in French with the courtiers.

Marie again:

I seem to have been unclear as well. Argentine would not have been his only possible Italian-speaking contact by any means, and we have no evidence that Mancini spoke to Argentine whilst he was actually in England. Several highly educated churchmen of the era studied in Italy - Bishop Langton of St Davids, a great fan of Richard's, was another. Also there were Italian scholars in London, including Pietro Carmeliano, and Giovanno Gigli (possibly the same man as the John Giles who was Edward V's Latin teacher) and his cousin Silvestro.
Plus all the Italians in London, some of them like Gerard Caniziani, well established in England and rich and powerful.
But there is a difference between having people to talk to and being able to operate effectively as a spy - no eavesdropping possible for a non-English-speaker. Maybe I'm missing a trick, but I'm afraid I'm having problem squaring the idea that Mancini spoke no English at all with the idea that he was sent over on a spying mission. I admit that getting a Frenchman installed at that point in time would have been difficult, so a non-national based in France would be an excellent compromise, but why not have Mancini taught some English first so that he could overhear things not meant for his ears? An employee of Louis' archbishop would not have been immediately trusted after all.

If, as I suspect, Mancini was not commissioned to report on English affairs until after he was recalled to France, then his taking information from Argentine in France would make perfect sense. He has been asked to write up the whole story, but has no notes and his memory of events is hazy. At this juncture an Italian-speaking Englishman who was actually Edward V's doctor pops up in town. In that position, wouldn't you just rush round to Argentine's lodgings and introduce yourself?


>
> That he's operating in at least some cases on assumptions is indicated by the references to Richard's Gloucester estates and to Edward V as having been in Wales rather than Ludlow at his father's death.

Not very precise information for a professional spy, but very understandable from someone working from memory who hadn't realised at the time that he was going to be asked for all this later.

>
> I think you're right that Argentine is his source for the events at Stony Stratford,

It was a suggestion, no more, but I'm glad you like it. We have no direct evidence, but it seems reasonable to assume that Mancini got his detailed account of this from an eyewitness, in other words someone in the retinue of either Edward V, Gloucester or Buckingham, and given its pro-Edward stance one of his men seems more likely. If not Argentine, then perhaps John Giles. Argentine is of course the most likely candidate on the basis of what we actually know; but we know so little about Mancini's contacts.


>which would account for the assumption that Richard intended from the moment of Edward's death to take the throne and that he might have "done away with" Edward V (no mention of Richard Duke of York as having possibly been "done away with").
>
> I wonder, though, what Cato's assumptions were in sending him to England.

We don't actually know that Cato sent him; I'm not saying he didn't, but all we know is that when he went back to France it was because Cato had sent for him. He could have come over during leave, perhaps to meet some of the Italian scholars living in England.


>I'm guessing that it wasn't so much anti-Richard as anti-England. It puts me in mind of Louis XI's machinations with regard to Warwick and Margaret of Anjou. Maybe Cato was trying to discover information that Louis could use against England. I don't unfortunately, have access to Armstrong's introduction at the moment (unless it's online--I'll check in a moment), but I do recall that he's hostile to Richard and shares the assumption that Richard was aiming at the throne (hence his translation of Mancini's neutral "occupatio" as "usurpation").

Armstrong's translation is tendentious in many places and needs to be carefully watched up.


>
> My impression on reading Mancini (which I admittedly haven't done for some time--I'm operating on memory here) is that his informants were, like Argentine, for the most part hostile to Richard, which is why I mentioned Morton and Rotherham as among the priests he might have talked to (before Morton's arrest; Rotherham was freed in mid-July but I don't know whether Mancini was still in England at that point).

He tells us he left England shortly after the coronation, and that is indeed the last thing he writes about, so he probably had no chance to speak to Rotherham about Friday 13th - had he done so he might have got the date right.

>Also, of course, both of them were members of Edward's council and Mancini would have regarded them as valuable (if partisan) sources of information.

Assuming he was spying, of course.


>Russell, I think, would have been more neutral. (I don't believe that he was the Croyland/Crowland chronicler though I know that argument has been made.)
>
> Of course, the whole Hastings affair would have looked from Mancini's outsider's perspective like an invented plot to destroy enemies, but he may have had informants who shared that view (including Rotherham after he was freed?)--and he may also have been telling Cato what Cato (and Louis XI) wanted to hear--information that Louis could use against Richard as an excuse to back an invasion of England by Henry Tudor (who had a better claim to the throne of France as the grandson of Catherine of Valois than he did to the throne of England as the son of a female Beaufort and was, of course, an expensive burden to the French court).
>
> Anyway, I'm just trying to account for Mancini's assumptions regarding Richard's motives. I see no indication that he talked to any of Richard's supporters, or, if he did, he may have dismissed their views as partisan justification of Richard's actions.

Actually, the introductory part of his work is favourable to Richard, and Mancini had evidently spoken to people who disliked the Woodvilles and even praised Clarence's good looks, eloquence and popularity. What is puzzling is that these introductory sections are so uninfected by the jaundiced hindsight against Richard. It may have been a literary device to make Richard's duplicity seem all the more shocking, or perhaps Mancini based it on something he had written at that time. It is of course possible that he had been in England for several months before King Edward's death and had formed a settled view of things during that period which remained etched in his mind in late 1483 even though it had been overturned by the confusion of events and - perhaps - introduction to new friends.

I just think it's good to keep an open mind, or at least be aware of different possibilities, and good to get hold of a copy to study.

Best,
Marie

Marie wrote:
>
> I seem to have been unclear as well. Argentine would not have been his only possible Italian-speaking contact by any means, and we have no evidence that Mancini spoke to Argentine whilst he was actually in England. Several highly educated churchmen of the era studied in Italy - Bishop Langton of St Davids, a great fan of Richard's, was another. Also there were Italian scholars in London, including Pietro Carmeliano, and Giovanno Gigli (possibly the same man as the John Giles who was Edward V's Latin teacher) and his cousin Silvestro.
> Plus all the Italians in London, some of them like Gerard Caniziani, well established in England and rich and powerful.
> But there is a difference between having people to talk to and being able to operate effectively as a spy - no eavesdropping possible for a non-English-speaker. Maybe I'm missing a trick, but I'm afraid I'm having problem squaring the idea that Mancini spoke no English at all with the idea that he was sent over on a spying mission. I admit that getting a Frenchman installed at that point in time would have been difficult, so a non-national based in France would be an excellent compromise, but why not have Mancini taught some English first so that he could overhear things not meant for his ears? An employee of Louis' archbishop would not have been immediately trusted after all.
>
> If, as I suspect, Mancini was not commissioned to report on English affairs until after he was recalled to France, then his taking information from Argentine in France would make perfect sense. He has been asked to write up the whole story, but has no notes and his memory of events is hazy. At this juncture an Italian-speaking Englishman who was actually Edward V's doctor pops up in town. In that position, wouldn't you just rush round to Argentine's lodgings and introduce yourself?
>
Carol responds:
But if that were the case, Cato could just talk to Argentine and the other Woodville-affiliated refugees himself. If I recall correctly, Mancini's text ends before Buckingham's rebellion, right about the point when Richard had left on progress. At that point, Dorset, Sir Edward Woodville, and others that Richard had declared traitors would have arrived at the French court. Why not just get the "facts" from them? Besides, Mancini's account seems to indicate that he talked to people other than Argentine (Morton and Rotherham?) who had some knowledge of council meetings, which Argentine would not have attended. And to talk with those people, who were not at the French court (Morton was in Buckingham's custody) and Rotherham (despite his enmity remained at Richard's court after his release from the Tower), Mancini would have had to do so before he left England. And what motive would he have for doing so unless Cato had sent him (as an observer rather than a spy if you prefer).

Carol earlier:
> > That he's operating in at least some cases on assumptions is indicated by the references to Richard's Gloucester estates and to Edward V as having been in Wales rather than Ludlow at his father's death.

Marie:
> Not very precise information for a professional spy, but very understandable from someone working from memory who hadn't realised at the time that he was going to be asked for all this later.
>
Carol:
I didn't mean to imply that he was a *professional* spy. But I do think he wanted a trusted and intelligent observer to see what was going on in England. I'm interested in Cato's motive for wanting to know about events in England. As I said, I think it had to do with Woodville refugees trickling in and the (no doubt expensive and possibly annoying) presence of a potential pretender at the French court. Why not see if the time is ripe to send him to England?

Carol earlier:

> > I think you're right that Argentine is his source for the events at Stony Stratford,

Marie:
> It was a suggestion, no more, but I'm glad you like it. We have no direct evidence, but it seems reasonable to assume that Mancini got his detailed account of this from an eyewitness, in other words someone in the retinue of either Edward V, Gloucester or Buckingham, and given its pro-Edward stance one of his men seems more likely. If not Argentine, then perhaps John Giles. Argentine is of course the most likely candidate on the basis of what we actually know; but we know so little about Mancini's contacts.

Carol again:
It just occurred to me, though, that Argentine could only have recounted his version of events at Stony Stratford itself, but not the encounter between Richard, Buckingham, and Anthony Woodville at Northampton. Either he got his information from someone who wasn't there (a council member recounting events at second hand?) or from a witness (one of Buckingham's men)? The first seems much more likely to me.

Carol earlier:
> > I wonder, though, what Cato's assumptions were in sending him to England.
>
> We don't actually know that Cato sent him; I'm not saying he didn't, but all we know is that when he went back to France it was because Cato had sent for him. He could have come over during leave, perhaps to meet some of the Italian scholars living in England.

Carol:
Let me rephrase then. He's writing to Cato for Cato's information either immediately after the events while he's still in England (which is suggested by his wording ("whether he has been done away with . . . so far I have not at all discovered") or soon after he returns to France. What I want to know is why Cato cared what was going on in England. As I said earlier, "I'm guessing that [his attitude] wasn't so much anti-Richard as anti-England. It puts me in mind of Louis XI's machinations with regard to Warwick and Margaret of Anjou. Maybe Cato was trying to discover information that Louis could use against England."

Marie:
> Armstrong's translation is tendentious in many places and needs to be carefully watched up.

Carol:
I don't doubt that for a moment. I seem to recall his doubting that the men of York actually mourned Richard!
>
Marie:
>
> Actually, the introductory part of his work is favourable to Richard, and Mancini had evidently spoken to people who disliked the Woodvilles and even praised Clarence's good looks, eloquence and popularity. What is puzzling is that these introductory sections are so uninfected by the jaundiced hindsight against Richard. It may have been a literary device to make Richard's duplicity seem all the more shocking, or perhaps Mancini based it on something he had written at that time. It is of course possible that he had been in England for several months before King Edward's death and had formed a settled view of things during that period which remained etched in his mind in late 1483 even though it had been overturned by the confusion of events and - perhaps - introduction to new friends.
>
> I just think it's good to keep an open mind, or at least be aware of different possibilities, and good to get hold of a copy to study.

Carol:
Preferably some other translation?

Carol, wishing that she could read medieval Latin and didn't have to depend on Armstrong

Somebody wrote (was it Marie?) relating to Mancini: "His information from Argentine must have been obtained retrospectively in France, because Argentine's dismissal from Edward V's service, referred to by Mancini, postdated Mancini's own return." Can you please clarify? I don't seem to have spotted this indication of when Argentine left Edward V's service, which is very interesting.

Somebody else (Carol, I think) wrote: "I'm interested in Cato's motive for wanting to know about events in England. As I said, I think it had to do with Woodville refugees trickling in and the (no doubt expensive and possibly annoying) presence of a potential pretender at the French court. Why not see if the time is ripe to send him to England?"

Here I think a period of time has been telescoped. Someone also questioned the date of Mancini's report, so let me start by confirming that Mancini himself dated it 1 December 1483. In his opening remarks he mentions that he has frequently repeated to Archbishop Cato in words the story which Cato has now asked him to record in writing, in order for it to be presented to Cato's friend Frederick, Prince of Taranto. This story being, in Mancini's summary, "by what machinations Richard the Third, who is now reigning in England, attained the high degree of kingship". Mancini apologises for taking so long to finish, but "although on your account I did not shrink from pains, yet I had not sufficiently ascertained the names of those to be described, the intervals of time, and the secret designs of men in this whole affair".

Armstrong takes these introductory words to suggest that it sounds as though he had received some commission from his patron to gather information in England. Plus - "The mere fact that Cato could recall Mancini quickly from England does to some extent pre-suppose that he sent him there". Armstrong gives a fair amount of detail about both Mancini and Cato, and in relation to the latter, if I may summarize, he points out that Cato made it his business to be exceptionally well informed at a time when Louis XI was "avid for information": "the favour and pre-eminence which he accorded to his councillors largely depended on the quality and quantity of the information with which they could provide him".

OK, as to dates being telescoped - it was actually at the court of Duke Francis of Brittany that the Tudors had taken up residence, and they were joined there by Sir Edward Woodville and the remains of his 'expeditionary force' in May 1483. Whatever date Mancini actually travelled to England (Jeremy Potter thinks he probably arrived "early in 1483 as a member of a French mission to the English court"), I think he was certainly there before the stirrings began in Brittany that led to Francis supporting (by the end of August) Tudor's attempt to invade England in October that year. It was not until twelve months later, and long after Louis XI's death, that Tudor and his band of exiles ended up in France.

For my own part I would assume that Cato's (and Louis's) principal interest in late 1482/early 1483 centred around Edward IV's reaction to Louis's repudiation of the Treaty of Piquigny and his jilting of Elizabeth of York by bestowing the Dauphin's hand in marriage elsewhere. Regarding Potter's French mission, Armstrong actually lists a number of official parties that crossed to England for various purposes around this time, to which Mancini could have been attached: ". . . between royal and papal favour [Cato had a long-standing relationship with Sixtus IV] Cato would have had little difficulty in having Mancini included". Armstrong's conclusion is, "There is then some likelihood that Cato either sent Mancini to England to produce a report on the situation there, at a time when relations between the courts of England and France were becoming increasingly strained, or that he asked Mancini, who was going to England for some other business, to prepare a memorandum."
Regards, Annette

--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Somebody wrote (was it Marie?) relating to Mancini: "His information from Argentine must have been obtained retrospectively in France, because Argentine's dismissal from Edward V's service, referred to by Mancini, postdated Mancini's own return." Can you please clarify? I don't seem to have spotted this indication of when Argentine left Edward V's service, which is very interesting.
>
> Somebody else (Carol, I think) wrote: "I'm interested in Cato's motive for wanting to know about events in England. As I said, I think it had to do with Woodville refugees trickling in and the (no doubt expensive and possibly annoying) presence of a potential pretender at the French court. Why not see if the time is ripe to send him to England?"
>
> Here I think a period of time has been telescoped. Someone also questioned the date of Mancini's report, so let me start by confirming that Mancini himself dated it 1 December 1483. In his opening remarks he mentions that he has frequently repeated to Archbishop Cato in words the story which Cato has now asked him to record in writing, in order for it to be presented to Cato's friend Frederick, Prince of Taranto. This story being, in Mancini's summary, "by what machinations Richard the Third, who is now reigning in England, attained the high degree of kingship". Mancini apologises for taking so long to finish, but "although on your account I did not shrink from pains, yet I had not sufficiently ascertained the names of those to be described, the intervals of time, and the secret designs of men in this whole affair".

>
> Armstrong takes these introductory words to suggest that it sounds as though he had received some commission from his patron to gather information in England. P

Marie:
Funnily enough, the above passage says the exact opposite to me: ie that the commission to write it all up had been given to Mancini after he had returned to France and chatted to Cato about what he had witnessed, and that he found the commission a challenge because he needed to check the details before he could complete it (details he would have noted down at the time of the events had he been so commissioned back then). This would certainly explain his seeking out Argentine, and the fairly good spellings, on the whole, of the names of the protagonists. Mancini's own admission that he was hazy as the the chronology certainly explains the chronological misaligning of Hastings' execution.

>plus - "The mere fact that Cato could recall Mancini quickly from England does to some extent pre-suppose that he sent him there".

Marie:
I read that too, but 'm not sure I go along with it. He may equally have been taking a retainer which obliged him to make himself available when required.

> Armstrong gives a fair amount of detail about both Mancini and Cato, and in relation to the latter, if I may summarize, he points out that Cato made it his business to be exceptionally well informed at a time when Louis XI was "avid for information": "the favour and pre-eminence which he accorded to his councillors largely depended on the quality and quantity of the information with which they could provide him".

Marie:
Indeed. Kings always wanted as much information as they could get about their foreign rivals, and Louis was more paranoid than most.


>
> OK, as to dates being telescoped - it was actually at the court of Duke Francis of Brittany that the Tudors had taken up residence, and they were joined there by Sir Edward Woodville and the remains of his 'expeditionary force' in May 1483. Whatever date Mancini actually travelled to England (Jeremy Potter thinks he probably arrived "early in 1483 as a member of a French mission to the English court"), I think he was certainly there before the stirrings began in Brittany that led to Francis supporting (by the end of August) Tudor's attempt to invade England in October that year. It was not until twelve months later, and long after Louis XI's death, that Tudor and his band of exiles ended up in France.
>
> For my own part I would assume that Cato's (and Louis's) principal interest in late 1482/early 1483 centred around Edward IV's reaction to Louis's repudiation of the Treaty of Piquigny and his jilting of Elizabeth of York by bestowing the Dauphin's hand in marriage elsewhere. Regarding Potter's French mission, Armstrong actually lists a number of official parties that crossed to England for various purposes around this time, to which Mancini could have been attached: ". . . between royal and papal favour [Cato had a long-standing relationship with Sixtus IV] Cato would have had little difficulty in having Mancini included". Armstrong's conclusion is, "There is then some likelihood that Cato either sent Mancini to England to produce a report on the situation there, at a time when relations between the courts of England and France were becoming increasingly strained, or that he asked Mancini, who was going to England for some other business, to prepare a memorandum."
> Regards, Annette
>

Marie:
The problem is, Mancini's actual account does not deal with the attitude of Edward IV or Gloucester/ Richard III towards France. But he is, in two places, extremely critical of recent French piracy against the English, particularly by Lord Cordes - whether he was hinting that the French were likely to cause the very thing they feared, I don't know.
What Armstrong actually suggests is not spying as I understand it (ie the attempt to uncover the other guy's state secrets), but the normal sounding out that is part and parcel of the diplomatic process.
Just a word for Carol: yes, I regretted immediately having used the word "professional" with regard to spies - there were as yet no professional spies as such, just people whose situation and skills made them useful to commandeer for such purposes.
But anyway, what was special about Mancini, that he had to be tacked on to a diplomatic mission for this purpose? Weren't diplomats the very best people to be sounding out government ministers? The man who came back not sure of the order of events or the names of the protagonists can't have been a very good sounder-out if that is what he was supposed to have been doing.
Diplomatic missions were coming and going pretty frequently, and we perhaps shouldn't read too much into the existence of these at the sort of period when Mancini may have arrived. He may indeed have come with an embassy, and stayed on in England for all sorts of possible reasons. But having stayed on, Cato would have seen him as a useful source of information. Argentine the Englishman may not have been at all happy about cooperating in that way with foreign powers.
Just one other thought. I wonder if the existence of Tudor and Woodville exiles in Brittany, whom the French soon seduced over to their side of the border, was indeed, as Carol suggests (albeit with telescoping of events), part of the reason that Cato commissioned Mancini to write his account. I wonder this is because Mancini is so keen to tell us what he has been able to learn about the fate of the Princes. If the French were to back Tudor, then they would need to be fairly confident that Edward V and his brother really were dead as Buckingham's/ Tudor's rebels had alleged. Admittedly Mancini could not tell them for sure, but I still think it is likely that it was his account of what he had learnt from Argentine that encouraged the French to believe it was so.

Best, Marie

Marie commented: "The problem is, Mancini's actual account does not deal with the attitude of Edward IV or Gloucester/ Richard III towards France."

From Annette: When I used to work in television, a century ago, it was not unusual for a team to go out after one story and come back with a different one. Hence, even if Mancini's presence in England was to gauge feeling after the Treaty of Arras, it is scarcely surprising that it was a different story everyone wanted to hear when he returned. I would further suggest that any sensitive/political matters were recounted to Cato face to face in July, not saved up for a written report in December, especially not one that Cato intended to circulate to his chums. I don't claim to be an expert on Dominic Mancini, but if you read Armstrong's account, it seems that he had already achieved some renown as a writer, and the moment he returned to France from England he seems to have hit the equivalent of the literary salon circuit and resumed writing with some enthusiasm, mostly Latin verse. Armstrong says that he cannot supply a complete bibliography in his introduction to De Occupatione, but refers readers to the British Library and other catalogues, saying, "Mancini was a most successful author appealing not only to the tastes of his own but also to those of the succeeding generation".

So here is an interesting scenario: a literary monk is patronized by a leading courtier of Louis XI; his principal talent is writing elegant Latin poetry; and he ends up in England, a country not apparently brimming with connexions useful to his literary career, where he spends some months seemingly without making any kind of literary mark or producing any written work (as compared with, for example, Pietro Carmeliano, or with Mancini's output before and after his visit). He hasn't come for the good of his or anyone else's soul, apparently, as he doesn't seem to have made his way to any Benedictine monasteries, but rather has hung around the capital getting information about Edward IV's rule and appetites, past and present, and what relations within court circles and the royal family were like, who went whoring with whom, what the principal factions and reactions were upon the king's death, and who met in each other's houses. True he gives no attribution to any source other than Dr Argentine, but this is not to say that Argentine was his only or even his principal source, and indeed his lengthy and spirited description of how the royal fleet was manned and by what means it was brought back to port quite clearly derives from contacts he made among Genoese merchants while he was in London, not from people he hastily looked up when he found he was suddenly required to write his story. The same applies to snippets like his account of Richard's arrival in London with wagon-loads of arms with Woodville markings, which, according to Mancini in an aside, "everyone knew" were stores laid up for the Scottish wars. This is clearly information that he could only have got from a local informant, not after he returned to France - and why is a monkish man of letters mixing with people who comment knowingly (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) on the disposition of war stores?

So the way I see it, our monk is not a detached traveller who happens to witness exciting times and is then persuaded to write an account of them - he is almost certainly in England with a job to do which involves not penning exquisite verses but talking to people in the capital and returning with information. I have tried not to be in the least speculative here, but to stick to what is apparent. However, I will end with one speculative point. If Mancini had been in England on business unrelated to his association with Cato - the most obvious being to further either his literary or his clerical interests - I suspect that the opening of his narrative would have included a reference to those interests. As, for example, ". . . although on your account I did not shrink from pains, nevertheless I had much to occupy me in the course of XYZ, which did not allow me sufficiently to ascertain the names, the intervals of time, and the secret designs ..." etc. On the contrary, there is not the smallest clue in Mancini's narrative as to why he went to such a destination as England in the first place, and hence we are left trying to make sense of it.

Just my view, with basically the same information (or lack of it) that everyone else has.
Regards, Annette


----- Original Message -----
From: mariewalsh2003
To:
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III





--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Somebody wrote (was it Marie?) relating to Mancini: "His information from Argentine must have been obtained retrospectively in France, because Argentine's dismissal from Edward V's service, referred to by Mancini, postdated Mancini's own return." Can you please clarify? I don't seem to have spotted this indication of when Argentine left Edward V's service, which is very interesting.
>
> Somebody else (Carol, I think) wrote: "I'm interested in Cato's motive for wanting to know about events in England. As I said, I think it had to do with Woodville refugees trickling in and the (no doubt expensive and possibly annoying) presence of a potential pretender at the French court. Why not see if the time is ripe to send him to England?"
>
> Here I think a period of time has been telescoped. Someone also questioned the date of Mancini's report, so let me start by confirming that Mancini himself dated it 1 December 1483. In his opening remarks he mentions that he has frequently repeated to Archbishop Cato in words the story which Cato has now asked him to record in writing, in order for it to be presented to Cato's friend Frederick, Prince of Taranto. This story being, in Mancini's summary, "by what machinations Richard the Third, who is now reigning in England, attained the high degree of kingship". Mancini apologises for taking so long to finish, but "although on your account I did not shrink from pains, yet I had not sufficiently ascertained the names of those to be described, the intervals of time, and the secret designs of men in this whole affair".

>
> Armstrong takes these introductory words to suggest that it sounds as though he had received some commission from his patron to gather information in England. P

Marie:
Funnily enough, the above passage says the exact opposite to me: ie that the commission to write it all up had been given to Mancini after he had returned to France and chatted to Cato about what he had witnessed, and that he found the commission a challenge because he needed to check the details before he could complete it (details he would have noted down at the time of the events had he been so commissioned back then). This would certainly explain his seeking out Argentine, and the fairly good spellings, on the whole, of the names of the protagonists. Mancini's own admission that he was hazy as the the chronology certainly explains the chronological misaligning of Hastings' execution.

>plus - "The mere fact that Cato could recall Mancini quickly from England does to some extent pre-suppose that he sent him there".

Marie:
I read that too, but 'm not sure I go along with it. He may equally have been taking a retainer which obliged him to make himself available when required.

> Armstrong gives a fair amount of detail about both Mancini and Cato, and in relation to the latter, if I may summarize, he points out that Cato made it his business to be exceptionally well informed at a time when Louis XI was "avid for information": "the favour and pre-eminence which he accorded to his councillors largely depended on the quality and quantity of the information with which they could provide him".

Marie:
Indeed. Kings always wanted as much information as they could get about their foreign rivals, and Louis was more paranoid than most.

>
> OK, as to dates being telescoped - it was actually at the court of Duke Francis of Brittany that the Tudors had taken up residence, and they were joined there by Sir Edward Woodville and the remains of his 'expeditionary force' in May 1483. Whatever date Mancini actually travelled to England (Jeremy Potter thinks he probably arrived "early in 1483 as a member of a French mission to the English court"), I think he was certainly there before the stirrings began in Brittany that led to Francis supporting (by the end of August) Tudor's attempt to invade England in October that year. It was not until twelve months later, and long after Louis XI's death, that Tudor and his band of exiles ended up in France.
>
> For my own part I would assume that Cato's (and Louis's) principal interest in late 1482/early 1483 centred around Edward IV's reaction to Louis's repudiation of the Treaty of Piquigny and his jilting of Elizabeth of York by bestowing the Dauphin's hand in marriage elsewhere. Regarding Potter's French mission, Armstrong actually lists a number of official parties that crossed to England for various purposes around this time, to which Mancini could have been attached: ". . . between royal and papal favour [Cato had a long-standing relationship with Sixtus IV] Cato would have had little difficulty in having Mancini included". Armstrong's conclusion is, "There is then some likelihood that Cato either sent Mancini to England to produce a report on the situation there, at a time when relations between the courts of England and France were becoming increasingly strained, or that he asked Mancini, who was going to England for some other business, to prepare a mem orandum."
> Regards, Annette
>

Marie:
The problem is, Mancini's actual account does not deal with the attitude of Edward IV or Gloucester/ Richard III towards France. But he is, in two places, extremely critical of recent French piracy against the English, particularly by Lord Cordes - whether he was hinting that the French were likely to cause the very thing they feared, I don't know.
What Armstrong actually suggests is not spying as I understand it (ie the attempt to uncover the other guy's state secrets), but the normal sounding out that is part and parcel of the diplomatic process.
Just a word for Carol: yes, I regretted immediately having used the word "professional" with regard to spies - there were as yet no professional spies as such, just people whose situation and skills made them useful to commandeer for such purposes.
But anyway, what was special about Mancini, that he had to be tacked on to a diplomatic mission for this purpose? Weren't diplomats the very best people to be sounding out government ministers? The man who came back not sure of the order of events or the names of the protagonists can't have been a very good sounder-out if that is what he was supposed to have been doing.
Diplomatic missions were coming and going pretty frequently, and we perhaps shouldn't read too much into the existence of these at the sort of period when Mancini may have arrived. He may indeed have come with an embassy, and stayed on in England for all sorts of possible reasons. But having stayed on, Cato would have seen him as a useful source of information. Argentine the Englishman may not have been at all happy about cooperating in that way with foreign powers.
Just one other thought. I wonder if the existence of Tudor and Woodville exiles in Brittany, whom the French soon seduced over to their side of the border, was indeed, as Carol suggests (albeit with telescoping of events), part of the reason that Cato commissioned Mancini to write his account. I wonder this is because Mancini is so keen to tell us what he has been able to learn about the fate of the Princes. If the French were to back Tudor, then they would need to be fairly confident that Edward V and his brother really were dead as Buckingham's/ Tudor's rebels had alleged. Admittedly Mancini could not tell them for sure, but I still think it is likely that it was his account of what he had learnt from Argentine that encouraged the French to believe it was so.

Best, Marie

--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Marie commented: "The problem is, Mancini's actual account does not deal with the attitude of Edward IV or Gloucester/ Richard III towards France."
>
> From Annette: When I used to work in television, a century ago, it was not unusual for a team to go out after one story and come back with a different one. Hence, even if Mancini's presence in England was to gauge feeling after the Treaty of Arras, it is scarcely surprising that it was a different story everyone wanted to hear when he returned. I would further suggest that any sensitive/political matters were recounted to Cato face to face in July, not saved up for a written report in December, especially not one that Cato intended to circulate to his chums.


Marie:
I don't think it's in dispute that Mancini spoke to Cato about events before he wrote his account. The difference is over whether he had been asked to write an account before he went over or after he got back. If before, why did he not at least write anodyne notes whilst in England? This is the sticking point for me - it simply makes no sense.

I don't claim to be an expert on Dominic Mancini, but if you read Armstrong's account, it seems that he had already achieved some renown as a writer,

Marie:
He had had his very first work published in 1482, at the age of "old". It is apparently the very first evidence we have that he was actually alive!


and the moment he returned to France from England he seems to have hit the equivalent of the literary salon circuit and resumed writing with some enthusiasm, mostly Latin verse. Armstrong says that he cannot supply a complete bibliography in his introduction to De Occupatione, but refers readers to the British Library and other catalogues, saying, "Mancini was a most successful author appealing not only to the tastes of his own but also to those of the succeeding generation".

Marie:
Could it have been the De Occupatione that brought him to everyone's attention rather than his 1482 literary publication?


>
> So here is an interesting scenario: a literary monk is patronized by a leading courtier of Louis XI; his principal talent is writing elegant Latin poetry; and he ends up in England, a country not apparently brimming with connexions useful to his literary career, where he spends some months seemingly without making any kind of literary mark or producing any written work (as compared with, for example, Pietro Carmeliano, or with Mancini's output before and after his visit).

Marie:
Much like virtually all the rest of his life, in fact.

He hasn't come for the good of his or anyone else's soul, apparently, as he doesn't seem to have made his way to any Benedictine monasteries, but rather has hung around the capital getting information about Edward IV's rule and appetites, past and present, and what relations within court circles and the royal family were like, who went whoring with whom, what the principal factions and reactions were upon the king's death, and who met in each other's houses.

Marie:
In other words, he hung around London. This sort of gossip would have been all over the place, and it's not necessary to imagine Mancini ferreting it out.

True he gives no attribution to any source other than Dr Argentine, but this is not to say that Argentine was his only or even his principal source, and indeed his lengthy and spirited description of how the royal fleet was manned and by what means it was brought back to port quite clearly derives from contacts he made among Genoese merchants while he was in London, not from people he hastily looked up when he found he was suddenly required to write his story.

Marie:
So you like my idea that he may have been in touch with Italian merchants?
I don't think it's been suggested on the forum at all that he had no other contacts than Argentine - the differences have been about whether we should try to go beyond identifying the classes of people he may have spoken to and attempt to come up with further names.


The same applies to snippets like his account of Richard's arrival in London with wagon-loads of arms with Woodville markings, which, according to Mancini in an aside, "everyone knew" were stores laid up for the Scottish wars. This is clearly information that he could only have got from a local informant, not after he returned to France - and why is a monkish man of letters mixing with people who comment knowingly (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) on the disposition of war stores?

Marie:
I've not suggested he learned everything after returning to France - ie that he had gone about London for all those months with his cowl pulled down over his eyes and communion bread in his ears. My point is that if he had been on a fact-finding mission he would have noted names and dates.
Got to go to watch Dr Who now.

>
> So the way I see it, our monk is not a detached traveller who happens to witness exciting times and is then persuaded to write an account of them - he is almost certainly in England with a job to do which involves not penning exquisite verses but talking to people in the capital and returning with information. I have tried not to be in the least speculative here, but to stick to what is apparent. However, I will end with one speculative point. If Mancini had been in England on business unrelated to his association with Cato - the most obvious being to further either his literary or his clerical interests - I suspect that the opening of his narrative would have included a reference to those interests. As, for example, ". . . although on your account I did not shrink from pains, nevertheless I had much to occupy me in the course of XYZ, which did not allow me sufficiently to ascertain the names, the intervals of time, and the secret designs ..." etc. On the contrary, there is not the smallest clue in Mancini's narrative as to why he went to such a destination as England in the first place, and hence we are left trying to make sense of it.
>
> Just my view, with basically the same information (or lack of it) that everyone else has.
> Regards, Annette
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: mariewalsh2003
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 2:48 PM
> Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@> wrote:
> >
> > Somebody wrote (was it Marie?) relating to Mancini: "His information from Argentine must have been obtained retrospectively in France, because Argentine's dismissal from Edward V's service, referred to by Mancini, postdated Mancini's own return." Can you please clarify? I don't seem to have spotted this indication of when Argentine left Edward V's service, which is very interesting.
> >
> > Somebody else (Carol, I think) wrote: "I'm interested in Cato's motive for wanting to know about events in England. As I said, I think it had to do with Woodville refugees trickling in and the (no doubt expensive and possibly annoying) presence of a potential pretender at the French court. Why not see if the time is ripe to send him to England?"
> >
> > Here I think a period of time has been telescoped. Someone also questioned the date of Mancini's report, so let me start by confirming that Mancini himself dated it 1 December 1483. In his opening remarks he mentions that he has frequently repeated to Archbishop Cato in words the story which Cato has now asked him to record in writing, in order for it to be presented to Cato's friend Frederick, Prince of Taranto. This story being, in Mancini's summary, "by what machinations Richard the Third, who is now reigning in England, attained the high degree of kingship". Mancini apologises for taking so long to finish, but "although on your account I did not shrink from pains, yet I had not sufficiently ascertained the names of those to be described, the intervals of time, and the secret designs of men in this whole affair".
>
> >
> > Armstrong takes these introductory words to suggest that it sounds as though he had received some commission from his patron to gather information in England. P
>
> Marie:
> Funnily enough, the above passage says the exact opposite to me: ie that the commission to write it all up had been given to Mancini after he had returned to France and chatted to Cato about what he had witnessed, and that he found the commission a challenge because he needed to check the details before he could complete it (details he would have noted down at the time of the events had he been so commissioned back then). This would certainly explain his seeking out Argentine, and the fairly good spellings, on the whole, of the names of the protagonists. Mancini's own admission that he was hazy as the the chronology certainly explains the chronological misaligning of Hastings' execution.
>
> >plus - "The mere fact that Cato could recall Mancini quickly from England does to some extent pre-suppose that he sent him there".
>
> Marie:
> I read that too, but 'm not sure I go along with it. He may equally have been taking a retainer which obliged him to make himself available when required.
>
> > Armstrong gives a fair amount of detail about both Mancini and Cato, and in relation to the latter, if I may summarize, he points out that Cato made it his business to be exceptionally well informed at a time when Louis XI was "avid for information": "the favour and pre-eminence which he accorded to his councillors largely depended on the quality and quantity of the information with which they could provide him".
>
> Marie:
> Indeed. Kings always wanted as much information as they could get about their foreign rivals, and Louis was more paranoid than most.
>
> >
> > OK, as to dates being telescoped - it was actually at the court of Duke Francis of Brittany that the Tudors had taken up residence, and they were joined there by Sir Edward Woodville and the remains of his 'expeditionary force' in May 1483. Whatever date Mancini actually travelled to England (Jeremy Potter thinks he probably arrived "early in 1483 as a member of a French mission to the English court"), I think he was certainly there before the stirrings began in Brittany that led to Francis supporting (by the end of August) Tudor's attempt to invade England in October that year. It was not until twelve months later, and long after Louis XI's death, that Tudor and his band of exiles ended up in France.
> >
> > For my own part I would assume that Cato's (and Louis's) principal interest in late 1482/early 1483 centred around Edward IV's reaction to Louis's repudiation of the Treaty of Piquigny and his jilting of Elizabeth of York by bestowing the Dauphin's hand in marriage elsewhere. Regarding Potter's French mission, Armstrong actually lists a number of official parties that crossed to England for various purposes around this time, to which Mancini could have been attached: ". . . between royal and papal favour [Cato had a long-standing relationship with Sixtus IV] Cato would have had little difficulty in having Mancini included". Armstrong's conclusion is, "There is then some likelihood that Cato either sent Mancini to England to produce a report on the situation there, at a time when relations between the courts of England and France were becoming increasingly strained, or that he asked Mancini, who was going to England for some other business, to prepare a mem orandum."
> > Regards, Annette
> >
>
> Marie:
> The problem is, Mancini's actual account does not deal with the attitude of Edward IV or Gloucester/ Richard III towards France. But he is, in two places, extremely critical of recent French piracy against the English, particularly by Lord Cordes - whether he was hinting that the French were likely to cause the very thing they feared, I don't know.
> What Armstrong actually suggests is not spying as I understand it (ie the attempt to uncover the other guy's state secrets), but the normal sounding out that is part and parcel of the diplomatic process.
> Just a word for Carol: yes, I regretted immediately having used the word "professional" with regard to spies - there were as yet no professional spies as such, just people whose situation and skills made them useful to commandeer for such purposes.
> But anyway, what was special about Mancini, that he had to be tacked on to a diplomatic mission for this purpose? Weren't diplomats the very best people to be sounding out government ministers? The man who came back not sure of the order of events or the names of the protagonists can't have been a very good sounder-out if that is what he was supposed to have been doing.
> Diplomatic missions were coming and going pretty frequently, and we perhaps shouldn't read too much into the existence of these at the sort of period when Mancini may have arrived. He may indeed have come with an embassy, and stayed on in England for all sorts of possible reasons. But having stayed on, Cato would have seen him as a useful source of information. Argentine the Englishman may not have been at all happy about cooperating in that way with foreign powers.
> Just one other thought. I wonder if the existence of Tudor and Woodville exiles in Brittany, whom the French soon seduced over to their side of the border, was indeed, as Carol suggests (albeit with telescoping of events), part of the reason that Cato commissioned Mancini to write his account. I wonder this is because Mancini is so keen to tell us what he has been able to learn about the fate of the Princes. If the French were to back Tudor, then they would need to be fairly confident that Edward V and his brother really were dead as Buckingham's/ Tudor's rebels had alleged. Admittedly Mancini could not tell them for sure, but I still think it is likely that it was his account of what he had learnt from Argentine that encouraged the French to believe it was so.
>
> Best, Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:

> Marie:

> Whilst it is true that Mancini could have communicated with Argentine in Italian, according to the ODNB, Argentine was an Englishman, born at Bottisham in Cambridgeshire. After doing an MA at Cambridge and starting a career in royal service, in 1473 he had gone off to Italy for three years to further his studies.


Katy: That reminds me of one, possibly two, misconceptions I've been harboring regarding Dr Argentine.

Firstly, I viewed his name with suspicion. Argentine means "silver" of course, so I was sure it was not his real, English name and I thought that either he was a foreigner, probably Italian, or that he had assumed the Argentine name as either a prententious Italianization or Latinizing of his actual surname, or that it was in relation to an interest in alchemy.

Fortunately, Marie's comment above set me straight on that. It was his real name...his family brought it over from before the Conquest.

Secondly, and I am still ignorant on this subject -- was he a medical doctor, or was his doctorate in divinity or law, as Morton's was?
Argentine could have been both, or even all three, I suppose. But the reliance that is placed upon his opinion regarding Edward V's health suggests that it is assumed that he was a medical doctor. If he was not, I think his opinion carries a lot less weight.

Katy

(My computer's email program is frozen, and probably will be till my son the computer expert comes up from California for a visit, so please excuse my tangential postings...it's the only way I can communicate at this time.)

--- In , "Annette Carson" <ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Marie commented: "The problem is, Mancini's actual account does not deal with the attitude of Edward IV or Gloucester/ Richard III towards France."
>
> From Annette: When I used to work in television, a century ago, it was not unusual for a team to go out after one story and come back with a different one. Hence, even if Mancini's presence in England was to gauge feeling after the Treaty of Arras, it is scarcely surprising that it was a different story everyone wanted to hear when he returned. I would further suggest that any sensitive/political matters were recounted to Cato face to face in July, not saved up for a written report in December, especially not one that Cato intended to circulate to his chums. I don't claim to be an expert on Dominic Mancini, but if you read Armstrong's account, it seems that he had already achieved some renown as a writer, and the moment he returned to France from England he seems to have hit the equivalent of the literary salon circuit and resumed writing with some enthusiasm, mostly Latin verse. Armstrong says that he cannot supply a complete bibliography in his introduction to De Occupatione, but refers readers to the British Library and other catalogues, saying, "Mancini was a most successful author appealing not only to the tastes of his own but also to those of the succeeding generation".
>
> So here is an interesting scenario: a literary monk is patronized by a leading courtier of Louis XI; his principal talent is writing elegant Latin poetry;

and he ends up in England, a country not apparently brimming with connexions useful to his literary career,

Marie:
Really? Then why had England recently attracted (and offered good careers to)such people as Pietro Carmeliano, Stefano Surigone and the Giglis, and why was it to attract Polydore Vergil a couple of decades later?


where he spends some months seemingly without making any kind of literary mark or producing any written work (as compared with, for example, Pietro Carmeliano, or with Mancini's output before and after his visit).

Marie:
He has precisely one known item of output before his visit, "a Latin verse recommendation to a commentary on the 'Sentences' of Peter the Lombrard by the Augustinian hermit Gregorio da Rimini (d.1538)." (ODNB)

He must have been asked to write this recommendation of Rimini's work - a literary career was all about patronage, was it not? Not ostensibly a great commission, but a start - Mancini may not have expected Rimini's work to be such a hit in Paris literary circles as it came to be. Perhaps he got impatient and visited in England in the hope of finding more eager patrons, but his hopes were dashed by the political upheavals.


He hasn't come for the good of his or anyone else's soul, apparently, as he doesn't seem to have made his way to any Benedictine monasteries,

Marie:
Livia, who wrote the ODNB article, believes he was probably an Augustinian friar like Rimini. He could well have stayed at, or visited, the London Austin Friars of course.

but rather has hung around the capital getting information about Edward IV's rule and appetites, past and present, and what relations within court circles and the royal family were like, who went whoring with whom, what the principal factions and reactions were upon the king's death, and who met in each other's houses.

Marie:
This is the information he gave Cato - information of political relevance. It would be unwise to assume from what Mancini writes about that it is all he did or was interested in whilst he was in London. He was, however, living through interesting times and might be expected to be interested.

True he gives no attribution to any source other than Dr Argentine, but this is not to say that Argentine was his only or even his principal source, and indeed his lengthy and spirited description of how the royal fleet was manned and by what means it was brought back to port quite clearly derives from contacts he made among Genoese merchants while he was in London, not from people he hastily looked up when he found he was suddenly required to write his story. The same applies to snippets like his account of Richard's arrival in London with wagon-loads of arms with Woodville markings, which, according to Mancini in an aside, "everyone knew" were stores laid up for the Scottish wars. This is clearly information that he could only have got from a local informant, not after he returned to France - and why is a monkish man of letters mixing with people who comment knowingly (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) on the disposition of war stores?
>
> So the way I see it, our monk is not a detached traveller who happens to witness exciting times and is then persuaded to write an account of them - he is almost certainly in England with a job to do which involves not penning exquisite verses but talking to people in the capital and returning with information.

Marie:
How do we know he was not penning verses?


I have tried not to be in the least speculative here, but to stick to what is apparent.


Marie:
I would nonetheless say that there are large assumptins in the above: such as that at that time he left France Mancini already had a thriving literary career there, and that he did nothing whilst in England except collect the political gossip he relayed to Cato at the latter's request.

However, I will end with one speculative point. If Mancini had been in England on business unrelated to his association with Cato - the most obvious being to further either his literary or his clerical interests - I suspect that the opening of his narrative would have included a reference to those interests. As, for example, ". . . although on your account I did not shrink from pains, nevertheless I had much to occupy me in the course of XYZ, which did not allow me sufficiently to ascertain the names, the intervals of time, and the secret designs ..." etc. On the contrary, there is not the smallest clue in Mancini's narrative as to why he went to such a destination as England in the first place, and hence we are left trying to make sense of it.

Marie:
If he had been in England on other business Cato would already have understood that, so that Mancini would not have had to explain the reaason for his failure to have all these details ready to hand on his return, and Cato would have been patient with him about these extra enquiries he would have to make in order to complete his text.
If, on the other hand, Mancini had been in England on a commission to collect such political information, then an admission that he had not done the job properly would not have been a very clever excuse to use for his delay in completing the writing up. 'Sorry the draft's a bit late, Guv, but you see I didn't bother noting anything down some minor details - such as, hmm, the names of the protagonists and the order of events - whilst I was in England, so I had to try and find a lot of this stuff out after I got back.' In that situation, wouldn't Mancini have been better off pleading writer's cramp?

Is there a potential new Brian Wainwrigt novel here (are you there, Brain?) - "Dominic Mancini: The World's Worst Spy."

Marie
In a silly mood but making serious points underneath it all.

PS. I notice that Livia's article steers clear of the question. Certainly she gives no indication that she believes Mancini was over on a political mission:
"It is not known why or for how long Mancini was in England, only that he left it shortly before Richard's coronation on 6 July 1483. He finished his account on 1 December 1483, claiming it was put on paper at the request of Angelo Cato, who had heard the story several times, found it interesting, and wished to present it to his patron, Federico, duke of Otranto."

PPS. Armstrong, of course, was motivated in his views by a felt need to present Mancini's work in as damning a light to Richard as possible. Hence his rather skewed translation, and hence - I would suggest - his argument in favour of Mancini having been over as a professional observer - it would make him a more reliable witness. Mancini himself, however, where he writes about his commission, seems to say that it was given him after he spoke to Cato on his return.

Thank you everyone who participated in this fabulously interesting thread
about Mancini. I have been enlightened and entertained at the same time! I
am reminded again how erudite Ricardians are and how much thought and
research has gone into the fight for Richard's good name. Thank you again!



L.M.L.,

Janet

I think the great thing about a forum like this is that we can all air our different theories and engage in amicable and respectful debate, in which all input is welcomed and valued. There is so much we can learn by listening to each other. I think my favourite comment over the past week or so has been, "Hey, Poly, it's really funny this time"!
Regards, Annette

----- Original Message -----
From: Janet Trimbath
To:
Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 3:37 PM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III



Thank you everyone who participated in this fabulously interesting thread
about Mancini. I have been enlightened and entertained at the same time! I
am reminded again how erudite Ricardians are and how much thought and
research has gone into the fight for Richard's good name. Thank you again!

L.M.L.,

Janet

Katy wrote:
>
> (My computer's email program is frozen, and probably will be till my son the computer expert comes up from California for a visit, so please excuse my tangential postings...it's the only way I can communicate at this time.)
>
Carol notes:

I'm sure you already know this, but just in case:

You don't need to use your e-mail program to post to the forum. Just go to the website, http://groups.yahoo.com/group//?yguid=69059971. Click Messages to read the Messages and Reply to respond to a particular message or click Post to start a new thread.

Carol, who always posts from the website, never from e-mail

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>
> Katy wrote:
> >
> > (My computer's email program is frozen, and probably will be till my son the computer expert comes up from California for a visit, so please excuse my tangential postings...it's the only way I can communicate at this time.)
> >
> Carol notes:
>
> I'm sure you already know this, but just in case:
>
> You don't need to use your e-mail program to post to the forum. Just go to the website, http://groups.yahoo.com/group//?yguid=69059971. Click Messages to read the Messages and Reply to respond to a particular message or click Post to start a new thread.
>
> Carol, who always posts from the website, never from e-mail


Oh, I know, Carol...I too read the postings in the group website. That's how I could see what others were writing, and reply, even though my email system stubbornly rejects me. It's all that keeps me from being cut off from the cyber world...sob, whimper.

Katy
>

I'd belatedly like to add my thanks too - I've enjoyed the Mancini debate tremendously, and found it very useful in forcing me to examine the evidence properly. Thanks also to Doug for his excellent final suggestion. It certainly injected some clarity, and is an explanation that works for me.

Just a last bit of discussion re Carol's very pertinent point that Mancini's informant about Stony Stratford must have been a member of Buckingham's or Gloucester's party, rather than the King's, if he had also described the events at Northampton.
In fact, however, Mancini's account of the Northampton episode is hazy and doesn't match the accepted explanation. As usual, he has no idea where the whole thing occurred, viz:-
Edward V reaches a village (unnamed) close to the twelfth milestone from London [sic]. He initially halts there to await Gloucester, but as Gloucester approaches he decides to send most of his attendants on to the villages nearer London (also unnamed) to make more room for Gloucester's retinue. Edward himself, though, stays put at the appointed village, and even sends out Rivers to meet Gloucester along the road.
Rivers finds Gloucester in a strongly fortified town of his own ('in oppido ipsius ducis quam munitissimo') - unnamed of course - "and after passing a great part of the night in conviviality, they both retired to bed. At dawn the following day, when everything was prepared for the journey, Richard, after secretly giving curt orders to this effect, seized Rivers and his companions and imprisoned them in that place. Then, with a large body of soldiers, and in company with the duke of Buckingham, he hastened at full gallop towards the young king."
We then get a page and a half of the scene between Gloucester and Edward V.
My own feeling is that Mancini is so muddled about the events leading up to the encounter between the young king and his uncle that his informant cannot have been at Northampton. He knows that Buckingham was with Gloucester when he reached the king, but doesn't seem to have the faintest idea how this came to be.
This version also makes innocent sense of Edward V not having been in the town where Richard met Rivers. As has been argued before (certainly by Anne Sutton), the excuse that Edward V had moved on to Stony Stratford to make room is implausible. Northampton was a large town with many religious houses, whereas Stony Stratford was only a small market town; and, even if some of the retinue did have to move out to make room, there would have been no need for Edward V to go himself.
So Mancini's version makes the agreed rendezvous a village rather than a large town, and has Edward himself dutifully remain there. The big town where Rivers was taken prisoner is somewhere else entirely, and belongs to Gloucester. Is this Mancini, unclear as to the story, trying to make the best sense of it he could (on the assumption that the villain of the piece was Gloucester)? or is this what he was actually told? Anyhow, surely he must have heard it from one of the King's party, and certainly not from anyone who had come with Gloucester or Buckingham. There is a lot of reported speech in the account of Gloucester's meeting with Edward V, and Mancini isn't given to invention on that scale.

Marie






--- In , "Janet Trimbath" <forevere@...> wrote:
>
> Thank you everyone who participated in this fabulously interesting thread
> about Mancini. I have been enlightened and entertained at the same time! I
> am reminded again how erudite Ricardians are and how much thought and
> research has gone into the fight for Richard's good name. Thank you again!
>
>
>
> L.M.L.,
>
> Janet
>
>
>
>
>

I wish to add my thanks too. Even though I've been mostly lurking, I
have found this thread positively riveting.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , mariewalsh2003
<no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
> I'd belatedly like to add my thanks too - I've enjoyed the Mancini
debate tremendously, and found it very useful in forcing me to examine
the evidence properly. Thanks also to Doug for his excellent final
suggestion. It certainly injected some clarity, and is an explanation
that works for me.
>
> Just a last bit of discussion re Carol's very pertinent point that
Mancini's informant about Stony Stratford must have been a member of
Buckingham's or Gloucester's party, rather than the King's, if he had
also described the events at Northampton.
> In fact, however, Mancini's account of the Northampton episode is
hazy and doesn't match the accepted explanation. As usual, he has no
idea where the whole thing occurred, viz:-
> Edward V reaches a village (unnamed) close to the twelfth milestone
from London [sic]. He initially halts there to await Gloucester, but as
Gloucester approaches he decides to send most of his attendants on to
the villages nearer London (also unnamed) to make more room for
Gloucester's retinue. Edward himself, though, stays put at the appointed
village, and even sends out Rivers to meet Gloucester along the road.
> Rivers finds Gloucester in a strongly fortified town of his own ('in
oppido ipsius ducis quam munitissimo') - unnamed of course - "and after
passing a great part of the night in conviviality, they both retired to
bed. At dawn the following day, when everything was prepared for the
journey, Richard, after secretly giving curt orders to this effect,
seized Rivers and his companions and imprisoned them in that place.
Then, with a large body of soldiers, and in company with the duke of
Buckingham, he hastened at full gallop towards the young king."
> We then get a page and a half of the scene between Gloucester and
Edward V.
> My own feeling is that Mancini is so muddled about the events leading
up to the encounter between the young king and his uncle that his
informant cannot have been at Northampton. He knows that Buckingham was
with Gloucester when he reached the king, but doesn't seem to have the
faintest idea how this came to be.
> This version also makes innocent sense of Edward V not having been in
the town where Richard met Rivers. As has been argued before (certainly
by Anne Sutton), the excuse that Edward V had moved on to Stony
Stratford to make room is implausible. Northampton was a large town with
many religious houses, whereas Stony Stratford was only a small market
town; and, even if some of the retinue did have to move out to make
room, there would have been no need for Edward V to go himself.
> So Mancini's version makes the agreed rendezvous a village rather than
a large town, and has Edward himself dutifully remain there. The big
town where Rivers was taken prisoner is somewhere else entirely, and
belongs to Gloucester. Is this Mancini, unclear as to the story, trying
to make the best sense of it he could (on the assumption that the
villain of the piece was Gloucester)? or is this what he was actually
told? Anyhow, surely he must have heard it from one of the King's party,
and certainly not from anyone who had come with Gloucester or
Buckingham. There is a lot of reported speech in the account of
Gloucester's meeting with Edward V, and Mancini isn't given to invention
on that scale.
>
> Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "Janet Trimbath"
forevere@ wrote:
> >
> > Thank you everyone who participated in this fabulously interesting
thread
> > about Mancini. I have been enlightened and entertained at the same
time! I
> > am reminded again how erudite Ricardians are and how much thought
and
> > research has gone into the fight for Richard's good name. Thank you
again!
> >
> >
> >
> > L.M.L.,
> >
> > Janet
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

...me too! Listening quietly from the sidelines, terribly impressed with the knowledge of the group!
Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: Joan
To:
Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 9:21 PM
Subject: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III



I wish to add my thanks too. Even though I've been mostly lurking, I
have found this thread positively riveting.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , mariewalsh2003
<no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
> I'd belatedly like to add my thanks too - I've enjoyed the Mancini
debate tremendously, and found it very useful in forcing me to examine
the evidence properly. Thanks also to Doug for his excellent final
suggestion. It certainly injected some clarity, and is an explanation
that works for me.
>
> Just a last bit of discussion re Carol's very pertinent point that
Mancini's informant about Stony Stratford must have been a member of
Buckingham's or Gloucester's party, rather than the King's, if he had
also described the events at Northampton.
> In fact, however, Mancini's account of the Northampton episode is
hazy and doesn't match the accepted explanation. As usual, he has no
idea where the whole thing occurred, viz:-
> Edward V reaches a village (unnamed) close to the twelfth milestone
from London [sic]. He initially halts there to await Gloucester, but as
Gloucester approaches he decides to send most of his attendants on to
the villages nearer London (also unnamed) to make more room for
Gloucester's retinue. Edward himself, though, stays put at the appointed
village, and even sends out Rivers to meet Gloucester along the road.
> Rivers finds Gloucester in a strongly fortified town of his own ('in
oppido ipsius ducis quam munitissimo') - unnamed of course - "and after
passing a great part of the night in conviviality, they both retired to
bed. At dawn the following day, when everything was prepared for the
journey, Richard, after secretly giving curt orders to this effect,
seized Rivers and his companions and imprisoned them in that place.
Then, with a large body of soldiers, and in company with the duke of
Buckingham, he hastened at full gallop towards the young king."
> We then get a page and a half of the scene between Gloucester and
Edward V.
> My own feeling is that Mancini is so muddled about the events leading
up to the encounter between the young king and his uncle that his
informant cannot have been at Northampton. He knows that Buckingham was
with Gloucester when he reached the king, but doesn't seem to have the
faintest idea how this came to be.
> This version also makes innocent sense of Edward V not having been in
the town where Richard met Rivers. As has been argued before (certainly
by Anne Sutton), the excuse that Edward V had moved on to Stony
Stratford to make room is implausible. Northampton was a large town with
many religious houses, whereas Stony Stratford was only a small market
town; and, even if some of the retinue did have to move out to make
room, there would have been no need for Edward V to go himself.
> So Mancini's version makes the agreed rendezvous a village rather than
a large town, and has Edward himself dutifully remain there. The big
town where Rivers was taken prisoner is somewhere else entirely, and
belongs to Gloucester. Is this Mancini, unclear as to the story, trying
to make the best sense of it he could (on the assumption that the
villain of the piece was Gloucester)? or is this what he was actually
told? Anyhow, surely he must have heard it from one of the King's party,
and certainly not from anyone who had come with Gloucester or
Buckingham. There is a lot of reported speech in the account of
Gloucester's meeting with Edward V, and Mancini isn't given to invention
on that scale.
>
> Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "Janet Trimbath"
forevere@ wrote:
> >
> > Thank you everyone who participated in this fabulously interesting
thread
> > about Mancini. I have been enlightened and entertained at the same
time! I
> > am reminded again how erudite Ricardians are and how much thought
and
> > research has gone into the fight for Richard's good name. Thank you
again!
> >
> >
> >
> > L.M.L.,
> >
> > Janet
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

Hi, Dorothea!



My professor of English History did the same thing - and made me a lifelong
Richard III booster!



Whoever first said "History is written by the victors" may have had Richard
and Henry in mind.



BTW, Happy Spring to all Ricardians! Hope no one's travel plans have been
disrupted like John Cleese's were! (Of course he solved his by taking a taxi
from Oslo, Norway to Belgium - I understand it cost him about $5000 US. :-))



Johanne



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Johanne L. Tournier

Email - jltournier@...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_____

From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of Dorothea Preis
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 9:12 PM
To:
Subject: Re: Re: Edward IV's age in More's
History of Richard III





English professors have a lot to answer for! Mine recommended his students
to read "The Daughter of Time" to get a more truthful historical perspective
on Richard III - and that in a lecture series on Shakespeare's history
plays. And that is why I'm here today.

Cheers, Dorothea

________________________________

Hi Johanne,

Thank you for your message.

I live in Australia now, so it's autumn for us - and we are far away from the vulcanic ash. Though some school friends of my daughter went on an art expedition to Italy and France during the Easter break and are now stuck in Paris. Their parents are not "quite" in the same income bracket as John Cleese, so they will just have to wait. Though I could imagine worse places than Paris for an enforced stay.

Cheers, Dorothea




________________________________
From: Johanne Tournier <jltournier@...>
To:
Sent: Sun, 18 April, 2010 12:28:31 AM
Subject: RE: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III


Hi, Dorothea!

My professor of English History did the same thing - and made me a lifelong
Richard III booster!

Whoever first said "History is written by the victors" may have had Richard
and Henry in mind.

BTW, Happy Spring to all Ricardians! Hope no one's travel plans have been
disrupted like John Cleese's were! (Of course he solved his by taking a taxi
from Oslo, Norway to Belgium - I understand it cost him about $5000 US. :-))

Johanne

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

Johanne L. Tournier

Email - jltournier@ns. sympatico. ca

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

_____

From: richardiiisocietyfo rum@yahoogroups. com
[mailto:richardiiisocietyfo rum@yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Dorothea Preis
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 9:12 PM
To: richardiiisocietyfo rum@yahoogroups. com
Subject: Re: Re: Edward IV's age in More's
History of Richard III

English professors have a lot to answer for! Mine recommended his students
to read "The Daughter of Time" to get a more truthful historical perspective
on Richard III - and that in a lecture series on Shakespeare' s history
plays. And that is why I'm here today.

Cheers, Dorothea

____________ _________ _________ __

Hi, Dorothea!



Ahhhh . . . Paris! My dad's family was French, and my mom and I got to spend
two weeks in Paris in 1972 - we stayed in a small, family run hotel on the
Rue des Belles Feuilles - "the Street of the Beautiful Leaves" - it was as
romantic as it sounds - other than the fact that I was traveling with my
mom, that is! :-)



We had spent five days in London - and left because we ran into the Spring
Bank Holiday and the Queen's Official Birthday, and an acute shortage of
hotel rooms in London - but we got to see the Tutankhamen exhibit at the
British Museum at that time, and when I went back the next year, I got to
the National Portrait Gallery and got my repro of the famous portrait of
Richard, which I eventually had framed and now hangs in a place of honour in
my living room! (I had to bring the discussion back to Richard somehow). In
the course of my stay in England and Wales that year, which was in
connection with a Summer School course at the library school in Aberystwyth,
we visited Ludlow Castle and Warwick Castle. As I recall, Ludlow's ruins are
pretty . . . well . . . *ruined.* But of course Warwick is one of the
best-preserved medieval castles in England. It's a great place for young
people to tour - just what one expects a castle to be!



Well, we're lucking out so far - I understand that planes are still able to
land in Iceland from North America, but the jet stream is blowing all that
ash across northern Europe, not only the British Isles and Scandinavia, but
apparently all the way to Italy and Bulgaria now! And I have heard that the
eruption is getting worse!



What are those kids doing in Paris? I mean, how are they managing
financially? But I agree with you, Paris has got to be one of the top places
in the world that I could ever imagine getting stranded - as long as one is
in funds, of course! So my thoughts are with all the people that have gotten
stranded! It might be okay for people traveling throughout Europe - there
should always be road and rail alternatives. But for people traveling from
overseas - well, there's really no practical alternative to flying!



TTFN :-)



Johanne





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Johanne L. Tournier

Email - jltournier@...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

_____

From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of Dorothea Preis
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 2:19 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Re: Edward IV's age in More's
History of Richard III





Hi Johanne,

Thank you for your message.

I live in Australia now, so it's autumn for us - and we are far away from
the vulcanic ash. Though some school friends of my daughter went on an art
expedition to Italy and France during the Easter break and are now stuck in
Paris. Their parents are not "quite" in the same income bracket as John
Cleese, so they will just have to wait. Though I could imagine worse places
than Paris for an enforced stay.

Cheers, Dorothea

________________________________

Hi Johanne,

Richard is hanging in my study, so he's looking over my shoulder as I'm typing.

Actually I have been wondering as well about the finances of my daughter's friends. The scheduled trip was already Aus $ 6000, so I think this extra stay might get difficult. And I could imagine that all accommodation is overbooked as well, as they are obviously not the only ones in this situation.

I'm only glad that the southern hemisphere is not affected. My mother-in-law has been staying with us for 3 weeks and is due to leave on Wednesday back to South Africa. Huge sigh of relief!

I've been to Warwick Castles once, but that's a long time ago and before any interest in Richard, unfortunately. Before coming to Australia we lived for 5 years in England, but that was in Hertfordshire, where Tudor associations come fast and furious, but the Yorkist connections are much harder to find. We lived near Hatfield - Old Palace built by John Morton, where Elizabeth I lived in her youth, New Palace built by Cecil - but who wants them as neighbours?!

I'm off to meet some friends from our branch for a Ricardian coffee, what the main topic for conversation will be I'm sure you can imagine.

Cheers, Dorothea





________________________________
From: Johanne Tournier <jltournier@...>
To:
Sent: Sun, 18 April, 2010 11:30:12 PM
Subject: RE: Re: Edward IV's age in More's History of Richard III


Hi, Dorothea!

Ahhhh . . . Paris! My dad's family was French, and my mom and I got to spend
two weeks in Paris in 1972 - we stayed in a small, family run hotel on the
Rue des Belles Feuilles - "the Street of the Beautiful Leaves" - it was as
romantic as it sounds - other than the fact that I was traveling with my
mom, that is! :-)

We had spent five days in London - and left because we ran into the Spring
Bank Holiday and the Queen's Official Birthday, and an acute shortage of
hotel rooms in London - but we got to see the Tutankhamen exhibit at the
British Museum at that time, and when I went back the next year, I got to
the National Portrait Gallery and got my repro of the famous portrait of
Richard, which I eventually had framed and now hangs in a place of honour in
my living room! (I had to bring the discussion back to Richard somehow). In
the course of my stay in England and Wales that year, which was in
connection with a Summer School course at the library school in Aberystwyth,
we visited Ludlow Castle and Warwick Castle. As I recall, Ludlow's ruins are
pretty . . . well . . . *ruined.* But of course Warwick is one of the
best-preserved medieval castles in England. It's a great place for young
people to tour - just what one expects a castle to be!

Well, we're lucking out so far - I understand that planes are still able to
land in Iceland from North America, but the jet stream is blowing all that
ash across northern Europe, not only the British Isles and Scandinavia, but
apparently all the way to Italy and Bulgaria now! And I have heard that the
eruption is getting worse!

What are those kids doing in Paris? I mean, how are they managing
financially? But I agree with you, Paris has got to be one of the top places
in the world that I could ever imagine getting stranded - as long as one is
in funds, of course! So my thoughts are with all the people that have gotten
stranded! It might be okay for people traveling throughout Europe - there
should always be road and rail alternatives. But for people traveling from
overseas - well, there's really no practical alternative to flying!

TTFN :-)

Johanne

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

Johanne L. Tournier

Email - jltournier@ns. sympatico. ca

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~

_____

From: richardiiisocietyfo rum@yahoogroups. com
[mailto:richardiiisocietyfo rum@yahoogroups. com] On Behalf Of Dorothea Preis
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 2:19 AM
To: richardiiisocietyfo rum@yahoogroups. com
Subject: Re: Re: Edward IV's age in More's
History of Richard III

Hi Johanne,

Thank you for your message.

I live in Australia now, so it's autumn for us - and we are far away from
the vulcanic ash. Though some school friends of my daughter went on an art
expedition to Italy and France during the Easter break and are now stuck in
Paris. Their parents are not "quite" in the same income bracket as John
Cleese, so they will just have to wait. Though I could imagine worse places
than Paris for an enforced stay.

Cheers, Dorothea

____________ _________ _________ __