To Annette re "Maligned King"

Hi, Annette. The sentence that confused (and still confuses) me is at the bottom of page 120: "A similar claim of notoriety was attached to the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage, which carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation."

I assume that by "appeal to notoriety" you (and Hicks) mean the claim that these matters are common knowledge, but the first clause is a bit confusing because Hicks's absurd conclusions about no-longer extant "propaganda" and the (imaginary) withered arm refer to Richard's letter but "the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage" seems to refer to Titulus Regius where this idea is regarded as common knowledge.

I'm even more confused by the relative clause, especially "carried a written undertaking." Do you mean "which included a promise to provide evidence to substantiate the charges"?

I'd be grateful if you'd enlighten me as to the intended meaning of the whole sentence.

Carol, who admits to a gruesome curiosity regarding the murder of Charles Ross (mentioned somewhere in your book) and wonders whether anyone can enlighten her offlist

Hi Carol, and thanks for putting me out of my misery regarding the offending sentence, which occurs in my chapter 'Witchcraft and Sorcery'. I think my main error on page 120 has been to rely on the phrase 'formal charge' to refer to the charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage put forward in Titulus Regius, without clearly saying (as you rightly spotted) that I'm referring to this particular document.

Page 120 needs to be taken with my earlier account on pp. 117-8 relating to the charges of witchcraft, specifically image-magic, that were brought against Jacquetta of Luxembourg during the interregnum of 1469, when she was charged that (inter alia) she had in her possession images of the king and of the queen - an early attempt, I have suggested, to invalidate Edward's marriage by implying that Jacquetta used these images to secure it by witchcraft. Jacquetta is said to have bewailed from her own mouth that her accuser spread stories 'throughout the realm' of her witchcraft and sorcery. This is a precise definition of notoriety as understood at the time, and it derived not from any propaganda of the seventeen-year-old Richard, who was in exile with Edward, but from the actions of the rebel faction of the Earl of Warwick.

On page 118 I add that by the time of the 1483 petition and subsequent Act of Parliament, the charge had widened to include Elizabeth in the alleged witchcraft 'as the common opinion of the people and the public voice and fame is through all this land' (Titulus Regius).

This common knowledge about the connection between the Woodvilles and accusations of witchcraft, no doubt juicily embellished, clearly had existed for a dozen years by the time Richard of Gloucester wrote his letter seeking help from York, which referred to Elizabeth Woodville and her family and adherents plotting his destruction and (as was 'openly known') using necromancy in the process. Even Rosemary Horrocks, whom I quote on p.121, says of these allegations that it would hardly be surprising if the queen and her family had been 'hopefully dabbling in witchcraft'.

Nevertheless, Michael Hicks in his analysis of the letter claims that because Richard invokes the mediaeval appeal to notoriety, it 'implies the existence of other propaganda [on the part of Richard] now irretrievably lost'. In other words, he claims it implies a calculated campaign trumped-up by Richard. Actually this 'propaganda' business is a recurring charge made by Hicks, along with 'character-assassination'. My angle is that Richard had no need to circulate propaganda about a subject that was already notorious (as my readers will know from previous pages), and indeed it was perfectly feasible that his spies may have brought him reports of horoscopes being cast in which the length of his life featured prominently. (The necessity to limit the number of words prevented me from adding modern examples of leading statesmen and their wives casting horoscopes!).

Having next dealt with Hicks's interpolation of the topic of Richard's alleged deformity at the hands of the Woodvilles ['should we take this more seriously?' says he, foreshadowing Philippa Gregory] I then return to the matter of notoriety as a recognized mediaeval yardstick. My aim is to make it clear that contrary to today's standards of evidence, an appeal to the fact that something was notorious carried evidential weight. As an example I continue: 'A similar claim of notoriety was attached to the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage' [i.e. the charge in Titulus Regius] 'which carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation.'

The exact wording of this passage in Titulus Regius is as follows: 'And here also we considre, howe that the seid pretensed Mariage bitwixt the above named King Edward and Elizabeth Grey was made of grete presumption, without the knowyng and assent of the Lords of this Lond, and also by Sorcerie and Wichecrafte, committed by the said Elizabeth, and her Moder Jaquett Duchesse of Bedford, as the comon opinion of the people, and the publique voice and fame is thorough all this Land; and herafter, if and as the caas shall require, shall bee proved sufficiently in tyme and place convenient.'

We don't know what evidence might have been offered in substantiation, but it's interesting that the offer of proof was made, which of course Hicks does not take into account when dismissing Richard's accusations as 'propaganda'.

However, I digress. I admit that I may have confused matters by moving on from discussing Richard's letter to mentioning Titulus Regius without naming it, so I am open to suggestions as to how to re-write the passage. I lean toward adding in brackets '(in Titulus Regius)' after the words 'bewitchment into marriage'. But does this solve the problem?
Regards, Annette

----- Original Message -----
From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Sunday, June 27, 2010 7:33 PM
Subject: To Annette re "Maligned King"



Hi, Annette. The sentence that confused (and still confuses) me is at the bottom of page 120: "A similar claim of notoriety was attached to the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage, which carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation."

I assume that by "appeal to notoriety" you (and Hicks) mean the claim that these matters are common knowledge, but the first clause is a bit confusing because Hicks's absurd conclusions about no-longer extant "propaganda" and the (imaginary) withered arm refer to Richard's letter but "the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage" seems to refer to Titulus Regius where this idea is regarded as common knowledge.

I'm even more confused by the relative clause, especially "carried a written undertaking." Do you mean "which included a promise to provide evidence to substantiate the charges"?

I'd be grateful if you'd enlighten me as to the intended meaning of the whole sentence.

Carol, who admits to a gruesome curiosity regarding the murder of Charles Ross (mentioned somewhere in your book) and wonders whether anyone can enlighten her offlist

Annette wrote:
>
> Hi Carol, and thanks for putting me out of my misery regarding the offending sentence, which occurs in my chapter 'Witchcraft and Sorcery'. I think my main error on page 120 has been to rely on the phrase 'formal charge' to refer to the charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage put forward in Titulus Regius, without clearly saying (as you rightly spotted) that I'm referring to this particular document.
<snip>

As an example I continue: 'A similar claim of notoriety was attached to the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage' [i.e. the charge in Titulus Regius] 'which carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation.'
>
> The exact wording of this passage in Titulus Regius is as follows: 'And here also we considre, howe that the seid pretensed Mariage bitwixt the above named King Edward and Elizabeth Grey was made of grete presumption, without the knowyng and assent of the Lords of this Lond, and also by Sorcerie and Wichecrafte, committed by the said Elizabeth, and her Moder Jaquett Duchesse of Bedford, as the comon opinion of the people, and the publique voice and fame is thorough all this Land; and herafter, if and as the caas shall require, shall bee proved sufficiently in tyme and place convenient.'
>
> We don't know what evidence might have been offered in substantiation, but it's interesting that the offer of proof was made, which of course Hicks does not take into account when dismissing Richard's accusations as 'propaganda'.
>
> However, I digress. I admit that I may have confused matters by moving on from discussing Richard's letter to mentioning Titulus Regius without naming it, so I am open to suggestions as to how to re-write the passage. I lean toward adding in brackets '(in Titulus Regius)' after the words 'bewitchment into marriage'. But does this solve the problem?

Carol responds:
Thanks for the clarification, part of which you might consider transferring to your next edition. I agree that adding "(in Titulus Regius)" in what we Americans call parentheses would help. So would clarifying the concept of "notoriety" as Hicks uses the term (as you did so well in the snipped part of your post). But my main problem was with the phrase "which carried a written undertaking." Can you clarify that for me? Possibly it's British English that doesn't make sense to my American ears.

By the way, I spotted another discrepancy: On page 127, you refer to Margaret Beaufort as the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, but in Table 2, you show her as the daughter of the second John Beaufort (Edmund's older brother). Edmund, I believe, was the father of the later dukes of Somerset, Henry (pardoned and later executed by Edward IV) and another Edmund (executed after Tewkesbury). Their sister, another Margaret Beaufort, was (Richard's) Duke of Buckingham's mother.

I love the tables, by the way, but it might be more convenient to put them all in one place, either at the beginning of the book or in an appendix. I've resorted to bookmarking them so I don't have to look in the table of contents every time I want to consult them.

Carol, wondering if you've written to Professor Hicks to discuss these concerns

Aha, so the difficulty lies with 'the claim ... carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation'. Probably I should have written 'the claim ... was accompanied by' - does that work better? Or is there a problem with the concept of 'an undertaking' meaning a pledge or guarantee? Perhaps the solution is 'the claim ... was accompanied by a written pledge to provide substantiation'.

As regards Margaret Beaufort, I think if you look again at the top of page 127 you'll see that the Margaret Beaufort whom I describe as Harry of Buckingham's mother was indeed the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, but then, as my next paragraph explains, this particular Margaret 'was not, in any case, the senior female of the legitimated Beaufort line: that position belonged to ... Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of the exiled Henry Tudor.' I don't give the latter's ancestry on that page because in this section I'm talking about Buckingham and his pedigree.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the two Margarets were cousins: Tudor's mother was the daughter of John, created 1st Duke of Somerset, died 1444, the eldest of four Beaufort brothers, two of whom predeceased him leaving no heirs. He had no other surviving children.

Buckingham's mother was the daughter of the only one of John Beaufort's younger brothers to survive him, Edmund, created 2nd duke, died 1455 at St Albans. She had a few brothers (Henry, Edmund, John), all of whom died without heirs. By the 1470s the two Margarets were all that remained to carry on the Beaufort line.

But you knew all this anyway - I think you just mis-read my reference on p.127. I'm open to correction on any of the above if I've got it wrong, by the way.

Actually I did write a polite letter to Michael Hicks at quite an early stage asking him if he could identify the source of something he says about Buckingham's whereabouts in August 1483, a very simple question requiring a two-line answer, but he didn't favour me with a reply. Since then I have learned to mistrust this and other references cited by him - and you should hear Marie Barnfield on the subject of the sources he cites in his biography of Clarence!
Regards, Annette

----- Original Message -----
From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 5:36 PM
Subject: Re: To Annette re "Maligned King"



Annette wrote:
>
> Hi Carol, and thanks for putting me out of my misery regarding the offending sentence, which occurs in my chapter 'Witchcraft and Sorcery'. I think my main error on page 120 has been to rely on the phrase 'formal charge' to refer to the charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage put forward in Titulus Regius, without clearly saying (as you rightly spotted) that I'm referring to this particular document.
<snip>

As an example I continue: 'A similar claim of notoriety was attached to the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage' [i.e. the charge in Titulus Regius] 'which carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation.'
>
> The exact wording of this passage in Titulus Regius is as follows: 'And here also we considre, howe that the seid pretensed Mariage bitwixt the above named King Edward and Elizabeth Grey was made of grete presumption, without the knowyng and assent of the Lords of this Lond, and also by Sorcerie and Wichecrafte, committed by the said Elizabeth, and her Moder Jaquett Duchesse of Bedford, as the comon opinion of the people, and the publique voice and fame is thorough all this Land; and herafter, if and as the caas shall require, shall bee proved sufficiently in tyme and place convenient.'
>
> We don't know what evidence might have been offered in substantiation, but it's interesting that the offer of proof was made, which of course Hicks does not take into account when dismissing Richard's accusations as 'propaganda'.
>
> However, I digress. I admit that I may have confused matters by moving on from discussing Richard's letter to mentioning Titulus Regius without naming it, so I am open to suggestions as to how to re-write the passage. I lean toward adding in brackets '(in Titulus Regius)' after the words 'bewitchment into marriage'. But does this solve the problem?

Carol responds:
Thanks for the clarification, part of which you might consider transferring to your next edition. I agree that adding "(in Titulus Regius)" in what we Americans call parentheses would help. So would clarifying the concept of "notoriety" as Hicks uses the term (as you did so well in the snipped part of your post). But my main problem was with the phrase "which carried a written undertaking." Can you clarify that for me? Possibly it's British English that doesn't make sense to my American ears.

By the way, I spotted another discrepancy: On page 127, you refer to Margaret Beaufort as the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, but in Table 2, you show her as the daughter of the second John Beaufort (Edmund's older brother). Edmund, I believe, was the father of the later dukes of Somerset, Henry (pardoned and later executed by Edward IV) and another Edmund (executed after Tewkesbury). Their sister, another Margaret Beaufort, was (Richard's) Duke of Buckingham's mother.

I love the tables, by the way, but it might be more convenient to put them all in one place, either at the beginning of the book or in an appendix. I've resorted to bookmarking them so I don't have to look in the table of contents every time I want to consult them.

Carol, wondering if you've written to Professor Hicks to discuss these concerns

Quite correct on the two Margaret Beauforts - see a certain yellow booklet for confirmation;)

----- Original Message -----
From: Annette Carson
To:
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: To Annette re "Maligned King"



Aha, so the difficulty lies with 'the claim ... carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation'. Probably I should have written 'the claim ... was accompanied by' - does that work better? Or is there a problem with the concept of 'an undertaking' meaning a pledge or guarantee? Perhaps the solution is 'the claim ... was accompanied by a written pledge to provide substantiation'.

As regards Margaret Beaufort, I think if you look again at the top of page 127 you'll see that the Margaret Beaufort whom I describe as Harry of Buckingham's mother was indeed the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, but then, as my next paragraph explains, this particular Margaret 'was not, in any case, the senior female of the legitimated Beaufort line: that position belonged to ... Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of the exiled Henry Tudor.' I don't give the latter's ancestry on that page because in this section I'm talking about Buckingham and his pedigree.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, the two Margarets were cousins: Tudor's mother was the daughter of John, created 1st Duke of Somerset, died 1444, the eldest of four Beaufort brothers, two of whom predeceased him leaving no heirs. He had no other surviving children.

Buckingham's mother was the daughter of the only one of John Beaufort's younger brothers to survive him, Edmund, created 2nd duke, died 1455 at St Albans. She had a few brothers (Henry, Edmund, John), all of whom died without heirs. By the 1470s the two Margarets were all that remained to carry on the Beaufort line.

But you knew all this anyway - I think you just mis-read my reference on p.127. I'm open to correction on any of the above if I've got it wrong, by the way.

Actually I did write a polite letter to Michael Hicks at quite an early stage asking him if he could identify the source of something he says about Buckingham's whereabouts in August 1483, a very simple question requiring a two-line answer, but he didn't favour me with a reply. Since then I have learned to mistrust this and other references cited by him - and you should hear Marie Barnfield on the subject of the sources he cites in his biography of Clarence!
Regards, Annette

----- Original Message -----
From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2010 5:36 PM
Subject: Re: To Annette re "Maligned King"

Annette wrote:
>
> Hi Carol, and thanks for putting me out of my misery regarding the offending sentence, which occurs in my chapter 'Witchcraft and Sorcery'. I think my main error on page 120 has been to rely on the phrase 'formal charge' to refer to the charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage put forward in Titulus Regius, without clearly saying (as you rightly spotted) that I'm referring to this particular document.
<snip>

As an example I continue: 'A similar claim of notoriety was attached to the formal charge of Edward IV's bewitchment into marriage' [i.e. the charge in Titulus Regius] 'which carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation.'
>
> The exact wording of this passage in Titulus Regius is as follows: 'And here also we considre, howe that the seid pretensed Mariage bitwixt the above named King Edward and Elizabeth Grey was made of grete presumption, without the knowyng and assent of the Lords of this Lond, and also by Sorcerie and Wichecrafte, committed by the said Elizabeth, and her Moder Jaquett Duchesse of Bedford, as the comon opinion of the people, and the publique voice and fame is thorough all this Land; and herafter, if and as the caas shall require, shall bee proved sufficiently in tyme and place convenient.'
>
> We don't know what evidence might have been offered in substantiation, but it's interesting that the offer of proof was made, which of course Hicks does not take into account when dismissing Richard's accusations as 'propaganda'.
>
> However, I digress. I admit that I may have confused matters by moving on from discussing Richard's letter to mentioning Titulus Regius without naming it, so I am open to suggestions as to how to re-write the passage. I lean toward adding in brackets '(in Titulus Regius)' after the words 'bewitchment into marriage'. But does this solve the problem?

Carol responds:
Thanks for the clarification, part of which you might consider transferring to your next edition. I agree that adding "(in Titulus Regius)" in what we Americans call parentheses would help. So would clarifying the concept of "notoriety" as Hicks uses the term (as you did so well in the snipped part of your post). But my main problem was with the phrase "which carried a written undertaking." Can you clarify that for me? Possibly it's British English that doesn't make sense to my American ears.

By the way, I spotted another discrepancy: On page 127, you refer to Margaret Beaufort as the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, but in Table 2, you show her as the daughter of the second John Beaufort (Edmund's older brother). Edmund, I believe, was the father of the later dukes of Somerset, Henry (pardoned and later executed by Edward IV) and another Edmund (executed after Tewkesbury). Their sister, another Margaret Beaufort, was (Richard's) Duke of Buckingham's mother.

I love the tables, by the way, but it might be more convenient to put them all in one place, either at the beginning of the book or in an appendix. I've resorted to bookmarking them so I don't have to look in the table of contents every time I want to consult them.

Carol, wondering if you've written to Professor Hicks to discuss these concerns

Annette Carson wrote:
>
> Aha, so the difficulty lies with 'the claim ... carried a written undertaking to provide substantiation'. Probably I should have written 'the claim ... was accompanied by' - does that work better? Or is there a problem with the concept of 'an undertaking' meaning a pledge or guarantee? Perhaps the solution is 'the claim ... was accompanied by a written pledge to provide substantiation'.

Carol responds:
Much better. Yes, "undertaking" is the main problem, but "carried" is also confusing. Would "accompanied with a pledge to provide supporting evidence" be even clearer? You might even partially quote the specific sentence in which the pledge was made ("The claim was accompanied with a pledge to provide sufficient proof 'in tyme and place convenient'" or something like that to jog the reader's memory.

Sorry about my confusion over the two Margaret Beauforts. Maybe yet another genealogical table showing the Beaufort genealogy (and the relationship between our two traitorous Henrys (Tudor and Buckingham) would be helpful. The tables were one of my favorite parts of the book, only it would be more convenient if they were all together.

Annette:
> Actually I did write a polite letter to Michael Hicks at quite an early stage asking him if he could identify the source of something he says about Buckingham's whereabouts in August 1483, a very simple question requiring a two-line answer, but he didn't favour me with a reply. Since then I have learned to mistrust this and other references cited by him - and you should hear Marie Barnfield on the subject of the sources he cites in his biography of Clarence!

Carol:
I suppose he's a lost cause--so convinced of the correctness of his views that he won't even deign to speak to us "revisionists." I mistrust everything he writes because, like the scientists who examined the bones in the urn, he's convinced of his position before he examines the evidence. That's no way to arrive at objective conclusions.

Carol, thinking how different history, both real and written, would have been if Richard had won Bosworth

Thanks, Carol, that's a very good suggestion. ("The claim was accompanied with a pledge to provide sufficient proof 'in tyme and place convenient'.") There is always a problem with amendments to later editions because one daren't disturb the pagination, but I will mark this for further attention.

The same problem arises with grouping the genealogical tables differently or adding a new one: for some reason THP numbers its pages starting with page 1 for the half-title page, so there's no flexibility even before the main text starts. However, if I reprint the book myself after THP give up on it, I will give thought to all these (and any other) constructive suggestions.
Regards, Annette

Would THP allow you to add end notes? If so, it's not a perfect
solution, but at least the information will be there for the reader.

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
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist

--- In , "Annette Carson"
<ajcarson@...> wrote:
>
> Thanks, Carol, that's a very good suggestion. ("The claim was
accompanied with a pledge to provide sufficient proof 'in tyme and place
convenient'.") There is always a problem with amendments to later
editions because one daren't disturb the pagination, but I will mark
this for further attention.
>
> The same problem arises with grouping the genealogical tables
differently or adding a new one: for some reason THP numbers its pages
starting with page 1 for the half-title page, so there's no flexibility
even before the main text starts. However, if I reprint the book myself
after THP give up on it, I will give thought to all these (and any
other) constructive suggestions.
> Regards, Annette
>
>
>
>
>

Yes, you definitely need a table of Beauforts to show where the two Margaret Beauforts and their sons fit together. There is a good one in "The Stafford Line".

----- Original Message -----
From: Annette Carson
To:
Sent: Sunday, July 04, 2010 9:23 AM
Subject: Re: To Annette re "Maligned King"



Thanks, Carol, that's a very good suggestion. ("The claim was accompanied with a pledge to provide sufficient proof 'in tyme and place convenient'.") There is always a problem with amendments to later editions because one daren't disturb the pagination, but I will mark this for further attention.

The same problem arises with grouping the genealogical tables differently or adding a new one: for some reason THP numbers its pages starting with page 1 for the half-title page, so there's no flexibility even before the main text starts. However, if I reprint the book myself after THP give up on it, I will give thought to all these (and any other) constructive suggestions.
Regards, Annette