The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey

Was the execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey legal? This seems to be disputed.

Whether you agree with the verdict or not, Rivers, Grey, Haute, and
Vaughn were tried and were sentenced to death. So, those were legal.
Hastings is another matter as it's doubtful that he received due
process, although he could have been sentenced by Richard in his
capacity as England's constable. I believe, he had the authority to do
what he did as an equivalent of marshal law. So that, too, was probably
legal. When Richard had Hastings executed, he was protector and
constable, not king. What we don't know is if he acted outside the rule
of law, whether anyone else had recourse to act, and if so, whether they
would have done so.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "vermeertwo"
<hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Was the execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey legal? This seems to
be disputed.
>

If you get 12 economists in a room you get 12 different opinions and so it is with `legality' and `medical appraisal, particularly related to Richard III's actions or the 1674 bones.

Richard III was caught in a catch 22 situation; if he'd not moved against the grasping Woodvilles he'd have been ground down, if he did more mud would fly at him. He was ultimately a tragic figure who did the best he could under impossible circumstances. I don't know if he ordered the elimination of his nephews, but, if he did, we should bear in mind they would done the same to him.


--- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@...> wrote:
>
> Whether you agree with the verdict or not, Rivers, Grey, Haute, and
> Vaughn were tried and were sentenced to death. So, those were legal.
> Hastings is another matter as it's doubtful that he received due
> process, although he could have been sentenced by Richard in his
> capacity as England's constable. I believe, he had the authority to do
> what he did as an equivalent of marshal law. So that, too, was probably
> legal. When Richard had Hastings executed, he was protector and
> constable, not king. What we don't know is if he acted outside the rule
> of law, whether anyone else had recourse to act, and if so, whether they
> would have done so.
>
> Joan
> ---
> author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
> 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
> website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
> ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo"
> <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > Was the execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey legal? This seems to
> be disputed.
> >
>

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> If you get 12 economists in a room you get 12 different opinions and so it is with `legality' and `medical appraisal, particularly related to Richard III's actions or the 1674 bones.


Well now, I think if we hold a position, we need to understand why we do so. Experts disagree, but some expert opinions are more equal than others. Whilst Wright was a leading anatomist, and Professor Northcroft, pres. of the Dental Association, helped with the dentition, none of them had an archaeological background, and the data for child development which they were using are now outdated and no longer accepted.
I think my quotations from Tanner and Wright's report amply demonstrate the flaws in their methodology, and that some of the most persuasive arguments in the quotations you posted in favour of the identification of the Bones in the urn as those the Princes - presence of velvet and elm chest, for instance - have no basis in fact.

I have mentioned that for me the biggest sticking point is the depth at which the bones were found, and the fact that the structure under which they lay predated Richard's reign. What would be your view on this?


What
>
> Richard III was caught in a catch 22 situation; if he'd not moved against the grasping Woodvilles he'd have been ground down, if he did more mud would fly at him. He was ultimately a tragic figure who did the best he could under impossible circumstances. I don't know if he ordered the elimination of his nephews, but, if he did, we should bear in mind they would done the same to him.

They certainly would, once old enough. But, as I mentioned before, there was a taboo against killing children which made it actually more dangerous for Richard to kill them than to keep them alive. It seems to me that the widespread belief that he had murdered them played a large part in his downfall. That doesn't, of course, mean that Richard couldn't have killed them - errors of judgement and all that (I am leaving aside the question of whether he was that sort of person) - but the behaviour of the boys' mother doesn't fit that scenario very well either.
Although there was nothing set down in writing, fourteen seems to have been generally regarded as the minimum age for criminal responsibility. The analogy of the hen and the snake eggs doesn't really hold because the poor hen was unaware of what she was sitting on whilst Richard would have been all too aware of the potential danger from the boys once they reached manhood and acted accordingly. It is perhaps instructive to look at Henry VII's treatment of Warwick. He kept the boy until he was in his twenties, and only then had him executed on trumped-up charges, and only then as the result of pressure from Spain.

As for Hastings' execution - the trouble is, we don't really know what happened in the Tower that morning. By any standards the execution was hasty, but where the King (or Protector) was the person condemning there would have been no need to allow time for the condemned to seek a royal pardon. There is no doubt that, as both Protector wielding the royal power and Lord Constable, Richard had the power to give a summary condemnation for treason. This is from Ross's 'Edward IV':-

"The constable's court, whose savage penalties won for John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, his unenviable reputation for ruthlessness, was roundly condemned by an earlier generation of scholars. It was a summary court, acting without indictment and without benefit of trial by jury, and it employed a law other than the common law of England. Its activities, in the words of Bishop Stubbs, `condemned its agents to perpetual infamy'. He further regarded its summary jurisdiction over treason as a novel usurpation at the expense of the common law courts. However, recent research has suggested that there was ample precedent under the law of arms for its use in treason trials. As a branch of civil law, the law of arms required neither indictments nor juries. Often Tiptoft as constable was merely pronouncing a sentence which had already been `ordained' by the king in advance. The king could still `record' a verdict based upon his knowledge of notorious treason without further justification." (pp. 396-7)


>
>
> --- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:
> >
> > Whether you agree with the verdict or not, Rivers, Grey, Haute, and
> > Vaughn were tried and were sentenced to death. So, those were legal.
> > Hastings is another matter as it's doubtful that he received due
> > process, although he could have been sentenced by Richard in his
> > capacity as England's constable. I believe, he had the authority to do
> > what he did as an equivalent of marshal law. So that, too, was probably
> > legal. When Richard had Hastings executed, he was protector and
> > constable, not king. What we don't know is if he acted outside the rule
> > of law, whether anyone else had recourse to act, and if so, whether they
> > would have done so.
> >
> > Joan
> > ---
> > author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
> > 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
> > website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> > blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
> > ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
> >
> > --- In , "vermeertwo"
> > <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Was the execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey legal? This seems to
> > be disputed.
> > >
> >
>

As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.

So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.

What we have with Richard III is opportunity, motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V, a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc., and bones which could've been the princes in the right place, most agree of the right ages and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more. Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.

However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.


--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >
> > If you get 12 economists in a room you get 12 different opinions and so it is with `legality' and `medical appraisal, particularly related to Richard III's actions or the 1674 bones.
>
>
> Well now, I think if we hold a position, we need to understand why we do so. Experts disagree, but some expert opinions are more equal than others. Whilst Wright was a leading anatomist, and Professor Northcroft, pres. of the Dental Association, helped with the dentition, none of them had an archaeological background, and the data for child development which they were using are now outdated and no longer accepted.
> I think my quotations from Tanner and Wright's report amply demonstrate the flaws in their methodology, and that some of the most persuasive arguments in the quotations you posted in favour of the identification of the Bones in the urn as those the Princes - presence of velvet and elm chest, for instance - have no basis in fact.
>
> I have mentioned that for me the biggest sticking point is the depth at which the bones were found, and the fact that the structure under which they lay predated Richard's reign. What would be your view on this?
>
>
> What
> >
> > Richard III was caught in a catch 22 situation; if he'd not moved against the grasping Woodvilles he'd have been ground down, if he did more mud would fly at him. He was ultimately a tragic figure who did the best he could under impossible circumstances. I don't know if he ordered the elimination of his nephews, but, if he did, we should bear in mind they would done the same to him.
>
> They certainly would, once old enough. But, as I mentioned before, there was a taboo against killing children which made it actually more dangerous for Richard to kill them than to keep them alive. It seems to me that the widespread belief that he had murdered them played a large part in his downfall. That doesn't, of course, mean that Richard couldn't have killed them - errors of judgement and all that (I am leaving aside the question of whether he was that sort of person) - but the behaviour of the boys' mother doesn't fit that scenario very well either.
> Although there was nothing set down in writing, fourteen seems to have been generally regarded as the minimum age for criminal responsibility. The analogy of the hen and the snake eggs doesn't really hold because the poor hen was unaware of what she was sitting on whilst Richard would have been all too aware of the potential danger from the boys once they reached manhood and acted accordingly. It is perhaps instructive to look at Henry VII's treatment of Warwick. He kept the boy until he was in his twenties, and only then had him executed on trumped-up charges, and only then as the result of pressure from Spain.
>
> As for Hastings' execution - the trouble is, we don't really know what happened in the Tower that morning. By any standards the execution was hasty, but where the King (or Protector) was the person condemning there would have been no need to allow time for the condemned to seek a royal pardon. There is no doubt that, as both Protector wielding the royal power and Lord Constable, Richard had the power to give a summary condemnation for treason. This is from Ross's 'Edward IV':-
>
> "The constable's court, whose savage penalties won for John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, his unenviable reputation for ruthlessness, was roundly condemned by an earlier generation of scholars. It was a summary court, acting without indictment and without benefit of trial by jury, and it employed a law other than the common law of England. Its activities, in the words of Bishop Stubbs, `condemned its agents to perpetual infamy'. He further regarded its summary jurisdiction over treason as a novel usurpation at the expense of the common law courts. However, recent research has suggested that there was ample precedent under the law of arms for its use in treason trials. As a branch of civil law, the law of arms required neither indictments nor juries. Often Tiptoft as constable was merely pronouncing a sentence which had already been `ordained' by the king in advance. The king could still `record' a verdict based upon his knowledge of notorious treason without further justification." (pp. 396-7)
>
>
> >
> >
> > --- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Whether you agree with the verdict or not, Rivers, Grey, Haute, and
> > > Vaughn were tried and were sentenced to death. So, those were legal.
> > > Hastings is another matter as it's doubtful that he received due
> > > process, although he could have been sentenced by Richard in his
> > > capacity as England's constable. I believe, he had the authority to do
> > > what he did as an equivalent of marshal law. So that, too, was probably
> > > legal. When Richard had Hastings executed, he was protector and
> > > constable, not king. What we don't know is if he acted outside the rule
> > > of law, whether anyone else had recourse to act, and if so, whether they
> > > would have done so.
> > >
> > > Joan
> > > ---
> > > author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
> > > 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
> > > website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> > > blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
> > > ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
> > >
> > > --- In , "vermeertwo"
> > > <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Was the execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey legal? This seems to
> > > be disputed.
> > > >
> > >
> >
>

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.

So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
"Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
"scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
"Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
"Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."

What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.


>
> So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.

What on earth has that to do with anything?

>
> What we have with Richard III is opportunity,

He and some others

motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,

That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.

a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,

Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.


and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,

"could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.


most agree of the right ages

Not so.

and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.

Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.


Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.

By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.


>
> However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.

No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.

And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.

Marie

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.



Et cetera.

You seem very attached to your version of events. Though not at all original, they might form the skeleton of a novel. I'll look forward to reading it.

Katy

(Hope it will include green mice.)

     I hope it does not include the green mice, since Douglas Adams already had the white mice ruling in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It would  be too derivative.  Hedgehog rulers have not been done, though.

Sheffe


--- On Thu, 12/16/10, oregon_katy <oregon_katy@...> wrote:

From: oregon_katy <oregon_katy@...>
Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
To:
Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 11:59 AM







 













--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:

>

> As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.



Et cetera.



You seem very attached to your version of events. Though not at all original, they might form the skeleton of a novel. I'll look forward to reading it.



Katy



(Hope it will include green mice.)

As Constable of England Richard had the power of the king between the death of one monarch and the crowning of another.
Paul

On 14 Dec 2010, at 18:47, joansr3 wrote:

> Whether you agree with the verdict or not, Rivers, Grey, Haute, and
> Vaughn were tried and were sentenced to death. So, those were legal.
> Hastings is another matter as it's doubtful that he received due
> process, although he could have been sentenced by Richard in his
> capacity as England's constable. I believe, he had the authority to do
> what he did as an equivalent of marshal law. So that, too, was probably
> legal. When Richard had Hastings executed, he was protector and
> constable, not king. What we don't know is if he acted outside the rule
> of law, whether anyone else had recourse to act, and if so, whether they
> would have done so.
>
> Joan
> ---
> author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
> 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
> website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
> blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
> ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo"
> <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Was the execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey legal? This seems to
> be disputed.
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

with regards to h7 never finding the burial place of the princes, his envoy in 1495 told maximilliam the holy roman emperor that he could show him the place where richard, duke of york aka shrewsbury was interred.
Source ..google books:
Chroniques de Jean Molinet, Volume 5  By Jean Molinet

begin page 49
--- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:


From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
To:
Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 10:53 AM


 





--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.

So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
"Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
"scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
"Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
"Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."

What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.

>
> So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.

What on earth has that to do with anything?

>
> What we have with Richard III is opportunity,

He and some others

motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,

That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.

a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,

Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.

and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,

"could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.

most agree of the right ages

Not so.

and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.

Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.

Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.

By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.

>
> However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.

No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.

And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.

Marie

--- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@...> wrote:
>
> with regards to h7 never finding the burial place of the princes, his envoy in 1495 told maximilliam the holy roman emperor that he could show him the place where richard, duke of york aka shrewsbury was interred.
> Source ..google books:
> Chroniques de Jean Molinet, Volume 5  By Jean Molinet

Well, Molinet's not at all reliable for English events. And, if Henry did really say this, it was surely a bluff to convince Maximilian that the pretender he had been supporting was not York. In actual fact, Henry never announced any finding of the burial place, never directly accused Richard of murdering the Princes, never produced any explanation for their disappearance (unless you credit the claims of More and Vergil, in Henry VIII's reign, that HVII "gave out" that Tyrell had killed them), and was very jittery about the pretender. He also apparently turned down an offer to have Mr & Mrs Warbeck sent over to identify their son.
Marie

>
> begin page 49
> --- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
> To:
> Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 10:53 AM
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >
> > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.
>
> So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
> The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
> 1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
> "Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
> 2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
> "scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
> 3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
> "Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
> 4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
> "Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."
>
> What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.
>
> >
> > So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.
>
> What on earth has that to do with anything?
>
> >
> > What we have with Richard III is opportunity,
>
> He and some others
>
> motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,
>
> That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.
>
> a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,
>
> Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.
>
> and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,
>
> "could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.
>
> most agree of the right ages
>
> Not so.
>
> and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.
>
> Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.
>
> Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.
>
> By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.
>
> >
> > However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.
>
> No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
> The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.
>
> And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.
>
> Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Just to add to this - I do recall that Ann Wroe recounts the incident in her book. For anyone who needs translation, "Sombreset" (Sir Charles Somerset, I guess), has arrived at Maximilian's court, where he is presented to Maximilian and Philip. Margaret it also present, and has the Yorkist pretender beside her. Somerset bows to Maximilian, Philip and Margaret, but ignores the pretender. Margaret is angry, and remarks:
"It seems you don't know (or recognise) my nephew Richard, since you don't deign to bow towards him".
Somerset responds "that her nephew Richard left this world long ago; and ,if he [Max] would be pleased to send over one of his men, he [Somerset] would show him the chapel where he [Richard] was buried. At this the said Richard (who, like a prince, kept his dignity) was marvelously astonished, and told him that when he was enthroned in his kingdom, as he hoped soon to be, he would not forget these words, but he [Somerset] - base liar that he was - would pay for it in agony."
Really difficult to tell from this (assuming the story is reliable) whether Henry had told Somerset to say he had the Duke of York's tomb in a chapel, or whether Somerset made this up on the spur of the moment. In any case, it doesn't match the location of the 1674 bones.

Marie

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@> wrote:
> >
> > with regards to h7 never finding the burial place of the princes, his envoy in 1495 told maximilliam the holy roman emperor that he could show him the place where richard, duke of york aka shrewsbury was interred.
> > Source ..google books:
> > Chroniques de Jean Molinet, Volume 5  By Jean Molinet
>
> Well, Molinet's not at all reliable for English events. And, if Henry did really say this, it was surely a bluff to convince Maximilian that the pretender he had been supporting was not York. In actual fact, Henry never announced any finding of the burial place, never directly accused Richard of murdering the Princes, never produced any explanation for their disappearance (unless you credit the claims of More and Vergil, in Henry VIII's reign, that HVII "gave out" that Tyrell had killed them), and was very jittery about the pretender. He also apparently turned down an offer to have Mr & Mrs Warbeck sent over to identify their son.
> Marie
>
> >
> > begin page 49
> > --- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> > Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
> > To:
> > Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 10:53 AM
> >
> >
> >  
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > >
> > > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.
> >
> > So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
> > The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
> > 1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
> > "Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
> > 2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
> > "scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
> > 3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
> > "Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
> > 4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
> > "Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."
> >
> > What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.
> >
> > >
> > > So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.
> >
> > What on earth has that to do with anything?
> >
> > >
> > > What we have with Richard III is opportunity,
> >
> > He and some others
> >
> > motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,
> >
> > That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.
> >
> > a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,
> >
> > Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.
> >
> > and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,
> >
> > "could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.
> >
> > most agree of the right ages
> >
> > Not so.
> >
> > and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.
> >
> > Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.
> >
> > Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.
> >
> > By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.
> >
> > >
> > > However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.
> >
> > No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
> > The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.
> >
> > And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.
> >
> > Marie
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

Marie,

Thank you so much for your thorough research. After all this time it's
difficult to separate propaganda from "fact"--in quotes, because so much
time has passed by, that it's hard to know what is fact. However, based
on Henry's subsequent actions against the man who claimed to be RoY who
Henry dubbed Perkin Warbeck, it does seem that Henry wasn't convinced
that this man could not have been Richard, which says to me that he
thought that at least Richard could have been alive at that time.

More interesting to me is while Henry held "Perkin", Henry's queen never
saw "Perkin" close up, but always in public and from a distance. IMO,
Henry had Elizabeth between a rock and a hard place. Should she confirm
that Perkin was her long lost brother, she'd cease being queen and would
in all likelihood have condemned her children to a life in prison only
to be executed once they became adults. Yet, if he was her brother, how
could she betray him?

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , mariewalsh2003
<no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> Just to add to this - I do recall that Ann Wroe recounts the incident
in her book. For anyone who needs translation, "Sombreset" (Sir Charles
Somerset, I guess), has arrived at Maximilian's court, where he is
presented to Maximilian and Philip. Margaret it also present, and has
the Yorkist pretender beside her. Somerset bows to Maximilian, Philip
and Margaret, but ignores the pretender. Margaret is angry, and remarks:
> "It seems you don't know (or recognise) my nephew Richard, since you
don't deign to bow towards him".
> Somerset responds "that her nephew Richard left this world long ago;
and ,if he [Max] would be pleased to send over one of his men, he
[Somerset] would show him the chapel where he [Richard] was buried. At
this the said Richard (who, like a prince, kept his dignity) was
marvelously astonished, and told him that when he was enthroned in his
kingdom, as he hoped soon to be, he would not forget these words, but he
[Somerset] - base liar that he was - would pay for it in agony."
> Really difficult to tell from this (assuming the story is reliable)
whether Henry had told Somerset to say he had the Duke of York's tomb in
a chapel, or whether Somerset made this up on the spur of the moment. In
any case, it doesn't match the location of the 1674 bones.
>
> Marie
>
> --- In , mariewalsh2003
no_reply@ wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , fayre rose
<fayreroze@> wrote:
> > >
> > > with regards to h7 never finding the burial place of the princes,
his envoy in 1495 told maximilliam the holy roman emperor that he could
show him the place where richard, duke of york aka shrewsbury was
interred.
> > > Source ..google books:
> > > Chroniques de Jean Molinet, Volume 5Â Â By Jean Molinet
> >
> > Well, Molinet's not at all reliable for English events. And, if
Henry did really say this, it was surely a bluff to convince Maximilian
that the pretender he had been supporting was not York. In actual fact,
Henry never announced any finding of the burial place, never directly
accused Richard of murdering the Princes, never produced any explanation
for their disappearance (unless you credit the claims of More and
Vergil, in Henry VIII's reign, that HVII "gave out" that Tyrell had
killed them), and was very jittery about the pretender. He also
apparently turned down an offer to have Mr & Mrs Warbeck sent over to
identify their son.
> > Marie
> >
> > >
> > > begin page 49
> > > --- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 [email protected]
wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > From: mariewalsh2003 [email protected]
> > > Subject: Re: The execution of
Hastings, Rivers and Grey
> > > To:
> > > Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 10:53 AM
> > >
> > >
> > > Â
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --- In , "vermeertwo"
<hi.dung@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin
was found.
> > >
> > > So one has to have been physically present at an historical event
in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no
history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
> > > The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't
it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the
finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
> > > 1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St
Katharine's Hospital:
> > > "Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in
the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother
murdered 1483. ..."
> > > 2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued
in February 1675:
> > > "scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae
nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis
sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
> > > 3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
> > > "Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from
the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found
the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
> > > 4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of
England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
> > > "Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation
from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole
scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the
Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings:
DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel
in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of
two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."
> > >
> > > What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that
they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the
art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to
have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre
of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe
in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need
to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even
experts should be treated with scepticism.
> > >
> > > What on earth has that to do with anything?
> > >
> > > >
> > > > What we have with Richard III is opportunity,
> > >
> > > He and some others
> > >
> > > motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,
> > >
> > > That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in
his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his
death.
> > >
> > > a certain track record of the execution of possible threats:
Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,
> > >
> > > Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely
restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It
simply doesn't follow.
> > >
> > > and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,
> > >
> > > "could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear
that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place
inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.
> > >
> > > most agree of the right ages
> > >
> > > Not so.
> > >
> > > and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry
their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were
no longer relevant, implying they were no more.
> > >
> > > Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic.
Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no
credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it
would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies
spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he
couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know
that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with
Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth
marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.
> > >
> > > Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the
least.
> > >
> > > By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are
hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for
the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of
small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and
we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop
Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you
want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records
of government business.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or
that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis
that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and
can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute
knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green
mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's
possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the
Tower,' but I can't prove it.
> > >
> > > No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what
green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must
be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green
mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting
as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business
suggesting it as a theory.
> > > The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having
been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up
in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.
> > >
> > > And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all
and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes,
there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into
the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as
part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII
never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could
have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones
wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.
> > >
> > > Marie
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

i have not fully researched molinet. perhaps you can list chroniclers/writers who were contemporary with r3 and h7, in particular the foreign ones who were incredibly accurate with the events in england during the time period in discussion.
 
for what it is worth this is my translation of molinet record regarding the 1495 resting place of richard of shrewsbury, duke of york.
 
you don't know where my nephew, richard lies like an immortal peacock. i can lead you directly to the chapel where he is buried. without a word of a lie..
 
molinet's version.
il semble que ne congnoissez mon nepveu richard, quand ne vous daignez incliner; et celuy respondit que richard, son nepveu, estoit piccha trespasse de ce monde; et que s'il luy plaisoit deputer quelque ung de ses gens, il le meneroit droict a la chapelle ou il estoit inhume.
 
i believe the uncle of richard, who spoke to maximillian to be jasper tudor. he was married to catherine woodville, maternal aunt to the princes in 1495.  catherine was the widow of buckingham. she fled with him to herefordshire and was captured. as it appears buckingham is the most viable candidate for the death of the princes, catherine may have well have known the truth about how the boys died and where their bodies were. she could have directed jasper and h7 to their resting place.
 
as to why h7 did not bring the warbeck's to england to identify their son? h7 was king. why should he entertain commoners to support what he believed to be true, i.e. warbeck was a well trained imposter who bore a strong resemblence to the former e4. it is postulated that warbeck may even be one of e4's illegitimate children.
 
the tudor accusation that tyrell killed the princes did not surface until after h7's eldest son arthur died. tudor needed to lay to rest the rumours that one of e4's sons survived. h7 only had one son, h8, left to inherit the throne. there is no actual record of the tyrrell confession.
 
interesting arthur waite/plantagenet also surfaces the same year as the tyrrell confession. 1502 was a busy year in england for laying rumours to rest and fortifying the tudor's hold on the crown. molinet wrote about the gravesite 7 years prior to this date.
 
in 1495 tudor needed only to impress those monarch's he wanted to impress. arthur was married to katherine of aragon in 1499, but had been betrothed to her since 1488. the issue of "proving" there would be no more pretenders did not become vitally important until after the death of arthur, and prior to an acceptable alliance that would be provided by the betrothal of katherine to h8.
 
roslyn


--- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:


From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
To:
Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 5:55 PM


 





--- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@...> wrote:
>
> with regards to h7 never finding the burial place of the princes, his envoy in 1495 told maximilliam the holy roman emperor that he could show him the place where richard, duke of york aka shrewsbury was interred.
> Source ..google books:
> Chroniques de Jean Molinet, Volume 5  By Jean Molinet

Well, Molinet's not at all reliable for English events. And, if Henry did really say this, it was surely a bluff to convince Maximilian that the pretender he had been supporting was not York. In actual fact, Henry never announced any finding of the burial place, never directly accused Richard of murdering the Princes, never produced any explanation for their disappearance (unless you credit the claims of More and Vergil, in Henry VIII's reign, that HVII "gave out" that Tyrell had killed them), and was very jittery about the pretender. He also apparently turned down an offer to have Mr & Mrs Warbeck sent over to identify their son.
Marie

>
> begin page 49
> --- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
> To:
> Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 10:53 AM
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >
> > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.
>
> So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
> The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
> 1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
> "Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
> 2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
> "scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
> 3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
> "Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
> 4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
> "Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."
>
> What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.
>
> >
> > So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.
>
> What on earth has that to do with anything?
>
> >
> > What we have with Richard III is opportunity,
>
> He and some others
>
> motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,
>
> That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.
>
> a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,
>
> Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.
>
> and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,
>
> "could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.
>
> most agree of the right ages
>
> Not so.
>
> and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.
>
> Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.
>
> Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.
>
> By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.
>
> >
> > However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.
>
> No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
> The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.
>
> And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.
>
> Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

brother in laws, jasper tudor and george grey met with maximillion in 1492. grey was married to anne woodville until her death in 1489. jasper tudor was "owed" a lot by margaret beaufort daughter of john beaufort, duke of somerset.
 
h7 tried to resurrect the somerset title with his son, edmund born in 1499 and who died young. given that h7 attempted the somerset title with edmund it is therefore possible that h7 and his mother, heir to the house of lancaster/beaufort could have unofficially passed the title on to jasper. jasper was essentially the saviour of the house of beaufort/tudor.
 
charles beaufort and then later became known as somerset was an illegit son of henry beaufort a cousin of margaret's. somerset does not appear to really have been a tudor player until several years after his marriage to elizabeth herbert in 1490. it was not until 1504 that he was even created lord herbert. he could not claim the pembroke title as it was only passed on to the herbert male line. charles beaufort somerset could not claim richard of shrewsbury as a nephew. jasper tudor however, could.

given that jasper died in 1495, he may have lived long enough to have encountered maximillian once again and to "discuss" his nephew via marriage.
 
i suppose the only way we can really confirm or deny mine or your suppositions is to find a source/record indicating that charles or jasper did go to maximillian in 1495. and it maybe that molinet got his years mixed up too. or the transcriber/translator read a 2 as a 5.
 
i do know that for years "experts" and academics have been trying to determine exactly who sombreset is/was.
 
roslyn
 

--- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:


From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
To:
Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 6:58 PM


 



Just to add to this - I do recall that Ann Wroe recounts the incident in her book. For anyone who needs translation, "Sombreset" (Sir Charles Somerset, I guess), has arrived at Maximilian's court, where he is presented to Maximilian and Philip. Margaret it also present, and has the Yorkist pretender beside her. Somerset bows to Maximilian, Philip and Margaret, but ignores the pretender. Margaret is angry, and remarks:
"It seems you don't know (or recognise) my nephew Richard, since you don't deign to bow towards him".
Somerset responds "that her nephew Richard left this world long ago; and ,if he [Max] would be pleased to send over one of his men, he [Somerset] would show him the chapel where he [Richard] was buried. At this the said Richard (who, like a prince, kept his dignity) was marvelously astonished, and told him that when he was enthroned in his kingdom, as he hoped soon to be, he would not forget these words, but he [Somerset] - base liar that he was - would pay for it in agony."
Really difficult to tell from this (assuming the story is reliable) whether Henry had told Somerset to say he had the Duke of York's tomb in a chapel, or whether Somerset made this up on the spur of the moment. In any case, it doesn't match the location of the 1674 bones.

Marie

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@> wrote:
> >
> > with regards to h7 never finding the burial place of the princes, his envoy in 1495 told maximilliam the holy roman emperor that he could show him the place where richard, duke of york aka shrewsbury was interred.
> > Source ..google books:
> > Chroniques de Jean Molinet, Volume 5  By Jean Molinet
>
> Well, Molinet's not at all reliable for English events. And, if Henry did really say this, it was surely a bluff to convince Maximilian that the pretender he had been supporting was not York. In actual fact, Henry never announced any finding of the burial place, never directly accused Richard of murdering the Princes, never produced any explanation for their disappearance (unless you credit the claims of More and Vergil, in Henry VIII's reign, that HVII "gave out" that Tyrell had killed them), and was very jittery about the pretender. He also apparently turned down an offer to have Mr & Mrs Warbeck sent over to identify their son.
> Marie
>
> >
> > begin page 49
> > --- On Thu, 12/16/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> > Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
> > To:
> > Received: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 10:53 AM
> >
> >
> >  
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > >
> > > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.
> >
> > So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
> > The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
> > 1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
> > "Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
> > 2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
> > "scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
> > 3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
> > "Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
> > 4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
> > "Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."
> >
> > What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.
> >
> > >
> > > So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.
> >
> > What on earth has that to do with anything?
> >
> > >
> > > What we have with Richard III is opportunity,
> >
> > He and some others
> >
> > motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,
> >
> > That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.
> >
> > a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,
> >
> > Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.
> >
> > and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,
> >
> > "could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.
> >
> > most agree of the right ages
> >
> > Not so.
> >
> > and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.
> >
> > Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.
> >
> > Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.
> >
> > By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.
> >
> > >
> > > However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.
> >
> > No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
> > The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.
> >
> > And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.
> >
> > Marie
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

'So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be
able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And,
presumably, very little current affairs?'

Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?

More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.

' So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe
for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested
on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin
and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with skepticism.

What on earth has that to do with anything?'

It speaks for itself: that we should be skeptical about even the views of so called experts!

The fact that Elizabeth of York had become an issue as someone who could be worthy of marriage – according to Richard she was allegedly illegitimate - suggests that her brothers were dead. Tudor had promised to marry her in December, 1483, so why didn't Richard produce her brothers to show the futility of the planned marriage?


--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >
> > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.
>
> So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
> The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
> 1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
> "Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
> 2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
> "scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
> 3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
> "Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
> 4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
> "Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."
>
> What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.
>
>
> >
> > So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.
>
> What on earth has that to do with anything?
>
> >
> > What we have with Richard III is opportunity,
>
> He and some others
>
> motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,
>
> That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.
>
> a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,
>
> Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.
>
>
> and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,
>
> "could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.
>
>
> most agree of the right ages
>
> Not so.
>
> and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.
>
> Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.
>
>
> Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.
>
> By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.
>
>
> >
> > However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.
>
> No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
> The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.
>
> And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.
>
> Marie
>

We could try red, white and blue mice. We need a sense of humour to study history or even exist sometimes.

--- In , Sheffe <shethra77@...> wrote:
>
>      I hope it does not include the green mice, since Douglas Adams already had the white mice ruling in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It would  be too derivative.  Hedgehog rulers have not been done, though.
>
> Sheffe
>
>
> --- On Thu, 12/16/10, oregon_katy <oregon_katy@...> wrote:
>
> From: oregon_katy <oregon_katy@...>
> Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
> To:
> Date: Thursday, December 16, 2010, 11:59 AM
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
>
> >
>
> > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.
>
>
>
> Et cetera.
>
>
>
> You seem very attached to your version of events. Though not at all original, they might form the skeleton of a novel. I'll look forward to reading it.
>
>
>
> Katy
>
>
>
> (Hope it will include green mice.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

I'm awfully sorry to break the news to you, Roslyn, but your translation is fairly off the mark. What I gave in my previous post was a pretty close translation, actually. My French is very very rusty but I did used to teach it!


--- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@...> wrote:
>
> i have not fully researched molinet. perhaps you can list chroniclers/writers who were contemporary with r3 and h7, in particular the foreign ones who were incredibly accurate with the events in england during the time period in discussion.

Incredibly accurate foreign chronicles? Now you have me stumped.


>  
> for what it is worth this is my translation of molinet record regarding the 1495 resting place of richard of shrewsbury, duke of york.
>  
> you don't know where my nephew, richard lies like an immortal peacock. i can lead you directly to the chapel where he is buried. without a word of a lie..

I'm wondering where the immortal peacocks come from?


>  
> molinet's version.
> il semble que ne congnoissez mon nepveu richard, quand ne vous daignez incliner; et celuy respondit que richard, son nepveu, estoit piccha trespasse de ce monde; et que s'il luy plaisoit deputer quelque ung de ses gens, il le meneroit droict a la chapelle ou il estoit inhume.


This passage starts with direct speech from the Duchess Margaret ('Madame la Grande') - "Il semble ...incliner":
"It seems that you do not know my nephew Richard, since you do not deign to bend."

The next bit - "et celui ...monde" - means:
"and he [Sombreset, that is] replied that Richard, her nephew, had long ago departed this world..."
["son nepveu" in this context means "her nephew". Remember, French doesn't have separate words for his and her the way we do in English -you use son, sa or ses depending on the gender/ number of the thing owned, not that of the owner. Nepveu is masculine, so takes 'son'.
I belive piccha is a Flemish form of Old French pieca, meaning long ago.]

And the last bit:-
"et que ... inhume":
"... and that, if it pleased her to depute one of her people, he would lead him straight to the chapel where he was buried."
This could have been addressed to a person of either sex, but on balance I now think he was still responding to Margaret at this point, rather than addressing Maximilian.

Marie



>  
> i believe the uncle of richard, who spoke to maximillian to be jasper tudor.

The English envoy was not Richard's uncle. Molinet states that he was "l'ung des seigneurs de Sombreset [qui] fut envoye d'Engleterre a la court du roy des Romains en ambassade" (one of the lords of Sombreset [who] was sent from England on an embassy to the court of the King of the Romans). This man did not name Richard as his nephew -rather, he referred to him, when talking to Margaret, as "son nepveu" - her nephew.


>  
> as to why h7 did not bring the warbeck's to england to identify their son?


To convince others that he wasn't telling porkies.

h7 was king. why should he entertain commoners to support what he believed to be true, i.e. warbeck was a well trained imposter who bore a strong resemblence to the former e4. it is postulated that warbeck may even be one of e4's illegitimate children.

>  
> the tudor accusation that tyrell killed the princes did not surface until after h7's eldest son arthur died. tudor needed to lay to rest the rumours that one of e4's sons survived. h7 only had one son, h8, left to inherit the throne. there is no actual record of the tyrrell confession.

Granted. In fact we don't know when the rumour first surfaced since it wasn't recorded until Henry VIII's reign.


>  
> interesting arthur waite/plantagenet also surfaces the same year as the tyrrell confession. 1502 was a busy year in england for laying rumours to rest and fortifying the tudor's hold on the crown. molinet wrote about the gravesite 7 years prior to this date.

I'm sorry to have to say that I do not believe the yeoman servant referred to in Elizabeth of York's accounts as "Master Arthur" was Arthur Wayte. He is not referred to as though he was a youngsster ('Master' was not yet a courtesy title for a gentleman of immature years), and is lumped in together with mature servants. There was also a surname Arthur, and at least one genuine MA of that name at the time. Also, "Master Arhur" probably only surfaces in 1502 because that is the only year for which Elizabeth's accounts survive.

Marie

"vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote: " We could try red, white and blue
mice. We need a sense of humour to study history or even exist
sometimes. "

Sorry, I thought you were being snarky, not humorous.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> We could try red, white and blue mice. We need a sense of humour to study history or even exist sometimes.


Are red, white, and blue mice funnier than green ones? And is being humorous the original attribute you were connecting with the green mice? I thought they were cited as something imaginary and unlikely.

Plus, white mice actually do exist. I don't know how humorous they are or whether they have a sense of humor, though.

Now I am wondering about green voles.

Katy

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

.
>
[fayrerose said] 
> > you don't know where my nephew, richard lies like an immortal peacock. i can lead you directly to the chapel where he is buried. without a word of a lie..
>
> I'm wondering where the immortal peacocks come from?


Me, too. I've never heard of an immortal peacock before, nor seen one cited as an example of prodigious lying.

It's a wonderful phrase, but I think it's probably an error in translation or a misreading of someone's handwriting.

It's also the sort of thing that might be misunderstood from spoken speech, by someone who was not familiar with the slang and euphemisms of the other language and who thought that immortal peacocks just might be the epitome of prevarication in that culture.

Sort of like when the late President Kennedy gave his famous speech in Berlin, in which he attempted to say "I am a citizen of Berlin" in German, and succeeded in proclaiming that he was a jelly donut.

Katy

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> 'So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be
> able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And,
> presumably, very little current affairs?'
>
> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
>
> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.


A "reasonable depth" at that period was a lot less than the 6 ft considered reasonable now. 3ft-4ft would have been more like it. For the simple reason that digging that deep in the royal buildings in the Tower would have been a bit obvious.


>
> ' So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe
> for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested
> on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin
> and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with skepticism.
>
> What on earth has that to do with anything?'
>
> It speaks for itself: that we should be skeptical about even the views of so called experts!

I am. that is why I am subjecting them to scrutiny rather than just accepting the original appraisal at face value.


>
> The fact that Elizabeth of York had become an issue as someone who could be worthy of marriage – according to Richard she was allegedly illegitimate - suggests that her brothers were dead.

It proves there were rumours, and that a lot of people believed her brothers were dead.

Tudor had promised to marry her in December, 1483, so why didn't Richard produce her brothers to show the futility of the planned marriage?

One could argue that, if he had stowed them safely in a secluded place, the last thing he would want to do would be to bring them out again. That personally doesn't convince me but it does convince others. It is also possible that Richard, although not guilty of their murders, no longer had them. Killed by someone else, stolen away, died trying to escape. ... One may have died and the other survived; that last scenario would certainly explain the reappearance (actual or feigned) of Richard Duke of York but not Edward V.

If Richard had murdered them, why on earth did Elizabeth Woodville then give him her daughters? Why did she break with Tudor and try to bring Dorset back?

Marie






>
>
> --- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > >
> > > As I wasn't there in 1674, I don't know at what depth the coffin was found.
> >
> > So one has to have been physically present at an historical event in order to be able to comment on it? Are you then saying you know no history at all? And, presumably, very little current affairs?
> > The study of history is the study of the documentary record, isn't it? Here I quote the best documentary sources we have regarding the finding of the bones in July 1674 (my caps):-
> > 1) The description of Bluemantle Herald, who lived next door at St Katharine's Hospital:
> > "Die veneris [Friday] July 17 1674 in DIGGING SOME FOUNDATIONS in the Tower, were discovered the bodies of Edward V and his brother murdered 1483. ..."
> > 2) The inscription on the urn - the warrant for the urn was issued in February 1675:
> > "scalarum in ruderibus (scalae istae ad sacellum turris albae nuper ducebant) ALTE DEFOSSA [ie DEEPLY BURIED] indiciis certissimis sunt reperta XVII die iulli Ao. Dni. MDCLXIIII."
> > 3) The description of Charles II's chief surgeon, John Knight:
> > "Anno 1674. In DIGGING DOWN A PAIR OF STONE STAIRS leading from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the White Tower, there were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest..."
> > 4) From Sandford's Genealogical History of the Kings and Queens of England (1707), seemingly based on information from John Knight:-
> > "Upon Friday the .. day of July, Anno 1674 (take this relation from a gentleman, an eye-witness and principally concerned in the whole scrutiny,) in order to the rebuilding of the several offices in the Tower, and to clear the White Tower from all contiguous buildings: DIGGING DOWN THE STAIRS which led from the King's lodgings to the chapel in the said tower, ABOUT TEN FOOT IN THE GROUND were found the bones of two striplings in (as it seemed) a wooden chest...."
> >
> > What gives these descriptions of depth some authenticity is that they do NOT tally either with More's "metely deep", or indeed with the art of the possible. The deep burial is therefore highly unlikely to have been an invention of the gentlemen involved.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > So called expert elites believed that the earth was the centre of the universe for thousands of years and that God created the universe in 6 days ( and rested on seventh as if an omnipotent being would need to rest), but Galileo and Darwin and others proved them wrong, so even experts should be treated with scepticism.
> >
> > What on earth has that to do with anything?
> >
> > >
> > > What we have with Richard III is opportunity,
> >
> > He and some others
> >
> > motive for fear of reprisal from Edward V,
> >
> > That was a distant fear. The immediate danger was of uprisings in his favour, and these could not be prevented without announcing his death.
> >
> > a certain track record of the execution of possible threats: Hastings, Grey, Vaughan etc.,
> >
> > Every king executed adult males - Richard's record was relativvely restrained. And that didn't make them go round murdering children. It simply doesn't follow.
> >
> >
> > and bones which could've been the princes in the right place,
> >
> > "could have been" means nothing at all - it is not at all clear that they could have been. Not in the right place, actually - in a place inaccessible to anyone in the 15th century.
> >
> >
> > most agree of the right ages
> >
> > Not so.
> >
> > and the fact that Richard III in denying that he intended to marry their sister Elisabeth rather giving the game away that the princes were no longer relevant, implying they were no more.
> >
> > Could you please explain this? I am not following the logic. Richard denied the rumour because it was out there and was doing him no credit. I agree that, if he had really considered marrying Elizabeth, it would imply that her brothers were dead (and this may be why his enemies spread the rumour). And that, of course, is one very good reason why he couldn't consider marrying her. He denied it, didn't he? And we now know that in reality he was putting out feelers for a double alliance with Portugal, with himself marrying the Princess Joanna and Elizabeth marrying Manuel Duke of Beja.
> >
> >
> > Our primary sources seem to be suspicious about him to say the least.
> >
> > By primary sources you mean chronicles, I take it. These are hostile because written in Tudor times or (in the case of Mancini) for the benefit of the French and the Lancastrians in exile. A couple of small chronicles have turned up more recently which are not hostile, and we also have contemporary correspondence which is favourable (Bishop Langton's letter, and Von Poppelau's account, for instance). And if you want to know what Richard really did, there are plenty of sober records of government business.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > However, this doesn't constitute absolute proof of his guilt or that of anyone else or even of events. It's a bit like the hypothesis that green mice control the universe: we can't prove that they do and can't prove that they don't and yet people, without true absolute knowledge, will believe what they believe. Personally, I doubt if green mice control the universe, but I can't prove it and I also believe it's possible that Richard III decided to rid himself of the `bastards in the Tower,' but I can't prove it.
> >
> > No, we can't prove anything either way, and I'm not sure what green mice have to do with it. If we put forward any hypothesis, it must be evidentially based. We have no evidence for the existence of green mice (so far as I'm aware), still less for intelligent green mice acting as cosmic lords, so although it "could be" true, we have no business suggesting it as a theory.
> > The same goes for the theory of the bodies of the Princes having been slipped under a flagstone AND being identical to the bones dug up in 1674, according to those in the know deeply buried under foundations.
> >
> > And of course, the identification of the Bones isn't the be all and end all of the mystery. If they were found not to be the Princes, there is still the possibility that Richard had the bodies slipped into the Thames or taken away and murdered elsewhere (if they were buried as part of a major excavtion of foundations in the Tower, why was Henry VII never able to discover it?). Or, if they are the Princes', they could have been Buckingham's victims. Even a thorough examination of the Bones wouldn't tell us the rest of the story.
> >
> > Marie
> >
>

"vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
><snip>
> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
>
> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.

Carol responds:
"Ten feet" is a close approximation. Certainly, the depth was considerably more than the height of a man (you'd need buckets to haul out the dirt at that depth). "Metely deep" probably means about three feet, which, if I recall correctly, was the standard depth for graves in the fifteenth century. (Marie or some other knowledgeable person will correct me if I'm wrong.)

"At the foot of the stairs" and "under the foundations" are not at all the same thing.

Also, of course, since no bones were found at the foot of any staircase in the Tower, More has his anonymous and conveniently dead priest move them to some other place.

What we have is some bones of preadolescent children that were found in a place only slightly resembling the place from which More said the bones no longer were.

He also said that this version of events was only one of the stories he had heard (Vergil gives a very different one) and that he had also heard that the boys were still alive.

Unfortunately, Tanner and Wright seem to have ignored these comments by More himself and taken the story of the bones buried at the foot of the stairs at face value and interpreted their findings to match it.

More was eight years old when Richard III died and Morton, presumed to be the source of at least some of his material, was nowhere near the Tower of London when the supposed murders occurred. (More had a vivid imagination and a mischievous sense of humor, facts too seldom noted by those who wish to take his tale at face value.)

At any rate, as many people have pointed out, it would be impossible to dig a hole about ten feet deep under the foundations of a staircase without at least some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Tower knowing about it. (Even a three-foot-deep hole at the foot of the stairs would have been hard to dig silently and secretly, but a ten-foot-deep hole *under the foundations* of stairs that had to be demolished to reach that depth would have been, as Marie has already said, impossible.

Also, there was no coffin, as Marie has already indicated, only a mixture of human and animal bones, some rusty nails, and a no-longer extant piece of wood that might or might not have had anything to do with the bones. (Wonder where More's anonymous priest would have conveniently have found one or two small coffins?)

Carol, who suspects that the skeletons date from Roman times or earlier, the Iron Age being entirely probable

And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father? Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to anyone about this then......"
Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
Paul


On 26 Dec 2010, at 18:42, justcarol67 wrote:

> "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>> <snip>
>> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
>>
>> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.
>
> Carol responds:
> "Ten feet" is a close approximation. Certainly, the depth was considerably more than the height of a man (you'd need buckets to haul out the dirt at that depth). "Metely deep" probably means about three feet, which, if I recall correctly, was the standard depth for graves in the fifteenth century. (Marie or some other knowledgeable person will correct me if I'm wrong.)
>
> "At the foot of the stairs" and "under the foundations" are not at all the same thing.
>
> Also, of course, since no bones were found at the foot of any staircase in the Tower, More has his anonymous and conveniently dead priest move them to some other place.
>
> What we have is some bones of preadolescent children that were found in a place only slightly resembling the place from which More said the bones no longer were.
>
> He also said that this version of events was only one of the stories he had heard (Vergil gives a very different one) and that he had also heard that the boys were still alive.
>
> Unfortunately, Tanner and Wright seem to have ignored these comments by More himself and taken the story of the bones buried at the foot of the stairs at face value and interpreted their findings to match it.
>
> More was eight years old when Richard III died and Morton, presumed to be the source of at least some of his material, was nowhere near the Tower of London when the supposed murders occurred. (More had a vivid imagination and a mischievous sense of humor, facts too seldom noted by those who wish to take his tale at face value.)
>
> At any rate, as many people have pointed out, it would be impossible to dig a hole about ten feet deep under the foundations of a staircase without at least some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Tower knowing about it. (Even a three-foot-deep hole at the foot of the stairs would have been hard to dig silently and secretly, but a ten-foot-deep hole *under the foundations* of stairs that had to be demolished to reach that depth would have been, as Marie has already said, impossible.
>
> Also, there was no coffin, as Marie has already indicated, only a mixture of human and animal bones, some rusty nails, and a no-longer extant piece of wood that might or might not have had anything to do with the bones. (Wonder where More's anonymous priest would have conveniently have found one or two small coffins?)
>
> Carol, who suspects that the skeletons date from Roman times or earlier, the Iron Age being entirely probable
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

I guess More neglected to mention the Toga party that otherwise occupied
all the Tower residents and security. :p

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935


--- In , Paul Trevor Bale
<paul.bale@...> wrote:
>
> And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time
wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise
digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father?
Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to
anyone about this then......"
> Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
> Paul
>
>
> On 26 Dec 2010, at 18:42, justcarol67 wrote:
>
> > "vermeertwo" hi.dung@ wrote:
> >> <snip>
> >> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we
can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you
quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about'
ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th
century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
> >>
> >> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely
could mean any reasonable depth.
> >
> > Carol responds:
> > "Ten feet" is a close approximation. Certainly, the depth was
considerably more than the height of a man (you'd need buckets to haul
out the dirt at that depth). "Metely deep" probably means about three
feet, which, if I recall correctly, was the standard depth for graves in
the fifteenth century. (Marie or some other knowledgeable person will
correct me if I'm wrong.)
> >
> > "At the foot of the stairs" and "under the foundations" are not at
all the same thing.
> >
> > Also, of course, since no bones were found at the foot of any
staircase in the Tower, More has his anonymous and conveniently dead
priest move them to some other place.
> >
> > What we have is some bones of preadolescent children that were found
in a place only slightly resembling the place from which More said the
bones no longer were.
> >
> > He also said that this version of events was only one of the stories
he had heard (Vergil gives a very different one) and that he had also
heard that the boys were still alive.
> >
> > Unfortunately, Tanner and Wright seem to have ignored these comments
by More himself and taken the story of the bones buried at the foot of
the stairs at face value and interpreted their findings to match it.
> >
> > More was eight years old when Richard III died and Morton, presumed
to be the source of at least some of his material, was nowhere near the
Tower of London when the supposed murders occurred. (More had a vivid
imagination and a mischievous sense of humor, facts too seldom noted by
those who wish to take his tale at face value.)
> >
> > At any rate, as many people have pointed out, it would be impossible
to dig a hole about ten feet deep under the foundations of a staircase
without at least some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Tower
knowing about it. (Even a three-foot-deep hole at the foot of the stairs
would have been hard to dig silently and secretly, but a ten-foot-deep
hole *under the foundations* of stairs that had to be demolished to
reach that depth would have been, as Marie has already said, impossible.
> >
> > Also, there was no coffin, as Marie has already indicated, only a
mixture of human and animal bones, some rusty nails, and a no-longer
extant piece of wood that might or might not have had anything to do
with the bones. (Wonder where More's anonymous priest would have
conveniently have found one or two small coffins?)
> >
> > Carol, who suspects that the skeletons date from Roman times or
earlier, the Iron Age being entirely probable
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>

We don't know for sure that the bones were those of the princes, but it's possible anyone burying these bodies had the area cordoned off; the use of More of a priest was simply a device for More to cover the fact that he didn't know where they were buried.

--- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote:
>
> And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father? Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to anyone about this then......"
> Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
> Paul
>
>
> On 26 Dec 2010, at 18:42, justcarol67 wrote:
>
> > "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >> <snip>
> >> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
> >>
> >> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.
> >
> > Carol responds:
> > "Ten feet" is a close approximation. Certainly, the depth was considerably more than the height of a man (you'd need buckets to haul out the dirt at that depth). "Metely deep" probably means about three feet, which, if I recall correctly, was the standard depth for graves in the fifteenth century. (Marie or some other knowledgeable person will correct me if I'm wrong.)
> >
> > "At the foot of the stairs" and "under the foundations" are not at all the same thing.
> >
> > Also, of course, since no bones were found at the foot of any staircase in the Tower, More has his anonymous and conveniently dead priest move them to some other place.
> >
> > What we have is some bones of preadolescent children that were found in a place only slightly resembling the place from which More said the bones no longer were.
> >
> > He also said that this version of events was only one of the stories he had heard (Vergil gives a very different one) and that he had also heard that the boys were still alive.
> >
> > Unfortunately, Tanner and Wright seem to have ignored these comments by More himself and taken the story of the bones buried at the foot of the stairs at face value and interpreted their findings to match it.
> >
> > More was eight years old when Richard III died and Morton, presumed to be the source of at least some of his material, was nowhere near the Tower of London when the supposed murders occurred. (More had a vivid imagination and a mischievous sense of humor, facts too seldom noted by those who wish to take his tale at face value.)
> >
> > At any rate, as many people have pointed out, it would be impossible to dig a hole about ten feet deep under the foundations of a staircase without at least some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Tower knowing about it. (Even a three-foot-deep hole at the foot of the stairs would have been hard to dig silently and secretly, but a ten-foot-deep hole *under the foundations* of stairs that had to be demolished to reach that depth would have been, as Marie has already said, impossible.
> >
> > Also, there was no coffin, as Marie has already indicated, only a mixture of human and animal bones, some rusty nails, and a no-longer extant piece of wood that might or might not have had anything to do with the bones. (Wonder where More's anonymous priest would have conveniently have found one or two small coffins?)
> >
> > Carol, who suspects that the skeletons date from Roman times or earlier, the Iron Age being entirely probable
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>

--- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote:
>
> And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father? Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to anyone about this then......"
> Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
> Paul

Carol responds:

He was intelligent, all right. He invented a story and despite not publishing it and placing disclaimers throughout the book and around that story (the supposed murders in the Tower) in particular, managed to get supposedly intelligent readers to believe it hundreds of years later. But who's to say he believed his own story (secret page, Richard in the privy, and all) given that he had to alter the ending because Richard had never announced their deaths and Henry had never displayed any bodies? I think he told the most absurd version of the events possible, never expecting them to be read by anyone but himself and a few intimates.

Carol, who agrees with Paul that burial anywhere in or on the grounds of the Tower without detection was impossible

Not to mention that More gave Edward's age at death as 53 instead of 40
which he actually was. Could this have been More's code to the reader
that what followed shouldn't be taken seriously?

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "justcarol67"
<justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , Paul Trevor Bale
paul.bale@ wrote:
> >
> > And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time
wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise
digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father?
Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to
anyone about this then......"
> > Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
> > Paul
>
> Carol responds:
>
> He was intelligent, all right. He invented a story and despite not
publishing it and placing disclaimers throughout the book and around
that story (the supposed murders in the Tower) in particular, managed to
get supposedly intelligent readers to believe it hundreds of years
later. But who's to say he believed his own story (secret page, Richard
in the privy, and all) given that he had to alter the ending because
Richard had never announced their deaths and Henry had never displayed
any bodies? I think he told the most absurd version of the events
possible, never expecting them to be read by anyone but himself and a
few intimates.
>
> Carol, who agrees with Paul that burial anywhere in or on the grounds
of the Tower without detection was impossible
>

"joansr3" <u2nohoo@...> wrote:
>
> Not to mention that More gave Edward's age at death as 53 instead of 40 which he actually was. Could this have been More's code to the reader that what followed shouldn't be taken seriously?

Carol responds:

"More's code"! I love it! That's my theory (and Alison Hanham's). I think he was making fun of the edited-for-Henry works of the Tudor historians and deliberately made his Richard ridiculous, from the imaginary withered arm caused by "sorcery" to the "secret page" confiding as his master sits on the chamber pot that a courtier (whom More surely knew was already serving Richard) lay without waiting to serve him. In my view, that elaborate misstatement of Edward IV's age would have signaled Polydore Vergil and anyone else that More allowed to read it (obviously, no Tudors) that nothing in his "historie," from Richard's impossible birth (as described in the first paragraph) to the "murder" of the "Princes" was to be believed.

Of course, I appear to be in the minority here. Most people who doubt More's account place the blame for the distortions on Morton. I suspect that they began there and More took them to the point of absurdity for his own purposes.

Carol, who needs to get back to work

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:
> >
> > Not to mention that More gave Edward's age at death as 53 instead of 40 which he actually was. Could this have been More's code to the reader that what followed shouldn't be taken seriously?
>
> Carol responds:
>
> "More's code"! I love it! That's my theory (and Alison Hanham's). I think he was making fun of the edited-for-Henry works of the Tudor historians and deliberately made his Richard ridiculous, from the imaginary withered arm caused by "sorcery" to the "secret page" confiding as his master sits on the chamber pot that a courtier (whom More surely knew was already serving Richard) lay without waiting to serve him. In my view, that elaborate misstatement of Edward IV's age would have signaled Polydore Vergil and anyone else that More allowed to read it (obviously, no Tudors) that nothing in his "historie," from Richard's impossible birth (as described in the first paragraph) to the "murder" of the "Princes" was to be believed.
>
> Of course, I appear to be in the minority here. Most people who doubt More's account place the blame for the distortions on Morton. I suspect that they began there and More took them to the point of absurdity for his own purposes.
>
> Carol, who needs to get back to work




More loved puns (one of his favorites was that "more" in Latin means "fool") and hyperbole and straight-faced bantering of ever-greater exaggerations. His correspondence with Erasmus over whether a suitably spirited horse could be found for More to ride in a procession is an example I have mentioned earlier. More was a notoriously poor horseman. More also loved codes and sly references designed to be comprehended only by those in the know. I wouldn't be surprised if any or all the "discrepancies" in the Richard III tale can be attributed to those facets of his character.

Katy

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> We don't know for sure that the bones were those of the princes, but it's possible anyone burying these bodies had the area cordoned off;

What sort of a cordon did you have in mind? Nothing short of a Cloak of Invisibility and a Wall of Silence would have kept the goings on so secret that Henry VII was never able to find out about it.


the use of More of a priest was simply a device for More to cover the fact that he didn't know where they were buried.

So More didn't know where they were buried ....





>
> --- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@> wrote:
> >
> > And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father? Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to anyone about this then......"
> > Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
> > Paul
> >
> >
> > On 26 Dec 2010, at 18:42, justcarol67 wrote:
> >
> > > "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > >> <snip>
> > >> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
> > >>
> > >> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.
> > >
> > > Carol responds:
> > > "Ten feet" is a close approximation. Certainly, the depth was considerably more than the height of a man (you'd need buckets to haul out the dirt at that depth). "Metely deep" probably means about three feet, which, if I recall correctly, was the standard depth for graves in the fifteenth century. (Marie or some other knowledgeable person will correct me if I'm wrong.)
> > >
> > > "At the foot of the stairs" and "under the foundations" are not at all the same thing.
> > >
> > > Also, of course, since no bones were found at the foot of any staircase in the Tower, More has his anonymous and conveniently dead priest move them to some other place.
> > >
> > > What we have is some bones of preadolescent children that were found in a place only slightly resembling the place from which More said the bones no longer were.
> > >
> > > He also said that this version of events was only one of the stories he had heard (Vergil gives a very different one) and that he had also heard that the boys were still alive.
> > >
> > > Unfortunately, Tanner and Wright seem to have ignored these comments by More himself and taken the story of the bones buried at the foot of the stairs at face value and interpreted their findings to match it.
> > >
> > > More was eight years old when Richard III died and Morton, presumed to be the source of at least some of his material, was nowhere near the Tower of London when the supposed murders occurred. (More had a vivid imagination and a mischievous sense of humor, facts too seldom noted by those who wish to take his tale at face value.)
> > >
> > > At any rate, as many people have pointed out, it would be impossible to dig a hole about ten feet deep under the foundations of a staircase without at least some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Tower knowing about it. (Even a three-foot-deep hole at the foot of the stairs would have been hard to dig silently and secretly, but a ten-foot-deep hole *under the foundations* of stairs that had to be demolished to reach that depth would have been, as Marie has already said, impossible.
> > >
> > > Also, there was no coffin, as Marie has already indicated, only a mixture of human and animal bones, some rusty nails, and a no-longer extant piece of wood that might or might not have had anything to do with the bones. (Wonder where More's anonymous priest would have conveniently have found one or two small coffins?)
> > >
> > > Carol, who suspects that the skeletons date from Roman times or earlier, the Iron Age being entirely probable
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------
> > >
> > > Yahoo! Groups Links
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

I'm not stating for sure that the princes were murdered and their bones found in 1674: we can't be certain, but it's possible that this was arranged at an appropriate time and with the command and control of someone devious such as Buckingham. The Tower at that time was a military stronghold and had been used as a royal palace and shouldn't be confused with the Tower as it is with jolly beefeaters and visitors feeding ravens. There were certainly quite a few contemporary rumours flying around: Mancini, Croyland and various chronicles which suggest the princes were bumped off at that time. Murderers don't usually give details of their crime. Hastings had of course been disposed of in the same place in the same year.

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >
> > We don't know for sure that the bones were those of the princes, but it's possible anyone burying these bodies had the area cordoned off;
>
> What sort of a cordon did you have in mind? Nothing short of a Cloak of Invisibility and a Wall of Silence would have kept the goings on so secret that Henry VII was never able to find out about it.
>
>
> the use of More of a priest was simply a device for More to cover the fact that he didn't know where they were buried.
>
> So More didn't know where they were buried ....
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> > --- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@> wrote:
> > >
> > > And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father? Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to anyone about this then......"
> > > Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
> > > Paul
> > >
> > >
> > > On 26 Dec 2010, at 18:42, justcarol67 wrote:
> > >
> > > > "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > > >> <snip>
> > > >> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
> > > >>
> > > >> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.
> > > >
> > > > Carol responds:
> > > > "Ten feet" is a close approximation. Certainly, the depth was considerably more than the height of a man (you'd need buckets to haul out the dirt at that depth). "Metely deep" probably means about three feet, which, if I recall correctly, was the standard depth for graves in the fifteenth century. (Marie or some other knowledgeable person will correct me if I'm wrong.)
> > > >
> > > > "At the foot of the stairs" and "under the foundations" are not at all the same thing.
> > > >
> > > > Also, of course, since no bones were found at the foot of any staircase in the Tower, More has his anonymous and conveniently dead priest move them to some other place.
> > > >
> > > > What we have is some bones of preadolescent children that were found in a place only slightly resembling the place from which More said the bones no longer were.
> > > >
> > > > He also said that this version of events was only one of the stories he had heard (Vergil gives a very different one) and that he had also heard that the boys were still alive.
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately, Tanner and Wright seem to have ignored these comments by More himself and taken the story of the bones buried at the foot of the stairs at face value and interpreted their findings to match it.
> > > >
> > > > More was eight years old when Richard III died and Morton, presumed to be the source of at least some of his material, was nowhere near the Tower of London when the supposed murders occurred. (More had a vivid imagination and a mischievous sense of humor, facts too seldom noted by those who wish to take his tale at face value.)
> > > >
> > > > At any rate, as many people have pointed out, it would be impossible to dig a hole about ten feet deep under the foundations of a staircase without at least some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Tower knowing about it. (Even a three-foot-deep hole at the foot of the stairs would have been hard to dig silently and secretly, but a ten-foot-deep hole *under the foundations* of stairs that had to be demolished to reach that depth would have been, as Marie has already said, impossible.
> > > >
> > > > Also, there was no coffin, as Marie has already indicated, only a mixture of human and animal bones, some rusty nails, and a no-longer extant piece of wood that might or might not have had anything to do with the bones. (Wonder where More's anonymous priest would have conveniently have found one or two small coffins?)
> > > >
> > > > Carol, who suspects that the skeletons date from Roman times or earlier, the Iron Age being entirely probable
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------
> > > >
> > > > Yahoo! Groups Links
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>

It is not necessarily true, or even likely on the balance of probability, that either or both "princes" were murdered. The bones could well pertain to commoners, older or younger people, females, other species or other than two individuals - they haven't been examined except by two "scientists" who wrote their conclusions first and did the examinations afterwards.

----- Original Message -----
From: vermeertwo
To:
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 3:40 PM
Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey



I'm not stating for sure that the princes were murdered and their bones found in 1674: we can't be certain, but it's possible that this was arranged at an appropriate time and with the command and control of someone devious such as Buckingham. The Tower at that time was a military stronghold and had been used as a royal palace and shouldn't be confused with the Tower as it is with jolly beefeaters and visitors feeding ravens. There were certainly quite a few contemporary rumours flying around: Mancini, Croyland and various chronicles which suggest the princes were bumped off at that time. Murderers don't usually give details of their crime. Hastings had of course been disposed of in the same place in the same year.

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> >
> > We don't know for sure that the bones were those of the princes, but it's possible anyone burying these bodies had the area cordoned off;
>
> What sort of a cordon did you have in mind? Nothing short of a Cloak of Invisibility and a Wall of Silence would have kept the goings on so secret that Henry VII was never able to find out about it.
>
>
> the use of More of a priest was simply a device for More to cover the fact that he didn't know where they were buried.
>
> So More didn't know where they were buried ....
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> > --- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@> wrote:
> > >
> > > And none of the few hundred people living in the Tower at the time wandered over to ask what the priest was doing making so much noise digging at that time of night, and why? "Whose bodies are they father? Look like the sons of King Edward to me! Best nobody say anything to anyone about this then......"
> > > Right. And some call More intelligent!!!
> > > Paul
> > >
> > >
> > > On 26 Dec 2010, at 18:42, justcarol67 wrote:
> > >
> > > > "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@> wrote:
> > > >> <snip>
> > > >> Obviously, given the fact that I've already commented upon it, we can comment, but regarding the location of the coffin the sources you quote usually don't state the depth of the coffin and one states `about' ten feet deep, which is an approximation. What on earth would stop 15th century murderers or burial diggers from digging down ten feet?
> > > >>
> > > >> More's "metely deep" is another example of inexactitude: metely could mean any reasonable depth.
> > > >
> > > > Carol responds:
> > > > "Ten feet" is a close approximation. Certainly, the depth was considerably more than the height of a man (you'd need buckets to haul out the dirt at that depth). "Metely deep" probably means about three feet, which, if I recall correctly, was the standard depth for graves in the fifteenth century. (Marie or some other knowledgeable person will correct me if I'm wrong.)
> > > >
> > > > "At the foot of the stairs" and "under the foundations" are not at all the same thing.
> > > >
> > > > Also, of course, since no bones were found at the foot of any staircase in the Tower, More has his anonymous and conveniently dead priest move them to some other place.
> > > >
> > > > What we have is some bones of preadolescent children that were found in a place only slightly resembling the place from which More said the bones no longer were.
> > > >
> > > > He also said that this version of events was only one of the stories he had heard (Vergil gives a very different one) and that he had also heard that the boys were still alive.
> > > >
> > > > Unfortunately, Tanner and Wright seem to have ignored these comments by More himself and taken the story of the bones buried at the foot of the stairs at face value and interpreted their findings to match it.
> > > >
> > > > More was eight years old when Richard III died and Morton, presumed to be the source of at least some of his material, was nowhere near the Tower of London when the supposed murders occurred. (More had a vivid imagination and a mischievous sense of humor, facts too seldom noted by those who wish to take his tale at face value.)
> > > >
> > > > At any rate, as many people have pointed out, it would be impossible to dig a hole about ten feet deep under the foundations of a staircase without at least some of the hundreds of people who lived in the Tower knowing about it. (Even a three-foot-deep hole at the foot of the stairs would have been hard to dig silently and secretly, but a ten-foot-deep hole *under the foundations* of stairs that had to be demolished to reach that depth would have been, as Marie has already said, impossible.
> > > >
> > > > Also, there was no coffin, as Marie has already indicated, only a mixture of human and animal bones, some rusty nails, and a no-longer extant piece of wood that might or might not have had anything to do with the bones. (Wonder where More's anonymous priest would have conveniently have found one or two small coffins?)
> > > >
> > > > Carol, who suspects that the skeletons date from Roman times or earlier, the Iron Age being entirely probable
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------
> > > >
> > > > Yahoo! Groups Links
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not stating for sure that the princes were murdered and their bones found in 1674: we can't be certain, but it's possible that this was arranged at an appropriate time and with the command and control of someone devious such as Buckingham. The Tower at that time was a military stronghold and had been used as a royal palace and shouldn't be confused with the Tower as it is with jolly beefeaters and visitors feeding ravens. There were certainly quite a few contemporary rumours flying around: Mancini, Croyland and various chronicles which suggest the princes were bumped off at that time. Murderers don't usually give details of their crime. Hastings had of course been disposed of in the same place in the same year.

Carol responds:

However, the death of Hastings was a political execution by order of the Constable of England, who also happened to be Lord Protector, and it was not secret. Admittedly, there was some confusion, apparently including fears for both the Protector and the boy king, but Richard quieted those fears by announcing, if I recall correctly, that Hastings had been executed for conspiring against him and life went back to normal.

No one assumed that after "murdering" Hastings Richard then planned to murder the young king and his brother. Nor did Edward V's deposition necessarily mean his death. Those rumors occurred later. The Croyland chronicler does *not* suggest that the princes were "bumped off." He mentions that they were in the Tower when Richard was on progress and states that "a rumor was spread" (he does not say by whom) to redirect the rebellion to restore Edward V into a rebellion in support of Henry Tudor. Mancini had left England when the rumors began to surface and his informants were hostile to Richard, either supporters of Edward V (Argentine) or supporters of Henry Tudor. The various chronicles were composed in Tudor times; none of the writers knew what had actually happened, but they knew what Henry Tudor (whose claim was shaky and who killed off several Yorkist heirs) wanted to hear.

One problem is that events occurred so quickly that it was hard to tell what was really happening, not to mention that we don't have Richard's side of the story because his followers were killed or forced into exile after Bosworth (and Stoke), and Henry seems to have destroyed a number of documents as he tried to do with Titulus Regius. (We see the altering of a document by Rous, which would not have happened had Richard survived.) Another problem is after-the-fact assumptions by Mancini and others that distort the order of events (as explained by Paul Murray Kendall, Annette Carson, and others). From that perspective, it looks as if Richard planned his "usurpation" (a mistranslation of Mancini's "Occupatione") from the time of Edward IV's death and therefore he "must" have ordered his nephews' execution. These sources should always be read with an eye to the bias or other failings of the sources (Mancini didn't know English, for example, and mistakenly assumed that Richard's estates were in Gloucester; he is obviously reporting through third parties like Argentine--and writing *for* a hostile audience eager to hear the worst of an English king perceived as an enemy to France, as well). The Croyland chronicler is also hostile to Richard though closer to events and generally better informed, at least for the short months of the Protectorate, but his account of Bosworth and the victory of Henry Tudor is extremely distorted. He is clearly writing after the fact in Tudor times. And yet even he never accuses Richard or anyone else of having killed Edward IV's sons; he merely reports a conveniently timed rumor of their deaths (which none of the rebels was in a position to confirm--unless, of course, you're right that Buckingham did it, and he wasn't about to admit his own guilt). Nor does Mancini accuse Richard directly. He merely states that he has heard rumors that the older boy, Edward (not his brother) was "done away with" (which may be a mistranslation) and that he has no idea at all whether that rumor is true.

In short, we have no reliable sources for what happened to the so-called princes, only bits and pieces of conflicting rumors. There is no evidence, either, that Francis Bacon is right that Henry Tudor publicly "gave out" that Sir James Tyrrell (executed for supporting another Yorkist heir and Ricardian nephew, Edmund de la Pole) killed the boys on Richard's orders. He seems to have made the suggestion to Polydore Vergil, his official historian, who has Tyrrell riding sorrowfully to London to commit the deed. More takes the story from there, omitting both the sorrow and Tyrrell's direct participation, and turns it into a melodrama along the lines of the Babes in the Woods.

Carol, who thinks that it's high time for a new and more accurate translation of Mancini

--- In , "vermeertwo" <hi.dung@...> wrote:
>
> I'm not stating for sure that the princes were murdered and their bones found in 1674: we can't be certain, but it's possible that this was arranged at an appropriate time and with the command and control of someone devious such as Buckingham. The Tower at that time was a military stronghold and had been used as a royal palace and shouldn't be confused with the Tower as it is with jolly beefeaters and visitors feeding ravens.



Do keep in mind that "the Tower" is not a specific term. There is the Tower of London, which is the whole enchilada -- a large walled complex containing a number of other structures, some also called towers. Among these is the White Tower, the original, much-remodeled keep that dates back to the first years of the reign of William I and possibly incorporates still older construction. The number and purpose and name of the towers within the walls has varied over the centuries.

There are some fascinating and very informative books about the Tower of London, and others that focus upon the White Tower.

Katy

Since I think that a pun is a terrible thing to waste, I added More's
Code <http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/2010/12/mores-code.html> to my blog.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "oregon_katy"
<oregon_katy@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "vermeertwo" hi.dung@
wrote:
> >
> > I'm not stating for sure that the princes were murdered and their
bones found in 1674: we can't be certain, but it's possible that this
was arranged at an appropriate time and with the command and control of
someone devious such as Buckingham. The Tower at that time was a
military stronghold and had been used as a royal palace and shouldn't be
confused with the Tower as it is with jolly beefeaters and visitors
feeding ravens.
>
>
>
> Do keep in mind that "the Tower" is not a specific term. There is the
Tower of London, which is the whole enchilada -- a large walled complex
containing a number of other structures, some also called towers. Among
these is the White Tower, the original, much-remodeled keep that dates
back to the first years of the reign of William I and possibly
incorporates still older construction. The number and purpose and name
of the towers within the walls has varied over the centuries.
>
> There are some fascinating and very informative books about the Tower
of London, and others that focus upon the White Tower.
>
> Katy
>

--- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@...> wrote:
>
> Since I think that a pun is a terrible thing to waste, I added More's
> Code <http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/2010/12/mores-code.html> to my blog.
>
> Joan


I'm sure More would approve. He and Erasmus both loved puns.

Katy

........ and it's a posthumous pun. Even if more had died of natural causes at an advanced age, Morse wouldn't have been born by then;)

----- Original Message -----
From: oregon_katy
To:
Sent: Friday, December 31, 2010 4:11 AM
Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey





--- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@...> wrote:
>
> Since I think that a pun is a terrible thing to waste, I added More's
> Code <http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/2010/12/mores-code.html> to my blog.
>
> Joan

I'm sure More would approve. He and Erasmus both loved puns.

Katy

True. I used it as a pun because it was too delicious for me to pass up.
However, my point that More used the incorrect age at the very beginning
of his work was perhaps a signal to the reader that the work was a
satire.

Joan
---
author of This Time, a novel about Richard III in the 21st-century
2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards General Fiction Finalist
website: http://www.joanszechtman.com/
blog: http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/
ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3935

--- In , "Stephen Lark"
<stephenmlark@...> wrote:
>
> ........ and it's a posthumous pun. Even if more had died of natural
causes at an advanced age, Morse wouldn't have been born by then;)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: oregon_katy
> To:
> Sent: Friday, December 31, 2010 4:11 AM
> Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings,
Rivers and Grey
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "joansr3" u2nohoo@
wrote:
> >
> > Since I think that a pun is a terrible thing to waste, I added
More's
> > Code <http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/2010/12/mores-code.html> to my
blog.
> >
> > Joan
>
> I'm sure More would approve. He and Erasmus both loved puns.
>
> Katy
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Thomas More's account of Richard III isn't something to be taken seriously; he was not only a satirist, but this account seems to have been an early draft and he never published the story: perhaps he gave it up as a bad job. Hence, the many mistakes: the age of Edward IV when he died, and the vague stories about the demise of the princes.

Maybe we will never know what happened to them.


--- In , "Stephen Lark" <stephenmlark@...> wrote:
>
> ........ and it's a posthumous pun. Even if more had died of natural causes at an advanced age, Morse wouldn't have been born by then;)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: oregon_katy
> To:
> Sent: Friday, December 31, 2010 4:11 AM
> Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In , "joansr3" <u2nohoo@> wrote:
> >
> > Since I think that a pun is a terrible thing to waste, I added More's
> > Code <http://rtoaaa.blogspot.com/2010/12/mores-code.html> to my blog.
> >
> > Joan
>
> I'm sure More would approve. He and Erasmus both loved puns.
>
> Katy
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

well marie you must have access to materials i do not have access too. i.e. olde flemish writings.
 
this is the first time i have seen pieca as being a possible definition for piccha. the definition for piccha i obtained from a native italian speaker whose father is a history prof in that country. i asked for assistance from an italian because i thought molinet had possibly used a latin word. i did this AFTER i had also scourred latin dictionaries.
 
i will concur that the flemish pieca does appear more applicable.
 
piccha trespasse de ce monde...via my translation was "peacock not of this world", ergo
immortal peacock. i do humbly beg your forgiveness for using some creative thinking. very bad of me..right..or is that wrong too? after all my posting did offer you the opportunity to jump in and correct me 
 
and with regard to the following statements... 
me/ i have not fully researched molinet. perhaps you can list chroniclers/writers who were contemporary with r3 and h7, in particular the foreign ones who were incredibly accurate with the events in england during the time period in discussion.

marie/  Incredibly accurate foreign chronicles? Now you have me stumped.
.....
well marie..i knew i had you stumped because there ain't no such animal is there? but it did provide you with the opportunity to take YET another shot at me. in other words implying i was so god awfully stupid and ill informed that i wouldn't or couldn't know that there ARE NO perfectly or incredibly accurate foreign chronicles..and for that matter english ones either.
 
have you a good reason for not replying that accurate chronicles in the 15th and 16thC exist only in one's wishes or imagination? or were you really stumped?
 
in conclusion marie...you are definitely a fountain of information. you are articulate and most often concise. your info is sincerely appreciated. but i absolutely do not appreciate the condescension and attempts to portray my research as feckless. you and i do not agree on the fate of the princes. you believe in perkin warbeck, i believe the boys died because of buckingham and associates.
 
and while i am on a roll. joan you have been playing the same game as marie. i wrote from the top of my head advising you that a scarecrow was not something typically used in the medieval era because of religious and supersitious beliefs. marie popped up basically the same info. marie was wonderful...meanwhile, i was high handedly dismissed as being incorrect and worthless.
 
and for what it is worth..cecille would most likely be the spelling used in the era you are writing in. this is because Y was often used to demonstrate the soft sound of the letter i.
 
roslyn - wishing all a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2011

--- On Fri, 12/17/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:


From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
To:
Received: Friday, December 17, 2010, 11:27 AM


 




I'm awfully sorry to break the news to you, Roslyn, but your translation is fairly off the mark. What I gave in my previous post was a pretty close translation, actually. My French is very very rusty but I did used to teach it!

--- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@...> wrote:
>
> i have not fully researched molinet. perhaps you can list chroniclers/writers who were contemporary with r3 and h7, in particular the foreign ones who were incredibly accurate with the events in england during the time period in discussion.

Incredibly accurate foreign chronicles? Now you have me stumped.

>  
> for what it is worth this is my translation of molinet record regarding the 1495 resting place of richard of shrewsbury, duke of york.
>  
> you don't know where my nephew, richard lies like an immortal peacock. i can lead you directly to the chapel where he is buried. without a word of a lie..

I'm wondering where the immortal peacocks come from?


>  
> molinet's version.
> il semble que ne congnoissez mon nepveu richard, quand ne vous daignez incliner; et celuy respondit que richard, son nepveu, estoit piccha trespasse de ce monde; et que s'il luy plaisoit deputer quelque ung de ses gens, il le meneroit droict a la chapelle ou il estoit inhume.

This passage starts with direct speech from the Duchess Margaret ('Madame la Grande') - "Il semble ...incliner":
"It seems that you do not know my nephew Richard, since you do not deign to bend."

The next bit - "et celui ...monde" - means:
"and he [Sombreset, that is] replied that Richard, her nephew, had long ago departed this world..."
["son nepveu" in this context means "her nephew". Remember, French doesn't have separate words for his and her the way we do in English -you use son, sa or ses depending on the gender/ number of the thing owned, not that of the owner. Nepveu is masculine, so takes 'son'.
I belive piccha is a Flemish form of Old French pieca, meaning long ago.]

And the last bit:-
"et que ... inhume":
"... and that, if it pleased her to depute one of her people, he would lead him straight to the chapel where he was buried."
This could have been addressed to a person of either sex, but on balance I now think he was still responding to Margaret at this point, rather than addressing Maximilian.

Marie

>  
> i believe the uncle of richard, who spoke to maximillian to be jasper tudor.

The English envoy was not Richard's uncle. Molinet states that he was "l'ung des seigneurs de Sombreset [qui] fut envoye d'Engleterre a la court du roy des Romains en ambassade" (one of the lords of Sombreset [who] was sent from England on an embassy to the court of the King of the Romans). This man did not name Richard as his nephew -rather, he referred to him, when talking to Margaret, as "son nepveu" - her nephew.

>  
> as to why h7 did not bring the warbeck's to england to identify their son?

To convince others that he wasn't telling porkies.

h7 was king. why should he entertain commoners to support what he believed to be true, i.e. warbeck was a well trained imposter who bore a strong resemblence to the former e4. it is postulated that warbeck may even be one of e4's illegitimate children.

>  
> the tudor accusation that tyrell killed the princes did not surface until after h7's eldest son arthur died. tudor needed to lay to rest the rumours that one of e4's sons survived. h7 only had one son, h8, left to inherit the throne. there is no actual record of the tyrrell confession.

Granted. In fact we don't know when the rumour first surfaced since it wasn't recorded until Henry VIII's reign.

>  
> interesting arthur waite/plantagenet also surfaces the same year as the tyrrell confession. 1502 was a busy year in england for laying rumours to rest and fortifying the tudor's hold on the crown. molinet wrote about the gravesite 7 years prior to this date.

I'm sorry to have to say that I do not believe the yeoman servant referred to in Elizabeth of York's accounts as "Master Arthur" was Arthur Wayte. He is not referred to as though he was a youngsster ('Master' was not yet a courtesy title for a gentleman of immature years), and is lumped in together with mature servants. There was also a surname Arthur, and at least one genuine MA of that name at the time. Also, "Master Arhur" probably only surfaces in 1502 because that is the only year for which Elizabeth's accounts survive.

Marie

--- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> well marie you must have access to materials i do not have access too. i.e. olde flemish writings.
>  
> this is the first time i have seen pieca as being a possible definition for piccha. the definition for piccha i obtained from a native italian speaker whose father is a history prof in that country. i asked for assistance from an italian because i thought molinet had possibly used a latin word. i did this AFTER i had also scourred latin dictionaries.
>  
> i will concur that the flemish pieca does appear more applicable.
>  
> piccha trespasse de ce monde...via my translation was "peacock not of this world", ergo
> immortal peacock. i do humbly beg your forgiveness for using some creative thinking. very bad of me..right..or is that wrong too? after all my posting did offer you the opportunity to jump in and correct me 

Roslyn please chill; I had already given a translation, if you recall, and you were 'correcting' me; if I was at all condescending, that was why. I've no problem with having my mistakes corrected - I do make mistakes - but you admit yourself that your translation was highly creative because you were stuck on some of the vocabulary. It does matter to me that we don't propagate new misleading myths.

Anyway, this is from Hilaire Van Daele's Petit Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Francais (pieca has cedilla, by the by):-
"Pieca, dial. piecha, litt. 'il y a du longtemps', adv. 'il ya a longtemps' ....." (p. 352). I've got an idea Molinet uses the word quite a bit, but I'd need to check.
Using ch instead of s was typical of the French-speaking Flemish area - franchois, for instance. In this case I suspect the editor misread 'piecha' as 'piccha'
By the way, the French for peacock is paon.

Trepasse (sorry about lack of accents) is pretty similar in meaning to deceased or departed in English.

As for the item below - I answered your question, which I thought all along was not seriously meant. I think my views on the general reliability of chronicles and histories is no secret.

I certainly don't recall Joan being rude to you. Perhaps we should all take a deep breath and start again.

Marie


>  
> and with regard to the following statements... 
> me/ i have not fully researched molinet. perhaps you can list chroniclers/writers who were contemporary with r3 and h7, in particular the foreign ones who were incredibly accurate with the events in england during the time period in discussion.
>
> marie/  Incredibly accurate foreign chronicles? Now you have me stumped.
> .....
> well marie..i knew i had you stumped because there ain't no such animal is there? but it did provide you with the opportunity to take YET another shot at me. in other words implying i was so god awfully stupid and ill informed that i wouldn't or couldn't know that there ARE NO perfectly or incredibly accurate foreign chronicles..and for that matter english ones either.
>  
> have you a good reason for not replying that accurate chronicles in the 15th and 16thC exist only in one's wishes or imagination? or were you really stumped?
>  
> in conclusion marie...you are definitely a fountain of information. you are articulate and most often concise. your info is sincerely appreciated. but i absolutely do not appreciate the condescension and attempts to portray my research as feckless. you and i do not agree on the fate of the princes. you believe in perkin warbeck, i believe the boys died because of buckingham and associates.
>  
> and while i am on a roll. joan you have been playing the same game as marie. i wrote from the top of my head advising you that a scarecrow was not something typically used in the medieval era because of religious and supersitious beliefs. marie popped up basically the same info. marie was wonderful...meanwhile, i was high handedly dismissed as being incorrect and worthless.
>  
> and for what it is worth..cecille would most likely be the spelling used in the era you are writing in. this is because Y was often used to demonstrate the soft sound of the letter i.
>  
> roslyn - wishing all a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2011
>
> --- On Fri, 12/17/10, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: The execution of Hastings, Rivers and Grey
> To:
> Received: Friday, December 17, 2010, 11:27 AM
>
>
>  
>
>
>
>
> I'm awfully sorry to break the news to you, Roslyn, but your translation is fairly off the mark. What I gave in my previous post was a pretty close translation, actually. My French is very very rusty but I did used to teach it!
>
> --- In , fayre rose <fayreroze@> wrote:
> >
> > i have not fully researched molinet. perhaps you can list chroniclers/writers who were contemporary with r3 and h7, in particular the foreign ones who were incredibly accurate with the events in england during the time period in discussion.
>
> Incredibly accurate foreign chronicles? Now you have me stumped.
>
> >  
> > for what it is worth this is my translation of molinet record regarding the 1495 resting place of richard of shrewsbury, duke of york.
> >  
> > you don't know where my nephew, richard lies like an immortal peacock. i can lead you directly to the chapel where he is buried. without a word of a lie..
>
> I'm wondering where the immortal peacocks come from?
>
>
> >  
> > molinet's version.
> > il semble que ne congnoissez mon nepveu richard, quand ne vous daignez incliner; et celuy respondit que richard, son nepveu, estoit piccha trespasse de ce monde; et que s'il luy plaisoit deputer quelque ung de ses gens, il le meneroit droict a la chapelle ou il estoit inhume.
>
> This passage starts with direct speech from the Duchess Margaret ('Madame la Grande') - "Il semble ...incliner":
> "It seems that you do not know my nephew Richard, since you do not deign to bend."
>
> The next bit - "et celui ...monde" - means:
> "and he [Sombreset, that is] replied that Richard, her nephew, had long ago departed this world..."
> ["son nepveu" in this context means "her nephew". Remember, French doesn't have separate words for his and her the way we do in English -you use son, sa or ses depending on the gender/ number of the thing owned, not that of the owner. Nepveu is masculine, so takes 'son'.
> I belive piccha is a Flemish form of Old French pieca, meaning long ago.]
>
> And the last bit:-
> "et que ... inhume":
> "... and that, if it pleased her to depute one of her people, he would lead him straight to the chapel where he was buried."
> This could have been addressed to a person of either sex, but on balance I now think he was still responding to Margaret at this point, rather than addressing Maximilian.
>
> Marie
>
> >  
> > i believe the uncle of richard, who spoke to maximillian to be jasper tudor.
>
> The English envoy was not Richard's uncle. Molinet states that he was "l'ung des seigneurs de Sombreset [qui] fut envoye d'Engleterre a la court du roy des Romains en ambassade" (one of the lords of Sombreset [who] was sent from England on an embassy to the court of the King of the Romans). This man did not name Richard as his nephew -rather, he referred to him, when talking to Margaret, as "son nepveu" - her nephew.
>
> >  
> > as to why h7 did not bring the warbeck's to england to identify their son?
>
> To convince others that he wasn't telling porkies.
>
> h7 was king. why should he entertain commoners to support what he believed to be true, i.e. warbeck was a well trained imposter who bore a strong resemblence to the former e4. it is postulated that warbeck may even be one of e4's illegitimate children.
>
> >  
> > the tudor accusation that tyrell killed the princes did not surface until after h7's eldest son arthur died. tudor needed to lay to rest the rumours that one of e4's sons survived. h7 only had one son, h8, left to inherit the throne. there is no actual record of the tyrrell confession.
>
> Granted. In fact we don't know when the rumour first surfaced since it wasn't recorded until Henry VIII's reign.
>
> >  
> > interesting arthur waite/plantagenet also surfaces the same year as the tyrrell confession. 1502 was a busy year in england for laying rumours to rest and fortifying the tudor's hold on the crown. molinet wrote about the gravesite 7 years prior to this date.
>
> I'm sorry to have to say that I do not believe the yeoman servant referred to in Elizabeth of York's accounts as "Master Arthur" was Arthur Wayte. He is not referred to as though he was a youngsster ('Master' was not yet a courtesy title for a gentleman of immature years), and is lumped in together with mature servants. There was also a surname Arthur, and at least one genuine MA of that name at the time. Also, "Master Arhur" probably only surfaces in 1502 because that is the only year for which Elizabeth's accounts survive.
>
> Marie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>