Guardian piece...

Hi!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/history-as-
fantasy-no-substitute-truth
That idiot Simon Jenkins getting carried away with himself, though I
do agree about pseudo-history and wish-fulfilment fantasy posing as
history being a waste of space.
I've posted my responses as NuitsdeYoung. My main one is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/18394095

"No sacred cow unbarbequed".

cheers,
Marianne

You have been busy! Keep it up, but don't forget to get some sleep.

More strength to your elbow!

Best wishes
Christine

On 21/09/2012 00:16, Dr M M Gilchrist wrote:
> Hi!
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/history-as-
> fantasy-no-substitute-truth
> That idiot Simon Jenkins getting carried away with himself, though I
> do agree about pseudo-history and wish-fulfilment fantasy posing as
> history being a waste of space.
> I've posted my responses as NuitsdeYoung. My main one is here:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/18394095
>
> "No sacred cow unbarbequed".
>
> cheers,
> Marianne
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>


--
Best wishes
Christine

Christine Headley
Butterrow, Stroud, Glos

Dr M M Gilchrist wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/history-as-
> fantasy-no-substitute-truth
> That idiot Simon Jenkins getting carried away with himself, though I
> do agree about pseudo-history and wish-fulfilment fantasy posing as
> history being a waste of space.
> I've posted my responses as NuitsdeYoung. My main one is here:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/18394095

Carol responds:

Thanks for this link. Here's my posted comment (which I revised about six times and hope contains no errors!):

Of course "history as fantasy is no substitute for rigorous truth." And, yes,."positions once adopted become impervious to reason or research." Unfortunately, our author seems to have made up his mind about Richard III just as the people he condemns have done, not based on historical documents such as Richard's laws and Titulus Regius (his legal claim to the crown, one copy of which escaped Henry VII's order that all copies be burned unread) but based on myths concocted by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. Simon Jenkins' sources are evident from this statement::"Nor is there a specific smoking gun (or dripping dagger) for the deaths, variously, of Henry VI, Clarence, Hastings, Richard's wife Anne and the princes in the Tower (one of them Edward V)." Of all these "murders," only the death of Hastings is certainly attributed to Richard and that was an (admittedly overhasty) execution for treason. Henry VI (assuming that he didn't die of "pure displeasure and melancholy" as claimed in "The Arrivall of Edward IV") was executed on Edward IV's orders. Richard, age eighteen, may have been present as Constable of England, but he certainly didn't give the order or do the deed. George of Clarence, Richard and Edward's brother, was executed on Edward's orders after numerous treasons and follies. Richard's wife, Anne Neville, died from an illness, probably tuberculosis. The so-called Princes in the Tower, declared illegitimate because of their father's precontract to marry Eleanor Butler (nee Talbot) before his "ungracious pretensed marriage" to Elizabeth Woodville (I'm quoting Titulus Regius), may have been killed by someone other than Richard or not have been killed at all. Examination of the bones in the urn would at least answer the question of whether those bones really are those of Richard's officially bastardized nephews rather than those of. say, pre-Norman children buried before the Tower was built. After all, the bones were found ten feet under the foundations of a staircase where it would be very hard for More's lone and unidentified priest to bury them secretly (not to mention that More's priest actually buried the boys at the foot of some stairs "under a great heap of stones" and later dug up the bodies and reburied them in some secret place. The stories don't even match.).

Come on now, Simon. Do some research yourself and don't assume that the members of the Richard III Society are a bunch of nerds trying to defend the indefensible. Shakespeare's murderous hunchback and the withered arm invented by More are the stuff of fantasy. These bones may well be those of a crowned and anointed king of England about whom we need to discover the facts. At least the raised shoulder--as opposed to a hunchback--should be a first step (if indeed the bones are Richard's)--if only the media would stop mischaracterizing the scoliosis (which apparently resulted in one shoulder higher than the other as kyphosis (which would have resulted in a hunchback) and treating this discovery as if it confirmed rather than refuted the myth (again assuming that the skeleton is King Richard's).

Here's a place for those interested in "rigorous truth" to start: http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/Titulus%20Regius.htm

[End of response]

Carol

I am adding my thanks, Carol! I am quite disappointed in Simon Jenkins, as I have long been a fan of his books about English churches and stately homes.

The piece seems to be poorly written and I am not quite sure why the comments on Richard III have been interpolated into a piece that is really about biblical scholarship.

As a fantasy writer, I'm afraid one is used to being characterised as a nerd. It is a popular way of denigrating anything seen as uncool, or too serious. It ignores the fact that the Richard III Society is a broad church with many points of view, and that the members have done much serious research over the years.

Jessica


--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
> Carol responds:
>
> Thanks for this link. Here's my posted comment (which I revised about six times and hope contains no errors!):
>
> Of course "history as fantasy is no substitute for rigorous truth." And, yes,."positions once adopted become impervious to reason or research." Unfortunately, our author seems to have made up his mind about Richard III just as the people he condemns have done, not based on historical documents such as Richard's laws and Titulus Regius (his legal claim to the crown, one copy of which escaped Henry VII's order that all copies be burned unread) but based on myths concocted by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. Simon Jenkins' sources are evident from this statement::"Nor is there a specific smoking gun (or dripping dagger) for the deaths, variously, of Henry VI, Clarence, Hastings, Richard's wife Anne and the princes in the Tower (one of them Edward V)." Of all these "murders," only the death of Hastings is certainly attributed to Richard and that was an (admittedly overhasty) execution for treason. Henry VI (assuming that he didn't die of "pure displeasure and melancholy" as claimed in "The Arrivall of Edward IV") was executed on Edward IV's orders. Richard, age eighteen, may have been present as Constable of England, but he certainly didn't give the order or do the deed. George of Clarence, Richard and Edward's brother, was executed on Edward's orders after numerous treasons and follies. Richard's wife, Anne Neville, died from an illness, probably tuberculosis. The so-called Princes in the Tower, declared illegitimate because of their father's precontract to marry Eleanor Butler (nee Talbot) before his "ungracious pretensed marriage" to Elizabeth Woodville (I'm quoting Titulus Regius), may have been killed by someone other than Richard or not have been killed at all. Examination of the bones in the urn would at least answer the question of whether those bones really are those of Richard's officially bastardized nephews rather than those of. say, pre-Norman children buried before the Tower was built. After all, the bones were found ten feet under the foundations of a staircase where it would be very hard for More's lone and unidentified priest to bury them secretly (not to mention that More's priest actually buried the boys at the foot of some stairs "under a great heap of stones" and later dug up the bodies and reburied them in some secret place. The stories don't even match.).
>
> Come on now, Simon. Do some research yourself and don't assume that the members of the Richard III Society are a bunch of nerds trying to defend the indefensible. Shakespeare's murderous hunchback and the withered arm invented by More are the stuff of fantasy. These bones may well be those of a crowned and anointed king of England about whom we need to discover the facts. At least the raised shoulder--as opposed to a hunchback--should be a first step (if indeed the bones are Richard's)--if only the media would stop mischaracterizing the scoliosis (which apparently resulted in one shoulder higher than the other as kyphosis (which would have resulted in a hunchback) and treating this discovery as if it confirmed rather than refuted the myth (again assuming that the skeleton is King Richard's).
>
> Here's a place for those interested in "rigorous truth" to start: http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/Titulus%20Regius.htm
>
> [End of response]
>
> Carol
>

Yeah, have you noticed? It's like how anyone who says Samsung had it coming for egregious theft of Apple's proprietary tech is instantly derided as an "Apple fanboi". It's a great tactic if what you want to avoid is having to do any thinking about, say, the merits of the case.

It gets terribly frustrating to try to make a case that Richard III wasn't an unholy murderin' monster, much less that the surviving traces we have of him make him seem like rather a decent fellow opposed by nearly everyone with an axe to grind, in an era where grindable axe-toting was common.

NON-SCHOLAR WHO HAS SEEN TWO PRODUCTIONS OF RICHARD III: Richard III was a homicidal hunchbacked maniac who stole the throne from his brother's heirs and murdered them to keep it.

RICARDIAN: But the first person who said he was a hunchback was a little boy when Richard died and never met him.

NON-SCHOLAR: Nope, murderin' hunchback.

RICARDIAN: But there's no evidence that his nephews were murdered.

NON-SCHOLAR: Killer... hunchback... slaughtered princes... stole throne.

RICARDIAN: But they weren't princes, and he didn't steal it. See, Parliament issued a document--

NON-SCHOLAR: Look, just because you've got the hots for the guy doesn't mean you should excuse crimes against humanity.

In my own researches into Richard's life and career (prompted, as I have observed many of you guys also experienced by reading "The Daughter of Time" about a quarter-century ago), I've been utterly astounded by the divergence between the historical record (by which I mean stuff like Titulus Regius and Richard's letters) and the extent to which ostensibly professional historians will completely ignore it in a gallop toward a preconceived judgment of villainy.

(By the way, I trust Ms. Carson's judgment on source recommendations implicitly, but I must say that I am not real wild about either Dr. Hanham or this Charles Ross person, both of whom mightily object, with commendable scholarly exactitude, to the "must undoubtedly beyond question have been thus-and-such" gambit based on zero evidence, unless they're the ones saying it.)

In this kind of a climate, in which even Richard's ostensible defenders are on his side approximately as much as his allies Hastings and Buckingham were, anyone who stands up to say, "Now, look, everything you've asserted about the guy is either demonstrably untrue or entirely unproven," is going to be accused of being baldly, frothingly partisan. (Ross further warmed my heart by pointing out that most of Richard's modern defenders are women, because hee hee ho ho ho we all know what the ladies are after, am I right, fellas?)

The distinction between "They sainted the wrong dude giving it to Sir Thomas 'stead of Richard" and "Let's see if there are any reliable pointers to something other than utter poisonousness in Richard's character and actions" is mighty fine to the detractors, but I don't know that it's even possible to slot the Ricardians into such neat little categories. I think our similarities--we are here because we suspect that an enormous injustice has been done to the life, career, and postmortem reputation of a king who bothered occasionally to do something on behalf of the poor, the deprived, and the vulnerable--far outweigh any differences.

Just as the Richard III revealed in his own actions (legislation, decrees, letters, speeches) seems to have exerted himself beyond what was expected of a monarch to use his position of influence to better lives other than his own and his friends', so everyone on this board is here because we think those values are both rare and important. I know it infuriates me that, among other things, the otherwise tolerant and fearless Shakespeare bent his incomparable talent toward perpetuating the denigration of a king he might well have admired above all others had he survived on the throne long enough to oversee, say, the development of printing technology and a more egalitarian society. I bet a lot of the other folks on this board feel the same way: it all comes down to, "What a waste, when the guy could have done such amazing things for his country, and shown a way forward to a more enlightened civilization for a society just climbing out of the medieval era." I'll be damned if I'll let someone dismiss Richard III as a murderous usurper on the basis of no evidence other than a smear campaign; what Richard III stood for, and what his opponents have succeeded in denying for half a millennium, making dupes of careless commentators at every step to carry the lies forward, is just too important.

Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?

--- In , "casildis" <jessica.rydill@...> wrote:
>
> I am adding my thanks, Carol! I am quite disappointed in Simon Jenkins, as I have long been a fan of his books about English churches and stately homes.
>
> The piece seems to be poorly written and I am not quite sure why the comments on Richard III have been interpolated into a piece that is really about biblical scholarship.
>
> As a fantasy writer, I'm afraid one is used to being characterised as a nerd. It is a popular way of denigrating anything seen as uncool, or too serious. It ignores the fact that the Richard III Society is a broad church with many points of view, and that the members have done much serious research over the years.
>
> Jessica
>
>
> --- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > Thanks for this link. Here's my posted comment (which I revised about six times and hope contains no errors!):
> >
> > Of course "history as fantasy is no substitute for rigorous truth." And, yes,."positions once adopted become impervious to reason or research." Unfortunately, our author seems to have made up his mind about Richard III just as the people he condemns have done, not based on historical documents such as Richard's laws and Titulus Regius (his legal claim to the crown, one copy of which escaped Henry VII's order that all copies be burned unread) but based on myths concocted by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. Simon Jenkins' sources are evident from this statement::"Nor is there a specific smoking gun (or dripping dagger) for the deaths, variously, of Henry VI, Clarence, Hastings, Richard's wife Anne and the princes in the Tower (one of them Edward V)." Of all these "murders," only the death of Hastings is certainly attributed to Richard and that was an (admittedly overhasty) execution for treason. Henry VI (assuming that he didn't die of "pure displeasure and melancholy" as claimed in "The Arrivall of Edward IV") was executed on Edward IV's orders. Richard, age eighteen, may have been present as Constable of England, but he certainly didn't give the order or do the deed. George of Clarence, Richard and Edward's brother, was executed on Edward's orders after numerous treasons and follies. Richard's wife, Anne Neville, died from an illness, probably tuberculosis. The so-called Princes in the Tower, declared illegitimate because of their father's precontract to marry Eleanor Butler (nee Talbot) before his "ungracious pretensed marriage" to Elizabeth Woodville (I'm quoting Titulus Regius), may have been killed by someone other than Richard or not have been killed at all. Examination of the bones in the urn would at least answer the question of whether those bones really are those of Richard's officially bastardized nephews rather than those of. say, pre-Norman children buried before the Tower was built. After all, the bones were found ten feet under the foundations of a staircase where it would be very hard for More's lone and unidentified priest to bury them secretly (not to mention that More's priest actually buried the boys at the foot of some stairs "under a great heap of stones" and later dug up the bodies and reburied them in some secret place. The stories don't even match.).
> >
> > Come on now, Simon. Do some research yourself and don't assume that the members of the Richard III Society are a bunch of nerds trying to defend the indefensible. Shakespeare's murderous hunchback and the withered arm invented by More are the stuff of fantasy. These bones may well be those of a crowned and anointed king of England about whom we need to discover the facts. At least the raised shoulder--as opposed to a hunchback--should be a first step (if indeed the bones are Richard's)--if only the media would stop mischaracterizing the scoliosis (which apparently resulted in one shoulder higher than the other as kyphosis (which would have resulted in a hunchback) and treating this discovery as if it confirmed rather than refuted the myth (again assuming that the skeleton is King Richard's).
> >
> > Here's a place for those interested in "rigorous truth" to start: http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/Titulus%20Regius.htm
> >
> > [End of response]
> >
> > Carol
> >
>

<mcjohn@...> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
>\Carol responds:

Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:

'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.

That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.

You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.

[End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]

Carol

Hi, Carol -



I think you wrote an excellent and heartfelt piece. Not to feel discouraged.
I think it is worth making the arguments, because there may be a way to
characterize the facts, even the ones that have been debated ad nauseam, in
a way that captures the truth better - or at least the possible/probable
truth better - than the way it has previously been characterized. I am
currently studying theology, and I certainly feel that the debates here bear
a certain similarity to the debates over Biblical truth or falsehood. In
other words, one will probably never have all the evidence of Richard's
"innocence" - or guilt, for that matter - that one would want. But I do
think laying out the objective evidence that does exist and arguing the
merits is a worthwhile exercise. Yes, I do feel that Richard has been
slandered. In fact, I probably could be classed as one of those with an
"extreme" view, because I believe Richard may actually have been rather
saintly, in contrast to most of those around him. But I also believe the
only way one will be able to satisfy the desire to uncover the "truth" (as
best as we can at this point) is by considering every point of view and
every scrap of evidence, wherever that takes us.



Anyway, your comments and those of others here are well worth reading. I
know I, for one, still have a lot to learn about Richard! So - keep up the
good work!!



Johanne

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

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

Johanne L. Tournier



Email - jltournier60@...

or jltournier@...



"With God, all things are possible."

- Jesus of Nazareth

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

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



From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of justcarol67
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 2:32 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)





<mcjohn@...> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
>\Carol responds:

Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval
dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a
pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:

'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the
past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many
sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an
evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include
Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated
and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had
only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who
either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made
his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed
king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for
overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of
Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges
of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's
nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended
to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's
historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard
look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't).
The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made
Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James
Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's
nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally
found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed
(after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.

That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's
fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the
foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More
afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys'
escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III"
(perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a
tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was
eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was
secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed
in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew
up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of
them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the
throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when
Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English)
says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away
with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their
deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's
enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped
remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the
building of the Tower of London.

You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in
most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been
destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical
figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a
Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person
what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a
line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict
Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain
either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support
the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V
(the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I
said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of
Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as
a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are
contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws
(instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion).
Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example,
his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but
none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a
hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find
very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the
recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and
exploding the myth.

[End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go
back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]

Carol

Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.

Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.

So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
Regards, Annette
P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!



----- Original Message -----
From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)



<mcjohn@...> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
>\Carol responds:

Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:

'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.

That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.

You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.

[End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]

Carol

Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.

And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?

Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.

I find it all baffling really...Eileen



--- In , "Annette Carson" <email@...> wrote:
>
> Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
>
> Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
>
> So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> Regards, Annette
> P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: justcarol67
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>
> <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> >\Carol responds:
>
> Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
>
> 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
>
> That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
>
> You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
>
> [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Precisely - we don't know.

The Boneheads - through their Patron who was five in 1483 - thought they had a complete solution for all time and they obviously have not. There is no complete solution, although some are more probable than others.

----- Original Message -----
From: EileenB
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)



Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.

And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?

Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.

I find it all baffling really...Eileen

--- In , "Annette Carson" <email@...> wrote:
>
> Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
>
> Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
>
> So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> Regards, Annette
> P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: justcarol67
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>
> <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> >\Carol responds:
>
> Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
>
> 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
>
> That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
>
> You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
>
> [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers" (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what we're left with, a great deal of the time.

Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be hurt.

Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling. Let's remember why we're here.

Warm regards,
Judy 


 
Loyaulte me lie


________________________________
From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


 
Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.

And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?

Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.

I find it all baffling really...Eileen

--- In , "Annette Carson" <email@...> wrote:
>
> Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
>
> Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses
to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
>
> So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> Regards, Annette
> P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: justcarol67
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>
> <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > <snip>
> >
> > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> >\Carol responds:
>
> Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
>
> 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to
find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
>
> That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when
Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
>
> You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case
as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
>
> [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

I'm afraid History is often like news bulletins: they dwell upon the bad news, usually to propagandise on the side of warning people to be peaceful instead of trouble. Did any of the medieval monarchs or Roman emperors escape criticism; Thomas More even criticised the parsimonious Henry VII saying that Henry VIII heralded a bright new dawn. Little did he realise what a monster Henry VIII would turn out to be who ordered More's execution.

History may be a case of not reading it and being uninformed or reading it and being misinformed.

Richard III was maligned by some, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a grain of truth in what was said. As we can't go back in time we will never know.


--- In , "EileenB" <cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>
> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
>
> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
>
> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
>
> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> >
> > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> >
> > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> >
> > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > Regards, Annette
> > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: justcarol67
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> >
> > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > >\Carol responds:
> >
> > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> >
> > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> >
> > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> >
> > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> >
> > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

Just a thought (pulled from something I'm currently writing)

&History
was to the Greeks a goddess they called Clio, one of nine daughters of Jupiter
[Zeus] and MemoryI do not recall her Greek name, but its meaning was thus. And
therefore History is Daughter of Memory, and subject to the recollections of
men and, as S says, fallible. All we believe we know or have ever known may be
as illusory as figures in mist&.

And another story to consider:

My Egyptologist husband concentrates on the 18th Dynasty. Traditionally, it's been held that the disappearance of Pharaoh Akhenaton's Chief Wife Nefertiti from official records indicated her death, and that Akhenaton chose a brother (who suddenly shows up) named Smenkhare to be his co-regent and immediate successor. Akhenaton is known for wresting political and spiritual power from the priests of Amun; he announced there was one god, the Aton, and moved his capital to Tell El Amarna.

The Theban status quo later tried to erase Akhenaton from history. Much is lost forever. Sound familiar?

Recent scholarship notes the mystery "brother" has one truly mysterious characteristic. His throne name, a supposedly unique nomen, is "Nefer-nefer-u-aton," which just happens to have been Nefertiti's, as well. Egyptologists at first dismissed this fluke...but more and more people are grudgingly considering the possibility S and N were one and the same. Additionally, a female mummy, now tentatively ID's as Nefertiti's, had one arm deliberated broken off. When this arm is repositioned on the body, it completes a pose used only in the burial of Pharaohs.

Again, just a story.

Judy 



Loyaulte me lie

________________________________
From: HI <hi.dung@...>
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 9:34 AM
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


 
I'm afraid History is often like news bulletins: they dwell upon the bad news, usually to propagandise on the side of warning people to be peaceful instead of trouble. Did any of the medieval monarchs or Roman emperors escape criticism; Thomas More even criticised the parsimonious Henry VII saying that Henry VIII heralded a bright new dawn. Little did he realise what a monster Henry VIII would turn out to be who ordered More's execution.

History may be a case of not reading it and being uninformed or reading it and being misinformed.

Richard III was maligned by some, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a grain of truth in what was said. As we can't go back in time we will never know.

--- In , "EileenB" <cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>
> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
>
> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
>
> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
>
> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>
>
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> >
> > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> >
> > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself
chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> >
> > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > Regards, Annette
> > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: justcarol67
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> >
> > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > >\Carol responds:
> >
> > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> >
> > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best
to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> >
> > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time
when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> >
> > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his
case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> >
> > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

I agree Eileen. There are those on here who want to condemn "Mary Janes". Who are any of us to tell others they should not think the way they do. I dare say there would be some who would be upset if the Earl of Warwick was called "evil" even though there could be some basis for that belief.
I for one do not think Richard was a saint, just a man of his times. I base my belief that he did not kill his nephews on the proven fact that Richard was not stupid and to kill them in secrecy would have been stupid

Vickie

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 22, 2012, at 8:26 AM, "EileenB" <cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:

> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
>
> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
>
> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
>
> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@...> wrote:
> >
> > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> >
> > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> >
> > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > Regards, Annette
> > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: justcarol67
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> >
> > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > >\Carol responds:
> >
> > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> >
> > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> >
> > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> >
> > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> >
> > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get across....

May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on the mend and in fine fettle...
Eileen...

--- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@...> wrote:
>
> Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers" (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what we're left with, a great deal of the time.
>
> Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be hurt.
>
> Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling. Let's remember why we're here.
>
> Warm regards,
> Judy 
>
>
>  
> Loyaulte me lie
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>  
> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
>
> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
>
> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
>
> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> >
> > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> >
> > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses
> to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> >
> > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > Regards, Annette
> > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: justcarol67
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> >
> > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > >\Carol responds:
> >
> > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> >
> > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to
> find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> >
> > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when
> Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> >
> > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case
> as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> >
> > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

To me Vickie...yes a man of his times...but head and shoulders among his peers. A man who was catapulted into a situation not of his making and who tried to do the best he could in very difficult circumstances.. Surrounded by people not fit enough to lick his boots, a treacherous nest of vipers if there ever was one. The Stanley brothers, Buckingham, the Woodviles, Margaret Beaufort and her co-pilot Morton. What chance did he stand...I think he gave it his best shot....To me...a hero...always.

When I see the dates of the deaths of this little Royal Family, April 1484 his son, Anne in March 1485 and Richard August 1485...its enough to make you weep....

Eileen aka Mary Sue :0)

--- In , Vickie <lolettecook@...> wrote:
>
> I agree Eileen. There are those on here who want to condemn "Mary Janes". Who are any of us to tell others they should not think the way they do. I dare say there would be some who would be upset if the Earl of Warwick was called "evil" even though there could be some basis for that belief.
> I for one do not think Richard was a saint, just a man of his times. I base my belief that he did not kill his nephews on the proven fact that Richard was not stupid and to kill them in secrecy would have been stupid
>
> Vickie
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Sep 22, 2012, at 8:26 AM, "EileenB" <cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>
> > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> >
> > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
> >
> > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
> >
> > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> >
> > --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> > >
> > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > >
> > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > > Regards, Annette
> > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: justcarol67
> > > To:
> > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > <snip>
> > > >
> > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > >\Carol responds:
> > >
> > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > >
> > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > >
> > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > >
> > > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> > >
> > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> > >
> > > Carol
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

Hi, Eileen!

Thanks!

Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few friends; I think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All the exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home to 400+ Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the remains are identified as Richard's....

Judy

And you were eloquent enough... :-)
 
Loyaulte me lie


________________________________
From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


 
Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get across....

May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on the mend and in fine fettle...
Eileen...

--- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@...> wrote:
>
> Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers" (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what we're left with, a great deal of the time.
>
> Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be hurt.
>
> Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling. Let's remember why we're here.
>
> Warm regards,
> Judy 
>
>
>  
> Loyaulte me lie
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>  
> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
>
> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
>
> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
>
> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>
> --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> >
> > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> >
> > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself
chooses
> to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> >
> > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > Regards, Annette
> > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: justcarol67
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> >
> > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > >\Carol responds:
> >
> > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> >
> > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to
> find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> >
> > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when
> Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> >
> > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case
> as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> >
> > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here about what a 'Mary Sue' is.
None of the members of this forum are. We're all real live human beings, not
fictional characters. The term comes from fanfic, particularly SF or fantasy
fanfic, but it's now used for any (usually female) character who's too good
to be true. You know the ones. Every man they meet falls in love with them.
They can beat anyone in a fight, even if they've never picked up a sword
before. They can speak twenty languages. They're always right and frequently
save the world singlehanded. They're incredibly beautiful and have names
like Raven. And there are lot of them around in historical fiction at the
moment. Being a diehard supporter of Richard III (or any person from
history) doesn't make anyone a Mary Sue. I apologise for any
misunderstanding or offence. It was entirely unintentional.

You can call Warwick 'evil' as much as you like, Vickie. I've heard it all
by now! He certainly did some pretty shonky things, like executing Richard
and John Wydeville with neither trial nor justification; rebelling against
the king, that kind of thing. It's not going to upset me in the slightest. I
find him fascinating, but I don't make excuses for him. He did what he did
and there's nothing I can do to change that. I don't believe either he or
Richard III was evil, mainly because it's a word I don't use. They were
human beings, men of their times. Brutal and ruthless some of the time, by
21st century standards. Not evil.

I don't know if Richard killed his nephews. I'd like to think he didn't and
that one day there'll be something solid to back that up, but I just don't
know.

Karen




From: Vickie <lolettecook@...>
Reply-To: <>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 10:15:17 -0500
To: ""
<>
Cc: ""
<>
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)






I agree Eileen. There are those on here who want to condemn "Mary Janes".
Who are any of us to tell others they should not think the way they do. I
dare say there would be some who would be upset if the Earl of Warwick was
called "evil" even though there could be some basis for that belief.
I for one do not think Richard was a saint, just a man of his times. I base
my belief that he did not kill his nephews on the proven fact that Richard
was not stupid and to kill them in secrecy would have been stupid

Vickie

Oh good...excellent.

Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of people have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for sure to get here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might be some time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place. I have a feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont want to feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at how many people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into 1000s...Amazing.

--- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@...> wrote:
>
> Hi, Eileen!
>
> Thanks!
>
> Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few friends; I think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All the exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home to 400+ Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the remains are identified as Richard's....
>
> Judy
>
> And you were eloquent enough... :-)
>  
> Loyaulte me lie
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>  
> Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get across....
>
> May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on the mend and in fine fettle...
> Eileen...
>
> --- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> >
> > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers" (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> >
> > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be hurt.
> >
> > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling. Let's remember why we're here.
> >
> > Warm regards,
> > Judy 
> >
> >
> >  
> > Loyaulte me lie
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> >  
> > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> >
> > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
> >
> > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
> >
> > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> >
> > --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> > >
> > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself
> chooses
> > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > >
> > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > > Regards, Annette
> > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: justcarol67
> > > To:
> > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > <snip>
> > > >
> > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > >\Carol responds:
> > >
> > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > >
> > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best to
> > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > >
> > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time when
> > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > >
> > > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his case
> > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> > >
> > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> > >
> > > Carol
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

Oh...Im only having a little fun with the Mary Sue thingy...I know it wasnt meant in any nasty way at all. I didnt realise it had a SF connotation...I thought it sounded more Little House on the Prairy....No offence taken at all....Eileen...

--- In , Karen Clark <Ragged_staff@...> wrote:
>
> I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here about what a 'Mary Sue' is.
> None of the members of this forum are. We're all real live human beings, not
> fictional characters. The term comes from fanfic, particularly SF or fantasy
> fanfic, but it's now used for any (usually female) character who's too good
> to be true. You know the ones. Every man they meet falls in love with them.
> They can beat anyone in a fight, even if they've never picked up a sword
> before. They can speak twenty languages. They're always right and frequently
> save the world singlehanded. They're incredibly beautiful and have names
> like Raven. And there are lot of them around in historical fiction at the
> moment. Being a diehard supporter of Richard III (or any person from
> history) doesn't make anyone a Mary Sue. I apologise for any
> misunderstanding or offence. It was entirely unintentional.
>
> You can call Warwick 'evil' as much as you like, Vickie. I've heard it all
> by now! He certainly did some pretty shonky things, like executing Richard
> and John Wydeville with neither trial nor justification; rebelling against
> the king, that kind of thing. It's not going to upset me in the slightest. I
> find him fascinating, but I don't make excuses for him. He did what he did
> and there's nothing I can do to change that. I don't believe either he or
> Richard III was evil, mainly because it's a word I don't use. They were
> human beings, men of their times. Brutal and ruthless some of the time, by
> 21st century standards. Not evil.
>
> I don't know if Richard killed his nephews. I'd like to think he didn't and
> that one day there'll be something solid to back that up, but I just don't
> know.
>
> Karen
>
>
>
>
> From: Vickie <lolettecook@...>
> Reply-To: <>
> Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 10:15:17 -0500
> To: ""
> <>
> Cc: ""
> <>
> Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I agree Eileen. There are those on here who want to condemn "Mary Janes".
> Who are any of us to tell others they should not think the way they do. I
> dare say there would be some who would be upset if the Earl of Warwick was
> called "evil" even though there could be some basis for that belief.
> I for one do not think Richard was a saint, just a man of his times. I base
> my belief that he did not kill his nephews on the proven fact that Richard
> was not stupid and to kill them in secrecy would have been stupid
>
> Vickie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

On 22 Sep 2012, at 03:38, mcjohn_wt_net wrote:

> I'll be damned if I'll let someone dismiss Richard III as a murderous usurper on the basis of no evidence other than a smear campaign; what Richard III stood for, and what his opponents have succeeded in denying for half a millennium, making dupes of careless commentators at every step to carry the lies forward, is just too important.


With you all the way on this sir! [if you are a sir mcjohn wt!]
Paul


Richard Liveth Yet!

Johanne wrote:

>Hi, Carol -

> I think you wrote an excellent and heartfelt piece. Not to feel discouraged. I think it is worth making the arguments, because there may be a way to characterize the facts, even the ones that have been debated ad nauseam, in a way that captures the truth better - or at least the possible/probable truth better - than the way it has previously been characterized. <snip>

> Anyway, your comments and those of others here are well worth reading. I know I, for one, still have a lot to learn about Richard! So - keep up the good work!!

"Annette Carson" wrote:
>
> Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.

Carol responds:

Thank you both for your encouraging comments. I was rather tired when I wrote that I was discouraged (that sentence didn't appear in the comment itself). I should have said that I probably won't respond to any more comments on the Jenkins site, not because I'm giving up but because I've given them both barrels (two long comments and a short one) and am out of ammunition. However, if anyone else wants to go there and give it a try, I'd appreciate it.

Here in the forum, we're safe. We're writing for each other, sharing views in a place where we share a common interest and a common goal (regardless of our individual differences, which add spice to the mix). Out there, someone not already interested in Richard might read and learn, or at least read and become curious.

Thanks,
Carol (with apologies for the stale metaphors--I haven't had my morning coffee!)

Not a problem, Ellen. There are two websites with Mary Sue tests that
writers can run their characters through. It's a lot of fun! Every time I've
done it, my characters pass. Or is it fail? Either way, none of the are Mary
Sues!

Karen

From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
Reply-To: <>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:07:32 -0000
To: <>
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)






Oh...Im only having a little fun with the Mary Sue thingy...I know it wasnt
meant in any nasty way at all. I didnt realise it had a SF connotation...I
thought it sounded more Little House on the Prairy....No offence taken at
all....Eileen...

-

Yes Paul I second you on that. A very good post from mcjohn and I meant to post a message immediately after I read it...you beat me to it...wish I k
new their real name...Eileen
(Sick cat on my lap having trouble posting....duh)

--- In , Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...> wrote:
>
>
> On 22 Sep 2012, at 03:38, mcjohn_wt_net wrote:
>
> > I'll be damned if I'll let someone dismiss Richard III as a murderous usurper on the basis of no evidence other than a smear campaign; what Richard III stood for, and what his opponents have succeeded in denying for half a millennium, making dupes of careless commentators at every step to carry the lies forward, is just too important.
>
>
> With you all the way on this sir! [if you are a sir mcjohn wt!]
> Paul
>
>
> Richard Liveth Yet!
>

I'm off to the Carpathians next year to tread the path of Vlad Tepes, known in the west chiefly because Bram Stoker appropriated his name and location for his famous vampire Dracula.
Drakul in Romanian means son of the dragon, also a member of a knightly fraternity similar to the Knights of the Bath.
Lurid tales were spread of him by his enemies of him dining while watching women and children being impaled. Tales denied by the vast majority from his own lands. [And impalement as a means of execution was no worse than our 'civilised' hanging, drawing, and quartering.]
In fact the man is still venerated in Romania as a bulwark against the Turkish invasion of Europe, which he was instrumental in stopping, and as a liberator.
He was betrayed and killed fighting. After his death the tales got worse and worse.
Sound familiar?
Paul




On 22 Sep 2012, at 16:09, Judy Thomson wrote:

> Just a thought (pulled from something I'm currently writing)
>
> &History
> was to the Greeks a goddess they called Clio, one of nine daughters of Jupiter
> [Zeus] and MemoryI do not recall her Greek name, but its meaning was thus. And
> therefore History is Daughter of Memory, and subject to the recollections of
> men and, as S says, fallible. All we believe we know or have ever known may be
> as illusory as figures in mist&.
>
> And another story to consider:
>
> My Egyptologist husband concentrates on the 18th Dynasty. Traditionally, it's been held that the disappearance of Pharaoh Akhenaton's Chief Wife Nefertiti from official records indicated her death, and that Akhenaton chose a brother (who suddenly shows up) named Smenkhare to be his co-regent and immediate successor. Akhenaton is known for wresting political and spiritual power from the priests of Amun; he announced there was one god, the Aton, and moved his capital to Tell El Amarna.
>
> The Theban status quo later tried to erase Akhenaton from history. Much is lost forever. Sound familiar?
>
> Recent scholarship notes the mystery "brother" has one truly mysterious characteristic. His throne name, a supposedly unique nomen, is "Nefer-nefer-u-aton," which just happens to have been Nefertiti's, as well. Egyptologists at first dismissed this fluke...but more and more people are grudgingly considering the possibility S and N were one and the same. Additionally, a female mummy, now tentatively ID's as Nefertiti's, had one arm deliberated broken off. When this arm is repositioned on the body, it completes a pose used only in the burial of Pharaohs.
>
> Again, just a story.
>
> Judy
>
>
>
> Loyaulte me lie
>
> ________________________________
> From: HI <hi.dung@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 9:34 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>
> I'm afraid History is often like news bulletins: they dwell upon the bad news, usually to propagandise on the side of warning people to be peaceful instead of trouble. Did any of the medieval monarchs or Roman emperors escape criticism; Thomas More even criticised the parsimonious Henry VII saying that Henry VIII heralded a bright new dawn. Little did he realise what a monster Henry VIII would turn out to be who ordered More's execution.
>
> History may be a case of not reading it and being uninformed or reading it and being misinformed.
>
> Richard III was maligned by some, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a grain of truth in what was said. As we can't go back in time we will never know.
>
> --- In , "EileenB" <cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>>
>> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
>>
>> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
>>
>> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
>>
>> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>>
>>
>>
>> --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
>>>
>>> Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
>>>
>>> Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself
> chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
>>>
>>> So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
>>> Regards, Annette
>>> P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: justcarol67
>>> To:
>>> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
>>> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> <mcjohn@> wrote:
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
>>>> \Carol responds:
>>>
>>> Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
>>>
>>> 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best
> to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
>>>
>>> That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time
> when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
>>>
>>> You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his
> case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
>>>
>>> [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
>>>
>>> Carol
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

Richard Liveth Yet!

Eileen, a bit of a time lag works in my favour, as first I must find the necessary funds :-)

That said, I hope to meet a bunch of you while we're there. In fact, it would be lovely if we Diehards could plan our own little event. Something celebratory to follow the High Solemnities of that [possible] reinterment. 

Years ago, our local RIII chapter had one day a year when we really let loose. People dressed up (not obligated, of course, but most people did it out of sheer pleasure), and we had a 15th C. feast. A potluck, but somehow we always had good variety. I'll never forget one such, when my best friend made a boar's head subtlety. Along with all the scholarship, I would just love to meet you and others under circumstances where, to borrow from the Artist Once Again Known As Prince, we party like it's "1499..." Well, 1483, in our case.

Anyone else? I'll recreate that subtlety if I can.

Smiles,
Judy
 
Loyaulte me lie


________________________________
From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:58 AM
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


 
Oh good...excellent.

Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of people have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for sure to get here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might be some time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place. I have a feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont want to feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at how many people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into 1000s...Amazing.

--- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@...> wrote:
>
> Hi, Eileen!
>
> Thanks!
>
> Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few friends; I think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All the exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home to 400+ Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the remains are identified as Richard's....
>
> Judy
>
> And you were eloquent enough... :-)
>  
> Loyaulte me lie
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>  
> Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get across....
>
> May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on the mend and in fine fettle...
> Eileen...
>
> --- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> >
> > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers" (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> >
> > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be hurt.
> >
> > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling. Let's remember why we're here.
> >
> > Warm regards,
> > Judyà
> >
> >
> > à
> > Loyaulte me lie
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> > à
> > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> >
> > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
> >
> > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
> >
> > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> >
> > --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> > >
> > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself
> chooses
> > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > >
> > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > > Regards, Annette
> > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: justcarol67
> > > To:
> > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > <snip>
> > > >
> > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > >\Carol responds:
> > >
> > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > >
> > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best
to
> > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > >
> > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time
when
> > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > >
> > > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his
case
> > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> > >
> > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> > >
> > > Carol
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

That would be lovely....absolutely.

I have read somewhere (?) that the re-burial will be a private thing...Im understanding this as invites only? Understandable I suppose.....as its an unknown thing really isnt it...re-burying a long dead King..No precedent in modern times...Eileen

--- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@...> wrote:
>
> Eileen, a bit of a time lag works in my favour, as first I must find the necessary funds :-)
>
> That said, I hope to meet a bunch of you while we're there. In fact, it would be lovely if we Diehards could plan our own little event. Something celebratory to follow the High Solemnities of that [possible] reinterment. 
>
> Years ago, our local RIII chapter had one day a year when we really let loose. People dressed up (not obligated, of course, but most people did it out of sheer pleasure), and we had a 15th C. feast. A potluck, but somehow we always had good variety. I'll never forget one such, when my best friend made a boar's head subtlety. Along with all the scholarship, I would just love to meet you and others under circumstances where, to borrow from the Artist Once Again Known As Prince, we party like it's "1499..." Well, 1483, in our case.
>
> Anyone else? I'll recreate that subtlety if I can.
>
> Smiles,
> Judy
>  
> Loyaulte me lie
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:58 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>  
> Oh good...excellent.
>
> Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of people have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for sure to get here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might be some time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place. I have a feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont want to feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at how many people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into 1000s...Amazing.
>
> --- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> >
> > Hi, Eileen!
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few friends; I think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All the exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home to 400+ Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the remains are identified as Richard's....
> >
> > Judy
> >
> > And you were eloquent enough... :-)
> >  
> > Loyaulte me lie
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> >  
> > Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get across....
> >
> > May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on the mend and in fine fettle...
> > Eileen...
> >
> > --- In , Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers" (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> > >
> > > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be hurt.
> > >
> > > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling. Let's remember why we're here.
> > >
> > > Warm regards,
> > > Judy 
> > >
> > >
> > >  
> > > Loyaulte me lie
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > To:
> > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > >  
> > > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> > >
> > > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
> > >
> > > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
> > >
> > > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> > >
> > > --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> > > >
> > > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself
> > chooses
> > > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > > >
> > > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > > > Regards, Annette
> > > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: justcarol67
> > > > To:
> > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > > <snip>
> > > > >
> > > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > > >\Carol responds:
> > > >
> > > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > > >
> > > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best
> to
> > > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > > >
> > > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time
> when
> > > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > > >
> > > > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his
> case
> > > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> > > >
> > > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> > > >
> > > > Carol
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

Most men think my heroine is too skinny. She constantly breaks or else loses things. She hasn't a clue how to wield a sword - and has no interest in learning. Sometimes she acts on impulse, then berates herself (she has enormous self-doubts). She can be foolishly stubborn. She constantly worries. Oh, and she's pregnant, again. How could she have let that happen, darn it?

Judy
 
Loyaulte me lie


________________________________
From: Karen Clark <Ragged_staff@...>
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 11:16 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


 
Not a problem, Ellen. There are two websites with Mary Sue tests that
writers can run their characters through. It's a lot of fun! Every time I've
done it, my characters pass. Or is it fail? Either way, none of the are Mary
Sues!

Karen

From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
Reply-To: <>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:07:32 -0000
To: <>
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)

Oh...Im only having a little fun with the Mary Sue thingy...I know it wasnt
meant in any nasty way at all. I didnt realise it had a SF connotation...I
thought it sounded more Little House on the Prairy....No offence taken at
all....Eileen...

-

--- In , "EileenB" <cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>
> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
>
> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
>
> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
>
> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>
Carol responds:
My apologies. I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was actually trying to defend speculation. I meant that, yes, if we're arguing (in the sense of taking a particular position on an issue, not of quarreling), we should back up our assertions with reasons and evidence to support our view. Otherwise, it remains just an opinion and unpersuasive. But if that isn't our goal--if we're just trying to figure out what may have happened--I see nothing wrong with speculation. It's fun. It's natural. And as I said (with my American spelling), "There's nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as we realize that we haven't solved it."

And, if it's any comfort, I do think that Richard III was the best king England ever had, as his legislation shows, and it's a pity that he died after ruling only two years. (Just my opinion, of course!)

Carol

Sounds like the perfect anti-Mary Sue.

Karen

From: Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@...>
Reply-To: <>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 09:40:42 -0700 (PDT)
To: ""
<>
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)






Most men think my heroine is too skinny. She constantly breaks or else loses
things. She hasn't a clue how to wield a sword - and has no interest in
learning. Sometimes she acts on impulse, then berates herself (she has
enormous self-doubts). She can be foolishly stubborn. She constantly
worries. Oh, and she's pregnant, again. How could she have let that happen,
darn it?

Judy

Loyaulte me lie

Oooooops Carol...I think you have have misconstrued my message and absolutely no reason to apologise....I fully understood what you meant re speculation...and as I said..my thoughts exactly...Eileen

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In , "EileenB" <cherryripe.eileenb@> wrote:
> >
> > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> >
> > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
> >
> > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
> >
> > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> >
> Carol responds:
> My apologies. I didn't mean to offend anyone. I was actually trying to defend speculation. I meant that, yes, if we're arguing (in the sense of taking a particular position on an issue, not of quarreling), we should back up our assertions with reasons and evidence to support our view. Otherwise, it remains just an opinion and unpersuasive. But if that isn't our goal--if we're just trying to figure out what may have happened--I see nothing wrong with speculation. It's fun. It's natural. And as I said (with my American spelling), "There's nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as we realize that we haven't solved it."
>
> And, if it's any comfort, I do think that Richard III was the best king England ever had, as his legislation shows, and it's a pity that he died after ruling only two years. (Just my opinion, of course!)
>
> Carol
>

Hi, Paul -
Vlad is another of interest of mine, although it is Bela Lugosi, the
original Dracula in the US, who is my real passion.

Vlad is considered a national hero by the Romanians and is credited with
founding the capital Bucurest. I have a set of Romanian stamps with his
picture on one which was issued on the anniversary of the founding of
Bucurest back in the 1960's.

Yes, a lot of people consider that his reputation was defamed unfairly by
exaggerating the degree of his bloodthirstiness. I seem to recall that most
of the exaggerated tales of him enjoying dining with his impaled victims,
etc., came from early German pamphlets.

I believe "Drakul" meant "devil" or "dragon" in Romanian and "Drakula" meant
"Son of the Dragon" (or "Son of the Devil"). It originated because Vlad's
father was awarded membership in the "Order of the Dragon," which had a
dragon symbol, so Vlad thereby became known as the "Son of the Dragon." It
was only the name that Bram Stoker borrowed for his fictional vampire -
Dracula in the book was supposed to be a Szekely nobleman, and the Szekely
were related to the Hungarians but lived in the Carpathian mountains as
frontiersmen. Vlad was a Wallachian who happened to be born in Transylvania,
but in a different part of Transylvania than Count Dracula. For what it's
worth. I would love to visit the region to trace various sites related to
Dracula, both the fictional vampire and the real-life Vlad, and also sites
in the neighboring territory around Lugos, where Bela Lugosi was born and
raised. When Bela, whose birth name was "Blasko," was a novice actor, he
actually toured Transylvania in a repertory company. Cool, huh?

As we say in my Lugosi group, "Bats ^*^ wishes,"

Johanne

-----Original Message-----
From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of Paul Trevor
Bale
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 1:19 PM
To:
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)

I'm off to the Carpathians next year to tread the path of Vlad Tepes, known
in the west chiefly because Bram Stoker appropriated his name and location
for his famous vampire Dracula.
Drakul in Romanian means son of the dragon, also a member of a knightly
fraternity similar to the Knights of the Bath.
Lurid tales were spread of him by his enemies of him dining while watching
women and children being impaled. Tales denied by the vast majority from his
own lands. [And impalement as a means of execution was no worse than our
'civilised' hanging, drawing, and quartering.] In fact the man is still
venerated in Romania as a bulwark against the Turkish invasion of Europe,
which he was instrumental in stopping, and as a liberator.
He was betrayed and killed fighting. After his death the tales got worse and
worse.
Sound familiar?
Paul




On 22 Sep 2012, at 16:09, Judy Thomson wrote:

> Just a thought (pulled from something I'm currently writing)
>
> .History
> was to the Greeks a goddess they called Clio, one of nine daughters of
Jupiter
> [Zeus] and Memory-I do not recall her Greek name, but its meaning was
thus. And
> therefore History is Daughter of Memory, and subject to the recollections
of
> men and, as S says, fallible. All we believe we know or have ever known
may be
> as illusory as figures in mist..
>
> And another story to consider:
>
> My Egyptologist husband concentrates on the 18th Dynasty. Traditionally,
it's been held that the disappearance of Pharaoh Akhenaton's Chief Wife
Nefertiti from official records indicated her death, and that Akhenaton
chose a brother (who suddenly shows up) named Smenkhare to be his co-regent
and immediate successor. Akhenaton is known for wresting political and
spiritual power from the priests of Amun; he announced there was one god,
the Aton, and moved his capital to Tell El Amarna.
>
> The Theban status quo later tried to erase Akhenaton from history. Much is
lost forever. Sound familiar?
>
> Recent scholarship notes the mystery "brother" has one truly mysterious
characteristic. His throne name, a supposedly unique nomen, is
"Nefer-nefer-u-aton," which just happens to have been Nefertiti's, as well.
Egyptologists at first dismissed this fluke...but more and more people are
grudgingly considering the possibility S and N were one and the same.
Additionally, a female mummy, now tentatively ID's as Nefertiti's, had one
arm deliberated broken off. When this arm is repositioned on the body, it
completes a pose used only in the burial of Pharaohs.
>
> Again, just a story.
>
> Judy
>
>
>
> Loyaulte me lie
>
> ________________________________
> From: HI <hi.dung@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 9:34 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>
> I'm afraid History is often like news bulletins: they dwell upon the bad
news, usually to propagandise on the side of warning people to be peaceful
instead of trouble. Did any of the medieval monarchs or Roman emperors
escape criticism; Thomas More even criticised the parsimonious Henry VII
saying that Henry VIII heralded a bright new dawn. Little did he realise
what a monster Henry VIII would turn out to be who ordered More's execution.

>
> History may be a case of not reading it and being uninformed or reading it
and being misinformed.
>
> Richard III was maligned by some, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't
a grain of truth in what was said. As we can't go back in time we will
never know.
>
> --- In , "EileenB"
<cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>>
>> Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone
should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular
views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may
have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every
single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to
be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I
dont.
>>
>> And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen
to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with
that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society
Forum where can you?
>>
>> Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long
as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way
I feel.
>>
>> I find it all baffling really...Eileen
>>
>>
>>
>> --- In , "Annette Carson" <email@>
wrote:
>>>
>>> Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol,
what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow
as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made
sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins
contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our
ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to
write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls
have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was
parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt
- if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage
that person to find out who made the more believable case.
>>>
>>> Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to
deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things
that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged
to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts
based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no
interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics
would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the
Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual
information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and
times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I
give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an
example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having
praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit
it, himself
> chooses to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of
Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more
facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is
what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the
interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I
speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the
existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or
objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our
legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're
not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
>>>
>>> So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in.
I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal
advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to
the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you
lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to
consider your case.
>>> Regards, Annette
>>> P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's
death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the
anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts
adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It
is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up
supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left
unbarbecued!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: justcarol67
>>> To:
>>> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
>>> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> <mcjohn@> wrote:
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
>>>> \Carol responds:
>>>
>>> Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that
medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them
was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
>>>
>>> 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis
of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so
many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain
have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases
include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was
defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French
invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some
disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last
moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only
a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his
own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry
ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague
and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his
best
> to find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's
since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them
legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he
wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show
that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews
should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and
executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting
another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole)
that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's
sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
>>>
>>> That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas
More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried
at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which
More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys'
escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III"
(perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a
tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was
eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was
secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed
in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew
up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of
them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the
throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time
> when Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no
English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done
away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of
their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's
enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped
remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the
building of the Tower of London.
>>>
>>> You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures,
and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have
been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other
historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character
in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average
person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or
quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would
depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still
retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who
support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between
Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him).
As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view
of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his
> case as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are
contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws
(instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion).
Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example,
his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but
none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a
hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find
very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the
recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and
exploding the myth.
>>>
>>> [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't
go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments.
Sigh.]
>>>
>>> Carol
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

Richard Liveth Yet!





------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

But who would they invite?   From everything I've read and heard I don't think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway.  The Duke of Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to attend of course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
 
However, I shall certainly be at any non-invite event!


________________________________
From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
To:
Sent: Saturday, 22 September 2012, 17:32
Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


 
That would be lovely....absolutely.

I have read somewhere (?) that the re-burial will be a private thing...Im understanding this as invites only? Understandable I suppose.....as its an unknown thing really isnt it...re-burying a long dead King..No precedent in modern times...Eileen

--- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@...> wrote:
>
> Eileen, a bit of a time lag works in my favour, as first I must find the necessary funds :-)
>
> That said, I hope to meet a bunch of you while we're there. In fact, it would be lovely if we Diehards could plan our own little event. Something celebratory to follow the High Solemnities of that [possible] reinterment. 
>
> Years ago, our local RIII chapter had one day a year when we really let loose. People dressed up (not obligated, of course, but most people did it out of sheer pleasure), and we had a 15th C. feast. A potluck, but somehow we always had good variety. I'll never forget one such, when my best friend made a boar's head subtlety. Along with all the scholarship, I would just love to meet you and others under circumstances where, to borrow from the Artist Once Again Known As Prince, we party like it's "1499..." Well, 1483, in our case.
>
> Anyone else? I'll recreate that subtlety if I can.
>
> Smiles,
> Judy
>  
> Loyaulte me lie
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:58 AM
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>  
> Oh good...excellent.
>
> Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of people have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for sure to get here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might be some time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place. I have a feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont want to feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at how many people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into 1000s...Amazing.
>
> --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> >
> > Hi, Eileen!
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few friends; I think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All the exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home to 400+ Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the remains are identified as Richard's....
> >
> > Judy
> >
> > And you were eloquent enough... :-)
> > à
> > Loyaulte me lie
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> > à
> > Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get across....
> >
> > May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on the mend and in fine fettle...
> > Eileen...
> >
> > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers" (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> > >
> > > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be hurt.
> > >
> > > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling. Let's remember why we're here.
> > >
> > > Warm regards,
> > > JudyÃ’â¬aà
> > >
> > >
> > > Ã’â¬aà
> > > Loyaulte me lie
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > > Ã’â¬aà
> > > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> > >
> > > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard lll Society Forum where can you?
> > >
> > > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be the way I feel.
> > >
> > > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> > >
> > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, "Annette Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed! Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> > > >
> > > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations. I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit it, himself
> > chooses
> > > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > > >
> > > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other people to consider your case.
> > > > Regards, Annette
> > > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left unbarbecued!
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > From: justcarol67
> > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > > <snip>
> > > > >
> > > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > > >\Carol responds:
> > > >
> > > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > > >
> > > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't, because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England, those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his best
> to
> > > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > > >
> > > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings, Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present during the time
> when
> > > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > > >
> > > > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case, records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias, and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul Murray Kendall presents his
> case
> > > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion). Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example, his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth and exploding the myth.
> > > >
> > > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of arguments. Sigh.]
> > > >
> > > > Carol
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

Me too - I'll be there come what may...(flexing of credit card etc!)

On 22 September 2012 15:10, liz williams
<ferrymansdaughter@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> But who would they invite? From everything I've read and heard I don't
> think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway. The Duke of
> Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to attend of
> course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
>
> However, I shall certainly be at any non-invite event!
>
> ________________________________
> From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, 22 September 2012, 17:32
> Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
> That would be lovely....absolutely.
>
> I have read somewhere (?) that the re-burial will be a private thing...Im
> understanding this as invites only? Understandable I suppose.....as its an
> unknown thing really isnt it...re-burying a long dead King..No precedent in
> modern times...Eileen
>
> --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson
> <judygerard.thomson@...> wrote:
> >
> > Eileen, a bit of a time lag works in my favour, as first I must find the
> necessary funds :-)
> >
> > That said, I hope to meet a bunch of you while we're there. In fact, it
> would be lovely if we Diehards could plan our own little event. Something
> celebratory to follow the High Solemnities of that [possible] reinterment.Â
> >
> > Years ago, our local RIII chapter had one day a year when we really let
> loose. People dressed up (not obligated, of course, but most people did it
> out of sheer pleasure), and we had a 15th C. feast. A potluck, but somehow
> we always had good variety. I'll never forget one such, when my best friend
> made a boar's head subtlety. Along with all the scholarship, I would just
> love to meet you and others under circumstances where, to borrow from the
> Artist Once Again Known As Prince, we party like it's "1499..." Well, 1483,
> in our case.
> >
> > Anyone else? I'll recreate that subtlety if I can.
> >
> > Smiles,
> > Judy
> > Â
> > Loyaulte me lie
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:58 AM
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> > Â
> > Oh good...excellent.
> >
> > Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of people
> have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for sure to get
> here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might be some
> time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place. I have a
> feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont want to
> feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at how many
> people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into 1000s...Amazing.
> >
> > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson
> <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi, Eileen!
> > >
> > > Thanks!
> > >
> > > Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few friends; I
> think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All the
> exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home to 400+
> Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the remains
> are identified as Richard's....
> > >
> > > Judy
> > >
> > > And you were eloquent enough... :-)
> > > ÃÂ
> > > Loyaulte me lie
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > > ÃÂ
> > > Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever
> could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get
> across....
> > >
> > > May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while
> ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on
> the mend and in fine fettle...
> > > Eileen...
> > >
> > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson
> <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers"
> (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their
> emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the
> Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are
> bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've
> got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought
> feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for
> everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major
> discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all
> the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what
> we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> > > >
> > > > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will
> tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon
> some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers
> of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an
> Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to
> remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be
> hurt.
> > > >
> > > > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling.
> Let's remember why we're here.
> > > >
> > > > Warm regards,
> > > > JudyÃ’â¬aÃÂ
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Ã’â¬aÃÂ
> > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ________________________________
> > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Ã’â¬aÃÂ
> > > > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone
> should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular
> views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have
> happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single
> thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be
> fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> > > >
> > > > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do
> happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the
> problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard
> lll Society Forum where can you?
> > > >
> > > > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as
> long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be
> the way I feel.
> > > >
> > > > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> > > >
> > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, "Annette
> Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed!
> Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts
> somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with
> ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which
> Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that
> defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be
> invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and
> other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at
> least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the
> seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root
> and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> > > > >
> > > > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any
> right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about
> things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is
> obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote
> was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no
> interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics
> would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the
> Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual
> information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life
> and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations.
> I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an
> example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having
> praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit
> it, himself
> > > chooses
> > > > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of
> Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more
> facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is
> what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the
> interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I
> speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the
> existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or
> objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our
> legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're
> not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > > > >
> > > > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to
> believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both
> in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK
> Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You
> win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other
> people to consider your case.
> > > > > Regards, Annette
> > > > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne
> Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But
> the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no
> facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery
> disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one
> puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left
> unbarbecued!
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > From: justcarol67
> > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
> General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > > > <snip>
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > > > >\Carol responds:
> > > > >
> > > > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that
> medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them
> was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > > > >
> > > > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective
> analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't,
> because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those
> that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England,
> those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's
> case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter
> French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some
> disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last
> moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only
> a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond
> his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry
> ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague
> and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his
> best
> > to
> > > > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in
> Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to
> consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him
> look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his
> laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what
> happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it
> wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter
> of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister
> Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to
> blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's
> death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > > > >
> > > > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas
> More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried
> at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest
> (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including
> the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of
> Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he
> knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention
> that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had
> about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings,
> Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation
> against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his
> lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who
> murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present
> during the time
> > when
> > > > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no
> English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been
> done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor
> of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by
> Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died
> or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well
> predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > > > >
> > > > > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical
> figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case,
> records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what
> other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a
> character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the
> average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer
> :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that
> historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most
> historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias,
> and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced
> to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the
> uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in
> general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul
> Murray Kendall presents his
> > case
> > > > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are
> contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws
> (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion).
> Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example,
> his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but
> none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a
> hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find
> very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the
> recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth
> and exploding the myth.
> > > > >
> > > > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably
> won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of
> arguments. Sigh.]
> > > > >
> > > > > Carol
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>



--
Lisa
The Antiques Boutique & Ceramic Restoration/Conservation Services
Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
Tel: 902 295 9013 / 1329

www.Antiques-Boutique.com <http://www.antiques-boutique.com/>
Like us on *www.facebook.com/TheAntiquesBoutique*
View our Ceramic Restoration Photos
<https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.398988066799604.100100.108554399176307&type=1&l=cd560aff9f>

liz williams wrote:
>
> But who would they invite?   From everything I've read and heard I don't think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway.  The Duke of Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to attend of course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
> <snip>

Carol responds:

Yes, I've been wondering about HRH the Duke of Gloucester. How can he remain silent on such a momentous occasion? Maybe he's waiting for the DNA results before making a statement.

Carol

Me too...I will be the one prostrated weeping on the ground...

--- In , "Lisa @ The Antiques Boutique" <lisa.holtjones@...> wrote:
>
> Me too - I'll be there come what may...(flexing of credit card etc!)
>
> On 22 September 2012 15:10, liz williams
> <ferrymansdaughter@...>wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > But who would they invite? From everything I've read and heard I don't
> > think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway. The Duke of
> > Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to attend of
> > course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
> >
> > However, I shall certainly be at any non-invite event!
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@...>
> > To:
> > Sent: Saturday, 22 September 2012, 17:32
> > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> >
> >
> > That would be lovely....absolutely.
> >
> > I have read somewhere (?) that the re-burial will be a private thing...Im
> > understanding this as invites only? Understandable I suppose.....as its an
> > unknown thing really isnt it...re-burying a long dead King..No precedent in
> > modern times...Eileen
> >
> > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson
> > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Eileen, a bit of a time lag works in my favour, as first I must find the
> > necessary funds :-)
> > >
> > > That said, I hope to meet a bunch of you while we're there. In fact, it
> > would be lovely if we Diehards could plan our own little event. Something
> > celebratory to follow the High Solemnities of that [possible] reinterment.Â
> > >
> > > Years ago, our local RIII chapter had one day a year when we really let
> > loose. People dressed up (not obligated, of course, but most people did it
> > out of sheer pleasure), and we had a 15th C. feast. A potluck, but somehow
> > we always had good variety. I'll never forget one such, when my best friend
> > made a boar's head subtlety. Along with all the scholarship, I would just
> > love to meet you and others under circumstances where, to borrow from the
> > Artist Once Again Known As Prince, we party like it's "1499..." Well, 1483,
> > in our case.
> > >
> > > Anyone else? I'll recreate that subtlety if I can.
> > >
> > > Smiles,
> > > Judy
> > > Â
> > > Loyaulte me lie
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:58 AM
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > > Â
> > > Oh good...excellent.
> > >
> > > Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of people
> > have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for sure to get
> > here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might be some
> > time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place. I have a
> > feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont want to
> > feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at how many
> > people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into 1000s...Amazing.
> > >
> > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson
> > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hi, Eileen!
> > > >
> > > > Thanks!
> > > >
> > > > Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few friends; I
> > think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All the
> > exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home to 400+
> > Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the remains
> > are identified as Richard's....
> > > >
> > > > Judy
> > > >
> > > > And you were eloquent enough... :-)
> > > > ÂÂ
> > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ________________________________
> > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ÂÂ
> > > > Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than I ever
> > could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to get
> > across....
> > > >
> > > > May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a little while
> > ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you are on
> > the mend and in fine fettle...
> > > > Eileen...
> > > >
> > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy Thomson
> > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the "messengers"
> > (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows their
> > emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not the
> > Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this site are
> > bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But we've
> > got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of us ought
> > feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room for
> > everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a major
> > discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't answer all
> > the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation is what
> > we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> > > > >
> > > > > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people will
> > tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based upon
> > some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When readers
> > of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone here is an
> > Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the group to
> > remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just might be
> > hurt.
> > > > >
> > > > > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except name-calling.
> > Let's remember why we're here.
> > > > >
> > > > > Warm regards,
> > > > > JudyÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ________________________________
> > > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit. Everyone
> > should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their particular
> > views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think may have
> > happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back every single
> > thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases to be
> > fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the time...I dont.
> > > > >
> > > > > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if you do
> > happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is the
> > problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the Richard
> > lll Society Forum where can you?
> > > > >
> > > > > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a mystery as
> > long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens to be
> > the way I feel.
> > > > >
> > > > > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> > > > >
> > > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, "Annette
> > Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly enjoyed!
> > Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this forum acts
> > somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us with
> > ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column to which
> > Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to feel that
> > defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him will be
> > invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that you and
> > other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to Richard III at
> > least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only to sow the
> > seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might take root
> > and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable case.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one has any
> > right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to write about
> > things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No one is
> > obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any scholar wrote
> > was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there would be no
> > interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few academics
> > would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE in the
> > Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual
> > information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and his life
> > and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and evaluations.
> > I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think is an
> > example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross, having
> > praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to discredit
> > it, himself
> > > > chooses
> > > > > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of
> > Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have no more
> > facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone knows is
> > what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the
> > interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so I
> > speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I perceive the
> > existing theory to be based on insufficient information or likelihood or
> > objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested under our
> > legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains when we're
> > not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you to
> > believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial opponents, both
> > in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the UK
> > Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair pensions. You
> > win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you encourage other
> > people to consider your case.
> > > > > > Regards, Annette
> > > > > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen Anne
> > Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's death. But
> > the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was poisoning (no
> > facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some mystery
> > disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as long as one
> > puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred cow left
> > unbarbecued!
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > > From: justcarol67
> > > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
> > General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > > > > <snip>
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > > > > >\Carol responds:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said that
> > medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or attacking them
> > was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an objective
> > analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history isn't,
> > because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of those
> > that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century England,
> > those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In Richard's
> > case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh, one-quarter
> > French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the aid of some
> > disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at the last
> > moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was not only
> > a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason (beyond
> > his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper. So Henry
> > ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard with vague
> > and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently did his
> > best
> > > to
> > > > > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in
> > Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would have to
> > consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to make him
> > look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical (his
> > laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of what
> > happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy, but it
> > wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former supporter
> > of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his sister
> > Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found someone to
> > blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after Tyrell's
> > death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir Thomas
> > More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows and buried
> > at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead priest
> > (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities, including
> > the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his "History of
> > Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII, whom he
> > knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also mention
> > that More was eight years old when Richard died and any information he had
> > about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval kings,
> > Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his reputation
> > against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors during his
> > lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered arm who
> > murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators present
> > during the time
> > > when
> > > > > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who spoke no
> > English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have been
> > done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that the rumor
> > of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably by
> > Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether they died
> > or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which may well
> > predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You say that we can look at the actions of these historical
> > figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's case,
> > records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately distorted. what
> > other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known as a
> > character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you ask the
> > average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either answer
> > :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly wish that
> > historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find that most
> > historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a Tudor bias,
> > and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves forced
> > to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III (the
> > uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports (in
> > general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper and Paul
> > Murray Kendall presents his
> > > case
> > > > > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we have are
> > contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are Richard's laws
> > (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from extortion).
> > Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for example,
> > his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is controversial, but
> > none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle with a
> > hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you will find
> > very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that the
> > recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective truth
> > and exploding the myth.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and probably
> > won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out of
> > arguments. Sigh.]
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Carol
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Lisa
> The Antiques Boutique & Ceramic Restoration/Conservation Services
> Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
> Tel: 902 295 9013 / 1329
>
> www.Antiques-Boutique.com <http://www.antiques-boutique.com/>
> Like us on *www.facebook.com/TheAntiquesBoutique*
> View our Ceramic Restoration Photos
> <https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.398988066799604.100100.108554399176307&type=1&l=cd560aff9f>
>
>
>
>

Yes.....come to think of it....We havent had a peep from him have we...As Carol says probably waiting for the DNA results...makes sense...Eileen

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> liz williams wrote:
> >
> > But who would they invite?   From everything I've read and heard I don't think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway.  The Duke of Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to attend of course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
> > <snip>
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Yes, I've been wondering about HRH the Duke of Gloucester. How can he remain silent on such a momentous occasion? Maybe he's waiting for the DNA results before making a statement.
>
> Carol
>

I've long felt another trip to England was in order and had hoped to
line up a return trip even before the momentous results of the dig in
Leicester. I'd be right there beside you on the ground, kneeling
reverently and probably teary-eyed. I can do nothing to change my
emotions, but I do seek to read as much as possible from the scholars
who contribute to our understanding of the people and events of that
era. Further, as a newcomer to the time, I have a lot of catching up to
do.

Oddly enough, it was a Gregory book a colleague had brought to work
and left lying about in the break room that really got me on the road to
discovering more about Richard's time. Every cloud has its silver
lining, eh?

Linda
--- In , "b.eileen25"
<cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>
> Me too...I will be the one prostrated weeping on the ground...
>
> --- In , "Lisa @ The Antiques
Boutique" lisa.holtjones@ wrote:
> >
> > Me too - I'll be there come what may...(flexing of credit card etc!)
> >
> > On 22 September 2012 15:10, liz williams
> > ferrymansdaughter@wrote:
> >
> > > **
> > >
> > >
> > > But who would they invite? From everything I've read and heard I
don't
> > > think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway. The
Duke of
> > > Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to
attend of
> > > course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
> > >
> > > However, I shall certainly be at any non-invite event!
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: EileenB cherryripe.eileenb@
> > > To:
> > > Sent: Saturday, 22 September 2012, 17:32
> > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
General
> > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > >
> > >
> > > That would be lovely....absolutely.
> > >
> > > I have read somewhere (?) that the re-burial will be a private
thing...Im
> > > understanding this as invites only? Understandable I
suppose.....as its an
> > > unknown thing really isnt it...re-burying a long dead King..No
precedent in
> > > modern times...Eileen
> > >
> > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy
Thomson
> > > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Eileen, a bit of a time lag works in my favour, as first I must
find the
> > > necessary funds :-)
> > > >
> > > > That said, I hope to meet a bunch of you while we're there. In
fact, it
> > > would be lovely if we Diehards could plan our own little event.
Something
> > > celebratory to follow the High Solemnities of that [possible]
reinterment.Â
> > > >
> > > > Years ago, our local RIII chapter had one day a year when we
really let
> > > loose. People dressed up (not obligated, of course, but most
people did it
> > > out of sheer pleasure), and we had a 15th C. feast. A potluck, but
somehow
> > > we always had good variety. I'll never forget one such, when my
best friend
> > > made a boar's head subtlety. Along with all the scholarship, I
would just
> > > love to meet you and others under circumstances where, to borrow
from the
> > > Artist Once Again Known As Prince, we party like it's "1499..."
Well, 1483,
> > > in our case.
> > > >
> > > > Anyone else? I'll recreate that subtlety if I can.
> > > >
> > > > Smiles,
> > > > Judy
> > > > Â
> > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ________________________________
> > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:58 AM
> > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
General
> > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Â
> > > > Oh good...excellent.
> > > >
> > > > Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of
people
> > > have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for
sure to get
> > > here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might
be some
> > > time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place.
I have a
> > > feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont
want to
> > > feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at
how many
> > > people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into
1000s...Amazing.
> > > >
> > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy
Thomson
> > > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Hi, Eileen!
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks!
> > > > >
> > > > > Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few
friends; I
> > > think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All
the
> > > exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home
to 400+
> > > Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the
remains
> > > are identified as Richard's....
> > > > >
> > > > > Judy
> > > > >
> > > > > And you were eloquent enough... :-)
> > > > > ÂÂ
> > > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ________________________________
> > > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
General
> > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ÂÂ
> > > > > Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than
I ever
> > > could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to
get
> > > across....
> > > > >
> > > > > May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a
little while
> > > ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you
are on
> > > the mend and in fine fettle...
> > > > > Eileen...
> > > > >
> > > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy
Thomson
> > > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the
"messengers"
> > > (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows
their
> > > emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not
the
> > > Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this
site are
> > > bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But
we've
> > > got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of
us ought
> > > feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room
for
> > > everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a
major
> > > discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't
answer all
> > > the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation
is what
> > > we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people
will
> > > tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based
upon
> > > some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When
readers
> > > of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone
here is an
> > > Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the
group to
> > > remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just
might be
> > > hurt.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except
name-calling.
> > > Let's remember why we're here.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Warm regards,
> > > > > > JudyÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ________________________________
> > > > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
General
> > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit.
Everyone
> > > should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their
particular
> > > views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think
may have
> > > happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back
every single
> > > thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases
to be
> > > fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the
time...I dont.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if
you do
> > > happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is
the
> > > problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the
Richard
> > > lll Society Forum where can you?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a
mystery as
> > > long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens
to be
> > > the way I feel.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com,
"Annette
> > > Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly
enjoyed!
> > > Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this
forum acts
> > > somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us
with
> > > ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column
to which
> > > Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to
feel that
> > > defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him
will be
> > > invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that
you and
> > > other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to
Richard III at
> > > least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only
to sow the
> > > seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might
take root
> > > and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable
case.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one
has any
> > > right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to
write about
> > > things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No
one is
> > > obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any
scholar wrote
> > > was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there
would be no
> > > interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few
academics
> > > would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE
in the
> > > Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual
> > > information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and
his life
> > > and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and
evaluations.
> > > I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think
is an
> > > example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross,
having
> > > praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to
discredit
> > > it, himself
> > > > > chooses
> > > > > > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of
> > > Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have
no more
> > > facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone
knows is
> > > what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the
> > > interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so
I
> > > speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I
perceive the
> > > existing theory to be based on insufficient information or
likelihood or
> > > objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested
under our
> > > legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains
when we're
> > > not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you
to
> > > believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial
opponents, both
> > > in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the
UK
> > > Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair
pensions. You
> > > win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you
encourage other
> > > people to consider your case.
> > > > > > > Regards, Annette
> > > > > > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen
Anne
> > > Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's
death. But
> > > the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was
poisoning (no
> > > facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some
mystery
> > > disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as
long as one
> > > puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred
cow left
> > > unbarbecued!
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > > > From: justcarol67
> > > > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece
(and
> > > General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > > > > > <snip>
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > > > > > >\Carol responds:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said
that
> > > medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or
attacking them
> > > was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an
objective
> > > analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history
isn't,
> > > because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of
those
> > > that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century
England,
> > > those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In
Richard's
> > > case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh,
one-quarter
> > > French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the
aid of some
> > > disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at
the last
> > > moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was
not only
> > > a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason
(beyond
> > > his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper.
So Henry
> > > ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard
with vague
> > > and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently
did his
> > > best
> > > > to
> > > > > > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in
> > > Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would
have to
> > > consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to
make him
> > > look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical
(his
> > > laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of
what
> > > happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy,
but it
> > > wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former
supporter
> > > of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his
sister
> > > Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found
someone to
> > > blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after
Tyrell's
> > > death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir
Thomas
> > > More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows
and buried
> > > at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead
priest
> > > (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities,
including
> > > the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his
"History of
> > > Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII,
whom he
> > > knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also
mention
> > > that More was eight years old when Richard died and any
information he had
> > > about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval
kings,
> > > Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his
reputation
> > > against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors
during his
> > > lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered
arm who
> > > murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators
present
> > > during the time
> > > > when
> > > > > > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who
spoke no
> > > English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have
been
> > > done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that
the rumor
> > > of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably
by
> > > Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether
they died
> > > or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which
may well
> > > predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > You say that we can look at the actions of these
historical
> > > figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's
case,
> > > records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately
distorted. what
> > > other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known
as a
> > > character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you
ask the
> > > average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either
answer
> > > :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly
wish that
> > > historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find
that most
> > > historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a
Tudor bias,
> > > and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves
forced
> > > to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III
(the
> > > uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports
(in
> > > general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper
and Paul
> > > Murray Kendall presents his
> > > > case
> > > > > > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we
have are
> > > contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are
Richard's laws
> > > (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from
extortion).
> > > Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for
example,
> > > his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is
controversial, but
> > > none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle
with a
> > > hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you
will find
> > > very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that
the
> > > recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective
truth
> > > and exploding the myth.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and
probably
> > > won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out
of
> > > arguments. Sigh.]
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Carol
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Lisa
> > The Antiques Boutique & Ceramic Restoration/Conservation Services
> > Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
> > Tel: 902 295 9013 / 1329
> >
> > www.Antiques-Boutique.com <http://www.antiques-boutique.com/>
> > Like us on *www.facebook.com/TheAntiquesBoutique*
> > View our Ceramic Restoration Photos
> >
<https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.398988066799604.100100.108554\
399176307&type=1&l=cd560aff9f>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

Well Linda now you have the Gregory book out of the way things can only get better!

There is no shortage of books that can be recommended to you...fiction and non-fiction.
It may be simpler to say what you have read before we start.....If you have not read Maligned King yet that would be a very good start. Eileen


--- In , "asphodellynwormwood" <asphodellynwormwood@...> wrote:
>
> I've long felt another trip to England was in order and had hoped to
> line up a return trip even before the momentous results of the dig in
> Leicester. I'd be right there beside you on the ground, kneeling
> reverently and probably teary-eyed. I can do nothing to change my
> emotions, but I do seek to read as much as possible from the scholars
> who contribute to our understanding of the people and events of that
> era. Further, as a newcomer to the time, I have a lot of catching up to
> do.
>
> Oddly enough, it was a Gregory book a colleague had brought to work
> and left lying about in the break room that really got me on the road to
> discovering more about Richard's time. Every cloud has its silver
> lining, eh?
>
> Linda
> --- In , "b.eileen25"
> <cherryripe.eileenb@> wrote:
> >
> > Me too...I will be the one prostrated weeping on the ground...
> >
> > --- In , "Lisa @ The Antiques
> Boutique" lisa.holtjones@ wrote:
> > >
> > > Me too - I'll be there come what may...(flexing of credit card etc!)
> > >
> > > On 22 September 2012 15:10, liz williams
> > > ferrymansdaughter@wrote:
> > >
> > > > **
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > But who would they invite? From everything I've read and heard I
> don't
> > > > think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway. The
> Duke of
> > > > Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to
> attend of
> > > > course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
> > > >
> > > > However, I shall certainly be at any non-invite event!
> > > >
> > > > ________________________________
> > > > From: EileenB cherryripe.eileenb@
> > > > To:
> > > > Sent: Saturday, 22 September 2012, 17:32
> > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
> General
> > > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > That would be lovely....absolutely.
> > > >
> > > > I have read somewhere (?) that the re-burial will be a private
> thing...Im
> > > > understanding this as invites only? Understandable I
> suppose.....as its an
> > > > unknown thing really isnt it...re-burying a long dead King..No
> precedent in
> > > > modern times...Eileen
> > > >
> > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy
> Thomson
> > > > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Eileen, a bit of a time lag works in my favour, as first I must
> find the
> > > > necessary funds :-)
> > > > >
> > > > > That said, I hope to meet a bunch of you while we're there. In
> fact, it
> > > > would be lovely if we Diehards could plan our own little event.
> Something
> > > > celebratory to follow the High Solemnities of that [possible]
> reinterment.Â
> > > > >
> > > > > Years ago, our local RIII chapter had one day a year when we
> really let
> > > > loose. People dressed up (not obligated, of course, but most
> people did it
> > > > out of sheer pleasure), and we had a 15th C. feast. A potluck, but
> somehow
> > > > we always had good variety. I'll never forget one such, when my
> best friend
> > > > made a boar's head subtlety. Along with all the scholarship, I
> would just
> > > > love to meet you and others under circumstances where, to borrow
> from the
> > > > Artist Once Again Known As Prince, we party like it's "1499..."
> Well, 1483,
> > > > in our case.
> > > > >
> > > > > Anyone else? I'll recreate that subtlety if I can.
> > > > >
> > > > > Smiles,
> > > > > Judy
> > > > > Â
> > > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ________________________________
> > > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:58 AM
> > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
> General
> > > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Â
> > > > > Oh good...excellent.
> > > > >
> > > > > Well.....Im a sure as eggs are eggs that that wonderful bunch of
> people
> > > > have found Richard....So..yes....you had better make plans for
> sure to get
> > > > here...Having said that I am beginning to realise that there might
> be some
> > > > time lapse until we will be able to visit his final resting place.
> I have a
> > > > feeling its going to be pretty crowded at first and I really dont
> want to
> > > > feel like I am being hurried and crowded out. I was surprised at
> how many
> > > > people turned out on the open day at the dig...it run into
> 1000s...Amazing.
> > > > >
> > > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy
> Thomson
> > > > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Hi, Eileen!
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Thanks!
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Yeah (gulp) that was me. I asked my husband to tell a few
> friends; I
> > > > think he hit the Reply to All, LoL. I'm much improved, thanks. All
> the
> > > > exciting news hit right when I had no computer access. Came home
> to 400+
> > > > Ricardian Emails. But now I'm scheming to get us to England if the
> remains
> > > > are identified as Richard's....
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Judy
> > > > > >
> > > > > > And you were eloquent enough... :-)
> > > > > > ÂÂ
> > > > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ________________________________
> > > > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:23 AM
> > > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
> General
> > > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ÂÂ
> > > > > > Thank you Judy....You put it in a far more eloquent way I than
> I ever
> > > > could...but I see you have fully understood what I am trying to
> get
> > > > across....
> > > > > >
> > > > > > May I ask...are you the Judy that was mentioned on here a
> little while
> > > > ago as being hospitalised....? If you are...I am pleased that you
> are on
> > > > the mend and in fine fettle...
> > > > > > Eileen...
> > > > > >
> > > > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com, Judy
> Thomson
> > > > <judygerard.thomson@> wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Eileen, I agree. As long as we show some respect to the
> "messengers"
> > > > (i.e., our fellow Forum members). If someone waxes poetic or shows
> their
> > > > emotional attachment...? Well, this IS a Richard III forum, not
> the
> > > > Medieval Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Some who follow this
> site are
> > > > bona fide historians. Or at least trained in rigorous methods. But
> we've
> > > > got artists, novelists, and just plain Dreamers present. None of
> us ought
> > > > feel we'll be shredded if we enter the conversation. There's room
> for
> > > > everyone, if we just acknowledge the historical records, short a
> major
> > > > discovery in the depths of, say, the Vatican Library, just don't
> answer all
> > > > the questions adequately. Interpretation and - yes - speculation
> is what
> > > > we're left with, a great deal of the time.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Also, this being a RIII-centric site, the majority of people
> will
> > > > tend to have a pro-Richard bias. That's the nature of groups based
> upon
> > > > some common interest. It's not a defect, just a fact of life. When
> readers
> > > > of Jane Austen meet, for example, the supposition is: Everyone
> here is an
> > > > Austen fan. If the group opens up to everyone, it behooves the
> group to
> > > > remember the original constituency and recognize how feelings just
> might be
> > > > hurt.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Bottom line, there's room for all opinions except
> name-calling.
> > > > Let's remember why we're here.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Warm regards,
> > > > > > > JudyÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > ÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > > > Loyaulte me lie
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > ________________________________
> > > > > > > From: EileenB <cherryripe.eileenb@>
> > > > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 8:26 AM
> > > > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece (and
> General
> > > > Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > ÃÆ'‚ÂÂ
> > > > > > > Why cannot we simply be allowed to post as we think fit.
> Everyone
> > > > should be allowed to post without getting pulled up on their
> particular
> > > > views. What is wrong with speculation and sharing what you think
> may have
> > > > happened or not. Crickey...if you feel as if you have to back
> every single
> > > > thought or idea up what would be the point of posting. It ceases
> to be
> > > > fun/enjoyable. Who wants to have to argue the toss all the
> time...I dont.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > And why should you have to worry about annoying people if
> you do
> > > > happen to think that Richard was magnificent or whatever. What is
> the
> > > > problem with that. After all if you cannot praise Richard on the
> Richard
> > > > lll Society Forum where can you?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Carol says "There is nothing wrong with trying to solve a
> mystery as
> > > > long as you realise we realise we havent solved it"...This happens
> to be
> > > > the way I feel.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I find it all baffling really...Eileen
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > --- In mailto:%40yahoogroups.com,
> "Annette
> > > > Carson" <email@> wrote:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Bravo to both for the two soapboxes, which I thoroughly
> enjoyed!
> > > > Carol, what I hope is that being able to exchange ideas on this
> forum acts
> > > > somehow as an antidote to the world of cynicism which surrounds us
> with
> > > > ready-made sound-bites designed to stir up controversy (the column
> to which
> > > > Mr Jenkins contributed is geared to do just that). If we get to
> feel that
> > > > defending our ideas is hopeless, they've won, and people like him
> will be
> > > > invited back to write more tendentious stuff. What matters is that
> you and
> > > > other brave souls have set down a marker that in relation to
> Richard III at
> > > > least, he was parroting unsubstantiated smears. The need is only
> to sow the
> > > > seeds of doubt - if read by a thinking person, those seeds might
> take root
> > > > and encourage that person to find out who made the more believable
> case.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Don't worry about standing up and being counted. No one
> has any
> > > > right to deter you, nor to deter me from writing what I want to
> write about
> > > > things that I've studied and researched and formed opinions on. No
> one is
> > > > obliged to read my books or believe my arguments. If all any
> scholar wrote
> > > > was facts based on evidence found in verifiable sources, there
> would be no
> > > > interpretation of those facts, and basically no one except a few
> academics
> > > > would have more than the faintest idea of what life was even LIKE
> in the
> > > > Middle Ages: we would just have source-books with lists of factual
> > > > information. We all owe our modest understanding of Richard and
> his life
> > > > and times to our reading of other people's interpretations and
> evaluations.
> > > > I give an example in my Preface to "Maligned King", which I think
> is an
> > > > example of what McJohn remarked on: the historian Charles Ross,
> having
> > > > praised Mancini's evidence and discounted attempts by others to
> discredit
> > > > it, himself
> > > > > > chooses
> > > > > > > to believe Thomas More rather than Mancini in the matter of
> > > > Clarence's execution. I beg leave to challenge this choice. I have
> no more
> > > > facts at my disposal than does Ross or Mancini or More, all anyone
> knows is
> > > > what's been written by fallible people 500 years ago. It's the
> > > > interpretation that I challenge. Why this rather than that? And so
> I
> > > > speculate, and so I construct alternative theories where I
> perceive the
> > > > existing theory to be based on insufficient information or
> likelihood or
> > > > objectivity. It's what happens in court when a case is tested
> under our
> > > > legal system. It's also what we human beings do with our brains
> when we're
> > > > not cooking the dinner or watching the telly.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > So stand up proudly for what your intelligence leads you
> to
> > > > believe in. I have butted heads with plenty of substantial
> opponents, both
> > > > in legal advocacy on behalf of animal protection and in taking the
> UK
> > > > Government to the European Court of Human Rights over unfair
> pensions. You
> > > > win some, you lose some, that's life. But along the way you
> encourage other
> > > > people to consider your case.
> > > > > > > > Regards, Annette
> > > > > > > > P.S. @Marianne - agreed, no one knows what caused Queen
> Anne
> > > > Neville's death, any more than they know what caused Edward IV's
> death. But
> > > > the anti-Richard Crowland chronicler decided the former was
> poisoning (no
> > > > facts adduced in substantiation), whereas the latter was some
> mystery
> > > > disease. It is no less valid to reverse these possibilities, as
> long as one
> > > > puts up supporting arguments. To quote your good self: no sacred
> cow left
> > > > unbarbecued!
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > > > > > > From: justcarol67
> > > > > > > > To: mailto:%40yahoogroups.com
> > > > > > > > Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 6:32 AM
> > > > > > > > Subject: Re: Guardian Piece
> (and
> > > > General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > <mcjohn@> wrote:
> > > > > > > > > <snip>
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > Um... anybody else want this soapbox now?
> > > > > > > > >\Carol responds:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Here's my latest attempt (in response to a person who said
> that
> > > > medieval dynasties were like crime families and defending or
> attacking them
> > > > was a pointless as defending or attacking Al Capone:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > 'm afraid that I can't agree. History should be an
> objective
> > > > analysis of the past, but it isn't, or at least medieval history
> isn't,
> > > > because so many sources have been lost or destroyed and so many of
> those
> > > > that remain have an evident bias (in the case of fifteenth-century
> England,
> > > > those biases include Yorkist, Lancastrian, Tudor, and French). In
> Richard's
> > > > case, he was defeated and killed by the forces of a half-Welsh,
> one-quarter
> > > > French invader who had only a faint Lancastrian claim (with the
> aid of some
> > > > disaffected nobles who either sat out the battle or attacked at
> the last
> > > > moment when Richard made his disastrous charge). Since Richard was
> not only
> > > > a crowned and anointed king, Henry Tudor had to provide a reason
> (beyond
> > > > his own weak claim) for overthrowing him or be branded a usurper.
> So Henry
> > > > ordered all copies of Titulus Regius burned and branded Richard
> with vague
> > > > and unsupported charges of tyranny and infanticide. He apparently
> did his
> > > > best
> > > > > to
> > > > > > > find Richard's nephews (who stood in *his* way more than in
> > > > Richard's since, if he intended to marry their sister, he would
> have to
> > > > consider them legitimate. Henry's historians did their best to
> make him
> > > > look saintly (he wasn't) and Richard look monstrous and tyrannical
> (his
> > > > laws and letters show that he wasn't). The unsolved mystery of
> what
> > > > happened to Richard's nephews should have made Henry's job easy,
> but it
> > > > wasn't until he captured and executed Sir James Tyrell, a former
> supporter
> > > > of Richard's, for supporting another of Richard's nephews (his
> sister
> > > > Elizabeth's son Edmund de la Pole) that Henry finally found
> someone to
> > > > blame for the "murders" of King Edward's sons and claimed (after
> Tyrell's
> > > > death) that Tyrell had confessed.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > That ostensible confession forms the sketchy basis for Sir
> Thomas
> > > > More's fanciful story about the boys being smothered by pillows
> and buried
> > > > at the foot of some stairs by an unknown and conveniently dead
> priest
> > > > (which More afterward admits is only one of many possibilities,
> including
> > > > the boys' escape). More never published or even finished his
> "History of
> > > > Richard III" (perhaps because he couldn't bear to make Henry VII,
> whom he
> > > > knew to be a tyrant, into the savior of England). I should also
> mention
> > > > that More was eight years old when Richard died and any
> information he had
> > > > about him was secondhand at best. Anyway, unlike other medieval
> kings,
> > > > Richard was killed in battle and had no one to defend his
> reputation
> > > > against the myth that grew up around him. He did have detractors
> during his
> > > > lifetime, but not one of them made him a hunchback with a withered
> arm who
> > > > murdered his way to the throne. In fact, of the two commentators
> present
> > > > during the time
> > > > > when
> > > > > > > Richard assumed the throne, one (an Italian visitor who
> spoke no
> > > > English) says that he has heard rumors that Richard's nephews have
> been
> > > > done away with but he can't confirm them and the other says that
> the rumor
> > > > of their deaths was spread (he doesn't say by whom but presumably
> by
> > > > Richard's enemies) at the time of Buckingham's rebellion. Whether
> they died
> > > > or escaped remains a mystery despite the bones in the urn, which
> may well
> > > > predate the building of the Tower of London.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > You say that we can look at the actions of these
> historical
> > > > figures, and in most cases that is no doubt true, but in Richard's
> case,
> > > > records have been destroyed and his reputation deliberately
> distorted. what
> > > > other historical figure (except possibly Macbeth) is better known
> as a
> > > > character in a Shakespearean play than a historical king? If you
> ask the
> > > > average person what he knows about Richard III, he will either
> answer
> > > > :nothing" or quote a line from Shakespeare's play. I certainly
> wish that
> > > > historians would depict Richard objectively, but you will find
> that most
> > > > historians still retain either a Yorkist, a Lancastrian, or a
> Tudor bias,
> > > > and even those who support the Yorkists in general find themselves
> forced
> > > > to choose between Edward V (the deposed boy king) and Richard III
> (the
> > > > uncle who deposed him). As I said earlier, Charles Ross supports
> (in
> > > > general) the traditional view of Richard as a tyrannical usurper
> and Paul
> > > > Murray Kendall presents his
> > > > > case
> > > > > > > as a good king with a rightful claim. The few documents we
> have are
> > > > contradictory. The only ones that speak for themselves are
> Richard's laws
> > > > (instituting bail, for example, or protecting poor men from
> extortion).
> > > > Richard is not just a member of his family. Even that family (for
> example,
> > > > his cousin the Earl of Warwick or his brother Edward( is
> controversial, but
> > > > none of them has been depicted as the stereotypical wicked uncle
> with a
> > > > hunchback and a withered arm. Richard is a special case, and you
> will find
> > > > very few historians who deal with him objectively. Let's hope that
> the
> > > > recent archaeological find spurs interest in finding the objective
> truth
> > > > and exploding the myth.
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > [End of response. I almost feel as if it's hopeless and
> probably
> > > > won't go back to the Simon Jenkins site, and in any case I'm out
> of
> > > > arguments. Sigh.]
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Carol
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Lisa
> > > The Antiques Boutique & Ceramic Restoration/Conservation Services
> > > Baddeck, Nova Scotia.
> > > Tel: 902 295 9013 / 1329
> > >
> > > www.Antiques-Boutique.com <http://www.antiques-boutique.com/>
> > > Like us on *www.facebook.com/TheAntiquesBoutique*
> > > View our Ceramic Restoration Photos
> > >
> <https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.398988066799604.100100.108554\
> 399176307&type=1&l=cd560aff9f>
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

Very true. The same colleague has multiple Gregory books in the break
room. I read them all with the view that it was a fanciful
interpretation (read: author's imagination) with a few facts thrown in
for spice. Thus far, the only books I have myself are Annette's 'The
Maligned King', 'Richard: The Young King to Be' by Josephine Wilkinson
and 'Bosworth 1485' by Mike Ingram. I am currently in the process of
rereading all three of them.

My interests include not only Richard's life history (as much as can
be established with extant original sources), but also the experiences
of the average (not wealthy noble) soldier who fought for him,
especially the archers. Yes, those are the two biggies to me. Richard's
life and the archers who fought for him.

Back in the dark ages when I was in school, we did a unit on archery
in sport class. I remember how strange and yet familiar the bow felt the
first time I picked one up. Of all the first arrows shot that day, mine
was the one to find its target and win praise from the teacher, "You've
done this before, haven't you?". I only wish I had pursued archery now
as I thoroughly enjoyed it and appeared to have some innate talent that
could have been honed. I find its history to be fascinating.

Linda
--- In , "EileenB"
<cherryripe.eileenb@...> wrote:
>
> Well Linda now you have the Gregory book out of the way things can
only get better!
>
> There is no shortage of books that can be recommended to you...fiction
and non-fiction.
> It may be simpler to say what you have read before we start.....If you
have not read Maligned King yet that would be a very good start. Eileen
>
>
> --- In , "asphodellynwormwood"
asphodellynwormwood@ wrote:
> >
> > I've long felt another trip to England was in order and had hoped
to
> > line up a return trip even before the momentous results of the dig
in
> > Leicester. I'd be right there beside you on the ground, kneeling
> > reverently and probably teary-eyed. I can do nothing to change my
> > emotions, but I do seek to read as much as possible from the
scholars
> > who contribute to our understanding of the people and events of that
> > era. Further, as a newcomer to the time, I have a lot of catching up
to
> > do.
> >
> > Oddly enough, it was a Gregory book a colleague had brought to
work
> > and left lying about in the break room that really got me on the
road to
> > discovering more about Richard's time. Every cloud has its silver
> > lining, eh?
> >
> > Linda
> > --- In , "b.eileen25"
> > <cherryripe.eileenb@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Me too...I will be the one prostrated weeping on the ground...
> > >

For the record, Philippa has been liaising with HRH all along and he has been supportive and helpful, easing communications where required in areas which might concern the royal family. I mustn't steal Philippa's thunder by going into details, but before the dig ever started there were many factors that had to be clarified about procedures in case the search for Richard was successful. I understand that he wishes to be present at any commemoration service, and the College of Arms is standing by. My impression is that the royals have been quietly co-operative and have agreed that Leicester Cathedral would be the right and proper place to lay him to rest. I'm sure Carol is right in suggesting that the Duke will not rush to comment until an identification is made.


----- Original Message -----
From: EileenB
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 7:18 PM
Subject: Re: The present Duke of Gloucester



Yes.....come to think of it....We havent had a peep from him have we...As Carol says probably waiting for the DNA results...makes sense...Eileen

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> liz williams wrote:
> >
> > But who would they invite?  From everything I've read and heard I don't think the Queen is particularly interested in history anyway. The Duke of Gloucester would be the obvious member of the royal family to attend of course since he is also the Patron of the Society.
> > <snip>
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Yes, I've been wondering about HRH the Duke of Gloucester. How can he remain silent on such a momentous occasion? Maybe he's waiting for the DNA results before making a statement.
>
> Carol
>

Say, Linda, if you felt like picking it up again, there has been no better time in human history for re-adoption as an adult of an activity you enjoyed in childhood. Archery is surprisingly popular (that people aren't aware of it may have something to do with the unfortunate reality that, unlike running, one cannot simply strap on trainers and practice in the park), and the teaching of any athletic discipline, in the computer age, just gets better and better.

--- In , "asphodellynwormwood" <asphodellynwormwood@...> wrote:
>
> Very true. The same colleague has multiple Gregory books in the break
> room. I read them all with the view that it was a fanciful
> interpretation (read: author's imagination) with a few facts thrown in
> for spice. Thus far, the only books I have myself are Annette's 'The
> Maligned King', 'Richard: The Young King to Be' by Josephine Wilkinson
> and 'Bosworth 1485' by Mike Ingram. I am currently in the process of
> rereading all three of them.
>
> My interests include not only Richard's life history (as much as can
> be established with extant original sources), but also the experiences
> of the average (not wealthy noble) soldier who fought for him,
> especially the archers. Yes, those are the two biggies to me. Richard's
> life and the archers who fought for him.
>
> Back in the dark ages when I was in school, we did a unit on archery
> in sport class. I remember how strange and yet familiar the bow felt the
> first time I picked one up. Of all the first arrows shot that day, mine
> was the one to find its target and win praise from the teacher, "You've
> done this before, haven't you?". I only wish I had pursued archery now
> as I thoroughly enjoyed it and appeared to have some innate talent that
> could have been honed. I find its history to be fascinating.
>
> Linda

Marianne, your post was deleted :(

--- In , Dr M M Gilchrist <docm@...> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/history-as-
> fantasy-no-substitute-truth
> That idiot Simon Jenkins getting carried away with himself, though I
> do agree about pseudo-history and wish-fulfilment fantasy posing as
> history being a waste of space.
> I've posted my responses as NuitsdeYoung. My main one is here:
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/18394095
>
> "No sacred cow unbarbequed".
>
> cheers,
> Marianne
>

The thing is I rather like Warwick (the word that comes to mind when I think of him is bold) and thought he was treated badly by Edward.  I'm just saying you  wouldn't like people saying things that you felt were untrue.  To me it is okay if someone wants to think Richard was a saint.  When there is a lack of proof, than we all have to decide what we choose to believe.  I don't  think any of us should put down someone who chooses to think differently.
Vickie

From: Karen Clark <Ragged_staff@...>
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


 
I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here about what a 'Mary Sue' is.
None of the members of this forum are. We're all real live human beings, not
fictional characters. The term comes from fanfic, particularly SF or fantasy
fanfic, but it's now used for any (usually female) character who's too good
to be true. You know the ones. Every man they meet falls in love with them.
They can beat anyone in a fight, even if they've never picked up a sword
before. They can speak twenty languages. They're always right and frequently
save the world singlehanded. They're incredibly beautiful and have names
like Raven. And there are lot of them around in historical fiction at the
moment. Being a diehard supporter of Richard III (or any person from
history) doesn't make anyone a Mary Sue. I apologise for any
misunderstanding or offence. It was entirely unintentional.

You can call Warwick 'evil' as much as you like, Vickie. I've heard it all
by now! He certainly did some pretty shonky things, like executing Richard
and John Wydeville with neither trial nor justification; rebelling against
the king, that kind of thing. It's not going to upset me in the slightest. I
find him fascinating, but I don't make excuses for him. He did what he did
and there's nothing I can do to change that. I don't believe either he or
Richard III was evil, mainly because it's a word I don't use. They were
human beings, men of their times. Brutal and ruthless some of the time, by
21st century standards. Not evil.

I don't know if Richard killed his nephews. I'd like to think he didn't and
that one day there'll be something solid to back that up, but I just don't
know.

Karen

From: Vickie <mailto:lolettecook%40yahoo.com>
Reply-To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 10:15:17 -0500
To: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com"
<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com"
<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)

I agree Eileen. There are those on here who want to condemn "Mary Janes".
Who are any of us to tell others they should not think the way they do. I
dare say there would be some who would be upset if the Earl of Warwick was
called "evil" even though there could be some basis for that belief.
I for one do not think Richard was a saint, just a man of his times. I base
my belief that he did not kill his nephews on the proven fact that Richard
was not stupid and to kill them in secrecy would have been stupid

Vickie

Vickie, I fail to see how I've put anyone down. I have said only that I fall
between the two extremes of those who believe Richard was a saint and those
who believe he was a monster. I really can't see how that can be construed
as putting anyone down.

Karen

From: Vickie Cook <lolettecook@...>
Reply-To: <>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:04:39 -0700 (PDT)
To: ""
<>
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)






The thing is I rather like Warwick (the word that comes to mind when I think
of him is bold) and thought he was treated badly by Edward. I'm just saying
you wouldn't like people saying things that you felt were untrue. To me it
is okay if someone wants to think Richard was a saint. When there is a lack
of proof, than we all have to decide what we choose to believe. I don't
think any of us should put down someone who chooses to think differently.
Vickie

From: Karen Clark <Ragged_staff@...
<mailto:Ragged_staff%40bigpond.com> >
To:
<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)


I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here about what a 'Mary Sue' is.
None of the members of this forum are. We're all real live human beings, not
fictional characters. The term comes from fanfic, particularly SF or fantasy
fanfic, but it's now used for any (usually female) character who's too good
to be true. You know the ones. Every man they meet falls in love with them.
They can beat anyone in a fight, even if they've never picked up a sword
before. They can speak twenty languages. They're always right and frequently
save the world singlehanded. They're incredibly beautiful and have names
like Raven. And there are lot of them around in historical fiction at the
moment. Being a diehard supporter of Richard III (or any person from
history) doesn't make anyone a Mary Sue. I apologise for any
misunderstanding or offence. It was entirely unintentional.

You can call Warwick 'evil' as much as you like, Vickie. I've heard it all
by now! He certainly did some pretty shonky things, like executing Richard
and John Wydeville with neither trial nor justification; rebelling against
the king, that kind of thing. It's not going to upset me in the slightest. I
find him fascinating, but I don't make excuses for him. He did what he did
and there's nothing I can do to change that. I don't believe either he or
Richard III was evil, mainly because it's a word I don't use. They were
human beings, men of their times. Brutal and ruthless some of the time, by
21st century standards. Not evil.

I don't know if Richard killed his nephews. I'd like to think he didn't and
that one day there'll be something solid to back that up, but I just don't
know.

Karen

From: Vickie <mailto:lolettecook%40yahoo.com>
Reply-To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 10:15:17 -0500
To: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com"
<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com"
<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)

I agree Eileen. There are those on here who want to condemn "Mary Janes".
Who are any of us to tell others they should not think the way they do. I
dare say there would be some who would be upset if the Earl of Warwick was
called "evil" even though there could be some basis for that belief.
I for one do not think Richard was a saint, just a man of his times. I base
my belief that he did not kill his nephews on the proven fact that Richard
was not stupid and to kill them in secrecy would have been stupid

Vickie

Actually I think the whole question of the beatification of Gloucester is some time away. He will be burie in Leicester... not St. John Lateran ;)

But it is important that we accept that he was a man of his time, and like men today, sometimes nice, sometimes nasty (!!!) and I think the more powerful the individual, then the more closely entwined those particular emotions would have been with self-interest. In fact, probably subsumed, even more than entwined. This I think holds true today.

V interesting though, carry on all!

--- In , Karen Clark <Ragged_staff@...> wrote:
>
> Vickie, I fail to see how I've put anyone down. I have said only that I fall
> between the two extremes of those who believe Richard was a saint and those
> who believe he was a monster. I really can't see how that can be construed
> as putting anyone down.
>
> Karen
>
> From: Vickie Cook <lolettecook@...>
> Reply-To: <>
> Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:04:39 -0700 (PDT)
> To: ""
> <>
> Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> The thing is I rather like Warwick (the word that comes to mind when I think
> of him is bold) and thought he was treated badly by Edward. I'm just saying
> you wouldn't like people saying things that you felt were untrue. To me it
> is okay if someone wants to think Richard was a saint. When there is a lack
> of proof, than we all have to decide what we choose to believe. I don't
> think any of us should put down someone who chooses to think differently.
> Vickie
>
> From: Karen Clark <Ragged_staff@...
> <mailto:Ragged_staff%40bigpond.com> >
> To:
> <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, September 22, 2012 10:55 AM
> Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
>
> I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding here about what a 'Mary Sue' is.
> None of the members of this forum are. We're all real live human beings, not
> fictional characters. The term comes from fanfic, particularly SF or fantasy
> fanfic, but it's now used for any (usually female) character who's too good
> to be true. You know the ones. Every man they meet falls in love with them.
> They can beat anyone in a fight, even if they've never picked up a sword
> before. They can speak twenty languages. They're always right and frequently
> save the world singlehanded. They're incredibly beautiful and have names
> like Raven. And there are lot of them around in historical fiction at the
> moment. Being a diehard supporter of Richard III (or any person from
> history) doesn't make anyone a Mary Sue. I apologise for any
> misunderstanding or offence. It was entirely unintentional.
>
> You can call Warwick 'evil' as much as you like, Vickie. I've heard it all
> by now! He certainly did some pretty shonky things, like executing Richard
> and John Wydeville with neither trial nor justification; rebelling against
> the king, that kind of thing. It's not going to upset me in the slightest. I
> find him fascinating, but I don't make excuses for him. He did what he did
> and there's nothing I can do to change that. I don't believe either he or
> Richard III was evil, mainly because it's a word I don't use. They were
> human beings, men of their times. Brutal and ruthless some of the time, by
> 21st century standards. Not evil.
>
> I don't know if Richard killed his nephews. I'd like to think he didn't and
> that one day there'll be something solid to back that up, but I just don't
> know.
>
> Karen
>
> From: Vickie <mailto:lolettecook%40yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 10:15:17 -0500
> To: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com"
> <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Cc: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com"
> <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Piece (and General
> Opposition to Realistic Interpretation)
>
> I agree Eileen. There are those on here who want to condemn "Mary Janes".
> Who are any of us to tell others they should not think the way they do. I
> dare say there would be some who would be upset if the Earl of Warwick was
> called "evil" even though there could be some basis for that belief.
> I for one do not think Richard was a saint, just a man of his times. I base
> my belief that he did not kill his nephews on the proven fact that Richard
> was not stupid and to kill them in secrecy would have been stupid
>
> Vickie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>