Re Michael Hicks & Michael K Jones

Re the two Michaels just under discussion, I picked up a copy of the
December BBC History Magazine yesterday, and it has an article by
Michael Hicks on how Richard came to the throne.

He actually seems to have taken Michael K Jones' book to heart and the
angle is that Edward V lost the throne because of things that happened
before he was born - ie his father probably wasn't York's son (he refers
specifically to Jones) and probably did promise marriage to Eleanor
Butler. The title, "Sins of the Father", pretty much explains the
argument.

However, he's not exactly turned into a Ricardian yet. Quote: "They [the
members of the Council] looked to Uncle Richard to keep them [the
Woodvilles] out. It was Richard's opportunity. At this point Bishop
Stillington remembered the match of Eleanor Butler with Edward IV. . .
And provided Richard with the means to bastardise all the children by
that marriage and to dispossess Edward V of his throne. However appalled
Crowland was, he could do nothing. . . Edward V, no longer king, was
now officially a bastard. In another guise, he was sent to the Tower
with his younger brother, Richard. They did not live long enough to
witness the reversal two years later. . . "

I don't need to point out that that the boys were not "sent to the
Tower" after being proclaimed bastards.

However, there is much more direct accusation in the captions to the
illustrations, viz:
"Richard Duke of York... Brother of Edward V, with whom he was
presumably murdered on the orders of Richard III"
"Edward V... With the connivance of the nobility, Edward's uncle Richard
III, [sic extraneous comma] usurped the 13-year-old's throne"
"Dynastic union bringing war to an end. . . Henry, in a piece of canny
diplomacy, united the houses of Lancaster and York by marrying Elizabeth
of York. . . In doing so, Henry brought the Wars of the Roses to an end"
"Despite recent revisionism, the killings of Edward V and his younger
brother Richard were almost certainly carried out on Richard III's
orders".
To me these sound like editorial insertions - that kind of bringing the
Wars of the Roses to an end guff doesn't sound scholarly enough to be
Hicks.
There is a reference to the Society website at the end, but with the
proviso: "which is, understandably, pro-Ricardian."

If these, not exactly neutral, captions are editorial additions, then I
feel they're completely out of order in the middle of someone else's
article. It may be that Hicks is happy with them anyway, but if I'd
submitted an article and they did that to it I'd be livid.

Last thing. Hicks says Lady Lucey was not called Elizabeth after all,
and is not the obscure Hampshire lady we have always been told (but of
whose existence there actually appears to be no proof).
Sadly, he doesn't discuss his grounds, just takes it as a given, but
says she was "Margaret Lucy... The widowed daughter of Anne Montagu,
ultimately Duchess of Exeter and a favourite aunt of Warwick the
Kingmaker. Margaret Lucy had a series of liaisons, with John Stafford,
Edward IV, Thomas Danvers, and Thomas Wake, and bore two children."

Now that's interesting, as Lady Margaret Lucy came to my attention when
researching novel on Anne of York, as she was a stepsister of Anne's
husband the Duke of Exeter. However, if she was, as I have it down, the
daughter of Anne Montague's first husband Sir Richard Hankeford, she
would have been much older than Edward IV, as Hankeford died in Feb
1431. Margaret's husband was Sir William Lucy, and I have him down as
dying at Northampton. She would have been at least 30 then. But I'm
afraid I don't know anything about the liaisons Hicks mentions, or her
children, but there is a chronicle which I think mentions that Sir W.
Lucy was killed in battle by a man "who loved that knight's wife and
hated him".

So we live and learn. Young Edward did seem to have had a thing about
older women, didn't he?

Marie