Alison Hanham on the Crowland chronicler

So glad that the Society is starting to put articles from the Ricardian on line.  
I read this one last night by Alison Hanham from 2008, and am curious to know if there has been any serious counter-argument about her characterization of the 2nd continuation as an in-house record cobbled together from a variety of sources, rather than a coherent diary by a specially informed source.
http://www.richardiii.net/downloads/Ricardian/2008_vol18_hanham_mysterious_affair.pdf

A J

Marie responds:

I'm not aware of any counter-article, but at the same time I've seen no sign that her arguments have been taken on board.

To me that article came as a complete light bulb moment. I'm not always that taken with Alison Hanham's ideas, but I'd been finding so many holes and misconceptions in Crowland's account of Westminster events, and indications that the main text wasn't written at a single sitting (ie there's a definite lack of the benefit of hindsight with the chronicler's judgements of some of the earlier events), that the standard idea of the author being a Westminster official on a visit was seeming more and more curious.

Also, there hasn't been a single Westminster candidate put forward who fits all the necessary criteria - they all fall short in some area.

There are earlier chronicles - the continuations of the Brut dealing with Henry VI's reign particularly comes to mind - that really do seem to have been written by a Westminster official, and I can see that historians wanted to find they had a similarly reliable source for Edward IV's and Richard III's reign in Crowland, despite its known composition at an East Midlands monastery. But you've only got to do a cursory comparison of the two chronicles to see the glaring differences. The Brut has such fine, checkable detail regarding London trials in particular, with dates and details of indictments, whereas Crowland is very vague on details and keeps making excuses for passing swiftly on.

So I think it's a pity that Hanham's suggestion hasn't been taken more seriously. The same issue of the Ricardian also carries an article showing that the "Tres Sunt Ricardi" poem in the Crowland chronicle was not composed by the chronicler but was just something doing the rounds, and that it has also been badly translated, and is therefore no clue as to the mysterious Crowland author's first name, at a stroke demolishing the main criterion in favour of at least two of the suggested candidates, Richard Lavender and Richard Lamport.

Marie

--- In , <> wrote:

So glad that the Society is starting to put articles from the Ricardian on line. Â
I read this one last night by Alison Hanham from 2008, and am curious to know if there has been any serious counter-argument about her characterization of the 2nd continuation as an in-house record cobbled together from a variety of sources, rather than a coherent diary by a specially informed source.
http://www.richardiii.net/downloads/Ricardian/2008_vol18_hanham_mysterious_affair.pdf

A J

Thanks Marie.  I also don't generally care for the tone of Hanham's writing about Richard, but this article made a lot of sense to me, & just wanted to know how others received it (or, in other words, am I missing something fundamentally wrong with her assessment).  
A J

On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 10:03 AM, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:
 

 

Marie responds:

 

I'm not aware of any counter-article, but at the same time I've seen no sign that her arguments have been taken on board.

To me that article came as a complete light bulb moment. I'm not always that taken with Alison Hanham's ideas, but I'd been finding so many holes and misconceptions in Crowland's account of Westminster events, and indications that the main text wasn't written at a single sitting (ie there's a definite lack of the benefit of hindsight with the chronicler's judgements of some of the earlier events), that the standard idea of the author being a Westminster official on a visit was seeming more and more curious.

Also, there hasn't been a single Westminster candidate put forward who fits all the necessary criteria - they all fall short in some area.

 

There are earlier chronicles - the continuations of the Brut dealing with Henry VI's reign particularly comes to mind - that really do seem to have been written by a Westminster official, and I can see that historians wanted to find they had a similarly reliable source for Edward IV's and Richard III's reign in Crowland, despite its known composition at an East Midlands monastery. But you've only got to do a cursory comparison of the two chronicles to see the glaring differences. The Brut has such fine, checkable detail regarding London trials in particular, with dates and details of indictments, whereas Crowland is very vague on details and keeps making excuses for passing swiftly on.

 

So I think it's a pity that Hanham's suggestion hasn't been taken more seriously. The same issue of the Ricardian also carries an article showing that the "Tres Sunt Ricardi" poem in the Crowland  chronicle was not composed by the chronicler but was just something doing the rounds, and that it has also been badly translated, and is therefore no clue as to the mysterious Crowland author's first name, at a stroke demolishing the main criterion in favour of at least two of the suggested candidates, Richard Lavender and Richard Lamport.

 

Marie

--- In , <> wrote:

So glad that the Society is starting to put articles from the Ricardian on line.  
I read this one last night by Alison Hanham from 2008, and am curious to know if there has been any serious counter-argument about her characterization of the 2nd continuation as an in-house record cobbled together from a variety of sources, rather than a coherent diary by a specially informed source.
http://www.richardiii.net/downloads/Ricardian/2008_vol18_hanham_mysterious_affair.pdf

A J

AJ Wrote:

So glad that the Society is starting to put articles from the Ricardian on line.

I read this one last night by Alison Hanham from 2008, and am curious to know if there has been any serious counter-argument about her characterization of the 2nd continuation as an in-house record cobbled together from a variety of sources, rather than a coherent diary by a specially informed source.
http://www.richardiii.net/downloads/Ricardian/2008_vol18_hanham_mysterious_affair.pdf

A J

Carol responds:

Very interesting! Thanks for that link. If Hanhanm is right, so much for the infallibility of the Croyland/Crowland Crhonicle! If the continuator was a compiler and commentator rather than an author and was reporting at best secondhand, no wonder he made identifiable errors.(I never believed that the "author" was Bishop Russell, but I had considered Pronay and Cox's hypothesis plausible. Now, I'm not so sure.

BTW, if Hanham is right that Sir Thomas More knew about the Croyland Chronicle, then More knew about Eleanor Butler, which makes his Elizabeth Lucy story all the more execrable (unless it was a private joke). But if More knew about CC, then Vergil did, too, and surely Vergil would not have denied the real basis for Richard's claim to the throne, however much he believed the tyranny stories.

In any case, thanks again for posting that link. I've saved the article to my Files and added it to my unwieldy list of Richard bookmarks.

Carol