PatrickLondon

And on the funeral - if last night's TV documentary was anything to go by, one has to hope against hope it won't turn into a Diana-style sobfest for the fanatical Ricardians.

flanneruk

"hope it won't turn into a Diana-style sobfest for the fanatical Ricardians."

There was indeed the same glint in the eyes of the "he couldn't have been hunchbacked if he'd worn armour" fundies that I saw in the wreath-bearers outside Ken Palace the day Diana died.

Mind you, there's only 3,000 in the Richard III Society. They'll doubtless turn Richard's grave into a shrine - but the discovery he really was hunchbacked might make them less prone to believe any old nonsense as long as it's anti-Tudor enough.

bendigo

It still blows my mind that history can still be so personal in the UK and Europe (noting the sensitivity about being PART of Europe)even after 400 - 500 years (and my wife dismayed at my joy at being in a nice room in Florence that hadn't been repainted in more than 300 years - what chance she'll now get our lounge room "refreshed" a mere ten years after we built it?)

I don't know whether I'd be constantly elated to live in that environment, or whether the weight of history would become oppressive?

As it is, the only family history I know much of is the last 150 years we have been in Australia - don't even know why we left England (or whether you shipped us out!), and we have so much space that there is still a tendency to try to save any "old" thing (ie pre-1900!) rather than focus on those heritage places that are truly important - and we'd never macadam a monarch!

flanneruk

"whether the weight of history would become oppressive?"

Depends. My favourite example is the Christmas midnight service at the CofE a few yards up the street. We're in wool country (or rather country that grew wool before being undercut by Australians 150 years ago). So coming out of church after the bit about "and there were in the same country shepherds watching their sheep", you realise people have been attending the same service, at the same time, with the same words, in the same building (admittedly with shifts in doctrine and the celebrant's gender - but not in the celebrant's robes) for 1,000 years. All listening to the sheep bleating as we come out, all probably as puzzled as us about why those Palestinian sheep were such wooses as to need overnight mollycoddling (the last wolf was eliminated here more or less when the current stone church was built around 1100).

Then you get irritated at the conditions attached to your application to extend the utility room - till you remember owners of the house have probably shared your irritation at such restrictions for at least 300 years, and that's why you bought it.

Incidentally: no-one's sensitive about being part of Europe (even our famous eccentrics don't delude themselves we're in Antarctica). It's the insularity and unaccountability of the European Union that upsets its British opponents.

And our relations are in constant flux: Richard III's personal standard combined the lions of England with the French fleur de lys because he had a pretty plausible claim to the French throne. If he'd won at Bosworth, North and South America would be entirely Catholic (and probably share a history pretty similar to Argentina), Australia would have developed under Dutch rule and modern England, without 450 years of global diplomacy and interfering, would be the same Eurocentric backwater it was in 1485.

stokebailey

Well said, Flanner.

Love your child protection one, Patrick. I guess the little princes' murder will be harder to DNA prove than R III's identity was.

So Richard's fans had been contending that the whole story -- hunchback, nephewcide, doublecrossing-- was a pack of lies?

Rubicund

From last night's programme, it appears he wasn't "hunchbacked" but his spinal deformity gave him a sideways "tilt". The jury is still out on the Princes in the Tower, but I'd guess that they'll never know that answer.

They did try to portray him as a more sympathetic figure who was well liked in North Yorkshire.

PatrickLondon

>>we'd never macadam a monarch!<<

That is such a fantastic phrase in its own right, I wish I could think of an occasion to reuse it.

>>So Richard's fans had been contending that the whole story -- hunchback, nephewcide, doublecrossing-- was a pack of lies?<<

See Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time". Nobody knows (and probably never will) exactly what happened to Richard's nephews. All that is known is that they just disappeared, and nothing was said about them after he (having brutally taken over their guardianship, by having their previous accompanying lord arrested and executed pretty summarily, then isolating them from their mother) had them declared bastards and assumed the throne himself. Apparently, none of the murderous details we have become familiar with were reported till Tudor times, so other explanations of their disppearance are possible.

But on the other hand, their mother was prepared to countenance more than one uprising against Richard in Henry Tudor's name, and agreed to marry her daughter to him, so was obviously persuaded they were dead in Richard's time (otherwise she'd have wanted to promote their claim rather than Henry Tudor's). You'd have thought that if they had died naturally, something would have been said about it and some funeral would have been held. It all suggests Richard and his supporters knew they had a guilty secret they couldn't explain away and just preferred to bury.

None of which is inconsistent with his being a respected overlord in the North. We're talking Mafia-style politics, with families and individuals jockeying for position and a slice of the action. He may well have thought his sister-in-law and her relatives and supporters were angling to manouevre him out of his position

PatrickLondon

..and wealth, and decided to get his retaliation in first - but that still left his nephews as an inconvenient potential threat.

paradeofmonkeys

I guess because of his back he was found in a spot for compact cars.

They should conduct a bi-denominational funeral. A bit of pageantry from the Catholics, a bit of bordeom from the Anglicans and enough hypocriscy to go around.

stokebailey

Thanks, Patrick. Good have your summary.

bendigo

Thanks flanner - history does indeed turn on a dime as some of our other distant cousins would claim!

Some of my "people" are also from Yorkshire - the headstone of one of the early arrivals sources them from "Grimwirth" - some cursory searching I did a few years ago revealed (with slightly different spelling?)this as the name of a reservoir, so perhaps they had no choice in moving out! (Although given the family propensity to stay put since we arrived here, it must have been a hell of a decision).

PalenQ

Another spineless royal it seems from pictures of Dick 3's skeleton. Oh a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse and IMO that is about all it is worth - well really horse tweed.

Havana128

Did I imagine this or did I see in last night's programme that the car parking spaces were alphabetically ordered and Richard was under space "R"? Tell me I didn't imagine that.

Also can I say that as a born and bred Leicester boy it's about time we had more than Humperdink, Lineker and Orton to be famous for.

PatrickLondon

>>Did I imagine this or did I see in last night's programme that the car parking spaces were alphabetically ordered and Richard was under space "R"? <<

No-one seems quite to know why that particular space was marked in that way, but yes, it does appear he was either under or very near it.

bendigo

Peter Ackroyd's book "London" highlights the "coincidence" of occurences / uses / nature of suburbs across the span of history that the area has been inhabited (see especially Clerkenwell chapter).

Perhaps this is merely another of those unexplained coincidences - only of note because it happened (ie, if he had been buried under "K" we would have noted that he was "King", rather than "Richard" - spooky!!)

stokebailey

They could've tried "G" next.

flanneruk

>>Did I imagine this or did I see in last night's programme that the car parking spaces were alphabetically ordered and Richard was under space "R"? <<

You imagined the description you've given.

Ms Langley has been quoted as saying “I actually felt I was walking on his grave. And a few feet to my left there was a white letter ‘R’ painted on to the car park, It was for ‘Reserved’, obviously, but I thought that’s it. And you know where we found his remains? Virtually under that spot,”

There was no mention of "alphabetical ordering" in the Channel 4 programme. It's impossible to tell from the visuals of the film what the R means (the joys of catchup TV), and the dig's destroyed the evidence anyway, though doubtless there's an archive in Leicester Social Services about it somewhere.

I'm sure Havana was no more oiled when watching it than I was. Though trivial and charming, this is a perfect example of how serious historical myths can get made. Havana had other things than the precise script of the TV programme to worry about, he saw reference to the R, his mind's created one logical explanation for why there might have been an R - and he now thinks that might have been in the script

Slightly misremembering a minor bit of a TV programme (and being clear minded enough to suspect he might have got it wrong) doesn't make Havana an unreliable witness on other things.

Just as remembering a man with scoliosis as having a severe hump doesn't make the Tudors vicious distorters of the truth in their other descriptions of Richard III. And of course, the fact that the Ricardians are now known to have been quite wrong in their "Richard wan't hunchbacked" obsession doesn't discredit their assertion that the evidence he killed the Princes is pretty ropey.

But try explaining that to the ranters on the blogosphere.

latedaytraveler

Flanner, interesting about poor old Richard.

If you recall the French also tried to get in on another exhuming of history when the city of Angers sued the Crown last summer, demanding the Crown Jewels for the murder of EDWARD PLANTAGENET in the Tower circa 1499. The family's legitimate male line came to an end with his death.

Angers, a truly lovely city in the Loire, is also interested in bolstering its tourist cache, eh? The city believes it is owed an apology – and 513 years’ worth of compensation. Right.

PalenQ

Ah now York and the York Minister thinks they should rightfully get the bones of Dick 3 - a fight over ancient royal bones.

Seems the Visitor Center that will be built in either or both cities needs to have the bones in that city - Dick 3 seemingly spent much time in York and only happened to be killed near Leicester.

Anyway York has so much let hard-scrabbled Leicester have something to brag about.

Havana128

<Seems the Visitor Center that will be built in either or both cities needs to have the bones in that city - Dick 3 seemingly spent much time in York and only happened to be killed near Leicester.>

Well he has spent 528 years in Leicester so I thinks it's a fair cop.

Also it will be a "Centre".