Breaking News!!!! Richard III's Body Found!

I was very glad about one thing when reading The King's Grave, Lily. Time Team were approached at the start, but turned the dig down, as their formula generally only allowed three days for a dig. Which, as we all know now, would have been ample, but however....

It's a good job they did turn it down. Otherwise Richard III would have been disinterred by Tony Robinson, who, as Baldrick, put him there in the first place in Blackadder.....

This whole story gets more interesting in the coincidences as it goes along.......

Must repeat one of my favorite sayings here as it really is apt:

There is no such thing as coincidence. Everyone and everything has a message for you. The 14th Dalai Lama.

LL mentioned earlier that the first non-Tudor version of events appeared as early as James VI & I, and that's in the history part of the book.

I think I may know why it was safe as early as that...

Jamie Saxt had his Stewart backside firmly planted on the English throne, not least due to the paranoid Tudor habit of wiping out any Plantagenet they could, so there was no-one else left.

But - while the Scots court had had to suck up to Elizabeth when she was alive, due to Jamie wanting the throne, it didn't mean they liked her - or Tudors generally. Elizabeth removing his mother's head won't have helped. Also, James was brought up by people who had witnessed/survived the carnage of the Rough Wooing, which would have got H8 a date at a war crimes trial nowadays.

As far as Jamie was concerned, the Tudors were dead and gone, and it may have suited him for them to be seen as less than God's gift to England? And as a learned, if superstitious, man, he may have appreciated the irony of the Tudor usurpation being the cause of him taking the English throne?

Does that make sense?

Perfect sense, Bonny. Very well said, thank you.

It's ironic, really, that between the Tudors bumping off any Plantagenet they got hold of, and being so bad at reproduction, they ensured that the English crown was lost to England forever.

Which probably served them right.

Absolutely.  

Just thought about the Gregory writer which then led me to think about everyone's favorite Princess. Princess Michael of Kent has got in on the genre and her very good bud is Philippa Gregory. Fortunately I had finished all her books I wanted to read so am moving on....

Will read your book, Bonny.

It's enjoyable, Lily. From what LL has helped us with, due to us knowing nothing about that period, the history part is accurate, and the story of the dig is fascinating.

I don't think the diggers actually realised how huge the story was going to be, they're touchingly naive sometimes. Ms Langley didn't want the photos of Richard's remains all over the place, in case people were disrespectful, which was rather sweet. It was harder heads who said, Look, this is him, getting a chance to tell his story, finally...which is how it's all turned out.

Tales from the Grave. A true story.

Who could have thought that? It's marvelous.

The evidence of the wounds is shocking, Lily, his death was as near as damn it to a murder on a battlefield. Though I could have done without the worms.....they don't really feature, thankfully.

His Poor Poor Grace. What terrible pain he must have endured.

Contrast that with HVII who hid at the back.

A battlefield wounds person reckoned he probably wouldn't have really noticed the non-fatal ones due to adrenalin, and the blow at the back of his head was so massive, death would have been almost instant.

It stripped away any pretence of H7 taking the throne honourably in battle, though - ALL the injuries were to Richard's back, and the back of his head.

In other words, more like a cowardly sneak attack?

H7 had no right whatsoever to the throne, he was debarred for all time as he was a Beaufort, and there was also no proof Owen Tydder married Katherine, widow of H5. He took the crown as a traitor, by the treasonsable deeds of the Earl of Oxford and Lord Stanley. He and his progeny were haunted by his treachery. LL

He and his progeny were haunted by his treachery.

Did they all come to bad ends, LL? I know one was executed by H7 ten years later....

The Tudors themselves seem to have been haunted, not one of them seems to have been anything resembling happy and stable.

OMG, Oxford and Stanley were quite the pair. With friends like those who needed enemies?  

I guess that is why the Beaufort woman spent most of her day on her knees? Praying for mercy, favor and forgiveness?

Ah, but if there is an Afterlife, then she got to see her grandson destroying her beloved church to marry his mistress.

bb1 wrote:Ah, but if there is an Afterlife, then she got to see her grandson destroying her beloved church to marry his mistress.

  Of course!

More of that, 'you reap what you sow' stuff. Good innit?  

An interesting little snippet I remember reading many years ago. Anne Boley, who was descended from the Earls of Ormond had a better claim, untainted by bastardy, than H7 or her husband H8. The theory was that she was set up by H8 to stop anyone positing that she or her brother, George, had a better claim. They were accused of incest, that being a heinous crime, especially when practiced by the Queen and the King's brother-in-law. Even Catherine Howard, his 5th wife had a better claim. LL

Am I getting muddled up, or was H7's claim actually illegitimate on both sides?

Through her father, Lady Margaret Beaufort was a granddaughter of John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset, a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster and his mistress and third wife Katherine Swynford, and a great-great-granddaughter of King Edward III of England.

This is his mother, Bonny. Taken from good old Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Beaufort,_Countess_of_Richmond_and_Derby

Ah yes, they were illegitimate because they'd been born because he was married to someone else at the time? And on the other side, there were endless medieval jokes about ex-queens and stable hands?

Yes. Not too much different from some others........    

The Beauforts, called after the castle in France where they were born, were legitimized by H4, legitimate son of John of Gaunt, with the proviso they were legitimate as John had married their mother, but debarred from the throne in perpetuity, being allowed all titles and land etc excepto regio, ie except the throne. There was never any written proof, or witnesses, that Owen married H5's widow. Illegitimate on both sides. LL

Er....am I allowed to say Barstewards, LL?    

lily wrote:Er....am I allowed to say Barstewards, LL?     

Feel free to give reign to your comments and thoughts, I am sure they are in line with my own. LL