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

I would love to know what Dominic's neighbours thought when they saw him riding a bike in a full suit of armour....and seriously, wouldn't riding  a big horse with a spike on its head for dealing with Enemies make EVERYONE feel happy?   

Richard was lucky in a way; whatever his other problems, he didn't have to put up with the Health Police measuring units of alcohol and tut-tutting....

And you only have to sit on a horse. It isn't exactly hard work once your muscles have adjusted. I know women of 80 who still ride to hounds. Well, the modern day equivalent that is. I gave up some time ago due to lack of money. But it was one of my few really joyful pastimes. And I always rode big horses. They are easier to ride, believe it or not.

Me and horses just don't get on, Sabot, I have tried, but the best that can be said is that I don't fall off. Much. As long as they don't go too fast. It's like riding a motorbike with a mind of its own.  

Have done it many times but it's simply not my favorite thing to do.  Would hate to do it now......would be walking like John Wayne for weeks.       

My daughters love it though...... 

Big Horses. That's the secret. They have a better and slower muscular gait. They tend more to glide. But if you don't know what you are doing then it is easy to opt for something smaller. This is a mistake.

If only I could have ridden a War Horse. Oh My. I could have ruled The World.

A few years ago I read a fascinating article on warhorses.   It came out of a discussion on radio about which breeds were used as destriers, corsiers etc.   It seems the Percheron or its ancestor is probably the most likely horse as the weight of the armor worn by the knight, plus the armor-plating used to protect the horse would have been impossible - the writer pointed out that the horses used in films would never have been able to move let alone gallop.   But a Percheron can gallop with large weights on its back.    The French knights at Azincourt wore German armor which was so heavy they had to be lowered onto their horses by a pulley system and when they charged, because it had been raining for days they got stuck in the mud, which is why so few English died in the battle and the French death toll was so great.   In contrast, English armor was Milanese, light, sturdy and very capable of resisting attacks.    LL

I give you this, next Friday, 22 August, is the 529th anniversary of Bosworth Day.   LL



I should add that Olivier had never ridden a horse until he made Henry V in 1944.

Thanks, LL. I find it interesting to compare the rather sanitized depictions of battle scenes in that era, with the much more gory and realistic battle re-enactments we see on-screen today.

“When I hit this polystyrene head on a pole – spot on – and brains exploded out it was an incredible feeling.”

Isn't exactly Shakespearean, but is probably more like the real thing?

Can't say I have never tried hitting a polystyrene head with anything.  But I would add that, as far as I know, you would have to have an opponent not wearing a helmet to spill his brains, and even the rank and file wore them, usually made from boiled leather.   I know Olivier had an expert on all things 15th century as far as warfare was concerned, though obviously the budget for his film in 1955 was miniscule to what would be spent now.   Battles were, and still are, nasty bloody things, men no longer behaved like men but like raging animals bent on spilling as much blood as possible.   Often the rules of war were ignored, such as when Henry V ordered the massacre of the French prisoners at Azincourt as there were far too many to drag back to Paris or London.    Mind you, the French had already butchered the unarmed servants, baggage boys and priests before Henry made his decision which was obviously a retaliation.   LL

LL, in comparison to present times, the Middle Ages were the very epitome of good behaviour in warfare...

There were strict rules of conduct and engagement weren't there? Until guerilla tactics came into use........

lily wrote:There were strict rules of conduct and engagement weren't there?  Until guerilla tactics came into use........

The rules of chivalry were very much in evidence. It was a gentler age, I think it was Paul Murray Kendall who said that wars were conducted properly, you found the enemy, set up your camp, he set up his, you faced off for a few hours then had a battle, buried the dead and moved on. LL

Is that what Henry Tudor did? You could have fooled me.

Atrocities did happen, and are well-recorded, but killing innocent people wasn't regarded as being a normal act of war, as it is now. The idea of deliberately targetting and killing women, children and other non-combatants would have been anathema to the medieval mind.

Sabot wrote:Is that what Henry Tudor did?  You could have fooled me.

By the time we get to HVll things have changed.  Had Richard won, he would not have behaved as HVll did.  I think the most he would have done was execute the Stanleys, Henry Tudor and Percy Duke of Northumberland and exiled Margaret Beaufort to a closed nunnery.    He was not known for being vindictive or cruel as he had proven over Berwick.    LL

Yes, it seems to have been with the arrival of the Tudors that the real viciousness started. Contrary to popular belief, it was actually pretty hard to get burned for witchcraft until then - people had to do something really, really bad, like get caught trying to poison the king, or try to bring about his death with 'magic'.

This rarely happened, as the Catholic church generally took the interesting attitude that 'magic' didn't actually exist and that it was all superstitious, harmless nonsense for the simple-minded.

Old Nick was an invention of the Reformation.

Lamplighter wrote:

Sabot wrote:Is that what Henry Tudor did?  You could have fooled me.

By the time we get to HVll things have changed.  Had Richard won, he would not have behaved as HVll did.  I think the most he would have done was execute the Stanleys, Henry Tudor and Percy Duke of Northumberland and exiled Margaret Beaufort to a closed nunnery.    He was not known for being vindictive or cruel as he had proven over Berwick.    LL

Put her in a Nunnery? She was the cause of it all.

Interesting that H7 put ma-in-law in a nunnery....

There were some odd instances of nastiness in royal and noble circles, but nothing like the things the Tudors did.  One thrat does spring to mind is the treatment of Edward ll by his wife and her lover, dragging him naked through the winter snows and finally killing him by a hot spike up the backside in Berkeley Castle.  Oh and Richard ll, slowly starved to death in Pontefract Castle.  Other than those two there was very little mayhem like there would be after R3 died.   LL

bb1 wrote:Interesting that H7 put ma-in-law in a nunnery....

....and he couldn't wait to do it.

I am convinced there was something wrong with the Tudors - all of them. The Stewarts in Scotland did some violent things, like personally killing recalcitrant lords and throwing them out windows, but hey, who hasn't lost their temper?   

There was a sadism in ALL the Tudors, IMO, which became State policy under their rule. And I would love to know the truth about why ma-in-law got sent to the nunnery; I can make one or two guesses involving supposedly-deceased princes.

bb1 wrote:I am convinced there was something wrong with the Tudors - all of them. The Stewarts in Scotland did some violent things, like personally killing recalcitrant lords and throwing them out windows, but hey, who hasn't lost their temper?   

There was a sadism in ALL the Tudors, IMO, which became State policy under their rule. And I would love to know the truth about why ma-in-law got sent to the nunnery; I can make one or two guesses involving supposedly-deceased princes.

He WAS paranoid as hell that at least one of them was alive and would take his throne.

H7 gave out that she was incarcerated for 'being nice to Richard' - which she was, as she did try and manoeuvre her daughter to become his wife when Anne died. She was also thought to be involved in the Lambert Simnel, the first of the pretenders to the throne. There are many views on what happened. LL

What intrigues me is that Elizabeth Woodville could have made her life very comfortable, by denouncing the dead king for having her sons murdered, and any other crime that fitted the Tudor version of events, and generally sucking up to her odious son-in-law.

She chose not to, and ended up in a nunnery. And after H7 re-legimized the boys, too - she didn't even set the record straight about her own 'marriage'.

H7 re-legimized the boys

He didn't, he couldn't because if he did and they were alive then his own marriage to their sister would have been a waste of time as they cae ahead of her in the succession line.  What he did was to wipe out Titulus Regius, thus making Richard a usurper, then he put it about that they were dead and killed by Richard.    They had to be dead or H7 had no claim to the throne.   He suppressed all possible claims re the boys being anything other than very dead.   Off now to watch the programme.    LL

Likewise.