A visit to a ruined manor house in the Cotswolds

In the Cotswolds, the ruins of a medieval manor house can be found by the banks of the Windrush, a tributary of the Thames. Minster Lovell Hall is located behind St Kenhelm’s church in the Oxfordshire village of Minster Lovell (located between Burford and Witney) and it’s a pleasant place to visit and wander among the ruins if the weather’s nice. The place was built in or around 1440 and was used as a manor house until the mid-eighteenth century, after which is was partly dismantled and abandoned. The ruins are listed and administered by English Heritage, but there’s no charge to visit.

The original owners, after whom the hall and the village are named, were the Lovell family. The most interesting member of this noble family is the last of them, Francis Lovell, the ninth Baron Lovell who lived at the time of the Wars of the Roses. He was a friend of Richard, Duke of Gloucester – to whom he was also linked by marriage, their respective wives being cousins. Richard had him knighted in 1481, and when he seized power and became King Richard III two years later he upgraded the Lovell peerage; it was as the first Viscount Lovell that Francis held the Sword of State at his friend’s coronation. Lovell’s closeness to the King resulted in him being mentioned in a famous piece of doggerel which was posted on the door of St Paul’s Cathedral by a Lancastrian supporter in 1484:

“The Catte, the Ratte and Lovell our dogge rulyth all Englande under a hogge.”

To explain: the ‘hogge’ refers to Richard himself, his personal badge being a white boar. Lovell is of course ‘Lovell our dogge’, his coat-of-arms having included a silver wolf. The ‘catte’ and the ‘ratte’ were two of Richard III’s other principal supporters, Sir William Catesby and Sir Robert Ratcliffe.

Naturally, the fates of the King’s main followers were intertwined with his own. Richard III, as is well known, was killed at the battle of Bosworth Field in Leicestershire on 22^nd August 1485 – the last King of England to die in battle; what happened to his body afterwards would remain a mystery until 2012, when his remains were found underneath a Leicester car park. Ratcliffe died on the battlefield with his king, while Catesby survived, only to be captured and subsequent executed by the victorious Lancastrians (a notable descendant of his was Robert Catesby, one of the leaders of the Gunpowder Plot).

Lovell also fought at Bosworth, following which he was able to evade capture. He went on to become a leading figure in the Yorkist revolts that plagued the early part of Henry VII’s reign. He’s reckoned to have been behind an attempt to have Henry murdered at York in 1486, and a year later he played a leading role in the attempt to put the pretender Lambert Simnel on the throne – an attempt that came to an end at the battle of Stoke Field in June of that year. Lovell survived that battle too, but after that he disappears from the pages of history.

Some said that he lived in hiding for many years afterwards – and it is at this point that the history of Minster Lovell Hall crosses into legend. In 1708, the skeleton of a man was found in a secret chamber at Minster Lovell Hall, and it was assumed that that was the skeleton of Francis himself – who, so the story goes, hid out at his ancestral home with only one faithful servant who knew that he was there; the plan was that Lovell would be kept under lock and key with the servant bringing him food. Unfortunately for him, the servant died without letting slip about his master and so Lovell, locked in and with no-one left to bring him food, starved to death. It’s an interesting tale but it does seem unlikely, as Francis Lovell’s estates were forfeit after Bosworth, with the hall being given to Henry VII’s uncle, Jasper Tudor. Hardly somewhere for a Yorkist fugitive to go into hiding.

I was also interested in the place because the hall also has a literary association, playing a key role in John Buchan’s 1931 historical adventure The Blanket of the Dark which is set in the Cotswolds during the reign of Henry VII’s son, Henry VIII. This story, not one of Buchan’s better-known works but still highly readable if you like historical fiction and can get hold of a second-hand copy (I got an old Penguin one, original retail price 2s 6d), concerns a young Oxford scholar by the name of Peter Pentecost who is told that he is in fact the son of the Duke of Buckingham (Edward Stafford, who in real life was executed for treason in 1521). Buchan was always a master of describing the countryside in which his stories were set, and with The Blanket of the Dark he showed that he was as at home in rural Oxfordshire (for many years he lived in Elsfield, about three miles north of Oxford; his ashes are buried in the churchyard there) as he was in his native Scottish Lowlands. The ordinary people who appear in the novel – beggars, small farmers, foresters and suchlike – are treated with a high degree of empathy and, as is the case with Katrine in Witch Wood, there’s an intriguing but ultimately elusive love interest (as they usually are in Buchan’s novels; in this case, she’s called Sabine and one contemporary of Buchan’s was moved to comment that the one quibble he had with The Blanket of the Dark was that Buchan didn’t spice things up a bit with Peter and Sabine, but one can hardly have expected the son of a Free Church of Scotland minister to have done that).

Like many a fictional character before and since, Peter gets caught up in events that he cannot hope to control; at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, he becomes the subject of an ill-fated plot to put him on the throne which climaxes when king and pretender meet face-to-face at an abandoned Minster Lovell Hall after the latter has rescued the former from an over-flowing Windrush. Henry is portrayed in less-than-flattering fashion, with Buchan adding some compelling descriptions of him: “the face was vast and red as a new ham, a sheer mountain of a face ... this vast being had the greatness of some elemental force ... power of Mammon, power of Antichrist, power of the Devil, maybe, but someone born to work mightily in the world.” The Blanket of the Dark is a really good, perhaps even great, work of fiction that, although Henry VIII does make an appearance, focuses more on the ordinary people of rural England (the Cotswolds, specifically) than on high intrigue even though there is something of that; this is at heart a story of what Buchan succinctly called “a world of which there has never been a chronicle; the heaths and forests of old England”, and it’s the better for it.

The Bayeux Tapestry

So, the Bayeux Tapestry is to be displayed in this country for the first time? Well I for one am delighted to hear this. There’s a personal reason, for it’s the Bayeux Tapestry that first got me interested in history when I went on a family holiday in Normandy in 1987 (we visited Bayeux, among other places, and a few months later there was a school trip down to Kent and Sussex which included a visit to Battle Abbey – and that, as they say, was that).

The most famous depiction of the events of 1066 – the most famous date in English history, for that was a year of three Kings and two invasions – the Bayeux Tapestry was probably made in the 1070s under the orders of Bishop Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror. It is actually an embroidered cloth rather than a tapestry (although ‘Bayeux Embroidered Cloth’ just sounds wrong) and measures 230 feet by 20 inches. An alternative theory is that it was made at the orders of (or even by) William’s wife, Queen Matilda, which is why it’s sometimes known in French as La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde. The Odo theory is more likely, though, and not just because the man himself makes an appearance. He is seen fighting at the battle of Hastings, albeit armed with a club rather than a sword (perhaps symbolic of his clerical status, although it’s worth noting that William himself is shown carrying a club into battle too, so maybe it was a sign of seniority). 

Odo was the Bishop of Bayeux, and after the Conquest he also became the Earl of Kent which supports the theory that the Tapestry was actually made in England. The earliest known reference to the Tapestry dates back to 1476, when it was mentioned in an inventory of Bayeux Cathedral which it had probably been made to adorn. Bayeux was where William made Harold promise that he would support his (William’s) claim to the English throne, although the cathedral itself wasn’t consecrated until 1077.

Although obviously intended to tell the story of the Norman Conquest from the Normans’ perspective – to the extend that King Harold’s victory over the King of Norway at Stamford Bridge and subsequent twelve-day march from York to Sussex in order to fight William doesn’t get a look-in – it’s not all one-sided propaganda. William did not recognise Harold as the rightful King of England after Edward the Confessor’s death in early 1066 (indeed, as far as he was concerned Harold had promised to support him), but Harold is nevertheless shown on the Tapestry with the regalia of kingship and explicitly named as England’s King (the text reads Harold Rex Anglorum – Harold, King of the English – the first King of England to be crowned at Westminster Abbey, in fact). It’s a funny way of depicting someone who, according to the brother of the man who had the Tapestry made, had no right to be King. Maybe the English seamstresses who stitched the Tapestry were being a bit subversive.

In Harold’s death scene, the famous arrow-in-the-eye could well be more propaganda than fact, because perjurers were commonly punished in Medieval times by way of having weapons poked through their eyes. William’s claim to the throne would be upheld by depicting Harold as an oath-breaker, which this is evidently an attempt at doing (whether Harold was coerced into promising support for William is, of course, another matter although it does seem likely). Other historical sources state that the King was hacked to death by some Norman knights, and indeed the very next scene shows a man, who may well also be Harold, being slain by way of a sword.

There is also a depiction of some Norman brutality towards the English – they’re shown as burning down someone’s house, although given the brutal and ruthless way in which William would later deal with any English resistance to his rule, perhaps that is to be expected.

The Tapestry is also unfinished, or rather incomplete – for the end is missing. When it was first made, it would doubtless have brought the story of the Norman Conquest to a conclusion by showing the (remaining) English nobles surrendering to William at Berkhamstead, and William’s subsequent coronation on Christmas Day, 1066, although for as long as people have been studying the Tapestry that part has not been there. There have been attempts in modern times to make the final part, though, as witness the 2013 effort by over 400 people on Alderney. As it is, the last (remaining) scene on the Tapestry shows the English fleeing from the battlefield.

The Tapestry did not become widely known until the eighteenth century. After the 1476 inventory, the next reference we have to the Tapestry is in 1724. The first detailed account of it in English was written in the 1730s but not published until the 1760s, although William Stukeley, the antiquarian who has cropped up on this blog before in relation to Avebury, mentioned it in a 1743 book of his. During the French Revolution it narrowly avoided being used as covering for wagons, and after Napoleon Bonaparte came to power it was displayed in Paris for the purposes of propaganda – this was, after all, a depiction of a successful invasion of England. It remained in Paris, and by the Second World War it was on display in the Louvre – the SS tried to have it shipped to Berlin when the liberation was imminent, but fortunately they were not successful. After the war, it was moved back to Bayeux. It’s been there, in its own museum near the cathedral, ever since. Previous attempts to have the Tapestry moved to England on a temporary basis – for the Coronation in 1953, and later for the 900^th anniversary of the battle of Hastings in 1966 – have not been unsuccessful, and tests will need to be done on it to make sure that it can be safely moved. The question of where it will be displayed is also one that will need to be addressed.

Getting back to the tapestry itself, some of the detail is fascinating – we see people hunting and ploughing the fields while the political/military stuff is going on above them, and Westminster Abbey makes an appearance, as God blesses it (yes, He’s there too) in time for the funeral of Edward the Confessor, the man who built it. This, weirdly, is shown before Edward’s death scene. 

Halley’s Comet appears in the sky. 

Then there are the oddities which are part of what makes the Bayeux Tapestry such a fascinating piece or artwork. Why, for example, is Edward the Confessor shown dying after his funeral? And, on a more trivial matter, are the invading Normans really eating kebabs? It looks like they are.

And, of course, what’s with the naked people in the, ahem, bottom section? There’s a man doing what appears to be a carpentry job in the buff, while his friend looks like he’s doing some exercises!

When a full-size replica was made in the 1880s, the naked people were given underpants; that version is on display in Reading, while there are other replicas of the Tapestry in North America and Denmark.

Half-a-dozen more kings and queens we never had

I recently looked into a few might-have-beens of English history in the form of half-a-dozen people who could, or even perhaps should, have been the King (or Queen) but through the cruel hand of fate were denied the chance. They weren’t the only ones, of course – and here are half-a-dozen more…

Edgar Aetheling (c.1051-c.1126) – would have been King Edgar II

‘Aetheling’ was, roughly speaking, the Anglo-Saxon term for the heir to the King. During the latter part of the Edward the Confessor’s reign (1042-1066) this title was held by Edgar, grandson of Edward’s half-brother Edmund Ironside (who had himself been King for a mere seven months in 1016) and, aside from Edward himself, the only surviving male member of the royal House of Wessex. The childless Edward, however, made no effort to entrench Edgar’s position as heir. The designs of both the King of Norway and Duke William of Normandy on the English throne meant that, after Edward’s death in January 1066, the assembly of the English nobility known as the Witan chose to elect Harold Godwinson, the country’s senior nobleman and a renowned warrior, to be King rather than the young, untested Edgar. After Harold’s death at the battle of Hastings later that same year, Edgar was proclaimed as King but the surviving English nobility quickly submitted to William the Conqueror. Thus deprived, Edgar would later be linked with various anti-Norman rebellions, and eventually became a Crusader.

Henry, the Young King (1155-1183) – would have been an alternative King Henry III

The Plantagenets were a famously unruly royal family. Henry II had five sons by his wife, the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the eldest of those to survive infancy was the one who was named after him. Described by contemporaries as a charming but feckless playboy, in 1170 this younger Henry became the only heir to the English throne to be crowned before the death of his predecessor. It is unclear why Henry II decided to do this, but as he got the Archbishop of York to do it, it became part of that king’s feud with Thomas Becket, who as Archbishop of Canterbury should have been the man to perform the ceremony. Probably frustrated by his father’s reluctance to relinquish any actual control of any of his lands, the Young King – as he became known after his coronation – led the rebellion against Henry II in 1173-74 and was joined by his mother and two of his brothers. He was in revolt against his father again in 1183 when he died. Six years later, his father died and the crown passed to his brother Richard.

Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales (1453-1471) – would have been another alternative King Edward IV, or maybe V

Born at a time of strife, this Prince Edward was the only son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou but he was disinherited in 1460 when his father was captured after the battle of Northampton – Henry was allowed to remain as King but he was forced to make the Duke of York his heir. A year later, York was dead and his son, the Earl of March, had defeated the Lancastrians at Towton, seizing the crown and becoming King Edward IV in the process. Prince Edward and his mother went into exile, where Margaret allied herself with the Earl of Warwick; Edward married his daughter, Anne Neville, in 1470. Warwick briefly restored Henry VI to the throne, but was defeated and killed by the Yorkists at Barnet in 1471. Deprived of their best military leader, the Lancastrians rallied around the inexperienced Prince of Wales for the battle of Tewkesbury on 4^th May 1471; they were defeated and Edward killed – making him the only heir to the English throne to have died in battle. His father died (or was murdered; no-one knows for sure) a few days later. A teenage widow, Anne went on to marry Edward IV’s brother, the Duke of Gloucester – who would become King Richard III.

Arthur, Prince of Wales (1486-1502) – would have been a real rather than legendary King Arthur

Much was expected of this Tudor prince, the eldest son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and as such viewed as living proof of the union between the houses of Lancaster and York (Elizabeth being the daughter of Edward IV) and the end of the Wars of the Roses. He was said to have been academically bright, as well as an accomplished archer and dancer. His father wanted him to marry Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, in order to forge a union between England and Spain; the marriage eventually took place in late 1501. Within months, though, Arthur fell ill and died. His brother Henry – the ‘spare’ who would succeed their father as King in 1509 – married Catherine but, as she was his brother’s widow, he could only do so after getting special dispensation from the Pope; the consequences of this would lead to the break with Rome some years later.

James Stuart (1688-1766) – styled himself as James III of England and James VIII of Scotland

The Old Pretender sparked controversy merely by being born – opponents of his father, James II, alleged that his mother’s pregnancy had been faked and that he had been smuggled into the Queen’s bed in a warming-pan. The Glorious Revolution followed shortly thereafter, and as such James Stuart grew up in exile, assuming the title of King – and being recognised as such by the Pope and by his cousin Louis XIV of France – after his father’s death in 1701. He made three serious attempts at recapturing his father’s kingdoms, his best chance being in 1715 after his half-sister Queen Anne’s death plunged Britain into political uncertainty. A rebel army was raised in Scotland and some rebel forces entered England, but before James could arrive in person defeats at Sheriffmuir and Preston had put government forces in control. James spent much of his life in Rome, where his court-in-exile was popular with British visitors regardless of their faith or political affiliation (he was even given permission to hold Protestant services for said visitors, although he himself remained a Catholic). In later life he quarrelled with his eldest son Charles (the Young Pretender) to the extent that he only knew of the 1745 rebellion after the latter had landed in Scotland. He died in Rome and is buried in the Vatican alongside his two sons – the younger of whom became a cardinal and in old age received a pension from George III.

Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) – would have been Queen Charlotte I

As the only legitimate grandchild of George III, Charlotte was second in line to the throne after her father who became Prince Regent in 1811 (and would become George IV in 1820); unlike him, she was very popular with the British people. She married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and in 1817 her pregnancy was the subject of intense public interest. Unfortunately her obstetrician, Sir Richard Croft, followed outdated medical advice and put her on a strict diet and bled her regularly; this weakened her to the extent that after a two-day labour the 21 year-old princess died after giving birth to a stillborn boy. Croft later killed himself. As well as deep mourning across the country, Charlotte’s death prompted a succession crisis which led to two of her uncles quickly ditching their mistresses and getting married in a bid to ensure the survival of the House of Hanover; one of them, the Duke of Kent, married Leopold’s sister Victoria, after whom their daughter – the future Queen Victoria – was named.

Half-a-dozen kings and queens we never had

These days, the succession to the throne is a fairly straightforward business. It wasn’t always the case, however, and English history is littered with those who, had events taken a slightly different term, could have got to wear the crown but never did. They are the might-have-beens of our history, and here are six of the best-known…

William Adelin (1103-1120) – would have been an alternative King William III

The youngest son of William the Conqueror, King Henry I had acted quickly to grab the throne for himself when his brother, William Rufus, was murdered in the New Forest in 1100. Henry fathered many sons, but only one of them was by his wife, Matilda of Scotland. It was in this 12^th century Prince William that the hopes of England’s Norman dynasty lay. Referred to as ‘Adelin’ (a corruption of ‘Aetheling’, the Anglo-Saxon term for the heir to the King) and rex designatus (king-designate), William was proclaimed Duke of Normandy but held the title in name only, although after his mother’s death in 1118 William acted as regent during his father’s absences from England. However, he died – along with at least two of his illegitimate half-siblings and much of the Anglo-Norman nobility – in the White Ship sinking of 1120. A direct consequence of this tragedy was a succession crisis which plagued the rest of Henry’s reign, resulting in the Anarchy, a 19-year civil war in which William’s sister Matilda and their cousin Stephen – who was meant to have travelled on the White Ship but did not due to illness – fought for control of England.

Empress Matilda, Lady of the English (1102-1167) – would have been Queen Matilda I

The daughter of Henry I, Matilda (also known as Maud) had been married off to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V but was a widow by the time she was 23. After her brother’s death (see above), she was proclaimed as the heir to the throne but this was unpopular with the Anglo-Norman nobility (those that had not travelled on the White Ship); when her father died in 1135 her cousin was crowned as King Stephen. Backed by her (second) husband Geoffrey of Anjou and her illegitimate half-brother Robert of Gloucester, Matilda tried to take the throne for herself in that long period of civil war known to history as the Anarchy. The closest she got was in 1141 when her forces captured Stephen; she entered London but was not crowned because of bitter opposition from the local populace. She then had to free Stephen in exchange for Robert (who had also been captured), and by the following winter Stephen had her trapped in Oxford Castle; she escaped over the frozen River Isis. Subsequently, a stalemate ensued with Matilda’s forces in control of the south-west of England while Stephen controlled the south-east and the midlands, although much of the country was in the hands of local barons who were happy to take whatever advantage they could get. Eventually, Matilda’s son Henry took over the fighting and by 1153 had negotiated a peace deal with Stephen; when the latter died, the former succeeded to the throne as King Henry II.

Louis of France (1187-1226) – would have been King Louis (or perhaps Lewis) I

The son of King Philip II of France, Louis fought against King John (his uncle on his mother’s side) in the latter’s unsuccessful attempt to recapture Normandy in 1214. When John tried to renege on the Magna Carta, the English barons offered Louis the throne; in May 1216 he landed in Kent, entered London with little resistance and was proclaimed (but not crowned) as King. He soon had control of over half of England, but when John died in October most of the barons deserted Louis in favour of John’s nine-year-old son, Henry III. Louis was defeated by Henry’s regent, William Marshal, at the battle of Lincoln in May 1217, and he was subsequently forced to make peace, a condition being that he had to agree that he had never been the legitimate King of England. In 1223, though, he did become King Louis VIII of France.

Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales (1330-1376) – would have been an alternative King Edward IV

Known to history as the Black Prince, the eldest son of Edward III was an exceptional military leader in an age when prowess on the battlefield went hand-in-hand with effective kingship. It was he who defeated the French as the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, key English victories in what would become known as the Hundred Years War. He was also the first Prince of Wales to have used an emblem consisting of three white ostrich feathers; this heraldic device, which he is believed to have inherited from his mother’s family, was used as his ‘shield for peace’ – the one he used for jousting. He died one year before his father; the throne passed to his son Richard who was just nine years old at the time and who would eventually be overthrown by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who became King Henry IV. Somewhat ironically, the Black Prince and Henry are buried yards from each other in Canterbury Cathedral.

James Scott, Duke of Monmouth (1649-1685) – would have been James III of England and James VIII of Scotland

The oldest of Charles II’s illegitimate sons, Monmouth claimed that his father had actually been married to his mother, Lucy Walter – a claim that Charles always denied. This claim, though, made Monmouth a factor in various schemes to have Charles’s brother, the Duke of York, excluded from the line of succession for being a Catholic; as a result of this, Charles had Monmouth exiled. When his uncle became King James II in 1685, Monmouth – Protestant, popular and an experienced military commander – landed in Dorset in an attempt to capture the throne. His makeshift force was no match for the regular army, though, and he was defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor by John Churchill (the future Duke of Marlborough). Subsequently, Monmouth was captured in Hampshire and executed on Tower Hill; it is said that the executioner, Jack Ketch, botched the deed to the extent that the Duke was still alive after two or three chops with the axe, and the job eventually had to be finished with a knife. It is also said that, following this, someone realised that no-one had done an official portrait of the Duke, so his head was sewn back onto his body. Curiously, many years later a descendant of his claimed to have found documentary proof that Charles II and Lucy Walter had been married; apparently he presented this to Queen Victoria, who burned it.

Sophia, Electress of Hanover (1630-1714) – would have been Queen Sophia I

In 1700, the only surviving son of Princess Anne, sister-in-law and heir of William III, died. With William a widower who was unlikely to remarry and Anne having recently miscarried for the twelfth time, an undoing of the Glorious Revolution loomed, prompting Parliament to pass the Act of Settlement which ensured that the crown could not pass to a Catholic. The closest Protestant relative, and therefore the presumptive heir, was Sophia, a grand-daughter of James I; she was the daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia (the ‘Winter Queen’) and had married the Elector of Hanover. She was a 71 year-old widow at the time of the Act of Settlement but she did have five living children and three legitimate grandchildren, so the question of the survival of the royal line wasn’t an issue. Thus was it decreed that after the deaths of William and Anne, the crown would pass to Sophia and her descendants. Although much older than Anne (who became Queen in 1702), Sophia enjoyed considerably better health; she was keen to move to London but Anne – acting out of suspicion, jealousy or both – opposed this. In the event, Sophia died in Hanover in 1714 after collapsing while running to take shelter from the rain. Anne herself died a month later, and the crown passed to Sophia’s son George, the first of the Hanoverians.

Some royal trivia

Following on from my musings about The Crown, here are some interesting facts about the British royal family. If you’ve ever wondered about their surname, the Queen’s full title or how the line of succession works, wonder no further…

Is it the House of Windsor, or Mountbatten-Windsor?

The official name of the British royal family is Windsor and has been since 1917, when George V changed the name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor because of anti-German sentiment in Britain and the Empire during the First World War (this had become increasingly problematic after the Germans had developed a twin-engined bomber called the Gotha G.IV which was capable of crossing the Channel and therefore bombing London). ‘Windsor’ was chosen because of that name’s long association with the monarchy.

The Mountbatten complication arose in 1952 when Elizabeth II succeeded to the throne, leading to questions about whether her children would use their father’s surname. By birth, Prince Philip had been a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg (which provided the royal families of Denmark and Greece, hence his nickname ‘Phil the Greek’) but when he took British citizenship in 1947 he abandoned his foreign titles and took the surname Mountbatten, which was that of his mother's family (his mother was the daughter of Prince Louis of Battenburg, who had relinquished his own German titles and changed his name to the more English-sounding Mountbatten in 1917). While the idea of changing the royal family’s name to the House of Mountbatten (or Mountbatten-Windsor) was obviously supported by Prince Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten, it was opposed by (among others) the Queen Mother and the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

In 1952 it was declared that the royal family would continue to be called the House of Windsor, but a 1960 declaration states that descendants of the Queen and Prince Philip can use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor if they want to. Surname usage among the Queen’s children and grandchildren varies. Princes Charles and Andrew were both referred to as ‘Lieutenant Windsor’ when they served in the Royal Navy, while Prince Edward has styled himself as ‘Edward Windsor’ for his TV work and his daughter, who does not have a royal title or a peerage, is called Lady Louise Windsor. Princess Anne and Prince Andrew both entered the name ‘Mountbatten-Windsor’ in official marriage register entries, while Prince William was referred to as ‘William Arthur Philip Louis Mountbatten-Windsor’ by the French courts during a lawsuit against a magazine that had published topless photographs of his wife. Meanwhile, Princes William and Harry have both used the surname ‘Wales’ while Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie have both used the surname ‘York’, referring to their fathers’ titles.

The Queen’s full title

“Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith”

This varies slightly in the “other Realms” of which she is head of state, and in Canada it is of course given in French as well. The Queen’s title is partly reiterated in the lettering on our coins – D.G.REG.F.D. stands for Dei Gratia Regina Fidei Defensatrix, which is Latin for ‘By the Grace of God, Queen and Defender of the Faith’.

‘Defender of the Faith’ dates back to the 16^th century. In 1521, Henry VIII was granted this title by the Pope in recognition of his opposition to the ideas of Martin Luther. He wasn’t the only one; his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was also a Defender of the Faith as were two Kings of Scotland, James IV and James V. The Pope revoked Henry’s title in 1530 following the break with Rome, however in 1544 Parliament voted to give Henry the title as a defender of the new Anglican faith. It’s in this sense that it has been passed onto his successors.

‘Head of the Commonwealth’ is more recent – it was created for George VI in 1950. Before this, the Commonwealth was a group of countries which all had the same monarch, but this changed when India wished to become a republic but remain a member. The solution was to give the monarch a new title. Today, most Commonwealth member-states are republics; there are 31 of them, along with 16 Commonwealth Realms – the ones which have the Queen as their head of state – and five more that have their own monarchies.

The line of succession 

Succession to the British throne is determined by legitimacy, religion and descent. The rules as they now stand date back to the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701). Succession is limited to those who are born within wedlock, in communion with the Church of England (ie. not of the Roman Catholic faith) and descended from Sophia, Electress of Hanover (1630-1714; more on her in a later post). The rules are the same in each of the 16 Commonwealth Realms – they have to be, in order for them all to have the same monarch. In 2011 the Prime Ministers of the Realms decided on some changes to the rules of succession, and the changes – which in this country fall under the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 – became law last year; specifically, the rule which disqualified anyone who married a Roman Catholic was got rid of, as was the the male-preference primogeniture requirement (ie. boys before girls, regardless of who was born first) for anyone born after the rule-change.

At the time of writing, and limiting it to the descendants of HM Queen Elizabeth II, the line of succession is as follows:

             

1.       HRH Prince Charles (68), eldest son

2.       HRH Prince William (34), grandson

3.       HRH Prince George (3), great-grandson

4.       HRH Princess Charlotte (1), great-grand-daughter

5.       HRH Prince Harry (32), grandson

6.       HRH Prince Andrew (56), son

7.       HRH Princess Beatrice (28), grand-daughter

8.       HRH Princess Eugenie (26), grand-daughter

9.       HRH Prince Edward (52), son

10.   James, Viscount Severn (8), grandson

11.   Lady Louise Windsor (13), grand-daughter

12.   HRH Princess Anne (66), daughter

13.   Peter Phillips (39), grandson

14.   Savannah Phillips (6), great-grand-daughter

15.   Isla Phillips (4), great-grand-daughter    

16.   Zara Tindall (35), grand-daughter

17.   Mia Tindall (2), great-grand-daughter

The line continues through the descendants of the Queen’s late sister, Princess Margaret, and then to the eligible descendants of their father’s siblings, followed by the eligible descendants of previous monarchs. No complete line of succession is maintained so the exact position of those who are far down the list is uncertain. An unofficial list compiled in 2011 contains the names of 5,753 living and eligible descendants of the Electress Sophia; in this, Prince Philip – the oldest living great-great-grandchild of Queen Victoria – is 679^th in line to his wife’s throne.

The Capital Ring: Wimbledon to Richmond

To Wimbledon on a very warm September day, from whence I hoped to complete another stage of the Capital Ring. Expectations were high, for this part of the Capital Ring – according to my copy of London: The Definitive Walking Guide – is “possibly one of the finest walks in the whole book, with glorious scenery wall to wall”. Here was a walk with the promise of not one, but three open spaces – Wimbledon Park, Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park.

I am, it seems, not alone in my love of walking. In fact, it’s practically a national trait for us English! I am currently reading a really good book called How England Made the English by Harry Mount (the son of Ferdinand Mount, as it happens). When talking of the weather, he observes that: “Our temperate climate … makes the English obsessive walkers.” Later, he continues: “Because the English weather is so temperate, and the landscape so accommodating, there’s no need for walking clothes, luminous body socks or special shoes … The English walk long distances because nowhere really seems very far from anywhere else, and you’ll never get fatally caught out by the weather or the terrain … Walking has always been our thing – from the Canterbury Tales, through to the Jarrow March and the charity walks of recent years; and walking in all weathers too, because we know the weather’s not going to be that bad.”

For me, though, this was a walk that I approached with some apprehension, for last month I had managed to do myself an injury by going for a quick single during a cricket match; in so doing, I badly pulled my calf which had a knock-on effect on my Achilles tendon and resulted in ‘retired hurt’ going against my name for the first time. After several weeks of icing it and various stretching exercises, I hadn’t done much by way of walking and, although the limp had worn off, this would be my first post-injury big walk.

Having got the Tube down to Wimbledon Park, I set off into the park of that name; a pretty-looking waterfall garden led up to the lake, on which were three types of geese (Canadian, Egyptian, greylag) and across which could be seen the tennis courts of the All-England Club, then diverting around a watersports centre and then across the grass to come out of the park on the other side. Six-and-a-half miles to Richmond Bridge, my target for the day.

After a couple of suburban back-roads, it was onto Wimbledon Common – through the woods to the windmill. Bird-life abounded, with robins, great tits and chaffinches spotted in addition to the much more ubiquitous jackdaws and magpies; a green woodpecker was heard – that distinctive laughing ‘yaffle’ call – but not seen. I’d been told to watch out for wombles, although in the event I did manage to spot a fox. (As well as those creatures who used to collect and recycle rubbish, by the way, my TV-memory of this large piece of open space also includes that episode of Bottom where Adrian Edmondson and the late, lamented Rik Mayall attempted to go camping – the one which wasn’t broadcast for two-and-a-half years due to a particularly brutal murder having been committed on the Common not long before it was originally due to be shown.)

The windmill, as it happens, was covered in scaffolding. It is, apparently, the last hollow post flour mill (whatever that means) in the country; Robert Baden-Powell wrote part of Scouting for Boys there, and it’s now a museum. I passed on by, also passing the club-house of the London Scottish Golf Club before heading downhill to a small lake called Queensmere (also spelled as Queen’s Mere on some maps); there, I saw a grey heron. I then continued, across the golf course – spotting a male kestrel flying overhead and crossing Beverley Brook (which has its own accompanying walk, from New Malden station to the point where said brook enters the Thames near Putney) before crossing the A3 at the Robin Hood Roundabout.

And so to Richmond Park – London’s largest Royal Park, a designated Site of Specific Scientific Interest and, at around 2,500 acres, the largest urban park in Europe. Within minutes of entering, I spotted a red deer – the largest mammal native to Britain; this one was a stag, sitting under the trees. Deer played a major role in the park’s establishment, for in the 1620s Charles I took his court to Richmond Palace in order to escape from an outbreak of the plague in London, and turned the area into a deer park so he could go hunting; just over a century later, the White Lodge in the middle of the park was built as a hunting-lodge for George II.

I followed the path up the hill to the oddly-named Spankers Hill Wood, having lunch on a bench at the top of the hill with a glorious view laid out before me. What a great day for a walk through this place!

After lunch, I had an ice cream at a nearby café before walking between the Pen Ponds, spotting more deer (fallow deer, this time) under some trees. There were plenty of ducks on the ponds – all mallards, from what I could tell – and ring-necked parakeets could be heard and seen overhead.

The signs took me across the Queen’s Road to the top of a slope with a good view to the west – although the view is better from the nearby King Henry’s Mound, a brief diversion from the Capital Ring path itself. This high point – a Neolithic burial barrow, it turns out – is named for Henry VIII and is said to be the spot from which he waited for a signal to tell him that Anne Boleyn had been executed at the Tower; there is, though, no actual evidence for this, with some sources claiming that Henry VIII was actually in Wiltshire, busy wooing Jane Seymour, on the day when his second wife went to the block. What is true about King Henry’s Mound is that it has a protected view of St Paul’s Cathedral, 12 miles away, which can be seen through a deliberate gap in the hedge (called ‘The Way’) and a specially-maintained avenue through Sidmouth Wood. To the west was a wonderful panoramic view – on a clear day, you can see Windsor Castle on the horizon (it was a sunny day for me, but the horizon was hazy; I could only just make the castle out with my binoculars).

Then it was downhill to the gate, and past Petersham Meadow to the path along the Thames. A very nice day for it, with some people hiring out the rowing-boats (£7 per adult per hour, half-rate after the first hour, users are advised to take the tide times into account). I continued past the elegant Richmond Bridge before making my way into town, with a view to getting the train back into Central London. I hadn’t had any trouble from the Achilles tendon, thankfully.

Fire!

350 years ago today, the Great Fire of London began. It started in a baker’s on Pudding Lane, and over the next four days it engulfed some four-fifths of the City of London. Some 13,200 homes, 89 churches and old St Paul’s Cathedral were destroyed.

To get an idea of what it must have been like, there can be no better eyewitness than Samuel Pepys. He wrote at length on this in his diary, describing – as he watched the blaze from “a little alehouse on the Bankside” – “a most horrid and malicious bloody flame, not like the flame of an ordinary fire … we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire … an arch of above a mile long” (eyewitnesses of the Blitz have described that blaze in a similar way). Interestingly, he also described how it was he who convinced the King (Charles II) of the seriousness of the blaze, and he who conveyed the King’s orders to the Lord Mayor (who, to be frank, wasn’t really up to the job).

As an historian, I’ve long been intrigued by a few snippets of information about the Great Fire. One such is the role played by the King’s brother, the Duke of York (the future James II) – his role has, I feel, been downplayed in favour of his (much more popular) brother, but his leadership during the Great Fire was exemplary. It was he who was in charge of pulling down houses to create firebreaks and thus prevent the fire from spreading, and it was also he who ensured the rescue of those who, by virtue of their being foreign, Catholic or both, were threatened by the angry lynch-mobs that were after convenient scapegoats (James himself did not convert to his mother’s religion until 1668 or 1669, although he kept it a secret until the 1670s).

One surprising aspect of both of the things the Duke did during the Great Fire has always been a little surprising; no-one appears to have been killed in the (frankly dangerous) job of demolishing the houses – this would have involved using ‘fire-hooks’ to quite literally pull buildings down, as well as controlled demolitions using gunpowder – and very few died at the hands of the mobs.

In fact, according to the records few people appear to have died in the Great Fire, long seen as a destroyer of property rather than people (in contrast to the Great Plague which preceded it). The official records say that just six people died. Can this really be true? I wanted to look into this further, and my findings have been published on Londonist:

http://londonist.com/2016/08/is-it-true-that-only-six-people-died-in-the-great-fire

During my research, I managed to find a few more interesting pieces on information about this most momentous of events:

  

1)      The fire started at a bakery on Pudding Lane – famously, the site is as far from the Monument as the Monument is tall (202 feet). Everyone – and this includes the Worshipful Company of Bakers, who put a plaque on the building that stands on the site of the bakery – seems to think that the baker, Thomas Farriner (or Farynor, Faryner, etc) was the King’s baker which leads one to think he was baking bread for Charles II. Not so – he actually had a contract to supply hardtack (ship’s biscuit) for the Navy.

2)      It didn’t bring about an end to the Great Plague; this had largely subsided by the time the fire broke out (it had been at its height during the previous year) and there were a few (but not many) instances of plague-related deaths after the Great Fire.

3)      Old St Paul’s – that Medieval Gothic structure that was destroyed in the Great Fire – may well have been threatened with demolition in any case. It had been in decline for years – the spire had been destroyed after being struck by lightning in 1561 and there had been some restoration work done by Inigo Jones before the Civil War. After the Restoration, Christopher Wren was put in charge of restoring the cathedral and advised that it should be demolished – advice that was opposed by both the clergy and the people of London. At the time when the Great Fire broke out, the old cathedral was surrounded by wooden scaffolding – which, along with all of the books and pamplets that were stored in the crypt, greatly assisted the blaze. I can think of two models of the old cathedral that exist for those who want an idea of what it looked like – one is in St Paul’s (appropriately enough) while the other is in the Museum of London.

4)      Charles II was particularly concerned about the actions of the mobs that went on the rampage looking for scapegoats afterwards; remembering that London had backed Parliament during the Civil War, he was afraid that this would lead to a popular uprising against him. The need for a scapegoat would lead to one execution at Tyburn (that of a French watchmaker whose confession was dubious to say the least) and a plaque on the Monument that blamed the Great Fire on “the Popish faction” (ie. Catholics). This was removed during the reign of James II, put back after the Glorious Revolution and later removed for good when Catholics were given the vote in 1830.

5)      Some of the plans for rebuilding London were truly radical and would have resulted in a City of piazzas and wide avenues; in the event, much of the old street plan was retained – albeit with wider streets, better access to the River and a rule stating that new buildings had to be made from brick and stone (not wood).

6)      And finally, something about cheese. Pepys famously recorded burying “my parmazan cheese as well as my wine and other things” in a pit in his garden so that he wouldn’t lose them in the flames – not as crazy as it seemed, for Parmigiano-Reggiano was a highly valuable commodity in the seventeenth century, especially given the cost that would have been involved in transporting it from Italy. In the event, Pepys’s house – he lived on Seething Lane, not far from the Tower, at the time – wasn’t burned down, but he never did record in his diary whether he was able to recover his cheese and wine.

There are numerous ways in which the Great Fire is being commemorated (lots of London’s museums have special exhibitions going on), of which my favourite is the  large wooden sculpture of the City on the Thames which is to be set alight on Sunday afternoon. 

A walk through the Royal Parks

Walking is a favourite pastime of mine, and I’m always keen to look for new walking routes in the London area. For some time, I have been wondering about how I could possibly replicate the Parisian ‘line of history’ walk in a London setting. After some consideration, I hit upon the notion of a walk through Central London’s four Royal Parks, from Kensington Palace to Whitehall. My write-up of this can be found on Londonist – so if you’re in London and fancy going for a walk containing plenty of places of historical interest, why not give this one a go?

The Fifteen

As well as the bicentenary of Waterloo and the sexcentenary of Agincourt, 2015 also marks the tricentenary of the Jacobite Uprising – not the famous 1745 one, but the 1715 one. It’s not hard to see why the ‘Fifteen’ (as it is sometimes referred to, with the other one known as the ‘Forty-Five’) is rather low down on the list of military things to be commemorated this year; victories overseas tend to get better coverage in the history books than failed rebellions at home.

There has, though, been a two-part documentary on BBC4 called The Stuarts in Exile, presented by an historian called Clare Jackson, which I watched with interest; this is partly because I like historical documentaries but also because I happen to think that James Edward Stuart (1688-1766), alias the Old Pretender, is one of those curiously fascinating people who history has largely overlooked. He was the son of James II by that King’s second wife, and the circumstances surrounding his birth (he was the ‘bedpan’ baby) helped spark the Glorious Revolution. As a result, he grew up in exile, and after James II’s death in 1701 he was acknowledged as King (James III & VII, no less, for like his father he had a different number in Scotland) by Louis XIV of France even though his Catholicism meant he was barred under the terms of the Act of Settlement. He made several attempts to regain the kingdoms which he and his supporters said were his by right, and eventually became the longest-serving pretender to the British throne – his 65-year ‘reign’ has not (yet) been surpassed by any actual British monarch.

His supporters were known as Jacobites (this derives from Jacobus, the Latin for James), and support for the exiled dynasty could be expressed in covert ways such as doing the Loyal Toast while holding one’s drink over a bowl of water (to symbolise the King over the water) and the wearing of a symbol – the white rose. That last bit is why SNP MPs like to wear white roses on their lapels – while the Jacobites weren’t fighting for an independent Scotland (they wanted to rule England and Ireland as well as Scotland), the gesture is at least suitably subversive for a party that wants to break up the British state.

Of all the Jacobite attempts to regain the throne, the Fifteen was probably the closest they got. The Forty-Five is better remembered, probably due to the romantic appeal of James’s son Bonnie Prince Charlie, but by 1745 the Hannoverian dynasty and the resulting Whig ascendancy were secure and the country was doing well (England and Lowland Scotland were, at any rate). In 1715, however, the Hannoverians had only just come to the throne and the political system was in turmoil, with the Tories – the faction which back in the day had supported James II – having been unceremoniously removed from office and therefore looking to the exiled Stuarts as a means of returning to power.

However, James had over-estimated his support and the whole thing went off half-cocked when the Earl of Mar raised James’s standard and started to assemble a rebel army in Scotland before being instructed to do so. Things initially went well in Scotland – less so in England where it was easier for the government to have suspected Jacobites arrested – but in November government forces inflicted key defeats on the rebels in the more-or-less simultaneous battles of Sheriffmuir and Preston, and this was before James actually landed in Scotland. International circumstances didn’t help either. James had been expelled from France the previous year under the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht, and combined with the death of Louis XIV this meant that French support was not forthcoming.

(James made two other attempts, in 1708 and 1719, but on neither occasion did he actually manage to set foot in any of his father’s former kingdoms.)

During the first episode of The Stuarts in Exile, I found the continued emphasis on the Duke of Marlborough surprising – yes, he does pop up at various points in the story and his defection from James II to William of Orange was a turning-point of the Glorious Revolution (which resulted in the Old Pretender growing up in exile), but he was not alone in switching sides. Stranger still, given this emphasis, was what was left out in terms of the connections between him and the various members of the Stuart dynasty. What of his wife’s close friendship with Queen Anne? His sister was the mother of James II’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Berwick – who became a successful military commander under Louis XIV and who later fell out with his half-brother after declining to get involved in the Fifteen. Wasn’t that worth mentioning? While we’re on the subject of family connections, why was there no mention of the fact that William of Orange was James II’s nephew as well as his son-in-law? Or that James II and Louis XIV were cousins? Back then, these connections mattered.

There was also surprisingly little about James’s attitude towards Protestantism. Jacobitism was by no means limited to Catholics, and while in exile in Rome James had special permission to hold Protestant services at his court – which was popular with British visitors to Rome regardless of their religious or political affiliation. James must have been aware that had he renounced Catholicism in favour of the C of E his chances of regaining the throne would have increased immeasurably; he was told as much more than once and there was definitely a family history of converting to suit circumstances, but he chose not to. I’d’ve liked to have heard a bit more about this. In the second episode we got a reference to James stating that he would be tolerant towards Protestants in the event of his coming to the throne, but that was it.

For much of the second episode, James’s son Charles – Bonnie Prince Charlie – took centre-stage as Dr Jackson took us through the little-known stories of English Jacobitism and Scottish support for the Hannoverian government before a somewhat brief look at the Forty-Five and an account of Charles’s later years which brought up the interesting story of his secret visit to London in 1750 and his apparent conversion to Protestantism.

Despite what I’ve said, I enjoyed watching this documentary and I did like Dr Jackson’s style (although in terms of TV historians she’s not quite on a par with the likes of Mary Beard and Lucy Worsley). Funny, though, that a study of a somewhat marginalised branch of British royalty that tends to get dismissed from the main story managed to miss some important parts from its narrative.

Why the Channel Islands aren't French

I’ve just been to Jersey for the weekend – it’s a place I’ve always fancied visiting but I never really got round to going. So when Allison went there on business and I had the chance to fly out and join her for the weekend, I jumped at it. I found out many interesting things about the place, and none of them involve Bergerac.

Officially, Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom but is a self-governing Crown dependency (the same status as Guernsey – which has jurisdiction over most of the other Channel Islands – and the Isle of Man). It has its own parliament (called the States of Jersey) and makes its own laws – including financial regulation, which is why it’s so popular with tax exiles. Although sterling is the currency, Jersey prints its own banknotes (including a £1 note, which the Bank of England stopped doing in the 1980s) and mints its own coins.

Jersey’s actual status with regards to the Crown (and the reason why it’s not French) is an interesting one that has its origins in the Middle Ages. The Channel Islands were originally part of the Duchy of Normandy, and as such their link with England began with the Norman Conquest in 1066. When King John managed to lose his remaining French possessions in 1204, the Channel Islands were omitted from the list of lands he handed over to the King of France. No-one seems to know whether this was deliberate or accidental, although as they were not officially incorporated into the Kingdom of England I suspect it may be the latter. This non-incorporation, by the way, explains why they’re self-governing to this day. An historical consequence of this is that, whenever she visits Jersey, the Queen is informally referred to by the title Duke of Normandy. Going by the way she’s depicted on the pound notes, I’m guessing she’s happy with this arrangement.

Rewriting history?

Poor old Tony Robinson. For almost two decades, he’s fronted a TV show which has seen him and a handful of archaeologists unearthing various old coins and bits of pottery in trenches dug in a variety of fields throughout the United Kingdom. Then, as soon as said show gets cancelled, a woman with a fixation about Richard III has a premonition about a car park in Leicester and is able to get sufficient funding from some equally-fixated friends to arrange for the University of Leicester to conduct an archaeological dig in said car park. On the first day of the dig, they find human bones which turn out to be the bones of the man they’re looking for. That never happened on Time Team.

Last Monday, the bones were officially confirmed to be the earthly remains of Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet dynasty, the last King of England to be killed in battle and, it’s safe to say, one of this country’s most controversial rulers. For all of the talk about history being about more than the study of famous dead men, there’s nothing like the discovery of the bones of a famous dead man to get people to pay attention. And in the evening, we had a lengthy documentary on Channel Four called Richard III: The King in the Car Park which told the full story behind the dig and the identification process.

The emphasis varied between the serious stuff outlined above, clips of Laurence Olivier with a false nose and a cushion stuffed up the back of his doublet reciting lines from Shakespeare’s Richard III, and the woman who’d had the premonition. In fact, her fixation with Richard III turned out to be a full-blown obsession with clearing his name (such people, it seems, are called ‘Ricardians’).

Although mildly interesting, this did detract from the more serious business of identifying the remains; carbon-dating put them in the right time period, analysis of the skull proved that this was someone who’d met with a violent end and a modern-day descendant who could provide a DNA match was found. Such is modern technology that the experts were even able to identify which wounds had been inflicted posthumously as ‘humiliation wounds’, which goes to show while battlefield technology has undoubtedly changed over the past 500 years, some attitudes have not.

This was presented by a comedian/actor I’d never heard of who tried to liven things up with the occasional attempt at a Shakespearean quote – not a smart move when the viewers have just seen a clip of Olivier doing it properly – and a few choice quotes of his own (‘if that isn’t Richard III, that is one unlucky monk!’). I cannot help thinking that Tony Robinson would’ve done a better job – if only because he’s had plenty of experience of explaining archaeology to the viewers and he has form on this particular time period, what with the first series of Blackadder having a Wars of the Roses setting and his having made a pretty good fist of questioning the legitimacy of Edward IV for a Channel Four documentary back in 2004. Maybe the people at Channel Four didn’t think that filming an archaeological dig in a city-centre car park which was happening thanks to an enthusiastic and eccentric amateur was sufficient reason to wheel him out. I guess they didn’t anticipate that they’d find the actual bones – which just goes to show that you never can tell.

Does this, as has been claimed, change or rewrite history? Not really. It ties up a couple of loose ends – we now know what happened to Richard’s body after the battle, and we know that the Tudor-era propaganda about his physical appearance had some (but not much) basis in fact. It will no doubt re-ignite the historical debate about Richard (probably along the ‘good king or bad king’ lines which mark out the debate on, say, King John), but it doesn’t change what happened.

For example, it does not change the fact that Richard III is still the most likely suspect in the mystery over the disappearance of his two nephews (the Princes in the Tower) in 1483; of the various people who have been suggested as being behind their murder, he definitely had the motive, the means and the opportunity to have them killed.

It doesn’t change the fact that after a reign of just two years, Richard lost his kingdom to a man who would go on to found his own dynasty, and who is (via a daughter who was married off to Scottish royalty) the ancestor of today’s Royal Family. The notion of history being written by the winners is certainly true of the posthumous treatment of Richard (Shakespeare’s play was based on a book by Thomas More), although what the Ricardians do not appear to have realised is that, without Shakespeare, few people would’ve heard of Richard III.

Trying to counter the Shakespearean image of Richard III with a whitewash won’t help. Medieval history wasn’t my particular area of expertise but what I can say is that no historical figure can really be seen in such black-or-white terms – eulogise or demonise if you like, but if you do you’ll never get to see the full person. There are only ever varying shades of grey.