Thanks Scoutmaster.
Posted on 09/17/2014 12:39:21 PM PDT by Scoutmaster
Richard III's last moments were likely quick but terrifying, according to a new study of the death wounds of the last king of England to die in battle.
The last king of the Plantagenet dynasty faced his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field on Aug. 22, 1485, only two years after ascending the throne. The battle was the deciding clash in the long-running Wars of the Roses, and ended with the establishment of Henry Tudor as the new English monarch. But Richard III's last moments were the stuff of legend alone, as the king's body was lost until September 2012, when archaeologists excavated it from under a parking lot in Leicester, England. Now, a very delayed postmortem examination reveals that of nearly a dozen wounds on Richard's body, only two were likely candidates for the fatal blow. Both were delivered to the back of the head.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
In Oakland, CA on Telegraph Avenue (Henry Kaiser Park) there is an assemblage of sculptures of famous liberal icons called the “Remember Them: Champions for Humanity” monument. Sort of a liberal shrine. A liberal friend insisted I see it because it was special to her. Amidst the sculptures of Mayou Angela, Harvey Milk, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, etc. etc. was....Winston Churchill!!! I still don’t know why he was let into that club.....but I was happy to see him there. If I recall, they had misquoted him (”Never give up” instead of “Never Surrender”), but as they would say, “Whatever”!
Nonsense. He was a despicable weasel traitor who murdered the nephews and usurped the throne he was sworn to protect.
You can't possibly be this stupid. Let me guess -- a distant relation?
No, he was not. He was a great general, a brilliant administrator of the north of England (basically a viceroy) and the right arm of his brother King Edward. Traitor? That’s foolish! There was no man more loyal to England. He implemented bail so that weaselly nobles could not steal the land of poor peasants who were arrested on minor charges and refused to take money during his many progresses and abolished benevolences. His first (and last) Parliament was an absolute model of good governance. Personally, he was noted for his good morals - unlike his brother who squandered his health and legacy on wine, women and greed.
When Richard died, the city of York (where he spent the bulk of his life) mourned his death in writing - that’s saying a lot considering Henry Tudor was a mean man. Later, Henry’s tax collector was brutally lynched to the cries of “Revenge King Richard!”
So there.
Yes, indeed, Richard was determined to make sure the proper succession occurred. In fact, he was somewhat obsessed with royal bloodlines. It's why he got so fed up with his greedy commoner in-laws. The boys were declared illegitimate by Titulus Regius. This is a fascinating document all but destroyed by the Tudors until one was found in the Tower about 2 centuries after Richard's death. Until that time, no one knew the full story of Richard's ascension.
There is also the glaring fact that a major reason for his loss of support was the growing suspicion that he’d killed the Little Princes. Which to allay all he had to do was exhibit them.
Since he didn’t, the most likely explanation, then and now, is that he couldn’t, because they were already dead.
There already was a proper succession, which Richard was pledged on his life to defend. Not only did he not uphold his vow to defend it, he was the man who actively destroyed it, and for which he was JUSTLY DESTROYED. If anything he was killed too mercifully. He should have sat in the Tower for a few months and then been given the ax.
Titulus Regius was produced at Richard's behest; Parliament in those days did exactly what it was told. The production of the document long after Richard's death proves nothing whatsoever about Richard's claims. Among other things, it purports that Elizabeth Woodville and her mother used "witchcraft" to alienate the kings affections.
So, I can see why a Ricardian is impressed by it. But no one serious is.
As for "allowing" some of his relatives to live, my, that was generous, wasn't it? Especially considering that there is no doubt that he had the children he was sworn to protect murdered -- and since Edward was king, and Richard was not, that makes him a traitor in every sense of the word: to family, to country, and to oath.
And please don't start in with the usual Ricardian nonsense about there being "no proof" of Richard's regicide. In 1483 it was common knowledge they were dead; Mancini even recorded it contemporaneously in his diary. Richard himself responded to those rumors publicly. But what he did not do, because he could not do it -- was the one thing that would have set those rumors to rest for all time -- produce the children alive. That would have been impossible.
If Richard really believed his claims that the succession was illegitimate, why did he have them murdered? Bastards weren't ordinarily done to death. But of course, they weren't bastards, Richard wasn't a king, Richard's own marriage was of dubious validity, and he was a traitor, a usurper, and a murderer.
What can be annulled can be un-annulled. Just requires proper payment or concessions to the Pope.
The lengths you Ricardians go to to try to rehabilitate this evil man is genuinely astonishing.
[Titulus Reguius] be void, adnulled, repelled, irrite , and of noe force ne effecte
and...that the said Bill, Act and Record, be annulled and utterly destroyed, and that it be ordained by the same Authority, that the same Act and Record be taken out of the Roll of Parliament, and be cancelled and brent, and be put in perpetual oblivion.
People arguing Richard was somehow justified in murdering his nephews or usurping the throne "by law" want to overlook just how much of a royal instrument Parliament was in the 15th century.
His daughter Mary was known as Bloody Mary. I’d say they were probably close.
Kyphosis, yes, that is what he really had. I do know, I was actually “in the trade” so to speak. And he wasn’t a traditional hunchback but he probably had a lot of spasm. I would think they would be more likely to call him “crooked” or whatever the parlance at the time was.
I saw the spine, it looked like a really good scoliosis that looked uncomfortable to live with. It was pretty severe. Maybe in some people it might not be too obvious but my guess is it had to be at least somewhat so. Who knows how it manifested in his actual walk and balance? He was a warrior, had to be able to move, the body can compensate pretty well for such things - but that does not mean they are not easily spotted - usually a high shoulder, uneven hips - first things chiropractors look for.
The interesting thought is, when did it come on? If it was childhood, his mother would probably have been blamed. That is the way things worked - mothers at the time were blamed for the way the kids physically turned out. A lustful thought might produce a monstrous child. That’s why they would enter periods of “confinement” while pregnant. It’s why poor Anne Boleyn ended up dead when she had stillbirths - she MUST have done something wrong to kill the King’s sons. Childhood scoliosis often has other genetic abnormalities, like missing organs.
If he was older, it may not have been noticed until he was later teens. Then what evil sin did he commit to bring it on? Hmmmm? We don’t think that way, but people at the time sure did. They had tons of spies in chambers. They talked about royalty - a lot. Royalty was the celebrities of the day. Something like a “crooked” king was must have been great fodder for the masses.
Oh, for goodness sake, I can’t believe you buy that bilge about More and the staircase. They weren’t scattered, by the way, they were found in a chest. These bones - which include animal bones - are actually thought - because of the depth of the earth - to be from the Roman period. The Queen won’t open the urn, so we may never know. We do know one of the children (they cannot determine whether it is a girl or a boy) has serious jaw disease - nothing like that was mentioned in any of the princes’ history.
Yup. I think people project the idea of an independent Parliament way too far into the past. Fifteenth century Parliaments did what they were told to do. Or else.
17th century, not so much. Even Elizabeth had problems with her later Parliaments. Nobody dared to give her Dad trouble, though.
Or the right connections. Was Clement’s opposition to Henry VIII’s annulment really all that principled? Or was Charles the V [and therefore Catherine of Aragon] simply better connected?
There is absolutely nothing to conclude that Richard was thought “evil” in his time because he may or may not have had a raised shoulder - this is a cliché about a time that was really much more sophisticated than commonly thought. In fact, the brilliance of the nobility and royalty is quite remarkable. The more I read about them the more I’m impressed with their genius.
There are no contemporary accounts of Richard being deformed. In fact, the reconstruction of his face shows a quite comely individual. His physique is considered gracile. He was small and fine boned. He was a fierce warrior who preferred a battle ax to any other weapon. He was also a fine horseman.
Thanks Scoutmaster.
There is no evidence that Titulus Regius was written by Richard - any more than there is evidence that the children were murdered, no matter how much you use caps to convince me. (You don’t happen to be Terry Breverton?!) Bishop Stillington had the goods on the story - check out the brilliant Annette Carson’s book on the subject. The Woodvilles stole the treasury while Richard rode to London after the King’s death, stole the fleet and tried to ambush him with 2,000 men while he had only 300. Hardly the army of an usurper!
There is simply no evidence to any of your claims. Only silence.
Henry the 7th didn’t believe the princes were dead which is why he murdered Perkin Warbeck and all of the young Plantaganents. He really was the killer of one of the princes - Clarence’s son.
Mancini did not speak English, was in England briefly, and was a cat’s paw of The Spider. Not exactly an objective observer - neither was DeCommyne, although, he at least, spoke English. He just never left France.
The only decent observer of Richard was Von Poppelau of Silesia. He kinda liked him.
"Scattered" was a sarcastic reference to your post, which used the image, to which I replied. Do try to keep up; if not with me, at least with your own writing.
The rest of your reply is more nonsense. The bones were where More said they'd be. They were exhumed in 1674, at which time no dating of the remains on the basis of depth or any other science would have been even remotely possible. But we do know this: There is no historical record of any other children having been buried in the Tower. We also know the White Tower was built in 1078, six centuries after the fall of Rome.
Please learn some history; you're embarrassing yourself here.
they cannot determine whether it is a girl or a boy
Another Ricardian distraction, which is typical. It was not determined, because no attempt to determine such was ever made. That doesn't mean "they cannot determine" it. Does a contemporary document mention the burial of a young female and her brother in the Tower? Nope. No such claim has ever been made, except by Ricardians pretending that it was routine to bury people in places mentioned by Chancellors of England.
As for what was or was not mentioned in the children's history, degenerative bone loss is indeed consistent with murder by starvation, and that was one of several contemporaneous theories in circulation while Richard III was still alive.
But second, and far more importantly, you won't -- and can't, any more than your murderous hero could -- refute claims against Richard by the simplest means of all: If he didn't murder them, why didn't their traitorous uncle produce them alive?
If you read More properly, you’d know that he said they were originally buried under a staircase and then moved. Moved, ok? The bones were exhumed from the urn in the 1930s and examined by two dentists. Their paper is available through the Richard the Third Society - with no skewed point of view - simply the findings of the doctors. Unfortunately, they worked from the assumption that the children were the princes and so identified them as such. That would never happen today with DNA testing. This is how it got into the water that one of the princes had jaw disease. The bones could not, at that time, be identified as either male or female - they were too young and undeveloped.
More grew up in the household of John Morton - a Lancastrian who brought about the death of Richard the Third. A man who deserves a book of his own - Morton’s Fork!
More’s book was never published in his lifetime and people are still perplexed by it. I suppose you believe Richard was born with a full set of teeth and hair down to his shoulders?
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