The New Murrey and Blue blog

Today is the annniversary of the death in 1416 of Constance of York, Lady Despenser and (for a time) Countess of Gloucester. She was one of many people of various conditions in life who inexplicably preferred the ‘tyranny’ of Richard II to the rule of Henry IV, and put their lives at risk to do something about it. She survived to die in her bed because a) she was a woman (or rather a lady) and b) the King’s cousin. The Plantagenets did not execute women for political reasons.

It is also the anniversary of the death of Edward, Earl of Warwick, the last legitimate male Plantagenet. Born in 1475, he was imprisoned from the age of ten, executed at Tower Hill in 1499 for an ostensible plot with the mysterious youth known as “Perkin Warbeck”. “Perkin” and Edward’s cousin John of Gloucester, were also executed that month, allowing Prince Arthur to marry Catherine of Aragon. Evidently, these moral scruples were not shared by the “Tudors”.