The New Murrey and Blue blog

A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth–Joseph Conrad
If Joseph Conrad was correct (and I believe he was), whatever could someone in the late 15th c have been trying to tell us about Henry VII in this amusing manuscript doodle? Especially as it came from  the Archbishop’s Register of the diocese of York.

That nose! That pinched  expression! Is the King depicted trying to smell out someone’s hard earned money? Did a scribe in York not think  terribly much of the new Tudor king?

And, just for fun,  here’s a more recent (early 20th c?) cartoon of Henry chowing down with good old Bishop Morton (by then  Archbishop of Canterbury), as they devise the idea of Morton’s Fork…