The New Murrey and Blue blog

From here :-

“….Richard FitzAlan, 11th Earl of Arundel, 9th Earl of Surrey, was born 1346 to Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel (c1313-1376) and Eleanor Plantagenet (c1318-1372) and died 21 September 1397 of unspecified causes….”

Um…unspecified causes? The earl was attainted and publicly beheaded by Richard II (who didn’t do it in person, of course). Arundel was probably the richest man in England after John of Gaunt, and a decidedly what-you-see-is-what-you-get man. He’d clambered up Richard’s royal nose once too often, including refusing the late Queen Anne’s pleas for the life of Sir Simon Burley, and then not only being late for Anne’s funeral but wanting leave early as well. For this latter he received a right royal left hook that decked him in Westminster Abbey.

There were other bones to rake over as well, such as Arundel being a ringleader of the Lords Appellant, who banded together to bring Richard to heel earlier in his reign. Richard was not a man to forgive and forget, but bided his time and got his own back  at a perfect moment. Perfect for him, that is. His revenge was served cold.

I’m not saying the fault lies entirely with one man or the other, because neither was unblemished in it all, but the fact remains that Richard Fitzalan, 11^th Earl of Arundel, was a very important magnate in late 14^th-century England, and it’s preposterous to state that he died of “unspecified causes”.

His execution on 21st September 1397 was a HUGE matter at the time, and very unpopular with the people, who liked him because he spoke his mind and stood up for what was right, not simply what was beneficial to his own coffers.  A man can be said to have “arrived” when miracles are claimed at the scene of his death and then at his tomb. Richard was so jittery about this that he had the tomb taken down and moved. It worked and Arundel’s fledgling “cult” dwindled. But the earl wasn’t forgotten.

How can all this be brushed aside as “unspecified”?