The New Murrey and Blue blog

Being king in the medieval period was definitely not an easy ride of luxury, comfort, feasting, wine, women and song. Well, it was but it also had its drawbacks. Not only did one have to contend with foreign enemies (and enemies within your own ranks) but there were those pesky creatures called pretenders. Some of them were genuine, of course, but others were chancers, put there by crafty foes with a view to dislodging your backside from the throne.

Some pretenders are particularly famous, especially at the moment with Philippa Langley’s amazing new discoveries about the real fate of the “Princes in the Tower”. If they weren’t disposed of by Uncle Richard III (who was innocent, by the way) then they were alive to return and make life very difficult for the man who usurped Richard III, one slimy Henry Tudor. It is a fact that Henry had trouble with two particularly famous pretenders/claimants, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. Was Simnel the elder of the two boys from the Tower? Was he actually King Edward V? And was Warbeck the younger boy, Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York? It now seems very likely that both could well have been what they claimed to be. To find out more on this, simply search online for anything to do with Philippa Langley, The Missing Princes Project and her new book, The Princes in the Tower: Solving History’s Greatest Cold Case.

But other medieval kings had their problems too. Another King of England, Edward II, was plagued by John Deydras, also known as John of Powderham, as you can read if you go here here. (This link takes the old line regarding Richard III and the Princes in the Tower, but is worth a read all the same.)

The other pretenders it lists are from lands other than England, but all are interesting, so I recommend taking a look.