The New Murrey and Blue blog

This link https://www.thecollector.com/british-royal-melodramas/ is an interesting accompaniment to your morning tea/coffee, and it’s Number Four in the list, Cousins in Conflict: Wars of the Roses, that will interest Ricardians the most. So I’ll deal with that and not the others, which are yours to read as you please.

Two King Richards figure in the commentary, numbers II and III. I quote: “….Richard II was overthrown by his nobility in 1399, led by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who was enthroned as Henry IV….” Well, that’s true enough, but there’s no comment on the rights and wrongs of that situation. To me it’s the first example of a rightful King Richard being murdered and replaced by a Lancastrian usurper. We have Henry IV to thank for the rotten Houses of Lancaster and Tudor. It’s interesting to note that his son, Henry V, had a terrible conscience about the way his father stole the throne, and had always been close to Richard II, who’d treated him very well.

Reading on, I came to Richard III: “….the drama reached its apogee when Richard, Duke of Gloucester, purportedly murdered his nephews, Edward and Richard, to seize the crown for himself in 1483….” Well, “purportedly” seemed hopeful of fairness for Richard of Gloucester, but that impression was then dashed by him having “seized” the throne. He didn’t seize anything. He was invited by Parliament and then persuaded to accept.

He was the rightful king because his elder brother’s marriage had been found to be bigamous. Therefore the offspring of that marriage were barred from the throne. Period. Then, of course, Richard was murdered at Bosworth, i.e. stabbed in the back by traitors who’d secretly gone over to the usurper Henry Tudor/VII. That’s not dying in the course of battle, it’s being betrayed and extinguished by a grievous plot. Well, at least one of them, Sir William Stanley, eventually paid the price when Henry VII executed him for another plot to remove the king. Henry was always a little twitchy about plots. Can’t think why.

So, two Richards, both murdered by usurping Lancastrian Henrys.

Maybe you’ll need to add some sugar to your morning beverage to make it more palatable.

by viscountessw