evidence
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On 8th June 1376, Edward, the Black Prince, died. From then until 29th September his body lay in state in Westminster Hall, and then was taken to Canterbury Cathedral to be buried on 5th October at Canterbury Cathedral. His passing was greatly mourned through the land, and lamented because the elderly monarch, Edward III, was…
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I was excited to be asked to contribute to an article in Issue 18 of History of Royals magazine about the fate of the Princes in the Tower. It helps when I have a book on the way next month called The Survival of the Princes in the Tower – and it probably gives away…
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Richard II is my second favourite king (you all know who’s first!) and both are controversial, albeit for very different reasons. One of the charges against Richard II is that he was something of a Peter Pan, and did not want to grow up. He had portraits painted depicting him as a boy, when he…
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Here is an excellent account of That Urn at Westminster Abbey. It demolishes all the “Tudor” flimflam, and entertains as it does so. Read, enjoy and digest, in connection with this.
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One thing of which we can be certain is that Richard III never played snooker. It was not invented until 1875 in Jabalpur by a Colonel Chamberlain (1). Nevertheless, it is an excellent vehicle for demonstrating the laws of probability with particular reference to the descent of the Plantagenet Y-chromosome from Edward III. Imagine that…
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To the delight of travelers across the globe, tired of lugging all those hard-copy books on planes, trains and automobiles, Annette Carson’s Richard III The Maligned King has just been released in ebook form and can now be purchased on Amazon.com. Along with John Ashdown-Hill, Carson is part of a new generation of historians who…
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This is Anthony William Hall, a former Shropshire police inspector. In 1931, he claimed to be the rightful King of England, descended from an illegitimate son of Henry VIII whilst James VI/I had been an impostor, thereby disqualifying all of his descendents down to George V, whom Hall sought to supplant. The chief obstacles to…
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You may recall that, about two years ago, we published the footnotes to Bertram Fields’ Royal Blood. Now it seems that, on page 152 of the paperback edition, he has something to say about Catherine de Valois’ apparent relationship with Owain Tudor. Just like G.L.Harriss (1988) and John Ashdown-Hill (2013), he holds that they are…
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You may have read here, here, here or even here about the regular own goals of a certain “Tudor”-ist troll. Anyway, given the fact that Henry VII, whether Tudor, Beaufort or Swynford, is not descended from Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster in suo jure but from her husband’s mistress and later wife, Katherine de Roet, he…
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I confess to not knowing that Edward V coins had ever been minted. There doesn’t really seem to have been time to have reached that point. However, as it’s clear they were coined and distributed, I have cause to consider the implication. We have the old, old story that Richard was a dastardly, murderous uncle…