John Ashdown-Hill
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Chapter 10 of Ashdown-Hill’s “The Last days …” (pp.92-7) describes the circumstances of Richard’s first burial in great detail and adds some intriguing points. Right at the beginning, we learn that Leicester’s Abbey, also lost and the burial place of fellow “Tudor” victim Thomas Wolsey, was more prestigious than the Greyfriars church. So why was…
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The reaction to the first part of “Kendall 2014” has been interesting. “According to Williams, Brampton was sent to Portugal as early as 22 March 1485, only six days after Anne’s death. ‘Brampton brought a double proposal to Portugal – for Richard to marry Joanna and for Elizabeth of York to marry…John, Duke of Beja…In…
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The suggestion in John Ashdown-Hill’s Royal Marriage Secrets (pp.69-74) that Edmund “Tudor” may have been fathered by Edmund Beaufort, of Somerset, and not by Owen Tudor, Catherine de Valois’ servant and apparent illegal husband, is most intriguing. It is clear that Edmund was a “transitional child” between one of her relationships much commented on at…
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Many of you will remember reading, perhaps in “The Last Days of Richard III”, how John Speed went to Leicester looking for the site of the Greyfriars but confused it with the Blackfriars which was in a far worse state of repair thus no royal body could possibly have survived. Yesterday, I lunched at the…
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I was going to write a review of this fascinating volume and may well do soon, but here is one by a lady whose stepbrother is a Clarence descendant: http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9024951/royal-marriage-secrets-by-john-ashdown-hill-review/
The New Murrey and Blue blog 