King Richard III

5/28/2018

If you happen to be near Leicester, England, tomorrow (May 29, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.), you can attend the first Richard III Annual Lecture, co-sponsored by the University of Leicester’s Medieval Research Centre and the King Richard III Visitor Centre.

Has any monarch provoked more debate after such a brief, long-ago reign? Shakespeare portrayed a hunchback villain who murdered his young nephews to usurp the throne in 1483, only to lose it—and his life—to Henry VII two years later. Historical investigation by the fictional detective in Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (1951) concludes Henry VII murdered the princes. Ricardians—Richard’s admirers—insist on Richard’s innocence and praise his judicial reforms. Click here for a teaser about the recovery of his bones.

You might find more Ricardian passion at a Society for Creative Anachronism event than a scholarly symposium on late medieval England. Ricardianism is part of a perennial grassroots rebellion against the perceived elitism of trained experts and smug academics.

It also reflects a human insistence on seeing our public figures as either saints or villains. Real-life trained historians are capable of thinking the same man a judicial reformer and a child killer, with morals irrelevant to the shape of his back.

8 Comments

Lisa Imhoff

5/29/2018 06:08:13 pm

It's very hard not to judge people from the past by our own modern standards of right and wrong, good and evil. Let alone our own limited life experience, which further confines our understanding.

The King Richard III Visitor Center has extensive information about the War of the Roses and the politics of the time. One whole small room has an interactive display where visitors can log in with their own conclusions on whether Richard III killed the princes, by answering questions and pressing buttons.

In the end I was most fascinated by the miracle of the discovery, the 3-D renderings of the skeleton, and the breath-taking room which has been built over the gravesite. That is stuff I can understand, as well as to admire the creativity and thought that went into the museum. I don't know enough about all the ramifications of his death vs if he had lived, which is a subject about 500 years long.

I don't know whether there is a rebellion against experts and academics, as much as there is an increasing sensitivity to the complexity of the matter. Maybe, like, an increasing sense of humanism? Or humanity?

Sarah link

5/30/2018 08:13:54 am

Lisa, well put. Thank you for your vivid description of the Visitor Centre. Sounds like a fascinating place to visit! I hope you are right about the increasing sensitivity to complexity. Almost everything turns out to be more complicated than we think at first. That, for me, is much of where the fascination lies.

Judging people of another time by the standards of ours is a complex issue, too. Richard lived in a violent age. When I looked into Richard more closely a few decades back, I concluded he probably was responsible for the princes's deaths, and would probably been killed himself otherwise. Perhaps trying to pass judgement on historical figures can get in the way of understanding them. Sounds like a topic for a future blog post.

5/30/2018 05:24:20 pm

Of course when you looked into Richard "a few decades back," opinion was still pretty slanted, so no matter how much you, as a, like, regular lay person, could reasonably research, you probably couldn't come to much of a different conclusion. Phillipa alone kept the faith. There's no science to prove whether he was "good" or "bad." Unlike with Jefferson, where we have DNA.

My sister was in London last fall, and went to the Tower. (I was there in 1984.) I asked her if Richard is still guilty as far as their tours are concerned, and she replied yes, he killed his young cousins.

5/30/2018 09:15:23 am

I should have added that after answering these questions in that room, you could then press a button (at each station) to find out how other people voted on that question.

I'm not so sure he was responsible for the deaths. There's some pretty compelling evidence that he didn't do it...

To bring it to our own history, Thomas Jefferson never had children with a slave, right? NOBODY doubted that (except for a very few people, mostly the ones who knew they carried his genes in their mulatto bodies), because, OUR FOUNDING FATHER would not have done that!!! I remember the uproar in Madison when it came out that he had, for certain, had children with his slave and furthermore, one of the children moved right here to Madison.

I think it does help us to compartmentalize "stuff" so we can cope.

Leicester is a vibrant city and I didn't get the impression that they were trying to capitalize on the discovery of Richard III's body in making this large museum. I mean, I didn't see Richard III t-shirts and caps and mugs anywhere else in town. And I was also really impressed in the thorough examination of the evidence of whether he was a good guy or a bad guy in their displays. The fairness made it a lot more interesting to me.

But oh, that takes effort. To be fair and open. In the words of my client, "There is no gray area with okra." And isn't that sometimes comforting?

5/30/2018 04:43:10 pm

I've visited the grave of Jefferson's descendant Eston Hemings in Madison. He passed as white. Jefferson seems to me an example of denial of complexity today. Can't we disapprove of slavery and still admire the Declaration of Independence?

The admirable even-handedness of the Leicester museum reminds me of an exhibit the county history museum in Appleton did on Senator Joe McCarthy after his bust was moved from the courthouse to the museum. Many in the Fox Valley still remembered and admired the guy. The museum exhibit, with the ambiguous title "An American Tragedy," presented his biography and ended in a 1950s kitchenette watching an Army/McCarthy Hearings clip on a black-and-white TV, with index cards to write comments on, and a board and thumbtacks to post them.

5/30/2018 05:46:04 pm

I'm still "troubled" (for lack of a better word) by your statement, "Ricardianism is part of a perennial grassroots REBELLION against the perceived elitism of trained experts and smug academics." I didn't see it that way. Phillipa is a respected and involved local historian who was able to raise a lot of private money and put that part of town through some considerable disruption after getting the locals' permission to do so to excavate and search. But the government didn't help, until the body was found and then they sorta HAD to do something. Well, I don't think it was a "rebellion." Phillip didn't start a "rebellion." She was dedicated and she got backing from school groups to large donors. I just don't think "rebellion" was on anyone's mind. If anything, Phillipa was one of the "trained experts" and an academic to boot (smug or not).

But then, England is so different than we are. After a season of reading Man Booker award winners in book discussion, we talked about that, and I said there is way too much naval gazing in American literature. In England, in their literature as well as in their acceptance of Richard III's value today, they are just much EASIER about it. They just would not use the word "rebellion" about themselves, in that context. So, should we?

5/31/2018 08:50:10 am

My first exposure was reading The Daughter of Time, way back when, in the course of reading every mystery Josephine Tey wrote. As I recall it, the novel was pretty explicit in holding up the wisdom of everyday folks (or homicide inspectors) as distinct from academics.

While it doesn't say which image of Richard is right or wrong, I still say Richard's cause has been more popular than professional over the decades, in a way that's quite rare for an otherwise rather obscure historical topic. How many historical figures have a whole organized society of champions dedicated to clearing their name? How many archaeological digs are crowd-funded? How many are the subject of a mock trial with a real judge presiding? How many debates to rehabilitate a historical reputation spend so much effort on whether or not the subject had a physical deformity, which you'd think says nothing whatever about his or her character?

Without doubt, Philippa Langley's achievement is tremendous. I haven't found a biography that tells anything of her before her Ricardian endeavors. I strongly suspect her convictions about Richard before any expertise in historical method. I would further speculate that the increasing involvement of professional historians in her cause contributed to the admirable even-handedness you saw in the museum.

5/31/2018 09:06:14 am

:)

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King Richard III

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