Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘nine or ten years old Edward began what he called ‘A Chronicle’ which was both a private record of his life and an account of public events. Early on he wrote it in the third person, a grammatical tense that, when we are used to the conversational directness of modern autobiography, today sounds remote and abstract. In a sense there were two Edwards in the ‘Chronicle’: the boy who wrote it and the prince and king’

‘It was also probably true that after Tewkesbury more men were pardoned than punished. The king was looking to build trust and harmony rather than to erect executioner’s platforms and gallows. With justification Edward could feel proud at what he had achieved. No other English king save Ethelred II in the eleventh century had won back a lost kingdom through force of arms’

‘He had betrayed Edward and married one of Warwick’s daughters only to find himself sidelined by his father-in-law’s latest round of realpolitik. Should Warwick manage to defeat and kill Edward, it was only after the deaths of both King Henry and his son, Edward of Lancaster (who would need to die without issue), that George could ever hope to reign as king’

‘The Woodvilles quickly became England’s nouveau rich, though not all of them directly benefited from the king’s political patronage, as is sometimes claimed. Edward was astute enough to only place political power in the hands of men capable of wielding it. On balance, no more was done to improve the standing of the Woodvilles than might reasonably have been expected for in-laws’

‘Warwick may have lost one king, but he could soon make another. Upon arrival he manipulated the authorities at Westminster, arguing that Henry har gone back on his word by reinstating his son as heir and that he had as a result forfeited his right to rule. He presented Edward to them - tall, healthy and brave - the antithesis of Henry.‘

‘The mantle of York’s unfulfilled destiny passed now to his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March... Most likely he was at Shrewsbury when he received the appalling news from Yorkshire... Being the main companion of his youth, news of his brother Edmund’s death must have been an immensely heavy blow for the future king to bear - perhaps more so than his father’s death.’

‘There was an age difference of just thirteen months between York’s two elder sons. Both had been born at Rouen. They might almost have been twins. Letters written jointly by them have survived from these times, thanking their father for gifts of clothes and promising him they would be diligent in their studies. The boys, both earls, formally signed themselves E. March and E. Rutland.’

‘Richard III is called an ‘unnatural uncle’, which can only really be a reference to an accusation of having murdered Edward V... The reason for offering so glowing a report of his uncle becomes clear in the following sentence when Henry VII is compared unfavourably to Richard III. Having bestowed Richard III with some redeeming features, Henry... is made a worse king with no redeeming features at all’

‘Richard represented the greatest threat to the English king and so the perfect weapon for James. The lure for Richard was easy to see too. He had a ready ally in James at the moment when all others seemed to be setting him aside in the face of Henry’s clever charm offensive.’

‘The deed is signed ‘Richard of England’ in a hand that Sir Frederic Madden asserted in Documents Relating to Perkin Warbeck, with Remarks on His History in 1837 was both bold and identifiably English, a crucial point against the assertion that this was a boy born to a middle-class family from Tournai... The need to prepare a will demonstrated that Richard was fully intending to try and win his crown in battle.‘

‘Explained to the world as Perkin Warbeck, the well-travelled son of a burgess from Tournai who was coerced into impersonating Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes in the Tower, the success he enjoyed and the genuine terror his career inflicted on Henry reveal at the very least that no one was so certain that the younger Prince was dead’

I wish he had included references, I cannot check any of his theories and so that will definitely have an impact on the star rating. He goes on about the real Earl of Warwick maybe being in Ireland, but gives no explanation as to who the man is in the Tower then. It is accepted that Lambert Simnel was an imposter, but it feels like Lewis is deliberately ignoring some parts of the story.

‘It seems unlikely that Henry found the boys in the Tower on his arrival in London and had them killed... If Princess Elizabeth had known her brothers were alive and well before August 1485, she would surely have found it impossible to accept Henry as her husband when they were dead immediately after his victory. The real problem for Henry was most likely that he didn’t know anything for certain.’

‘The single biggest problem with the belief that Richard III had his nephews murdered, that they died at the hands of another or even of some natural cause is the loud and significant lack of a public statement during his reign that they were dead... If Richard ordered their deaths, then in October he was presented with a golden opportunity to declare them murdered by Buckingham as part of his revolt‘

‘news to the former queen that her brother-in-law Richard, the new king, had put her sons to death, Elizabeth would have little other information available. Such news would also surely have served to fulfil her darkest fears, festering and growing in her seclusion... Elizabeth Woodville would believe Richard III capable of murdering two of her sons in the Tower because he had already ordered the execution of one’

‘The most politically well-informed contemporary commentary that we have appears to offer no insight whatsoever regarding the fate of the sons of Edward IV. The chronicler only offers that, as part of Buckingham’s Rebellion against Richard III in September and October 1483, a rumour was circulated by the rebels that they had been killed.’

‘This book does not seek to solve a mystery that had evaded any definitive resolution for five centuries... The purpose of this book is not to provide a definitive answer to a question that still defies answering, but to look beyond the traditional argument centred around who killed the Princes in the Tower in the summer of 1483 to ask a different question and to see where that inquiry leads.’

‘There is one more important Tudor tomb to note, another easily missed by visitors to the abbey, that of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, who Mary I had buried in a most honoured position, on the south side of the High Altar... Ironically, Anne, the most overlooked of Henry VIII’s queens, is the only one of his wives to be buried in Westminster Abbey.’

‘crowned King Henry VIII on 24 June 1509, in a joint coronation ceremony that saw Katherine fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming England’s queen. In keeping with tradition, the coronation was followed by a magnificent banquet at Westminster Hall, where newly crowned monarchs had been honoured for more than 300 years, and where they would continue to be so, until the nineteenth century.’

‘In front of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula stands an evocative circular memorial to the people who were executed inside the Tower, including five Tudor women all beheaded for treason... However, it does not mark the site of the original scaffold, which stood on the north side of the White Tower, close to the entrance of the Waterloo Barracks and Crown Jewels Exhibition.’

‘In 1529, Henry VIII took possession of Hampton Court, and continued the work started by the now disgraced cardinal, making extensive alterations and embellishments to the palace complex, as attested to by the 6,500 pages of work accounts that survive in the Public Record Office. By the time of Henry VIII’s death in 1547, Hampton Court Palace was the ultimate royal pleasure palace’

‘the Guildhall was the setting for a number of important state trials in the sixteenth century, including those of Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper, both charged with high treason for their alleged affairs with Queen Catherine Howard; Anne Askew, the Protestant martyr; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a first cousin of both Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard; Lady Jane Grey and her husband’

‘During the reign of Henry VII, Eltham served as a royal nursery where the future Henry VIII was raised and educated, alongside his sisters Margaret and Mary. It is uncertain as to whether the first of the Tudor monarchs made any significant additions or alterations to the palace complex, however, his son and successor certainly did, including the building of new privy apartments for himself’

‘At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Tudor London was a bustling city of around 60,000 inhabitants. The City came under the jurisdiction of the lord major and sheriffs of London, whose job it was to maintain order and cleanliness. It was the most prosperous city in England, on account of it being a flourishing trading centre and an important port, and was by far the largest city in the country’

‘The new men died as they had lived, calculating their consumption to mark the status they had won and build the connections they needed to exercise power. They used the common currencies of social display and networking: building, clothing, plate, gifts, hospitality, funeral commemoration.’

‘the new men were remarkably effective in buying land. They found it easier in some counties than others, notably those with active land markets because of proximity to the capital or the prevalence of small estates, but between them they made significant acquisitions across lowland England... Yet the new men’s achievement still stands out. The absolute scale of their gains was larger than that of the lawyers’

‘the means by which Henry’s new men exercised power appear transitional between those of Edward’s great lords and those of the great ministers of the later Tudor reigns. Where engagement at court and in the king’s council was complemented by local office-holding and the construction of a retinue designed to serve the king in the career of William, Lord Hastings, the same was true for Lovell and others.’

‘helped to operate was the best means available to keep good order while preserving their own social power. In this area as in others, the new men’s relationship with legality and justice was not unambiguous. While claiming to act according to law and in pursuit of good order and the common weal, they used their legal expertise and their access to the best lawyers to defend and promote their private interests’

‘The skills, contacts, and determination of the new men made them formidable legal adversaries. The language of legal pleadings was of course full of the sort of accusations levelled at Windsor in one chancery suit, decrying his ‘great power, might and maintenance’, his ‘great bearing and sinister means’.‘