The Rewritten Reputation of the Maligned Monarch

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n England has had its good monarchs, bad monarchs,nindifferent monarchs, mad monarchs and saintly monarchs. Some fully deserve thenmanner in which they are remembered, whilst others have had their deeds andncharacters altered to suit the purposes of later writers.

Richard I

nTake Richard I as annexample -fondly remembered as Richard the Lionheart, he is held up as the modelnof chivalric valour and kingship, a ruler of legendary and impeccablenreputation, regardless of the facts that he did not speak English, spent only sixnmonths of his ten year reign in the country (and was entirely absent for thenfinal five years) and almost bankrupted his kingdom with the cost of hisnCrusades and the payment of a ransom to free him from Leopold V, Duke ofnAustria, an amount equal to over two billion pounds in today’s currency.

Richard III

nAndnwhat of Richard III? Good king or bad king? Well, it all depends on whosenversion of events you choose to believe. Richard has a bad reputation, butnwhether it is deserved or not is another matter. And if that reputation isnbased on anything, it is based on Richard’s treatment of his nephews. Richard’snbrother, King Edward IV, had ten legitimate children, seven of whom survivednhim, and when Edward died, in 1483, his two sons, Edward and Richard, then agedn12 and 9, were placed in the Tower of London by their uncle, ostensibly forntheir own protection.

The Tower of London

nThe eldest of the children, Edward, was recognised asnKing Edward V, with his uncle Richard acting as Lord Protector, but manoeuvresnand machinations were soon underway, as rumours surfaced that Edward IV’snmarriage to Elizabeth Woodville might not have been valid. Edward, it was said,nhad sealed a legal precontract to marriage with Lady Eleanor Talbot, therebynrendering his later marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid, and rendering allnof their offspring illegitimate, in turn making any of them unable to succeednto their father’s throne.

nOn June 22^nd 1483, Dr Raaf Shaw preached ansermon before St Paul’s Cathedral, taking his text from the Book of thenWisdom of Solomon iv:3,

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n“But the multiplying brood of the ungodly shallnnot thrive, nor take deep rooting fromnbastard slips, nor lay any fast foundation.”

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nWith Edward V declarednillegitimate, Richard was asked to assume the crown, which he accepted withnfeigned reluctance on June 26^th, and was crowned King Richard III onnJuly 6^th. In 1484, parliament passed an act, Titulus Regius,nthat formally and legally legitimised Richard’s accession. Meanwhile, thendeposed Edward and his brother Richard remained in the Tower, where they werenseen less and less, and finally they were seen no more. The rumour was thatntheir uncle had had them murdered, and the Chronicles of London for thenyear 1484 records,

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n“… the said kyng Richard had put to deth the lordnChamberleyn and other Gentilmen, as before is said, he also put to deth the ijnchilder of kyng Edward, for whiche cawse he lost the hertes of the people.”

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nRichard may have been King but his position was precarious, to say the least.nIn 1485, Henry Tudor,his Lancastrian rival for the crown, met him in battle atnBosworth and Richard was killed, making him the last English King to die innbattle. Henry was crowned as Henry VII, and the Lancastrian Tudors took powernfrom the Yorkist Plantagenets. The Tudor propagandists then set about rewritingnhistory to legitimise their claims to the throne, skewing the story to blackennRichard’s regime and add a shine to their own.

Henry VII

nAt the instigation of Henry VII,nPolydorus Vergil, the celebrated Italian humanist scholar who became annaturalised Englishman, began to write an Anglica Historia in aboutn1505. Although he had completed his History by about 1512, it underwentnseveral revisions and was not published until 1534. Vergil has been called then‘Father of English History’, and was among the first historians to comment onnthe events he wrote about, unlike the earlier chroniclers who provided, on thenwhole, simple lists of dates and happenings.

Richard III

nWriting about Richard III, Vergilnsays,

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n“He was lyttle of stature, deformyd of body, thone showlder being highernthan thother, a short and sowre cowntenance, which semyd to savor of mischief,nand utter evydently craft and deceyt. The whyle he was thinking of any matter,nhe dyd contynually byte his nether lyppe, as thowgh that crewell nature of hisndid so rage agaynst yt self in that lyttle carkase.”

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Sir Thomas More

nSir Thomas More,nwriting a little later, in his unfinished History of King Richard III,nalso describes Richard’s physical appearance,

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n“Richarde the third sonne, ofnwhom we nowe entreate, was in witte and courage egall with either of them, innbodye and prowesse farre vnder them bothe, little of stature, ill fetured ofnlimmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher then his right, hardnfauoured of visage, and suche as is in states called warlye, in other menne otherwise,nhe was malicious, wrath-full, enuious and, from afore his birth, euer frowarde.”

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nA suspiciously similar portrait appears in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles publishednin two editions in 1577 and 1587,

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n“As he was small and little of stature, sonwas he of bodie greatlie deformed; the one shoulder higher than the other; hisnface was small, but his countenance cruell, and such, that at the first aspectna man would judge it to sauour and smell of malice, fraud, and deceit.”

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nThen, writing even later still, but still mindful of Tudor Myth and usingnHolinshed as source material, William Shakespeare’s Richard III hasnRichard describing himself thus,

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n“ I, that am curtail’d of this fairnproportion,

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nCheated of feature by dissembling nature,

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nDeform’d, unfinished, sentnbefore my time

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nInto this breathing world, scarce half made up,

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nAnd that sonlamely and unfashionable

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nThat dogs bark at me as I halt by them.”

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nSuchnemphasis on deformity runs throughout the play, as when Queen Elizabeth, widownof Edward IV, says,

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n“O, thou didst prophesy the time would come

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nThat I shouldnwish for thee to help me curse

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nThat bottled spider, that foul bunch-back’d toad.”

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nThe picture of Richard as a broken, ill-made monster was set with such worksnand it is the picture that endures, via Laurence Olivier’s portrayal in then1955 film version of Richard III, down to the present, although therenhave been reappraisals and revisions over the years, and I will return to thesensoon.

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