Really Bad History: The latest Richard III Conspiracy

[Music] hello as you may have gathered i have quite a decent vocabulary but today or yesterday i was the proud learner of the new word it's twixtmas that strange period which we now are between christmas and the new year and what we're going to have now is not what many people wanted me to do a christmas day broadcast and that would be a little usurping wouldn't it it is a twixtmas broadcast which is a bit of a parody i suppose and essentially well i spent a great deal of david starkey talks talking about how to do good history and the nature of good history so this twixtmas day broadcast is about bad history and an outstanding example of really bad history which happily was published today in the daily telegraph and was then picked up by the daily mail which you wouldn't expect to know better and the times which once upon a time you would have expected to know better the story well it does have a royal connection inevitably it's richard iii the story is as follows there is in deepest rural devon a very beautiful parish church which used to be called coleridge and matthew's college and now is known as saint matthews coldridge in the church there is a somewhat battered tomb of an early 16th century figure it's dateable to um the third year of henry the eighth that's 1511 1512 of a figure apparently wearing armor chainmail with a gown over it quite usual a recumbent and bearing a shield actually it's a jousting shield which is inscribed john evans well not quite but we'll discuss that and the figure is looking towards a stained glass window in which there appears of a fine but fragmentary portrait of no no less than one of the princes in the tower king edward v it's not labelled but the dress the long hair and everything else shows clearly that that's what it is what's all this about well the figure the image the effigy bearing the shield the name is oddly spelled it appears as john e v a s mysterious missing n you notice well how do we understand that the extraordinary intelligence of this cold case team that has been assembled uh by philippa langley that's the woman who discovered the body of richard iii in the car park leicester because the body was under i can't remember what's it par park king was it the king bit or was it the the the richard bit or indeed the r king bit anyway it was discovered under parking and the mysterious operations of of of dan brown will edward the fifth e v a s exile what could be clearer this trap this mysterious trap isn't it obvious it's edward v in exile and what's he looking at well he's looking at the image of edward v well in other words he's looking at his own image and to give you a clue above it suspended there is a somewhat fragmentary but again very fine version of the imperial crown showing the crown with with the fragments of his arches and below it there is the the urban border of the crown in which astonishingly there is shown deer now this so-called john evans is a parker in charge of the park at cold ridge so dear you get it there a deer um shona as part of the hermen and just guess what there are 41 deer four one how old would edward v being in 15 11 12. you've got it he's born in 1470 born in 1470 when his father is in exile and his mother elizabeth woodville is herself in a cilium in in in in refuge in the sanctuary of in in in westminster abbey because the lancastrians uh and and a group of renegade yorkists and under the the wicked earl of warwick have seized the throne and put back the half demented henry vi on the throne so little edward is born in 1470 which means that this mysterious eevee ass eff hands obviously pseudonym is telling us here i am i'm dying at the age of 41 but i'm at last reclaiming the crown that is mine or at least telling you offering us all these clues that i've been here in exile in refuge living under an anonymous name on curiously enough the estates of my half brother that's to say the uh thomas gray the marcus of dorset who is the eldest son of elizabeth woodville by her first marriage to to sir richard gray so what could be clearer we now know don't we because it's there to be proved that richard iii didn't murder at least the eldest prince of the tower but he kindly sent him to live in a generous exile in the middle of devon on the lands of um of thomas of thomas of thomas gray the marcus of dorset where do you start with this where do you begin well i think you begin with the fact that it is self-evidently matte if it sounds like dan brown well it is mad the thing that's even more alarming is apparently professional investigators who once were or perhaps still are members of the police force were involved and they modeled this procedure on that of a cold case inquiry and if you want to know i'm afraid why there have been so many appalling failures to solve crimes and so many crimes that have been ascribed to the wrong person and you know the birmingham this and whatever these procedures tell you apparently the secret of understanding things is if there is a coincidence investigate shall we just start right at the beginning john evans i don't know anything about john evans a quick search hasn't yielded anything but there's a single reference which i'll come back to later the shield well the shield is interesting in that it's in the form of the jousting shield that's the lobed shield in other words you put your spear through the to the corner of the shield this is pointing to somebody who is probably pretty professionally involved in arms as in other words what we would now call a soldier as is the fact that he seems to be shown and again the photographs of the effigy aren't good enough to tell fully apparently wearing for some form of chain mail um all of that suggests um a soldier of if it's chained male of pretty modest rank okay what about the business of the missing n in evans that led to this extraordinary con construction that is a kind of code dan brown again a code name e v edward v a s in asylum well actually if you look carefully the n isn't missing at all instead it's shown in the usual fashion with a little bar above it and the handwriting of the late middle ages this is before you've really got going with printing uses a form of shorthand you use abbreviation and particularly in latin forms and the standard way that you abbreviate for the letter n is just to show a narrow bar and above the line of lettering so in fact it's not this mysterious e v a s it is e v n assumed by the bar s so we've eliminated one point let's now have a look at this mysterious crown with its alleged 41 deer oh dear well let's just scroll down here and find it and there we are by the way there's the shield and then here we've got the crown above the figure very fine it's very very high quality stained glass and the crown suspended above the head of the already crowned and edward v oh dear if you look rather carefully you'll see the mysterious fact that lots of these deer have at least five legs they're not deer they're what's called the labels the black tails on the ermin and that's the standard way of representing them heraldically and it's actually rather fine what we think of as a crown is actually two completely separate bits there is the band of the crown the gold band with as is correctly shown here with the english crown alternating fleur-de-lis and cross pate the fleur-de-lis are put there by hender the fifth or perhaps henry vi to symbolize the claim to france the cross pate uh represents england and so that's the metal frame of the crown of course heavily jeweled and studied with with with great ballast rubies and sapphires and some diamonds and pearls and so on and then above it the the the cross arches that represent the imperial claim the english throne again shown very clearly here but you put the crown on over a hat what is usually referred to as the cap of maintenance and this is a velvet cap if you look at the modern crown you can see the rumpled velvet purple usually purple or scarlet velvet inside it and then there's the narrow border of ermine that goes around the bottom because originally as is shown very clearly here the cap was in line so it's actually a cap you put on because the crown itself is very uncomfortable you don't want a rough metal object sitting on your head so there's the the cap and the and the crown and as i said well i supposedly the 41 deer representing uh evans's supposed office actual office parker uh ambi uh and the number of years uh that that uh at his age since you've been born in 1470 is i'm afraid an absolute load of tosh it is simply a representation of the crown let's go down uh and look still further there is another image of the figure um that's got longish hair and and and apparently and some i'm wearing some herman and the construction of the mysterio and mysterious experts those who want to turn this into a dan brown story a dan brown legend is that this represents uh this represents john evans in in his forties on the points of death actually carrying the crown and wearing ermin as a symbol of the fact that you know he had been rightful king actually if you look at this image more carefully you'll see it's not carrying a crown at all it's wearing a what's called a livery collar and the livery collar consists as far as you can see of two elements it consists of the yorkiest white rose and it consists of the fleur de lis probably in other words the figure represents a yorkist ancestor of uh of uh of edward v probably his grandfather richard duke of york since it's not shown crowned but is shown uh with with with with the urban of a royal prince and a livery collar that indicates um its membership of the house of york are we getting the idea let's just investigate a little bit further what is it likely to be if the idea that this is a symbol of a of a royal prince sent to live in exile and in his dying year daring to give clues to posterity uh says that philippa langley can come along and claim that rich iii didn't really murder the princes in the tower and obviously that silly what is it instead i think it's really pretty simple these are now guesses on my part but their guess is framed within actual historical knowledge not the fictions pervaded by the rich of the third society or philippa langley or indeed i fear the metropolitan police certainly this is what's called a chantry chapel this is somebody the john evans here uh in the image who will have left money to maintain a priest to sing masses for his soul in the little church here well lots of little church actually very very fine church there's wonderful 15th century woodwork in it as well in the 15th century church of coleridge so it's a chantry chapel but why then the images of edward v why the crown why perhaps richard duke of york why the many other yorkist symbols that adorn the church there are sons in splendor white roses and so on why all of these things is it something very extraordinary the answer is it's not in the least extraordinary at all because what you tended to do if you've been a royal servant or indeed the servant of any great man you not only arrange for the chantry chapel to pray for your soul and the souls of members of your family and your children you will also set it up to pray for the souls of your benefactor and the members of his or her family this is very regular proceedings in fact there's a very similar example to this in of all places windsor where there is a chantry chapel and of a man called oliver king who had been secretary royal secretary to edward iv that's the father of edward v to edu the fifth himself and to henry vii noticed conspicuous he hadn't been secretary to richard iii and his chantry at windsor commemorates those three kings and sets up funds to pray for them as well as for himself so clearly certainly what this arrangement tells us is that john evans had actually been a servant of edward the four april the fifth maybe even the servant of edward iv but he's certainly been a servant of edward v when he was prince of wales i've talked extensively uh in the light of the upbringing of henry viii and of prince arthur about the upbringing of of this prince these two yorkies princes uh the the the yorkies prince of wales that's the boy who briefly becomes edward v and his younger brother richard duke of gloucester and i pointed out how the elder of them that's this edward and is sent off to ludlow with a major household to be brought up and trained in the arts of kingship by ruling from virtually childhood as prince of wales and invested with with various substantial powers exercised by a council in other words being trained on the job and i would guess though i can't prove it yet i imagine the evidence will come up that this john evans would have been a member of that household and the fact that all of this is associated with the estates of the marquis of dorset and in very high favor because of the woodville connection and that other members of the of the grave family are very prominent within the household of the prince of wales between the household of edward prince of wales underscores that fact in other words john evans isn't a missing yorkiest prince he is the servant of the dead the killed the murdered and edward v murdered 99 certainly by richard iii how can i be so confident about saying that because contemporaries were people right outside england the best contemporary account of the reign of rich of the well at least the usurpation of richard iii is that by dominico mancini and that is written at the very end of 1483. literally it's a blow-by-blow account it's following it's written in the months of richard's actual usurpation uh it's presented in france the following january and it is explicit in and it explains the wrong word there is a powerfully implied charge of murder and the charge becomes explicit at the french estates general which are held in the january 1484 when the french chancellor directly accuses richard of murdering his nephews so we've got then evans having been a servant of edward when he was prince of wales and presumably therefore a servant of him in those brief months uh when he's at a brief week actually when he's king what happens to him well the man that he seems to be associated with um thomas gray marcus of dorset flees into exile after the um after the usurpation uh of of richard um and where does he flee to he flees to brittany and whom does he join in brittany he joins henry tudor who is in exile in brittany the future henry vii i would guess it is 99 certain that john evans joins thomas gray in exile maybe even attaching himself to gray maybe having been associated with him and the grave family uh in the household of um of of edward prince of wales and briefly edward v he joins the group of exiles in britain what happens to him next well we don't know but there's quite a lot of evidence about them and a bit more combing may actually bring his name to light we know that thomas gray and his is this this powerful pressure applied to him uh to return to england to to actually make his peace with richard and he actually breaks away uh from uh the from the exiles and and is recaptured uh and brought back in humiliating fashion uh to henry tudor um and thereafter a very fraught relationship indeed with with henry vii so perhaps this again this word that really should have been there perhaps probably and when finally henry vii uh users usurps again of course he is a user too but he's a victorious usurper he defeats the other usurper richard iii in battle and he becomes king and grey comes back and presumably evans comes back and what happens to them we simply do not know what happens to evans we simply do not know we know of the tense relations between dorset and henry vii which finally culminate uh endorses um arrest exile and being held in calais uh under threat of execution till very nearly the last months of the reign and then something very interesting happens gray comes back the beginning of henry viii reign to a right royal welcome as do other people with very powerful yorkist connections like the the the lad um who um is earl of devon and the the his son will become marquis of exeter they descend from catherine plantagenet um who would marry the courtney as earl of devon and they they again devon had been exiled and they're brought back and they're in very high favor because what we forget and we now need to remember is at the beginning of henry viii and this is where this very early date this date of the third year of henry viii becomes really fascinating the beginning of henry viii reign sees a marked yorkist revival can i spell those words out again a marked yorkist revival we think of henry viii because of what he did in the 1530s what he will do to those lines of the of the corpus and so on and uh to to the the the other line uh that descends from the duke of clarence uh that descends from margaret plantagenet and the countess of salisbury uh richard pohl uh and so on what he does to all of those and the the terrible slaughter that he wreaks on those we tend to think of him as the like his father the profound enemy of the house of york he's only the enemy of the house of york in the 1530s because so many of those people margaret countess of salisbury reginald pole the cardinal and henry courtney the marquis of exeter they all take the wrong side in the reformation they are killed not as members of the house of york they're executed not as members of the house of york they're executed because they are catholicizing because in in various ways they are rejecting the royal supremacy and the divorce which are the central features of henry viii's policy at this period none of this applies in the first few years of henry's reign the first few years of henry's reign sees something completely different remember himself is half yorkist his mother is the elder sister of edward v she is elizabeth of york the eldest daughter of edward iv and his wife elizabeth woodville she right through henry vii reign continues to flaunt the white rose in just the same way that her husband uses the red rose the rose that he actually invents or has invented for him as the symbol of the house of lancaster at the battle of bosworth and the beaufort port colors what neither of them use is the tudor rose the combined red and white rose each one identifies instead with one of those two great warring families the first person regularly to use the tudor rose is henry viii because he equally descends from lancaster through his father of pseudo-lancaster through his father beaufort through his father and genuinely fully from york through his mother and what henry does at the beginning of his reign is consciously to reintegrate the surviving members of the house of york into the english aristocracy and he does it for a simple and straightforward reason he wants and indeed i think his father in fact i know his father had had had it were imprinted this idea in his mind and given him the means to do it henry aims to renew the hundred years war with france as quickly as possible and to do that you have to bring about a dynastic settlement in england which is what he triumphantly does at the beginning of his reign so what i think we need to do rather than having all this silly speculation about evans as being the missing edward v we need to see it instead as a moment in which you could fully come out of the woodwork as a committed supporter of the house of lang and the house of york um now of course fully loyal to henry viii because henry henry is the direct lineal descendant of that house and we can see i think here evans advertising proudly his former loyalty to his old master to his own master and edward v but also to his new master henry viii whose name also appears in the ornamentation and inscriptions around the tomb and the prayer desk that seem to form part of the general bequest the chantry bequest of john evans so we've got here then and in the background clearly there will also be the involvement of uh thomas gray the the marcus of dorset again restored to high favor to a major place of court to an important role in the council and so on which he continues to enjoy so here we have not dan brown clues to a dead yorkist prince and uh or rather in fact to our yorkie's prince who've been underground and and reveals himself only at the moment of death we've got something much more interesting we've got a monument to that change in the dynastic atmosphere of early tudor england and that change which brief well briefly for 15 odd years brings the house of york and the and those associated with it fully back into the favor of the tudor court into the favor of henry viii you get this happy dynastic union of york and lancaster only to be ripped apart by the tensions of the reformation and and 15 20 years on and in the 20 years on let's get the date right 20 years on in the 1530s that's the good history what do we need to pin this down well we need to identify or come up with a plausible guess as to who and what john evans was i would take a pretty strong guess that he is a human of the crown there is we know such a yeoman who receives sixpence a day which is a decent pension in the 1510s in the teens of the 16th century the human of the crown is the the as it were the official title of the people that we know as the human of the god and these are the ones who are actually being given a formal established position and within the royal household with the higher title of um of yeoman of the crown um in other words they're kind of they're the equivalent of chelsea pensioners they they they are people who would have been active within the guard will have distinguished themselves within the guard and and then will have been pensioned off and in the case of john evans goes to live in retirement in coleridge because this would then account for everything it accounts for the quality of the stained glass this is very high quality stuff in other words and also it's accurate this suggests good court contacts well of course he had good court contacts as an ex-human of the guard as of course did the marcus of dorset as a leading member of the royal court um of the council and and later on actually of the privy chamber so if we think of him in this position we have the explanation what we now need of course is the proper documentation maybe it will come up maybe it won't but at least looking at it properly exploring it within the context of the actual knowledge of the period as opposed to fantasy to myth to dan brown to the extraordinary playing around with imaginative coincidence and above all setting aside the desire to exonerate richard iii looking at the history as it is as it was as the evidence suggests it's got a bit serious really for a twixtmas celebration but i hope you've enjoyed it hello and thank you for watching david starkey talks if as i very much hope you're enjoying them why not become more actively involved and join my members club as a member you'll be able to take part in the members only weekly question and answer session suggest topics for forthcoming videos and have priority booking for my forthcoming live events and while you're at it why not have a look at the store page on my website davidstarkey.com there you can purchase t-shirts and other merchandise buy sign copies of my books and if you're feeling brave and a bit flush even arrange to take me out to lunch thank you once again for watching i look forward to hearing from you and to welcoming you to my members club [Music] you

Channel: David Starkey Talks

Views: 65,773

Keywords: David Starkey, History

Id: bFOMWkYQWsA

Length: 31min 46sec (1906 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 30 2021