Have Chair, Will Research

One of the more enjoyable things for me about writing historical fiction is doing the research, but it can be a challenge at times. Fortunately, I have help, as you can see by the pictures below.

That's Michael Hicks' Warwick the Kingmaker that Stripes and Onslow are working on, and Onslow's taking a break from reading Arlene Okerlund's Elizabeth: England's Slandered Queen.

Unfortunately, a difference seems to be arising between them (as it so often does) as to the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. That may well explain some of the hissing that went on this morning.





Oh, and Happy Leap Year!

Booking Through Thursday: Heroine

From Booking Through Thursday:

Who is your favorite female lead character? And why? (And yes, of course, you can name more than one . . . I always have trouble narrowing down these things to one name, why should I force you to?)

Like most who are answering this, I have more than one. I'll have to agree with those who named Jane Eyre, and I also like Lucy Snowe from Bronte's Villette. Lucy is similar to Jane in many ways, but even more alone in the world, so her achievement in finally finding a niche for herself is all the more commendable.

With Jane Austen, I rather prefer Anne Elliot from Persuasion. Anne is older than other Austen heroines and doesn't have the sparkling wit of Elizabeth or Emma, but she has integrity, intelligence, loyalty, and a quiet strength that make her most appealing.

Someone mentioned Mildred from Barbara Pym's Excellent Women. I agree with that, and also like Jane from Pym's Jane and Prudence. Both have an appealingly sardonic streak about them.

I'm fond of Lizzie from Our Mutual Friend. Like most Dickens heroines, she's a little on the perfect side, but I like her anyway. She's strong, self-reliant, and gentle, and the scenes where she saves Eugene Wrayburn (one of my favorite heroes, by the way) from drowning, then marries him when she believes him to be dying, are very moving. I also like Bella from the same novel. (Bet you didn't know that the nicknames of two of the minor characters in The Traitor's Wife, Elizabeth "Lizzie" le Despenser and Isabel "Bella" de Hastings are veiled tributes to the heroines of Our Mutual Friend.)

I'm trying to think of a heroine from historical fiction to put on the list. (Of course, I'm rather fond of my own heroines, Eleanor de Clare and Bess de Montacute.) It's difficult, because the novels I prefer feature real historical figures, and it all depends on how they're portrayed. If one counts A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as historical fiction, Francie Nolan--a gritty, sensitive, talented girl growing up in turn of the century Brooklyn, is a favorite of mine. I'm sure there are others. It's a question I'll ponder throughout the day.

Richard Woodville, Third Earl Rivers

Here's another Woodville mini-biography I've posted on my website:

By far the least known brother of Elizabeth Woodville is Richard, who eventually became the third Earl Rivers.

Richard seems to have been the second oldest Woodville brother. Cora Scofield in her biography of Edward IV refers to his having been pardoned in 1462 for his adherence to the Lancastrian cause; his father and older brother, Anthony, had been pardoned the previous July. His brother John was born around 1445 (he is said to have been 20 in 1465), and Anthony is said to have been born around 1440.

In 1465, Richard was made a Knight of the Bath, along with his brother John, as part of the festivities preceding Elizabeth’s coronation. In 1467, Edward IV attempted to have him appointed Prior of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, though he was not a member of the order; the royal intervention failed, however, when the order elected its own chosen candidate.

Scofield writes that in 1469, Richard captured Thomas Danvers, who was accused of plotting with Edward IV’s Lancastrian enemies. Later in 1469, the Earl of Warwick, taking advantage of unrest in the country, issued a manifesto condemning “the deceitful, covetous rule and guiding of certain seditious persons,” including the elder Richard Woodville, Anthony Woodville, and “Sir John Woodville and his brothers.” The elder Richard and John were seized and executed, and Anthony appears to have either eluded capture or to have been captured by men who were reluctant to execute him. Richard must have been in danger himself during this time, but nothing indicates his whereabouts. In November 1470, however, during the readeption of Henry VI, he was issued a pardon by the Warwick-controlled government. It seems likely that he would have fought for Edward IV at Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471, but his presence is not mentioned there; perhaps as a mere knight who did not play a notable part in the battle he was simply too lowly to mention.

Richard played little part in the remainder of Edward IV’s reign. J. R. Lander states in Crown and Nobility that he was “employed on various embassies and commissions” and notes that he found no evidence of grants made to him. He owned Wymington in Bedfordshire, where he served as a justice of the peace. Wymington was a manor that had been in his family. Was he considered ineffectual or incompetent, or was he simply a man who preferred the life of a country gentleman to a public role? Perhaps after having witnessed the strife of the previous decades, including the violent deaths of his father and his brother, he was content to live an existence of relative obscurity.

Following Edward IV’s death in April, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, having seized and imprisoned Richard Woodville’s brother Anthony at Northampton, confiscated Anthony’s land. According to Rosemary Horrox in Richard III: A Study in Service, the soon-to-be king seized Richard Woodville’s manor of Wymington as well on May 19, 1483, despite the fact that Richard Woodville stood accused of no crime. (Though Richard III has been praised for his enlightened legislation, he wasn’t much concerned with legal niceties when his own interests were involved.)

Given this high-handedness and the subsequent executions of Anthony and of Elizabeth Woodville’s son Richard Grey, it is not surprising that Richard Woodville, along with his brother Lionel Woodville, joined the interconnected series of uprisings against Richard III in the fall of 1483 known as Buckingham’s rebellion. (Richard and Lionel were brothers-in-law of Buckingham.) Richard Woodville was among the rebels who rose at Newbury. This rising, like all of the others, collapsed in the wake of Richard III’s swift reaction and Buckingham’s own capture and execution.

Richard Woodville, along with many other rebels, was attainted in the Parliament of 1484. As Richard III had executed his own brother-in-law, Thomas St. Leger, for his role in the uprising, as well as sundry other rebels, one wonders why Richard Woodville was spared. He does not seem to have fled abroad. Perhaps he went into sanctuary like his brother Lionel. In any case, by 1485, Richard III was trying to win over some of his former opponents. He pardoned Richard Woodville in March 1485 in exchange for a bond of 1,000 marks and a pledge of good behavior.

Whether Richard joined Henry Tudor’s forces at Bosworth is unknown. Following Richard III’s defeat there, Richard Woodville was restored to his estates, including those of his father, and became the third Earl Rivers, the title that his father and his brother Anthony had held before him. He took part in some of the ceremonial occasions of Henry VII’s reign, participating in the coronation of his niece Elizabeth of York and apparently at the christening of her first child, Arthur. During the reign, he served on commissions of the peace in Bedfordshire and Northhamptonshire and was among those commissioned to take musters of archers. Richard was also commissioned to investigate treasons, felonies, and conspiracies in Hereford in 1486 and to try petitions presented to Parliament in 1487. I have found nothing indicating whether he was at the battle of Stoke.

Though Elizabeth Woodville is generally condemned for using her queenly status to enrich her grasping family, Richard’s case illustrates how exaggerated this accusation is. Richard acquired neither great wealth nor power while his sister was queen; his lands came from his own family, not from royal largesse. Like his younger brother Edward, who also gained little materially from his royal connection, he does not even seem to have married.

Richard died on March 6, 1491, without issue. He was the last of the Woodville brothers. In his will, he requested burial at the Abbey of St. James at Northampton and bequeathed his lands to his nephew Thomas, Marquis of Dorset (Elizabeth Woodville’s surviving son by her first husband). He asked that the underwood at Grafton be sold so as to “buy a bell to be a tenor at Grafton to the bells now there, for a remembrance of the last of my blood.”

Booking Through Thursday: Format

From Booking Through Thursday:

All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?


Strangely, this is a hard question to answer! Hardbacks seem more durable, but I find trade paperbacks (not mass market paperbacks) physically easier to read. On balance, I think I'll say trade paperbacks, because they take up less space and I therefore have more room for books!

Mr. Despenser Collects Himself?

I woke this morning to the interesting, if unappetizing, news that remains of a corpse found at Hulton Abbey in Staffordshire have been identified by an anthropologist, Mary Lewis, as being those of Hugh le Despenser the younger, husband of the heroine of The Traitor's Wife. (Sorry, had to stick a little promo in here!)

In the article (which isn't for the faint of stomach; the graphic picture of Hugh being disemboweled is also included), Lewis notes that the body had been chopped into pieces, beheaded, and stabbed in the stomach (i.e., for disemboweling). This, of course, is how the unfortunate Hugh died. The body was of a man over 35 (Hugh would have been probably about 40) and could be dated between 1050 and 1385. Hugh died in 1326.

I, however, am not convinced that this body is Hugh's. As the Telegraph article points out, Hulton Abbey belonged to the estates of Hugh's sister-in-law, Margaret de Clare, and her husband, Hugh d'Audley. The Audleys had no love for the Despensers: after the battle of Boroughbridge in 1322 and before the fall of Edward II and the Despensers in 1326, Audley was a royal prisoner, and his wife, Margaret, was confined to Sempringham priory. It seems unlikely that they would have wanted Hugh le Despenser buried on their estates, or that the Despenser family would have wanted him buried there.

Moreover, Hugh's body parts seem to have been on display until at least December 15, 1330. That's when "the friends of Hugh le Despenser the younger" were given permission by Edward III to "collect his bones . . . and to carry them whither they may wish."** The order was directed to officials in London, York, Bristol, Carlisle, and Dover, these being the cities that were displaying part of Hugh. Hugh's widow, Eleanor, at this time had some land, though she had been forced to sign over her most valuable estates to the crown earlier in 1330. Moreover, by January 1331, she had been restored to all of her lands, including Tewkesbury, the abbey of which contains Hugh's tomb. So there would seem to be no good reason why she would have to bury Hugh, or parts of him, on land belonging to her sister and her husband when she had perfectly good land of her own to bury Hugh's body parts.

So whose corpse is this? Personally, I suspect it was someone killed after the battle of Boroughbridge, when Edward II, who could be ruthless, executed a number of those who had rebelled against him. Most of these men seem to have died by hanging, with no dismemberment following, but some are known to have been decapitated and may have been quartered as well. As Audley had been in rebellion against Edward II, it would make sense if one of his executed followers was subsequently buried on Audley's estates.

I'll be interested to see what Alianore, Lady D, and other Edward II/Despenser scholars have to say on this matter!

**Because of the following passage in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, I have never been able to read this order with a straight face. In the chapter entitled "Mr. Wegg Looks After Himself," Silas Wegg, an amputee, is paying a visit to Mr. Venus, an articulator of bones who has come into possession of one of Wegg's legs:

'Where am I?' asks Mr Wegg.

'You're somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and speaking quite candidly, I wish I'd never bought you of the Hospital Porter.'

'Now, look here, what did you give for me?'

'Well,' replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering out of the darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the old original rise in his family: 'you were one of a warious lot, and I don't know.'

Silas puts his point in the improved form of 'What will you take for me?'

'Well,' replies Venus, still blowing his tea, 'I'm not prepared, at a moment's notice, to tell you, Mr Wegg.'

'Come! According to your own account I'm not worth much,' Wegg reasons persuasively.

'Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr Wegg; but you might turn out valuable yet, as a--' here Mr Venus takes a gulp of tea, so hot that it makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes watering; 'as a Monstrosity, if you'll excuse me.'

Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a disposition to excuse him, Silas pursues his point.

'I think you know me, Mr Venus, and I think you know I never bargain.'

Mr Venus takes gulps of hot tea, shutting his eyes at every gulp, and opening them again in a spasmodic manner; but does not commit himself to assent.

'I have a prospect of getting on in life and elevating myself by my own independent exertions,' says Wegg, feelingly, 'and I shouldn't like--I tell you openly I should NOT like--under such circumstances, to be what I may call dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me there, but should wish to collect myself like a genteel person.'

In Which the Intelligence Quotient of This Blog Takes Yet Another Sharp Descent

OK, I'm still feeling brain-dead. So here's some results from the BBC's very own Valentine Name Generator:

Queen Isabella = Snuggles
Edward II = Atlas
Roger Mortimer = Poochie Woochie
Piers Gaveston = Drum Sticks
Hugh le Despenser = Pumpkin
Eleanor de Clare = Yum Yums
Edward III = Gold Member
Philippa of Hainault = Snuggles (Isabella isn't going to like that one bit, dearie.)

Elizabeth Woodville = Miffy
Edward IV = Drum Sticks (is there something we don't know about him and William Hastings?)
William Hastings = Drum Sticks (oh, there's definitely something here)
Harry Buckingham = Horny Honey (too much time alone on the Welsh border?)
Richard III = Donkey Derby (that's what you get for killing those sweet little Princes)

Henry Tudor = Shnookums
Elizabeth of York = Angel Pie

Henry VIII = Snoopy
Catharine of Aragon = Love Bunny
Anne Boleyn = Sex kitten
Jane Seymour = Tufty
Anne of Cleves = Cutiepops
Katherine Howard = Fairy Cake
Katherine Parr = Miffy

Elizabeth I = Snuggles (again?)

And for the man who wrote, "What's in a name?":

William Shakespeare = Diggler

Romance Cover Generator

It being near Valentine's Day, and my brain being rather tired tonight (no unkind comments, please), I went looking for something easy to do for my blog and found this Romance Novel Generator. Here's some results (as you can see, the word count is quite limited):

John Woodville and His Elderly Bride

As I mentioned earlier, I've been posting mini-biographies of the various Woodville family members on my website. Here's the latest:

John Woodville, described as being age 20 in 1465, was probably the second or third of Elizabeth Woodville’s brothers.

John is notorious, of course, for marrying Katherine Neville, Duchess of Norfolk, a wealthy widow well into her sixties at the time. Katherine was a sister of Cecily, Duchess of York, and of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury; she thus was aunt both to Edward IV and to his mentor, the Earl of Warwick. She was no stranger to the marriage rite, having been married first to John Mowbray, the second Duke of Norfolk, who died in 1432. Her second marriage, which took place before January 27, 1442, was an unlicensed match to Sir Thomas Strangways, a knight who had been in her husband’s service. Sir Thomas had died by August 25, 1443, on which date Katherine married John Beaumont, first Viscount Beaumont. Katherine’s third husband was killed at the Battle of Northampton in 1460. His widow was about sixty at the time.

Katherine and John married in January 1465, just a few months after Edward IV had announced his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. William Worcester decried the match as a “diabolical marriage” (though he thought the lady was eighty), and it has been roundly denounced by historians and novelists, particularly of the Ricardian bent, as a shocking example of Woodville greed. While John’s motives were undoubtedly mercenary and the age gap an unusual one, nothing supports the notion that the elderly lady was forced into the match by the Woodvilles or by her nephew the king or that she found it offensive or degrading. Outwardly, at least, she and her family seem to have been on good terms with the Woodvilles. At the banquet following Elizabeth’s coronation a few months after the marriage, Katherine was seated at a table with the queen’s mother. Her grandson, John Mowbray, the fourth Duke of Norfolk (who was about the same age as her new husband) played a prominent role at the coronation, where he fulfilled his hereditary duties as marshall of England. Perhaps Katherine happened to find the young man’s company congenial.

On May 23, 1465, as part of the ceremonies leading up to Elizabeth’s coronation, John was made a Knight of the Bath, along with his brother Richard and several dozen other men. In 1467, Edward granted him the reversion of certain of Katherine’s dower lands. These had been forfeited by William, second Viscount Beaumont, Katherine’s Lancastrian stepson from her third marriage.

John served as the queen’s Master of Horse, for which he received forty pounds per year. Like his father and his brother Anthony, he was fond of tournaments. In 1467, he fought in one alongside the king’s closest friend, William Hastings; the king and Anthony Woodville fought on the other side. The following year, he and Anthony were among the English entourage that escorted Margaret, Edward IV’s youngest sister, to Burgundy for her wedding to its duke. John was named the Prince of the Tournament that followed the wedding ceremony.

In June 1469, John accompanied Edward IV on a pilgrimage to Bury St. Edmunds and Walsingham. (One of the king’s other companions was the king’s youngest brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. This seems to be the first and last time recorded time Richard’s and John’s paths intersected, though they had likely encountered each other at court before that.) Trouble, however, was brewing in the person of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who had allied himself with the king’s other brother, George, Duke of Clarence. Warwick had several grudges against the crown, not the least of which was the growing influence of the Woodvilles at court. In a manifesto issued from Calais, he targeted Anthony and John Woodville and their father, along with several other men, as royal favorites that were harming the realm. The king sent the Woodville men away for their safety, but to no avail in the case of John and his father. On August 12, 1469, the two were captured by Warwick’s troops and beheaded outside Coventry without trial.

John’s burial place, like that of his father, is unknown. On May 29, 1475, however, Anthony Woodville granted land to Eton College; the indenture speaks of the “rele love and singular devocion” that John bore the college, which Edward IV had come close to abolishing because of its associations with Henry VI but which had regained some royal favor by the late 1460’s. Perhaps Anthony intended that his brother’s body be moved to Eton. Each year on October 30, a hearse with wax candles was to be erected and an obit held for John’s soul; the college was also to say daily masses for the king and queen, their children, Anthony, his late parents and John, and his other siblings. John was also remembered by Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who asked in his will that masses be said for John and his father.

Katherine, John’s aged widow, was to survive her youthful groom by fourteen years. She was issued robes for Richard III’s coronation in 1483 and died later that year.

Over at Yesterday Revisited . . .

I have an interview with Barbara Passaris, author of Through Tempest Forged, set in revolutionary-era Virginia. Check out the interview (and the book)!

New Poll, And a Useful Site for Us Yanks

Finally, there's a new poll in the sidebar. Keep scrolling down, you'll find it!

In getting ready for my reading (look in the trusty sidebar), I ran across this Wikipedia site that I found useful: embedded pronunciations of UK place names. I feel much better knowing how to pronounce "Berwick" and "Hereford" now! (Unless this is some sort of sinister conspiracy to delude us poor Americans into thinking we're pronouncing the names the right way, when we're really not. Nah. Must be too much Fox News in the background today.) It needs some adding to, though, so if you know how to pronounce "Warwick," I'm sure someone will appreciate your input!

Eva's Book Meme, and a Blogger Housekeeping Note

Marg tagged me for Eva's Book Meme*:

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

Like Marg, I think I'd have to answer Dorothy Dunnett's books. I hear mostly good things about them, and I think I even have a copy of King Hereafter in my garage, but I just can't bite. I think it's that for all the good I hear about her books, they just seem like too much work. And I do enough of that at the day job!

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

Being that this is a historical fiction blog, I'll pick Richard III, Edward IV, and Edward II and take them clubbing. (Though somehow I can't picture Richard III enjoying it much.) Hopefully, after a long evening of drinking, I'd hear (a) what really happened to the Princes, (b) whether there was a precontract, and (c) what really did happen in Berkeley Castle.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can't die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality Longevity-Industry Dec-07 is great for awhile, eventually you realise it's past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?

I'm having a difficult time with this one, because although I can think of a lot of books I dislike, it's usually not because they're boring but because of something else--it's because they're poorly written, or pretentious, or have stereotypical characters. Things like that. That being said, I did have a hard time wading through Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (this was back when I was younger and would finish any book I started, no matter how dreary). Almost everyone in it struck me as an upper-class twit (except for the lower-class characters), and I didn't give a rap about Clarissa's former love or about her angsty family. So I'll pick that. (Come to think of it, Woolf did manage to make London seem like a pretty boring place. And that's quite a feat now that I think of it.)

Come on, we've all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you've read, when in fact you've been nowhere near it?

I really can't think of one. The closest I can come to recalling is Howards End by E.M. Forster, which we were given the option to read in one of my English classes years ago. I opted out, and sat through the class discussion trying to look as if I knew what the professor was talking about.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to 'reread' it that you haven't? Which book?

I can't ever remember this happening. I'm more likely to read a book and forget I read it.

You've been appointed Book Advisor to a VIP (who's not a big reader). What's the first book you'd recommend and why? (if you feel like you'd have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP)

Depends on the VIP. I'd probably pick a nationally known talk show host and advise them to read one of my novels in the hopes of getting a mention!

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?

Latin, so I can wade through medieval documents to my heart's content!

A mischievous fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread once a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?

Charles Dickens's Bleak House.

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What's one bookish thing you 'discovered' from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?

I've discovered all sorts of great people through blogging--just look at the sidebar for just a few of them!

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she's granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.

I don't really care what the books look like, as long as they're in good condition with easy to read type. (I tried to read a mass-market paperback of Antonia Fraser's Mary, Queen of Scots a while back and couldn't do it--the typeface was so dense and the book so thick it was impossible to crack it open to read that easily. It was an almost painful process.) The main thing I want is just room to put them in! So a big house with lots of extra rooms would be my dream library--with, of course, some comfy chairs to read in.

One of the sexier things I've seen recently are the movable bookshelves in the Duke University library. You press a button and they can move together to give you more room to get to an adjoining bookshelf, or you can press another button and they move apart so that you can go into the stacks. If Oprah ever discovers me, that's what I'll be spending the sales proceeds on.

*And, for extra credit, if you leave a comment letting Eva know you've done the meme with a link to the post, she will give you some link love via a big list of who's participated. Additionally, if you link back to her original post, she will enter you in a drawing to win The House at Riverton. If you're an American, this is especially exciting since it isn't going to published until April. ;) To be in the drawing, you must have posted the meme (and commented) by February 5th, which is when she is holding the drawing.

OK, now to interrupt for a housekeeping note:

I've been pretty erratic about posting to my Unromantic Richard III and Plenty About Plaidy blogs, so I'm not going to be keeping them up anymore--all my posts will go here. The archives will still be available, though.

Richard Woodville, First Earl Rivers

As I come along with my novel in progress, I'm going to be adding short biographies of members of the Woodville family to my website. Here's the starting entry:

Richard Woodville’s father, also Richard, had been chamberlain to John, Duke of Bedford, a younger son of Henry IV. The younger Richard was knighted in 1426. Like his father, he served the Duke of Bedford, who in 1433 married the seventeen-year-old Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Bedford died two years later. Sometime in 1436 or 1437, Richard Woodville, a mere knight, shocked the court by marrying the widowed Duchess of Bedford.

Henry VI fined the couple ₤1,000 for the match, but they were soon forgiven. Richard served Henry VI militarily and administratively and became a knight banneret in 1442, Baron Rivers in 1448, and a Knight of the Garter in 1450. Like his eldest son, Anthony, he was an accomplished jouster, taking part in a 1440 tournament at Smithfield where he fought Pedro de Vasquez, a Spanish knight.

When hostilities broke out between the houses of Lancaster and York, Richard sided with the Lancastrians. He and Anthony were taken captive at Sandwich in 1460; at that time, the two Woodvilles underwent the humiliating experience of being “rated” for their low birth by the Earl of Salisbury, the Earl of Warwick, and the Earl of March—the latter being the man who would marry his daughter four years later. Sometime after this dressing down, Richard and Anthony were released. They returned to fight at the Battle of Towton in March 1461, where the Lancastrians were soundly defeated. With the Lancastrian cause appearing hopeless, Richard and his son made their peace with the new king, Edward IV. He was pardoned in June 1461. From thereon to his murder nine years later, Richard served Edward IV loyally. By 1463, he had become a member of the king’s council.

Richard might have continued as a minor courtier had it not been for the extraordinary event of May 1464—the secret marriage of his widowed daughter, Elizabeth, to Edward IV. Whether Richard had any role in bringing the couple together is unknown; later sources credit only his wife, Jacquetta, with promoting the match, and Richard III later claimed that Jacquetta and Elizabeth had procured it by witchcraft.

In September 1464, Edward announced the marriage to his council, and in May 1465, Elizabeth was crowned. Richard soon reaped the rewards of being father-in-law to the king. He was made treasurer of England in March 1466 and raised to an earldom in May of that year. In 1467, he became constable of England. His income from his offices was ₤1,586

Though Richard seems to have filled his positions competently and the favor shown to him was not grossly disproportionate, his success and the gains made by other Woodville family members aroused the resentment of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known as “The Kingmaker” for his role in bringing Edward IV to the throne. Warwick’s formerly all-encompassing influence with the king was waning just as the Woodvilles’ was growing. The earl had other grievances besides the Woodvilles—Edward’s foreign policy and his refusal to allow Warwick’s daughters to marry Edward’s younger brothers among them—but they and other men who had risen high in the king’s service as royal favorites were easy targets. As Warwick began to plot with the king’s maladroit younger brother, George, the Duke of Clarence, discontent in the North over taxes and the dispossession of Henry Percy from his family’s earldom created a volatile situation of which Warwick and Clarence took full advantage. In Calais on July 12, 1469, they issued a proclamation complaining of “the deceitful, covetous rule and guiding of certain seditious persons,” naming Richard Woodville, his wife, his sons Anthony and John and their brothers, and several other men.

Warwick returned to England and began to raise men. Edward IV, evidently underestimating the seriousness of the situation, had left William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, and Humphrey Stafford, the Earl of Devon—two of the men named in Warwick and Clarence’s manifesto—to deal with the rebel army. Herbert’s army met Warwick’s army at Edgecote on July 26, 1469. Outnumbered, Herbert’s Welsh troops were defeated and Herbert captured and beheaded by Warwick’s men. Humphrey Stafford was captured and executed by a mob some weeks later.

Richard Woodville, in the meantime, had gone on pilgrimage with Edward early in June. By July, Edward IV, fearing all too correctly that his in-laws might be a rebel target, sent them away for their safety. Richard and his son John, however, were captured by Warwick’s men. On August 12, 1469, they were beheaded near Coventry without trial. It was an act that has rightly been described as one of private revenge on Warwick’s part rather than one justified by charges of treason. Richard’s burial site is unknown. Interestingly, Walter Blount, who had given up the treasury to Woodville in exchange for a barony, an annuity, and 1,000 marks, seems to have borne no grudge against his replacement; he asked in his will several years later that masses be said for the souls of Richard and John.

Though Richard Woodville, along with other members of his family, has been described as greedy and grasping, the hard evidence for this is somewhat lacking. Richard does appear in a bad light if one believes the story that he and Jacquetta schemed to ruin Sir Thomas Cook based on charges of treason simply because he refused to sell them a tapestry Jacquetta coveted. Recent scholarship, however, has cast doubts on aspects of this story, which I’ll be posting on later.

Booking Through Thursday: Huh?

From Booking Through Thursday:

What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”

Great question!

I'm rather fond of the novels of James Wilcox, whose books get into bookstores but never get the front-of-store billing that some others do. Some are set in a small town in Louisiana; others are set in New York City. The Louisiana ones are better, in my opinion. They're comic with a hint of tragedy. My favorite is probably Miss Undine's Living Room.

Probably my favorite obscure book is Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright. The novel, which takes the form of a biography written by a 11-year-old about his recently deceased friend of the same age, is often hilarious, yet also charming and touching. It also splendidly evokes the atmosphere of 1950's America, in and outside the classroom.

Historical-fiction-wise, I've mentioned it before on this blog, I think, but some of my favorite obscure novels are now out-of-print novels about the reign of Edward II, namely, The King's Minions and The Queen and Mortimer by Brenda Honeyman, The Lion and the Leopard by Mary Ellen Johnston, and The Lord of Misrule and King's Wake by Eve Trevaskis.

Moving on to obscure Richard III fiction, I borrowed Presumed Guilty by Evelyn Rosenthal from the Richard III Society's library the other day and was quite impressed by it. Published by Vantage Press, a subsidy press, in 1982 when self-publishing was still an expensive undertaking, it tells its story (through Buckingham, Elizabeth of York, Francis Lovell, Margaret of Burgundy, and John Morton) as well as or better than most other Ricardian novels I've read, and it's a hell of a lot better researched than many of them. Pity it was published before the days of print-on-demand; it'd be easier to find a copy for sale!

Odds and Ends; and Edward II's Reign in a Nutshell

SonjaMarie over at the Historical Fiction Board linked to this site of historical figures by George S. Stuart. I liked his English figures--pity he hasn't done the Plantagenets.

Saw a link to Book-A-Minute Classics over at the Smart Bitches blog. Check out the classics--I particularly liked their take on Virginia Woolf and David Copperfield.

Naturally, that got me thinking I should do a fast version of the story of Edward II's reign (you can find another version here by Neadods):

Barons: We don't like your favorite, Piers Gaveston.

Edward II: Oh? Well, that's too bad. Do something about it.

(Barons execute Gaveston.)

Barons: We don't like your favorites, the Despensers.

Edward II: Oh? Well, that's too bad. Do something about it.

(Barons execute Despensers.)

Barons: We don't like you.

Edward II: Oh? Well, that's too bad. Do some-- OUCH!

Edward III: Mother, I don't like your lover, Roger Mortimer.

Isabella: Oh? Well, that's too bad. Do something about it.

(Edward III executes Mortimer.)

Isabella: Son? You do like me, don't you?

Edward III: Sure, Mom.

Isabella (sighing): Good. Had me worried there for a moment.

Monday Morning Keywords

higginbotham family scotland

You ought to see the kilts the Higginbotham men wear. Bare-chested, naturally.

hugh t. despenser

There's Hugh the elder, Hugh the younger, and Hugh the Mr. T. Despenser. I probably won't be writing about the latter.

i heard that you are working with childrens isabella

Nothing like a little charity work to rehabilitate one's image

isabel denounces he sisters-in-law for adultery

You skanks!

how to get to blacklow hill

Get a lonely young prince to fall in love with you, let him make you an earl and give you a lot of land, and call the barons funny names and make them kneel to you once the prince becomes king.

king henry viii called catherine of aragon a cow

snippets from william shakespeare

Henry: O, Catherine. This I say to you. Thou art a cow, unlike the slim maiden Anne Boleyn.

Catherine: Look who talketh.

Review: Jane Boleyn by Julia Fox

As everyone knows, Jane Boleyn, bitterly jealous of her husband George's close relationship with his sister Anne Boleyn, gave evidence that led to the executions of both for adultery. Not satisfied with that, Jane went on to serve Catherine Howard, where for twisted reasons she aided and abetted the queen's adultery with Thomas Culpepper, leading to Catherine's execution and Jane's own as well.

In Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford, Julia Fox demolishes this long-accepted story by looking at contemporary sources. She notes that there is no evidence that Jane was on poor terms with her husband or with Anne Boleyn and no reason why she would want to exchange her very comfortable life as George's spouse and the queen's sister-in-law for the precarious existence of a traitor's widow living off a small jointure. When George was in prison, she sent a letter to him through the constable of the Tower promising to attempt to intercede on his behalf, a promise that cheered the imprisoned man. She did not testify at George's trial (no one did), but on pretrial questioning by Cromwell may have told him that Anne had complained of Henry's difficulty in sustaining an erection, a statement that George at trial was requested not to read aloud but did, with disastrous consequences when the statement was twisted to suggest that Henry could not function sexually at all and thus could not have fathered Anne's child.

Fox follows the widowed Jane through her subsequent service to Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves to her service with Catherine Howard. She points out the difficult position Jane faced when asked to assist with Catherine's communications with Culpepper: she could refuse and be sent in disgrace from court, where she had succeeded in making sort of a career for herself and where her life was centered, or she could go to Henry and risk his wrath if she turned out to be wrong about the queen's intentions. Once she realized the full extent of what was happening, it was too late to extricate herself. She chose to keep silent and to continue to obey her queen, a disastrous choice but one for which she accepted the consequences with composure and courage.

In Jane Boleyn, Fox not only reassesses Jane's tarnished reputation and shows us how she became reviled over the centuries, she introduces us to Jane's upbringing and family, including her scholarly father, who had the misfortune to survive Jane and who may have quietly recorded his grief in a translation presented to Henry VIII.

Well researched and full of compassion for its subject, this is a must read for those interested in the Tudors--and even for those who aren't.

Booking Through Thursday: Anticipation

From Booking Through Thursday:

Last week we talked about the books you liked best from 2007. So this week, what with it being a new year, and all, we’re looking forward….

What new books are you looking forward to most in 2008? Something new being published this year? Something you got as a gift for the holidays? Anything in particular that you’re planning to read in 2008 that you’re looking forward to? A classic, or maybe a best-seller from 2007 that you’re waiting to appear in paperback?

I'm looking forward to Ian Mortimer's book The Time Travelers' Guide to Medieval England (scheduled for October, according to his website). Also in the nonfiction department, I'm looking forward to A. J. Pollard's Warwick the Kingmaker (not to be confused with Michael Hicks' and Paul Murray Kendall's books by the same name).

On the fiction front, it seems to me that it's about time for another Anne Tyler or P. D. James novel, but I don't know if either author has a release scheduled for this year. If either does, I'll be buying it the day of publication! Looking forward to seeing what Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir's forthcoming novels are like, though I do rather wish they'd chosen less written about people (Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I are their respective subjects). Speaking of Tudor women, I'm interested to see what Brandy Purdy makes of Anne Boleyn in her Vengeance Is Mine. Dropping back two centuries, I'm looking foward to David Blixt's sequel to The Master of Verona.

So: a lot to look forward to. I just need to get more time for reading!

New Post on My Richard III Blog

Stop by if you're interested in Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and his duchess! (Yes, I have been writing a lot about the chap lately, haven't I?)

Happy New Year!

I'm working on a very long post for my recently neglected Unromantic Richard III blog, so this is just a quickie. I'm not big on New Year's resolutions in general (for one thing, other than Teddy Grahams and GummiSavers, I don't have much to give up, unless I cut my Amazon expenditure in half, which would not be a good thing), but there are a few things I'd like to do in relation to my reading and writing:

Read a novel in Colleen McCullough's Rome series. I always hear good things about it, so I'd like to find out what I'm missing!

Get most, if not all, of my third novel completed this year--100,000 words, not any wimpy 60,000 words either.

Update my website with some more Medieval Miniatures, as most of the comments I get on the site seem to come from people who have read one of them.

Keep my blogs more up to date.

Read the books that have been sitting on my shelf since last year before buying any new ones. Actually, I broke that resolution just a couple of hours ago. Oh, well--there are worst things, I guess!

The Dumbest Question a Computer Has Asked Me Today

Doing a keyword search on a university library catalog for "Elizabeth Woodville," I received less than a handful of results and this helpful inquiry:

Did you mean elizabeth woodpile?

Obviously a Ricardian programmer at work here.