The Last of the Plantagenets: Richard III
Feb 4, 2013 2:38:40 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2013 2:38:40 GMT -5
Good morning to you all. 'The Times' leads today with some editorial comment on loser's justice: as Richard III is exhumed, a piece of Tudor propaganda could be buried. Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York; and all the clouds that lour'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the car park buried.
www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article3676971.ece
DNA analysis appears to have confirmed that bones found in a Leicester car park are those of Richard III. This is exciting for those who spent years looking for him, but it undermines their view of him and complicates their plans for him. In the anti-Richard corner, from the moment he was hacked to death on Bosworth Field in 1485, chroniclers, playwrights and method actors have depicted the last Plantagenet as a hunchback. The revisionists who worked so hard to persuade Leicester City Council to let them dig him up contend that his alleged deformity was Tudor spin.
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www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/archaeology/article3676964.ece
I have no idea into which category this particular posting should be put, Sydney Grew, so I am posting it here. Everyone reading The Third is cordially invited to join us at 21:00 (GMT) tonight to watch Channel 4 (television).
www.channel4.com/programmes/richard-iii-the-king-in-the-car-park
It is arguable that in terms of politics, we fight for power, and it is generally the winners who write history. Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets. The House of Plantagenet rose to a prominence in the High Middle Ages as a royal dynasty that endured until the end of the Late Middle Ages through the cadet branches of the House of York and House of Lancaster. Geoffrey V of Anjou is considered to have founded the dynasty with his marriage to Matilda who was the daughter of Henry I of England. The English crown passed to their son Henry II under the Treaty of Winchester bringing an end to decades of civil war and, with his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry accumulated a vast and complex feudal holding that was later called the Angevin Empire stretching from the Pyrenees to Ireland and the border with Scotland. The nomenclature of the dynasty dates from the 15th century and comes from a 12th century sobriquet of Geoffrey.
The Plantagenets transformed England from little more than a colonised realm, ruled from abroad, into one of the most deeply engaged and mature kingdoms in Europe, although not necessarily always intentionally. For example Winston Churchill argued that "[w]hen the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns". From Magna Carta forward, driven by weakness the compromises made by the Plantagenets in accepting constraint on their power in return for financial and military support, the role of kingship was transformed. This was from one where the king was the most powerful man in the country with the prerogative of judgement, feudal tribute and warfare into a polity where the king’s duties to his realm were defined, in addition to the realm's duties to the king, underpinned by a sophisticated justice system.
Successful Plantagenets required martial prowess and many are renowned warrior leaders. Conflict with the French, Scots, Welsh and Irish was to help shape a distinct national identity and, with the re-adoption of English as the official language of royal courts and parliaments by Edward III in 1362 in the Statute of Pleading, English was transformed from the language of serfs into one fit for poetry and scholarship. Among others the Pearl Poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower and William Langland created a distinctive English culture and art. The Plantagenets also transformed the English landscape with significant building and patronage of the arts. Westminster Abbey, Windsor, York Minster, the Welsh Castles and the golden age of cathedral building in the Gothic style are the most significant examples of this. Richard I founded Portsmouth as a military town, King John Liverpool and Henry III Harwich. London prospered and brick building was reintroduced for the first time since the Romans. No Royal dynasty was as successful in passing down the crown as the Plantagenets, from 1189 to 1377, but in 1399, as the dynasty splintered into two competing cadet branch, economic and social tumult lead to the internecine strife later named Wars of the Roses. With this, the Middle Ages in England are considered to end with the death of the last Plantagenet King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21328380
In 2016, the history of the United Kingdom may come to an end with Scottish independence from England, Northern Ireland and Wales. We are coming to the end of 300 years of glorious history in which the United Kingdom, through the Industrial Revolution, has transformed the world. I propose some toast: to all of you! We have put the Great back into Britain, Sydney Grew! Three cheers from kleines c and the gang (breakfast coffee)!
www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article3676971.ece
DNA analysis appears to have confirmed that bones found in a Leicester car park are those of Richard III. This is exciting for those who spent years looking for him, but it undermines their view of him and complicates their plans for him. In the anti-Richard corner, from the moment he was hacked to death on Bosworth Field in 1485, chroniclers, playwrights and method actors have depicted the last Plantagenet as a hunchback. The revisionists who worked so hard to persuade Leicester City Council to let them dig him up contend that his alleged deformity was Tudor spin.
"Five hundred years ago, King Richard III would have given his kingdom for a horse. Today, he might just regain his kingdom — or, at least, his rightful place in it, thanks to the DNA of a Canadian cabinet maker. The skull of the man believed to be the last king of the House of York was revealed to his former realm yesterday, as tests on Richard’s closest known relative were expected to reveal that the body found last summer in Leicester town centre is indeed his ... "
www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/archaeology/article3676964.ece
I have no idea into which category this particular posting should be put, Sydney Grew, so I am posting it here. Everyone reading The Third is cordially invited to join us at 21:00 (GMT) tonight to watch Channel 4 (television).
www.channel4.com/programmes/richard-iii-the-king-in-the-car-park
It is arguable that in terms of politics, we fight for power, and it is generally the winners who write history. Richard III was the last of the Plantagenets. The House of Plantagenet rose to a prominence in the High Middle Ages as a royal dynasty that endured until the end of the Late Middle Ages through the cadet branches of the House of York and House of Lancaster. Geoffrey V of Anjou is considered to have founded the dynasty with his marriage to Matilda who was the daughter of Henry I of England. The English crown passed to their son Henry II under the Treaty of Winchester bringing an end to decades of civil war and, with his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry accumulated a vast and complex feudal holding that was later called the Angevin Empire stretching from the Pyrenees to Ireland and the border with Scotland. The nomenclature of the dynasty dates from the 15th century and comes from a 12th century sobriquet of Geoffrey.
The Plantagenets transformed England from little more than a colonised realm, ruled from abroad, into one of the most deeply engaged and mature kingdoms in Europe, although not necessarily always intentionally. For example Winston Churchill argued that "[w]hen the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owe far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns". From Magna Carta forward, driven by weakness the compromises made by the Plantagenets in accepting constraint on their power in return for financial and military support, the role of kingship was transformed. This was from one where the king was the most powerful man in the country with the prerogative of judgement, feudal tribute and warfare into a polity where the king’s duties to his realm were defined, in addition to the realm's duties to the king, underpinned by a sophisticated justice system.
Successful Plantagenets required martial prowess and many are renowned warrior leaders. Conflict with the French, Scots, Welsh and Irish was to help shape a distinct national identity and, with the re-adoption of English as the official language of royal courts and parliaments by Edward III in 1362 in the Statute of Pleading, English was transformed from the language of serfs into one fit for poetry and scholarship. Among others the Pearl Poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower and William Langland created a distinctive English culture and art. The Plantagenets also transformed the English landscape with significant building and patronage of the arts. Westminster Abbey, Windsor, York Minster, the Welsh Castles and the golden age of cathedral building in the Gothic style are the most significant examples of this. Richard I founded Portsmouth as a military town, King John Liverpool and Henry III Harwich. London prospered and brick building was reintroduced for the first time since the Romans. No Royal dynasty was as successful in passing down the crown as the Plantagenets, from 1189 to 1377, but in 1399, as the dynasty splintered into two competing cadet branch, economic and social tumult lead to the internecine strife later named Wars of the Roses. With this, the Middle Ages in England are considered to end with the death of the last Plantagenet King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21328380
In 2016, the history of the United Kingdom may come to an end with Scottish independence from England, Northern Ireland and Wales. We are coming to the end of 300 years of glorious history in which the United Kingdom, through the Industrial Revolution, has transformed the world. I propose some toast: to all of you! We have put the Great back into Britain, Sydney Grew! Three cheers from kleines c and the gang (breakfast coffee)!