To wonder which ‘history facts’ aren’t true.

[LeslieKnopefan]

I understand that history isn’t always true and the further we go back in time the harder it is know what the truth is and what is simply made up.

However I recently posted that I thought it was true that Marie Antoinette hair turned white overnight after her best friends head was paraded in front of her and that I only realised it wasn’t when I told a mate who pointed out it couldn’t be true.

So which history facts that people think are true are known to be lies?

Queen, it’s reputed Margaret Beaufort did have a birth related injury as she was 12 when she conceived and 13 when she gave birth.

Yes that's what I thought. I don't think she was a likeable woman but fucking hell, her life was pretty grim for the most part.

I was a huge fan of The Daughter of Time as a teenager, and it was the first thing that made me realise that history is not just a done and dusted story. I was a signed up Riccardian and reckon I got into university to read history on the back of my interest in the whole thing which I discussed at interview. But I know that quite a lot of Tey's content has been pulled apart over the years and, without being in any way particularly knowledgeable about it, I think the theory of innocence has worn quite thin. It would be brilliant to find a passing reference to one of the princes in 1486 but i suspect it will never happen.

My own father had rickets as a child born into poverty in the late 20s. We used to laugh at his (slightly) bowed legs as cruel children. Horrific that this is re-emerging.

Tey, Kendall and Penman started to rehabilitate Richards reputation so much that's it's gone in completely the opposite direction and resulted in very strange books where Richard is a saintly character and Henry VII drinks the blood of virgins!

Both my maternal grandparents were stunted in growth due to early childhood malnutrition (1910s).

My mother probably attained her 'full genetic height' - she my daughter and I are much of a muchness height wise, while she is nearly a foot taller than her mother was, and a good 3-4" taller than her father - due to wartime rationing, which perversely in a family such as hers represented unheard-of plenty in terms of infant and early childhood nutrition.

" Readers of Cressy’s monograph will also discern that unless the Constable of England or the Protector of the Realm had been a first-hand witness (meaning, unless he could testify “I was there…I saw…I heard…”) regarding any past events involved in a challenge to a pre-contracted marriage, he was powerless to influence the outcome of that challenge. Medieval Church and the Anglican canon law that echoed it dictated that Richard of Gloucester had no power to declare any marriage invalid, nor could he declare illegitimate the children of any marriage. The medieval Church and the Anglican church both reserved the exclusive right to dissolve marriages, and their decisions were based solely upon eyewitness evidence brought before medieval Church/Anglican church officials. "

The above from

murreyandblue.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/even-by-tudor-and-stuart-standards-edward-ivs-marriage-to-elizabeth-woodville-was-invalid/

Here's Catherine Carey's daughter. Remind you of anyone?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lettice_Knollys#/media/File:Lettice_Knollys1.jpg

@liz70 I wouldn't believe anything I read in that blog - I have encountered the author before and he is quite nutty. His dislike of Henry VII seems almost personal and he's fond of referring to anyone who doesn't think Richard was an angel as "Cairo dwellers." He's nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is.

Lettuce Knollys and Elizabeth I were first cousins once removed, so that could account for the resemblance even if Henry VIII was not their common ancestor.

I always think it's interesting to go to places where history may well have been taught differently to the place you come from.

Lucknow in India was one - very different perspective on the 'Indian mutiny'.

That blog is really weird, isn't it? Just the way it's written with the faux-academic language he can't quite get right, and the little footnotes. I liked 'there was but one Church'. No, mate, no.

Rather a fortunate coincidence for Richard
Not really. He was referred to as 'the protector' in the patent rolls on April 21st. He arrived in London with Edward on the 4th of May and does everything that a protector should: organises a requiem mass for the previous king and swears and oath of allegiance to the new one. He stays in London at his mother's house and on 5th June releases detailed orders for Edwards coronation on the 22nd -down to the summoning of the squires for Edward to knight and ordering his coronation clothes.
Then, on the 8th of June, the Bishop of Bath turns up at a meeting of the council and tells them that he had married Edward to Lady Eleanor Butler prior to his secret wedding to Elizabeth Wodeville. (during Edward's reign the Bishop of Bath had been the privy seal, the Lord chancellor and the ambassador to Brittany. Rather suggests Edward had reason to keep this man sweet. And certainly he had no reason to make up lies about his benefactor.)
On the 9th June the evidence is taken before parliament - and they make the decision - this isn't a crooked, secret conspiracy of Richard's it's all open and above board. Parliament put all this into an act the Titulus regulus, which disinherits the boys and names Richard rightful king. (interestingly Henry VII has all the copies of the titulus regulus destroyed without allowing anyone to read it. Because he relegitimises Edward's children in order to marry Elizabeth of York - but in doing so he effectively makes Edward V the rightful king again... it isn't Richard that needs to get rid of the boy!)

on the tenth Richard writes to York asking them to send his men down - rather along way away to leave your men if you're planning a coup.
The boys enter the tower on the 16th of June (and remember it is a royal palace - not a prison) when it is already known that they no longer have a claim on the throne. They are not a threat when they enter the tower unless people fight in their name. In which case hiding the facts of their death achieves nothing.
All in all - he spends a month in London doing protector type stuff and then has a manic couple of days when this news hits out of the blue. He takes evidence before parliament and is crowned on the 6th of July.

Even if he did trump up the evidence of bigamy... he still has no reason to kill the boys! He has been declared King and crowned by parliament. The public are happy with an adult king over a child one... but they would be less thrilled with the idea of a King who murders children. And if he's pretending the boys are still alive then some nobles will rally to their banner for their own ends (as they do - his friend Buckingham is one of them).
If he wanted them dead he could have suffocated them, laid out their bodies and told everyone they had died of a fever. He would still be the rightful king thereafter. Why got to all the fuss of having them declared illegitimate to then kill them anyway? in secret?

The rumours that circulated about their death ... there is no contemporaneous account of that in a British source. The only rumour comes from France - where John Morton is hiding, having just been part of a conspiracy to murder Richard. He is trying to stir up anti-English sentiment in the French by claiming Richard has killed the boys and the English don't care, so that the French will aid Henry VII in his invasion.

Richard was a family man. He adored his brother and swore to protect his nephews. It was him that argued for the case for their middle brother when he tried to steal the throne - and after his own son died had his Clarence nephew put back into the line of succession. He was staying with his mother that month in London - he was not plotting to murder her grandsons!

And more to the point... he was the crowned King - declared so by Parliament. There is just no reason for him to kill the princes.

@LRDtheFeministDragon Believe me, the owner of the blog is a very strange little man. However that particular entry isn't by him, although it's by a woman known as one of the Brides of Gloucester. There was a time when I was in various Facebook history groups and, I shit you not, they were both in a secret one where they tore to pieces anyone who disagrees with them about Richard III!

Wow.

They sound ... interesting.

he still has no reason to kill the boys!

Of course he has! Boy princes don't stay boys forever, and their own father led an invasion and took the throne at 18. Who's to say they wouldn't have done the same with the backing of a powerful noble or foreign king?

"their own father led an invasion and took the throne at 18."

But surely only avenging his father's more rightful claim to the throne?

I mean "rightful" in that R.O.Y. was higher in the line of succession than the Lancasters.

@liz70 the jury's still out on that, but what I meant was that if they inherited his military capabilities then who knows what they were capable of?

But he has no reason to kill them and keep it a secret! He needs them to be dead and for everyone to know about it. As long as those boys are thought to be alive anyone with any grievance against Richard will rally behind them. They have to be known to be dead for it to be worthwhile for them being dead.
Richard was a Catholic, and no doubt believed in the divine right of Kings. For him to willingly set out to murder a child, his nephew, and the rightful King he would have to be assured that this would render him completely safe on the throne. He would genuinely believe he was putting his immortal soul in peril to do this. He wouldn't do a half arsed job and still leave the possibility of people rallying to the boy's cause.
If they had died suddenly, but had been laid out and given state funerals then I would agree that would be a bit suspicious. But to just vanish them does not help him.

And that's even working from the supposition that he wants to be the King - that he is willing to do this terrible thing out of a lust for power. But he was massively loyal to his brother, and was very powerful in his own right -basically the King of the North. As protector he would have had ultimate power during Edward V's minority and then probably continued to be very influential once he was old enough to rule in his own right.
All through Edward IV's reign Richard's actions are fair, just and loyal. He shows no desire to be the King himself, he is perfectly happy in his supporting role. To assume that he would on a whim (because no one expected Edward IV to die when he did and this all happened extremely quickly) decide to betray his brother's memory, murder his children, and usurp the throne is ludicrous. It just isn't in keeping with the man Richard had proven himself to be up to that point!

I know David Cressy is a real historian but I am rather amused by the 'four degrees from Cambridge'. That sounds like a lot of effort.

"the jury's still out on that"

Perhaps, but Henry B knocks off the unpopular RII and takes the throne, then years later Edward takes the crown from the ineffectual HVI to become EIV, with the advantage of being closer in the line of succession from EIII, surely? So just reclaiming the line from the Lancasters?

Moronic.

"Richard was a Catholic"

So was every Christian in England at the time.

@Icantreachthepretzels He was a medieval King - most were pretty Machiavellian! His execution of Hastings without a trial shows that he wasn't entirely above all that.