This year is the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury, and—justifiably—Gloucester wants a piece of the celebratory action. After all, Gloucester did contribute a lot to the outcome, by ensuring Margaret and her forces were obliged to take a stand in a place they wouldn’t have chosen. The queen wanted to pass through the city and cross the dangerous Severn by the bridge to the Welsh side, but Gloucester had closed its gates, forcing Margaret to continue northward on the English side of the river, because Edward IV’s army was bearing down on them at a rate of knots. For the same reason, with Edward at their heels, they got no further than Tewkesbury before a confrontation was their only option.
But today I’m writing about Gloucester’s role. I’ve said before that on Alney Island there is a commemorative woodland at the nature park
Alney Island is to the west of the city where the Severn divides for a while and then unites again, forming the island. The woodland is named Richard’s Wood, and is in honour of King Richard III, who granted the city its charter. (When you get to the link to the video below, don’t listen to Mr. Andrew Armstrong, City Archaeologist for Gloucester City Council, who believes Richard’s only reason for this was to grovel for favour because he was so wretchedly unpopular for stealing the throne, killing his nephews and so on. Such nonsense.)
Gloucester’s part in events of 1471 was also celebrated by a mounted procession through the city centre, with everyone in medieval costume. You can see it here Unfortunately it wasn’t advertised, so there weren’t many people to watch it pass by, social distancing or not. By the illustrations above, it was clearly well worth observing!
Now we come to Mr Armstrong, whose video places him firmly on the Lancastrian side. He finds it “understandable” that Henry VI went after the Duke of York, who was doing what Lords Protector are supposed to do. He speaks of “poor 13-year-old Edward of Westminster” being executed after Tewkesbury. Then he states that Clarence was drowned in that old Butt of Malmsey. Oh dear. After that he pronounces Richard to have been an evil usurper who was responsible for the deaths of his dear little nephews and had no right whatsoever to the throne, blah-diddy-blah-diddy-blah. Oh, and Henry Tudor WAS the Lancastrian heir. Um, really?
I won’t insult you by drawing further attention to the numerous bloopers in the narration, but if you can ignore all that, it’s interesting about Gloucester itself, the city walls, defence and so on.
I rather fancy Mr Armstrong’s pips squeaked loudly when he related that Gloucester closed its gates (willingly enough) against Margaret of Anjou, whose forces then lost the ensuing battle.
So Gloucester did indeed contribute handsomely to the victory at Tewkesbury, whether or not the City Archaeologist for Gloucester City Council likes it. 😊
murreyandblue 
Thanks for this – an excellent video, explains the to-ing and fro-ing of the Wars of the Roses pretty effectively. Didn’t find Mr Armstrong quite as biased as I’d expected (had been prepared to boo and hiss at appropriate moments!)
However, he does make one MAJOR error – he said that Edward of Westminster (Margaret & Henry’s son) was thirteen when he was killed after the battle. He was in fact almost eighteen. (October 1453 – May 1471) Getting his Edwards mixed up!
Richard’s Progress was the natural and expected outcome of a new regime. I thought the Charter was generous and perfectly understandable – it had been HIS Dukedom! Not generous because of “grovelling”! If he’d been Duke of – er – say Northampton or Coventry he would probably have been just as generous to those places as there was a special relationship. As it was, however, Gloucester had been totally instrumental in the outcome of the coming battle. And why not? They’d had ten years of steady Yorkist rule, an end to the battles, prosperity – and were faced with the alternative prospect of returning to a weak king, an over bearing French-born Queen, with rule by warring nobles.again. Good for Gloucester!
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Well, if Mr Armstrong regularly gives these little talks I would be most surprised! He has no idea how to speak in public, presumably while being filmed or among a group that might be listening! The manic fluttering hands was the first thing that struck me that no, he’s not nervous, he’s just not often sharing information other than perhaps a few coworkers at the Museum. I have taught for years and your body language is as important as what you say, as is modulating your voice, knowing when to pause, eye contact, and for the love of all that is good and great, KNOW your material! He did not.
One positive was he does know what is in his Museum, I loved seeing Richard’s Mourning Sword, loved the close ups of the Charter with the gorgeous scroll work and Richard’s illuminated intial “R” – Armstrong was fine there, he seemed comfortable and relaxed, within his own element.
The WoTR’s history lecture? OMG, someone must have prepped him with the notes that were written for him for he surely did not know 90% of what he babbled on about! The absolute dead giveaway was not knowing Edward of Westminster was 17 and a combatant at Tewkesbury, not some mewling bystander watching with mama from a distance. That and completely bungling the entire rationale for why and how Richard was offered the crown, not to mention Edward of Warwick was disbarred from contention due to Clarence’s attainder. True, Richard himself had been attainted, as had Edward (twice!) but those legalities could and were often overturned in Parliament. Had Edward of Warwick sufficient support in May 1483, amongst the nobility and commons AND wasn’t a young child himself, the situation might have been different. Armstrong knew so little of the circumstances that for whatever reason he leaves out that Richard and Queen Anne took this nephew with them on their progress, all the way to York, where the boy was knighted along with others, at their son’s investiture.
My point is, IF Armstrong’s writers are going to bother with unnecessary anecdotes TO the story of the story of Gloucester’s place in the 550th anniversary of Tewkesbury then add a few connective details that are not blatantly biased and easily proven false or misleading – it just makes your presenter look foolish and ill prepared!
I’ll put this down to Armstrong’s own ignorance of the WOTR in general, and definitely concerning Richard, even Margaret of Anjou’s army is portrayed as a rather low rent gaggle of French mercenaries! That was the cream of Lancastrian nobility, Beauforts (Edmund, 4th D of Somerset and brother John, calling himself Dorset) in their glory! Anjou had disaffected Lancastrians like the Courtneys (who remained a PIA for Richard) and Lord Wenlock. The bedraggled assortment of mercenaries Armstrong is describing is a better fit for the invasion force Henry of Richmond came a calling with in 1485!
Btw, the wretched earl of Oxford, John de Vere, was in Scotland and then France, with his two brothers, in exile after his defeat at Barnet – Ricardians know of him from Bosworth but also the feud E4 had with Countess Oxford and her estates, preferring that they not be used to fund Oxford’s post-Barnet activities of privateering; this was the situation that led E4 to grant her estates to Gloucester, while commanding the Countess appear before him in court for months under heavy fines if she did not. E4 knew how to play hardball but for reasons Ricardians are familiar with it is always Richard who bears the blame for brutish behaviour!
One last rant, sorry, but Armstrong should have followed his instincts, when he was in the Museum discussing the Sword and Charter and the huge benefits that this unique Charter gave the town of Gloucester, as he was citing its many advantages, noting how unusual they were and that they established a new model for town governance I noticed his tone was less strident and canned, he seemed to be genuinely intrigued, possibly hearing all this for the first time or considering it for the first time, had he allowed himself just a nudge he would have put two and two together and recognized that the same man Lord Chancellor Francis Bacon spoke of as the “solace of the common people” is NOT the same man in his script he was given to read from.
I’m in academia, so I’ll end it this way, I just WISH my fellow academics had the intellectual curiosity that my students have! (then we wouldn’t have had bungled mis-steps like Armstrong’s material that I really believe someone wrote for him, and did him a great disservice at that!)
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I’m not in academia—never have been—so I can’t claim the same knowledge of these things that you possess, but when I read your comment I realised that my assessment of this gentleman chimed with yours…albeit from the viewpoint of an amateur. So I agree with every word. 🙂
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Dear Viscountessw,
It is my favorite delusion that academics outside the US are different, rigorous and animated with a zeal to not only know the truth but to leave no stone unturned … yea no. It must be something IN academia itself that has led to so many lazy, ok, so many incurious minds. One of my professors (this is a topic that has annoyed me since grad school) suggested that overspecialization is at fault, ‘we’ force our students to know an excessive amount about an increasingly shrinking area of their discipline. There is just so much to know, and it is expanding, not consolidating or being reduced for what is no longer irrelevant.
This is likely true across all disciplines, I see this in my medical professions, the doctor I see for skin cancer is only a first stop, if she suspects something she can biopsy it but it goes to a lab, to other experts, IF it comes back basal, squamous etc, then I am off to the skin surgeon for MOHS (lots of experience with this), and they have another tier of information and training that dwarfs anything the dermatologist I originally saw …
Probably Armstrong has 1) little time to know the actual history behind the incredible items in ‘his’ Museum and 2) little initiative to learn on his own and 3) is perfectly happy with things just the way things are …
We are different, I’ve seen that about Ricardians for years, and unlike the rule of thumb, that we only know what is immediately connected to Richard and that’s all, I would say like ripples on a pond we keep reaching out further and further from that point that is Richard into the vast context of his era, his century, his culture, his entire milieu, both in linear and nonlinear ways. And the reason is not because we are necessarily obsessed with minutiae (I’m sure we have been accused of this) but because SO many documents for him and his life are missing (whether they were destroyed or simply lost we are unlikely to ever know) and that forces any researcher to throw out a very wide net indeed!
It’s not for the faint of heart to take on Ricardian research nor support the pursuit of what happened but I doubt any one of us would change once we’ve engaged in that hunt , would we Viscountessw! And somewhere, somehow I do think he knows this!
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I hope he does! As for more and more knowledge about him having come to light, I recall that when I first started writing (about his niece, Cicely, back in the early 70s) I had a couple of biographies and general history books to refer to, coupled with frequent trips to the local reference library. I’d left school at 15, and had dropped history for my exams, so I was fresh from the endless reading of historical novels. Since then, of course, we’ve had the internet. Boy have things changed. If I get something wrong in a book, the world and his wife pounces because all the information is available to everyone. We can sit on our sofas and trawl through all the Rolls and so on. A writer of historical fiction has to be on the ball these days. Yes, we can still make it fiction, but if we have real people from back then, we have to get it right. I can’t just say Richard was in, say, Lichfield. I have to KNOW he was there at that particular time. The only way to invent where he is is to find spaces in the records, when (so far) no one knows where he was.
What I’m getting around to is that these days we can all be au fait with historical detail. In my opinion someone like Mr Armstrong should also know. It’s his job to know. At the very least he should be sharp on the history of Gloucester, which owes a lot to Richard. So knowing about Richard should be high on his list as well. Clearly it isn’t.
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Yes I know!!
I was trying to write a very short story for our “Cyber Meeting” Magazine and gaily put Richard in Nottingham Castle just after the Christmas 1484 festivities (January/February-ish) Woah! He was still in Westminster for ages!
Quick artistic licence – he was there secretly and John Kendall had agreed to record his presence in London while Richard “kept to his room with the ague” or some such! That left me free to have him meet secretly with Elizabeth Woodville and arrange the Princes’ last meeting with her before they were spirited abroad.
Oh dear – facts can be very incnvenient at times! 🙂
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Inconvenient? Aren’t they just! Talk about getting in the way of a good plot! 😒
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To both Viscountessw and Anne A,
I admire those who write the fiction, especially Ricardian/Yorkist fiction, I do not have that knack (or any knack for fiction), I have been working on, for the last 2+ years a visual treatment, some might call it a graphic novel (for lack of a better word) on Richard’s key months (Jan-August 1483) and my biggest challenge is how little visually is available to recreate the London (in particular) of Richard’s day, even Baynard’s as he knew it has to be re-imagined as you-know-who just had to get his grubby hands on it and rip up portions that I need! well, one thing and another lead me to begin a good ole troll thru everything I could get access to at the TNA (Hustings and Common Pleas and Patent Rolls, love them) and while such details are fun, like Anne mentioned they can get you into trouble too!
I recall reading about some hapless gentleman hustled off to the counter in York on suspicion alone, he might be a ….SCOT! egad. Were people really so jittery over the mere sight of someone who “might” appear to be a “Scot” – and what would that look like anyway? This is where Viscountessw’s old school version of what she did for years before the internet: go to the books, and yes, I have piles of those too! Wouldn’t you know the good people of York (and also in London I would add), would have had every reason to be suspicious, it was 1481 and the fear of marauding, infiltrating Scots, as spies, or simply malefactors engaged in activities on behalf of the French – never forget Louis XI – was all in the upcoming shadow of the Scottish campaigns. Aha.
I have found cross-referencing to be my salvation, it is time consuming but necessary, there is copious material for all things London and England, culturally and politically, up to about oh say 1450, then the CHASM, and after that drop off we enter the sudden explosion of TudorMania and good luck finding a map, a book, a podcast, a reference on anything about London, its food, quality of life, fashions, even what taverns were there, without the name “Tudor” attached to it and of course, 1500 and later ….
To that end I may well end up creating the only map we Ricardians will have that is accurate for 1483 OUT OF NECESSITY! hahaaa… I have my Harben and Ekwall and my Thrupp and countless others that write on the Guilds, the Port of Medieval London (a gem), all the Museum of London archeology books (priceless info) , even the ugh Map of Tudor London as a base (it dates to 1520, I just work backward, I’ve learned from Hustings and Harben what mansions, Inns, hostels, brewhouses, or Taverns weren’t there in Richard’s day, or what tenements and streets and alleys changed names, what wharves etc had fallen into ruin and when, that sort of thing) and it will likely be the only ‘graphic novel’ (NOT manga; NO panels, NO bubbles with dialogue!) that will have a bibliography! maybe even footnotes!
see? I can’t shake the academic contamination, what I can describe in a drawing however I can only wish I could do as both of you do in your writing SOB!!!
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I look forward to one day seeing your graphic version of medieval London – as a map or otherwise. I can draw but wouldn’t describe myself as an artist; equally I wouldn’t call myself a writer either! Bit of a Jill of all Trades, which came in useful in Primary teaching. I know I could never write a novel – I haven’t the burning story trying to get out, or the imaginative ability to see or describe something with insightful imagery. All pretty average and somewhat banal – though I’m always thrilled to recognise it in a new author. My short story is my one and only, though it did appear in February’s Murrey and Blue this year as a Guest Post “Look Who’s Coming to Dinner” and was the result if Lockdown and the need to keep in touch with local members without using Zoom. We all contributed something on the premise that we were hosting a dinner with Richard (to stop everyone just choosing him as the guest!) Who would we invite, where would it be and when (then or now), how would we be dressed, what was on the menu and what would we ask our guest. Most contributions were straightforward reportage style or funny or quite intellectual, but mine and another turned into a short story. We had fun anyway but I can’t feel any more stories wanting to find a way out!
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Hello again to you both. Amma, a graphic novel sounds very intriguing…so have at it! Anne, there may be a novel lurking in there somewhere, and if there is, it’s going to leap out at you some day. Anything might trigger it….if only that you disagree with what you read in someone else’s novel. That’s what started me originally! That, and Tey and PMK.
When it comes to writing historical novels, my career goes back to the early 1970s, and until now I’ve had 80 books publishes under various names. The vast majority have been set during the Regency here in the UK, and while I wasn’t another Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, I had my fans. The period was reckoned (by Penguin USA) to cover the first 25 years of the 19th century, or thereabouts, and I had to be historically accurate. At least, that’s what I thought, until they started publishing any old Regency-set book, and the titles became ridiculously anachronistic, e.g. Captain Cupid Calls the Shots. The phrase in the title dates from much later than those 25 years. Having been told (always) that accuracy was the thing, this was a bit of a poke on the snout and signalled a general lowering of standards that cheapened the whole genre. IMO. Anyway, my Regency backlist is still published by a large e-book publisher, so I’m still around.
However, the one book that has been gnawing away at me since the 1970s is the one I’m working on now. And believe it or not, I don’t want to finish it. I want to work and twiddle, research and delve forever, and I’m happy as a sandboy. No contracts, due dates, picky editors who don’t know what they’re talking about…just the sheer joy of doing what I love most. The book is not set around Richard III, but during the reign of the second ill-fated Richard a century earlier. The object of my intense interest is his half-brother, John Holand, Earl of Huntingdon, Duke of Exeter, who came to a sticky end. I have no idea why I find him so fascinating, but I have done for fifty years now! Ye gods. I don’t even remember when I first latched on to him, or why. But he’s now to blame for endless hours of writing delight.
So having a book inside you isn’t necessarily going to lead to instant and feverish writing. Now I probably know enough about John Holand now to write his biography, but I’m no historian, and anyway the fiction writer in me has the upper hand. I want to write his life as.a story, and that’s what I’m doing. To my heart’s content. What I’m trying to say, Anne, is if deep inside you want to write a novel, just wait until that moment of inspiration clouts you one — then you’ll start writing, and you’ll have a whale of a time!
Good lord, did all this come from taking a pop at Mr Armstrong? 😧.
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Viscountessw,
wonderful comments for Anne, and I love a convo that sort of squirrels around and ends up nowhere near where it started (ie Armstrong!)
as for your interest in Richard II, I sensed that as soon as I started reading your posts when you reference him and I am pleased to say you have had quite an effect on me! The more I track down cultural and artistic roots – and not just in London – the more I bump into Richard and Henry III, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say the concept of a civilized man AS King may have its first flowering in Henry III but it was fully realised in Richard II whether he ever gets the credit for it or not.
How unfortunate that the same template for ‘successful’ monarch that would have been useful for say King Offa and the Conqueror (or the Frankish king Chlodovechus/ Clovis) was still being foisted on a man like Richard of Bordeaux (wish I could extend such sympathy to the hapless Henry VI, but his was a neurological disability, hard to imagine it was not inherited from his French grandfather, Charles VI).
Another seachange was in the offing too, with Richard III, on several fronts, his interest in promoting literacy and importation of books, a legal system better attuned to that dreaded ‘common man’, actual consideration for the North with a legitimate Council based there, and I’m just going out on a limb here but he did own the Psalms (?) in English (I believe he needed permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury) and while there wouldn’t have been a Reformation and break with the Church a la H8 I suspect there would have been a trend towards reforms and use of an English NT, not to mention he shared E4’sinterest in building projects, probably verging on a mania for them (I think had he lived he could easily have challenged Henry III in this area) and I haven’t even touched on his passion for Music, possibly the one area Hicks gets correct in his latest recycled biography.
Take whatever time you need Viscountessw to do justice to your subject, a thing well done is a thing of beauty and if Holand has exercised your imagination to this degree for so long there is a reason, he has chosen you!
it’s all good and so much to look forward to!
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Viscountessw,
wonderful comments for Anne, and I love a convo that sort of squirrels around and ends up nowhere near where it started (ie Armstrong!)
as for your interest in Richard II, I sensed that as soon as I started reading your posts when you reference him and I am pleased to say you have had quite an effect on me! The more I track down cultural and artistic roots – and not just in London – the more I bump into Richard and Henry III, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say the concept of a civilized man AS King may have its first flowering in Henry III but it was fully realised in Richard II whether he ever gets the credit for it or not.
How unfortunate that the same template for ‘successful’ monarch that would have been useful for say King Offa and the Conqueror (or the Frankish king Chlodovechus/ Clovis) was still being foisted on a man like Richard of Bordeaux (wish I could extend such sympathy to the hapless Henry VI, but his was a neurological disability, hard to imagine it was not inherited from his French grandfather, Charles VI).
Another seachange was in the offing too, with Richard III, on several fronts, his interest in promoting literacy and importation of books, a legal system better attuned to that dreaded ‘common man’, actual consideration for the North with a legitimate Council based there, and I’m just going out on a limb here but he did own the Psalms (?) in English (I believe he needed permission from the Archbishop of Canterbury) and while there wouldn’t have been a Reformation and break with the Church a la H8 I suspect there would have been a trend towards reforms and use of an English NT, not to mention he shared E4’sinterest in building projects, probably verging on a mania for them (I think had he lived he could easily have challenged Henry III in this area) and I haven’t even touched on his passion for Music, possibly the one area Hicks gets correct in his latest recycled biography.
Take whatever time you need Viscountessw to do justice to your subject, a thing well done is a thing of beauty and if Holand has exercised your imagination to this degree for so long there is a reason, he has chosen you!
it’s all good and so much to look forward to!
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I’m delighted to have interested you in Richard II. He was another Richard married to an Anne (who died young) and he was usurped by another scheming Henry of the House of Lancaster, in this case Richard’s first cousin! The enticing coincidences are there for someone like me.
Yes, I too think there would have been a seachange if Richard III had lived to reign his allotted time. He was an intelligent man who believed in justice and what was right – no matter how loudly his detractors squeal to the contrary.
Whether Richard II would have tried to achieve that I cannot say. Yes, he reigned for a fair time, but most of it was under the sort of pressure that a much stronger man might have found difficult. He was damaged goods, and was further wrecked by his uncles and the magnates who ganged up against him. THEY wanted to rule, and they bullied him from when he was very young.
But yes, I intend to keep on with John Holand’s story, because (yet again) I think he wasn’t quite the relentlessly bad boy he’s always painted. He had his moments, mind, but I’m a sucker for someone I think has been “done wrong” by historians!
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Dear Anne,
What a nifty idea for a story! how did I miss that one? I will need to track that one down – (Feb 2020? or 2021?) I will find it !! Like you I didn’t have any real desire to write anything, I’m just thrilled doing research. It was a ricardian friend who mentioned that Richard Armitage had wanted to do a movie about Richard but alas it has not come to be – that got me to thinking – in Art there is no ‘time’ that isn’t the right time hehee, so it struck me, illustrate a book about Richard using Mr Armitage as the prototype – and what is the first thing I think of when I think R3? what happened between Jan and August 1483? others may feel he planned it all, some may think he stumbled into it, some may even think we will never know just how many factors forced his hand but whatever it was THAT was what has animated me to research not only him but everyone around him, as they lived, from the Guilds to merchants to privy pickers and noblemen.
Sometimes just skewing my viewpoint gave me insights I didn’t have before – for example, here in the States we had a Civil War (some still call it the War between the States, or, The Great Unpleasantness, I kid you not) technically the fighting lasted about 4 years or so – that’s it, FOUR years. Some states and towns never did bother to proclaim or let their black populations know that they had been emancipated by President Lincoln, who was in fact assassinated by a southern Democrat. Four years, actual fighting. But that ‘war’ is still being fought, by many, and for many reasons, to this day, all over this country. The south may have gotten the brunt of the ‘blame’ for slavery but who handled the slave trade, who profited from it? The North, and when the fighting did happen who bought their way out of fighting, wealthy families IN the North, using the Irish immigrants to take their places.
Now, flash back to Richard, he spent his entire life in a fighting, active Civil War, not one that was four years or 6 years or 10, but all 32 years of his life was a active Civil War. Perhaps life had settled down to comfy and sedate for a Dorset at court with step-daddy E4 or Lord Rivers out at Ludlow, but for the likes of a Lord Hastings or Richard that civil war could erupt again at any moment, especially for Richard who was in the North (people forget Clifford was in hiding ever since 1470 I think). Several authors have dealt with the constant raiding and incursions by the Scots over that porous border in the North, one that I keep on hand is by Alexander Rose but there are others too. It’s a reminder that while E4 took his eye off the ball so often, especially on foreign policy (read Scofield!) once he had LXI’s tribute money, he was only luxuriating in London (or Eltham or Windsor etc) because Richard was in the North (with Mr Fun Henry Percy 4th earl of Northumberland). And if that wasn’t enough he had Lord Stanley breathing down his neck just waiting for a screwup, a miscue, remember it was Stanley who moaned to E4 about Gloucester leaving him – abandoning him to handle the Siege at Berwick all by his lonesome while R and Percy went off to Edinburgh! One can only imagine the messages the postal riders were carrying between Stanley and Edward!
well, IF I could figure out how to post visuals on this site I would, certainly the map will be helpful because I would love to see as many Ricardians as possible jump in and take a bite, there is so much to cover, so much about Richard that the academic won’t ask or query, so we need to do so, any format we can find! I’m leaning more toward a single or maybe two illustrations per page, think more NC Wyeth now, I’m just not manga, not trained that way, but I also concentrate on dialogue so this is real horse of different color! I’ve been following with interest the project to determine Richard’s voice, prob midlands, that is SO COOL, and I have been learning both Middle English and Middle French – I refuse to use any words that he would not have recognized (whoa that in itself has been an education!) but Middle English is charming! His title, Gloucester is in one document alone spelled “Glostre” and “Gloucestre” and I love the “Rycherd” …. now, I have to find your story, and Viscountessw is right, you may just have a seedling there – I love this stuff!!!
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Visuals? Please send them and we shall take a look.
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Superblue, I have no idea where to send them or how! (I predate modern tech lol, I do my own type and drawings… anyway, I recently chucked the whole hideous panels with dialogue bubbles typical in graphic novels and manga,after inking up some 8 trial pages … then deciding I just do NOT like the format. Maybe for another topic or Subject, but not for this one and not for Richard. So I spent the last 4 months rethinking how I want the ‘page’ to look, the size of maybe one main illustration accompanied with smaller one, what kind of borders, and handwritten typeface (I’m done with the computer generated ones, too – and not quite calligraphy that is tiring for the reader in a very short time, hence the reason it is usually reserved today for invitations and announcements) – my linear style is closer to Andrea del Sarto but I grew up on Victor Ambrus illustrations so I’m a hybrid (like most artists).
right now the first amended “Preamble” is three pages, entirely not like a manga, but not like NC Wyeth’s Robin Hood or the Black Arrow either (too much type not enough imagery!) I’m leaning more towards 75% imagery per page with just enough written connective tissue to keep the narrative coherent. ALOT can be understood if the imagery is successfully detailed with anecdotal material (and so the research! I am currently fighting with a proper reconstruction of Baynard’s, the scene of so many events and scenes in this book as it was in Richard’s life that summer, what engravings etc that we have are all post-R3 when H7 and then E1 allowed extensive alterations to Baynard’s- I need all of that to GO). Ditto Chapel St Thomas on the Bridge, which H8 destroyed, oh I mean “dissolved”
let me know what you mean by send the images (sorry I really have no clue) and I’ll take it from there, righ tnow I leave everything on Canson translucent tracing paper (my favorite, I like to layer the parts, ie borders, type, figural forms, etc to create the finished piece, not at al hazy, it hangs together better than one would imagine).
hope this helps (???)
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Viscountessw,
Just imagine what would have come of young Richard of Bordeaux IF his father had not been the heroic Black Prince, a bonafide warrior of merit and accomplishment, someone his younger brothers could not just shove aside as some bumbling lout who cost them France drained the Exchequer, was pelted with hatred by the commons (hmm that would have been Gaunt), no, I think the only reason his loving uncles had to let him be king, at least in name, was first there were so many of THEM, and, the father was probably the best of that lot! All those ‘if’s” – if E3 had died at 50, at 45… and Edward the Black Prince would have been for the Fourth Edward, presumably his son Richard better prepared for what was to come?
the seachange that I forgot to mention – that was lost with Bosworth – was instead the one H7 wrought, which due to the type of research I need for this project, involves an area that seems to be passed over by Tudor enthusiasts, this obsessively paranoid tribe literally created a police state, a fully functioning police state ushered in by H7 and perfected by his granddaughter E1. I don’t have to exaggerate of fall back on hyperbole, H7 left copious notes in his Record books, every last farthing he paid for informers and spies (he spent a fortune on them; he may have kept EoY on a manically tight budget but he threw the coin around when it came to surveillance of his own population)
Thanks to Ian Mortimer I am somewhat sensitive to the parallel circumstances of H4, before he became king his dopey father decides to legitimate FOUR teenage bastards when Bolingbroke has already provided good old dad with FOUR legitimate heirs to carry on Gaunt’s line, THEN when he is king he’s plagued with rebellions and assassination attempts, some quite creative! so I am eager to see where he fits into your book, surely he will have his place!
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Oh yes, Bolingbroke features in the book! I’d like to go really wild with the fictional aspect, and kill him off before he got to usurping Richard. In fact, I’d like to have John Holand unseat him in a tournament. A nasty fatal fall in which Bolingbroke is extinguished when his horse rolls over and flattens him! 😏 Well, maybe not flatten exactly, he’d be in armour, but you know what I mean. However, I’ll curb my flights of fancy.
Now, when it comes to ways of exterminating Henry VII, my imagination could come up with a few corking scenarios. 😁
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