A genealogical illustration …

… of Lewis’ The Survival of the Princes in the Tower. Here is the pedigree, incorporating the “Simnel” and “Warbeck” hypotheses but also Jack Leslau’s theory involving More and Hans Holbein’s painting.

Keeping it in the family

You will have seen him if you have been to Richard III’s final resting place. There are eight small statues on the main entrance (the Vaughan Porch, left) of St. Martin’s Cathedral but only one of them is wearing a doublet and hose, showing him to have lived a century later than the others. This is… Continue reading Keeping it in the family

Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen ….

Lucy Worsley can always been relied upon t)o be entertaining, and her latest documentary – BBC – Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen (2018 – is well up to standard. As the title suggests, she was going to reproduce the sort of amazing fireworks display that might have been created for Elizabeth I. In… Continue reading Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen ….

A truncated reign and a truncated monarch

Right at the start of this series, Helen Castor (left) takes a black marker pen and illustrates the cause of the 1553 crisis on a large sheet of paper. Beginning with Henry VII, very few of his legitimate male descendants were alive at the start of that year – eliminating the obvious illegitimate cases, we… Continue reading A truncated reign and a truncated monarch

Richard’s first resting place

… was the Newarke Church in the 1331 Hospital of the Annunciation, in which he laid from August 22-25 1485, also described here. The Earl of Leicester at the time of the construction was Henry of Lancaster, son of Edmund Crouchback. This is the Hawthorn Building of de Montfort University, on the same site today.… Continue reading Richard’s first resting place