J D Davies - Historian and Author

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richard iii

Richard III, Game of Thrones, and Invading France

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Pretty much everybody else on the interweb-thingy has had their fourpenn’orth about last week’s reburial of King Richard III, and I suppose it was only fitting that the events divided opinion just as sharply as the Marmite Monarch himself – depending on your point of view and which bloggers and tweeters you read, either a dignified and appropriate paying of respects or a ludicrous and unjustifiably expensive pantomime (accompanying those other ongoing panto spats, namely ‘He killed his nephews!”Oh no he didn’t!’ and ‘It’s not him at all!”Oh yes it is!’). I’m not going to get involved in any of that, calling upon the historian’s ancient and infallible get-out clause of ‘it’s not my period’, but I thought I’d pick up on just one element that some of those tuning in to the Dead Dick show might have thought a bit odd: namely, the inclusion of ‘King of France’ among his titles, and the appearance of the French royal arms on his new tomb.

The reason for this, of course, can be found in the causes of ‘the Hundred Years War’, which ended just a few months after Richard’s birth. Philip IV, King of France, who reigned from 1285 to 1314, had three sons, and might have gone to his grave assuming that the royal House of Capet’s succession to the throne was secure. But each of the three succeeded in turn and did not reign for very long: Louis X from 1314 to 1316, Philip V from 1316 to 1322, and Charles IV from 1322 to 1328. None of the brothers fathered a son. In 1316, France adopted the Salic Law, specifying that the throne could pass only to males and only through male lines. This barred from the succession the sister of the three short-lived brothers, namely Isabella, the Queen of King Edward II of England. On Charles IV’s death, therefore, the throne of France passed to the brothers’ first cousin, Philip, Count of Valois, who thus established the new royal dynasty of that name. Isabella refused to accept this and asserted her right in the name of her son, the new King Edward III. Some ten years later, this claim provided the pretext for the outbreak of the war between England and France. From then on, Kings of England also included ‘King of France’ among their titles, and the Fleur-de-Lis of France were quartered with the three lions of England on the royal standard.

Royal standard of later medieval kings of England
Royal standard of later medieval kings of England

(Incidentally, the reigns of the last Capet kings, and the subsequent clash of claims to the throne of France, inspired a series of historical novels, The Accursed Kings, by the French author Maurice Druon. These were read in turn by an American novelist, who took elements of Druon’s stories, mixed in ingredients from England’s Wars of the Roses, added extra dragons, and came up with a moderately successful series of his own, now best known by the title of the first book, Game of Thrones.)

The English monarch’s claim to the French throne remained a live political issue throughout the long duration of the wars, providing, for instance, the theoretical justification for Henry V’s Agincourt campaign (Shakespeare gave the Archbishop of Canterbury a very long and convoluted speech explaining the Salic Law in Act I Scene II of Henry V, which must have had the Globe audience snoring en masse in the aisles). But after the final English defeat at the battle of Castillon in 1453, the claim became increasingly academic, if not somewhat ludicrous, even though, until 1558, England still possessed a tiny foothold on French soil (the Pale of Calais). English Kings, notably Henry VIII, still went campaigning in France from time to time, but not even Bluff King Hal ever seriously expected to conquer the entire country and become its king. Yet his successors maintained the theoretical claim, counting King of France as one of their titles, until 1802, when it was abandoned in the Treaty of Amiens – ironically, at a time when France had no King, but was under the rule of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte.

During what really is my period, namely the seventeenth century, the claim to the French crown led to all sorts of oddities and logical nonsenses. For example, both Charles II and James II were exiled in the land of, and directly subsidised by, King Louis XIV, the man whose throne they claimed as their own. And for a brief period just after the Restoration, it seems as though Charles II made at least a half hearted attempt to assert his rights as ‘King of France’. The title given to General George Monck, the man who restored him to the throne, was Duke of Albemarle – but Aumale, from which the name was taken, was in Normandy. (And although the claim to the French throne was abandoned in 1802, the claim of English monarchs to be the Dukes of Normandy survives to this day, notably in the Channel Islands where Queen Elizabeth II is toasted as le duc.) The claim to the French throne is also the only possible justification for some dubious legal chicanery in naval warfare, as I noted in Pepys’s Navy:

Meanwhile, in a breathtaking reassertion of claims to sovereignty over large parts of France that would not have displeased his predecessor King Henry V, James’s patent of appointment [as Lord High Admiral of England], ratified on 29 January 1661, also named him as Lord High Admiral of Normandy, Calais, Gascony and Aquitaine, and a further patent of 20 February 1662 added Dunkirk, barely nine months before Charles II (whose titles still included ‘King of France’, the legal basis for James’s appointments) sold the town to Louis XIV. This was not just quaint legalism, nor nostalgia for lost glories. When hostilities with the Dutch loomed and eventually broke out openly in 1664-5, James was able to use his splendid medieval titles to issue letters of marque and reprisal to local privateers from Dunkirk and Honfleur, a strategically astute act which threatened any Dutch shipping that attempted to run up or down the English Channel by hugging the neutral French coast.

The claim to the French throne may have been abandoned in 1802, but when I was at Oxford, the university possessed an Invade and Conquer France Society. (From memory, though, the ‘invasion’ never actually got further than the wine section of a hypermarket in Boulogne.) In 1982, at the height of the Cold War and in the immediate aftermath of the Falklands War, the society’s chairman wrote to Foreign Secretary Francis Pym to assert that France was the real national enemy, and that British foreign policy should be adjusted accordingly. ‘Due to other preoccupations’, wrote the suave and deadpan Pym, ‘the repossession of Normandy, Aquitaine, Maine, Touraine, Anjou etc may have slipped a little in the table of British foreign policy objectives over the last 600 years.’ Richard III, King of England and France, would have been appalled by such out-and-out defeatism.

 

Of Kings, Car Parks and Bandwagons

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After the discovery of the remains of King Richard III, it seems to be obligatory for every history blogger, Tweeter and Facebooker to have their say on the matter, so for what it’s worth, here are a few of my thoughts. First, bouquets to Leicester University’s archaeologists for a stunning piece of work; second, brickbats to Channel 4 for producing such a dire documentary about it, analysed in this perceptive and funny account of ‘Richard III day’ . (As one Tweeter noted, though, the C-list status of some of those involved in the programme can probably be explained by the fact that no-one actually expected the dig to find anything, so why deploy the big guns for what was almost certain to be a non-event?) But no sooner has the dust settled on the previous set of big questions – is it really him? was he a hunchback? just how big was his parking fine? – than battle is being joined over the next set, notably where and how should he be buried.The existing memorial to Richard III, Leicester Cathedral

Before I jump on the bandwagon and join the massed ranks of those who’ve been pontificating on these matters, I should issue a few disclaimers. Firstly, I am not and never have been a member of the Richard III Society, to coin a phrase. I think members of the society have done a tremendous job both in funding the successful dig and, in the longer term, in revising historical assessments of many aspects of the fifteenth century. But as the documentary demonstrated, there’s sometimes been a tendency for some of its members to reject the historical record, to twist the facts, and to indulge in unhistorical wishful thinking; maybe there’s already a fundamentalist breakaway group out there who still can’t accept that their hero really did have a curved spine and are convinced that the skeleton must have been planted by a conspiracy of David Starkey, the Illuminati and Barack Obama. On the other hand, and despite sharing Welsh origins with them, I have little time for the Tudors, too. Frankly, I spent far too many years teaching the long haul from Henry VII to Elizabeth I to have much residual affection for any of them (besides, I’ve always preferred the Stuarts anyway). Moreover, the unwillingness of many Tudor historians to even consider new thinking about Richard III is, alas, typical of the complacent arrogance that characterises too many university history departments, whose members are often unwilling even to consider left-field thinking from outside their own ranks. For example, many years ago I used to show my students a televised trial of Richard III. The most convincing witnesses, and the most compelling evidence, came from the prosecution; but the jury acquitted, and as my students invariably said, that had to have been due largely to the unfortunate performance of the selfsame Dr Starkey, whose formidable command of the evidence was offset by his brusque manner, now a little (but only a little) mellowed by age, and unconcealed contempt for the defence case. So with all of that said…

1/ Where should he be buried? Within the last couple of days, the citizens of York have launched an e-petition insisting he should be buried there, and unsurprisingly, Leicester, already designated as the burial place by the Ministry of Justice, has launched a counter-petition. (A shame that Leicester City and York City are in different divisions of the Football League, really: it would be quite jolly to watch their fans arguing over their relative claims to bury a medieval monarch – ‘One Richard of York! There’s only one Richard of York!’ – rather than querying the eyesight and parentage of the referee.) Of course, Leicester and York can deploy formidably big battalions on their sides – large populations, ferocious civic pride, local councils keen to boost tourism, several MPs each, and so on. No such resources are available to another potential candidate for the royal burial, the tiny village of Fotheringhay in Northamptonshire,Fotheringhay church although a very few advocates for its case can be found on Twitter. Arguably, though, Fotheringhay has a better claim than either of the heavyweight cities: it’s where Richard was born, and where his parents are buried. The church was enlarged partly to serve as the mausoleum of the House of York, and although half of it disappeared in the reign of Richard’s great-nephew Henry VIII, it’s still a remarkably impressive and beautiful building. So before it all ends in tears, with enraged Yorkists rampaging through Leicester and vice-versa, might it not be worth at least considering the merits of an attractive and highly appropriate neutral location?

2/ How should he be buried? The debate over whether Richard should be buried according to Anglican or Catholic rites began almost as soon as the press conference at Leicester ended. I have no agenda here – again, I’m not and never have been an Anglican or a Roman Catholic. However, I think it’s worth pointing out that there is a precedent, which so far seems to have been almost entirely ignored or forgotten. In 1982 the remains of the Tudor warship Mary Rose, lost in 1545, were raised from the seabed, and the bones of one sailor were later reburied in Portsmouth Cathedral. I watched the service, and it was remarkably moving. But he was given a Catholic burial, according to the medieval Latin Sarum Rite (thanks to the Portsmouth Cathedral Twitter account via Ian Mortimer for that last piece of information). So if that was felt to be appropriate for an ordinary citizen of pre-Reformation England, why should it not be thought appropriate for an English head of state who was known to be deeply devout and who unquestioningly acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope?

3/ Should it be a state funeral? At the end of the day, this is all a question of semantics, although no doubt many in the Richard III Society won’t regard it as such. After all, if you did a straw poll in any high street in Britain and asked people if they thought Princess Diana had a state funeral, I suspect the vast majority would say yes. But she didn’t: she had a public funeral with royal honours. It’s entirely likely that politically correct and historically illiterate politicians and civil servants will oppose a state funeral, partly on grounds of cost and partly because of negative perceptions of Richard’s reputation. (If you think I’m being too harsh on our leaders, I refer you to the Deputy Prime Minister’s recent display of woeful ignorance about the history and significance of the Duchy of Lancaster.) However, there is no absolutely incontrovertible evidence of Richard’s guilt on any charge – and state, or at least full royal, honours have been accorded many times to more conclusively awful individuals. There is also a long royal tradition of showing respect to the remains of deposed or discredited predecessors: Richard himself had Henry VI reburied in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, while George III paid for a spectacular Canova monument to the Jacobite pretenders in St Peter’s, Rome,The Jacobite memorial, Rome and Queen Victoria paid for new tombs for her undistinguished ancestors Robert III and James III of Scots in Paisley and Cambuskenneth Abbeys respectively. (The exceptions to the rule were the Tudors and Charles II, although there were obviously extenuating circumstances for the latter’s violence towards the remains of Oliver Cromwell.) Other countries provide many other potential parallels: the remains of Tsar Nicholas II were buried with full honours in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, St Petersburg, in 1998, while in 2011, and despite the fact that Austria had been a republic for 93 years, the Archduke Otto, last Crown Prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was given the traditional funeral rites of the Imperial Habsburgs in Vienna. Ultimately, too, Richard III was the last King of England to die in battle, so to deny him at least a significant level of royal and military honours would be both an injustice to him and an act of singular disrespect to the history of the country itself. Thus, and regardless of whether one is a Ricardian or a ‘Tudorista’, anyone with a love of history should be supporting a spectacular royal funeral – a Catholic one, with the Latin mass – for King Richard III.