As a long-standing member of the Richard III Society who has made the trip to Bosworth Field in Leicestershire several times, this week has been truly unbelievable. 

The ceremonies of the reception of the King's body by Leicester Cathedral last Sunday and his re-internment on Thursday were both very moving.

The controversy as to whether King Richard III was a good king or a bad king will no doubt, continue.

Those who look at Richard as a monster insist that he ordered the murder of his eldest brother's sons, the little princes in the tower to consolidate his claim to the crown; they maintain that with the princes still alive, he could never sit safely on the throne of England.  

What has always puzzled me and what has never, to my mind, been successfully explained by historical scholars is what good would this murder have been since his (dead) elder brother, George Duke of Clarence's son was still alive?

Not only did Richard not have the boy (Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick ) murdered, but he knighted him in September 1483 and after the death of his own son, Edward of Middleham, declared him his heir. 

After his victory at Bosworth, Henry VII kept the Earl of Warwick a prisoner in the Tower of London and eventually had him executed on the 21st. November 1499.

It has always been my view that on balance, it was Henry Tudor who was responsible for the death of the princes just as he was responsible for the judicial murder of the Earl of Warwick.  His spin doctors, among them William Shakespeare, made sure that Richard III got all the blame.

 

Dr. Charles A. Gauci

 

Sannat