Richard III was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. His defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth Field marked the end of the Middle Ages in England.
Edward V was King of England from 9 April to 25 June 1483. He succeeded his father, Edward IV, upon the latter's death. Edward V was never crowned, and his brief reign was dominated by the influence of his uncle and Lord Protector, the Duke of Gloucester, who deposed him to reign as King Richard III; this was confirmed by the Titulus Regius, an Act of Parliament which denounced any further claims through Edward IV's heirs by delegitimising Edward V and all of his siblings. This was later repealed by Henry VII, who wished to legitimise his reign by marrying Elizabeth of York, Edward V's eldest sister.
John Morton was an English cleric, civil lawyer and administrator during the period of the Wars of the Roses. He entered royal service under Henry VI and was a trusted councillor under Edward IV and Henry VII. Edward IV made him Bishop of Ely and under Henry VII he became Lord Chancellor, Archbishop of Canterbury and a cardinal.
Elizabeth of York was Queen of England from her marriage to King Henry VII on 18 January 1486 until her death in 1503. She was the daughter of King Edward IV and his wife, Elizabeth Woodville, and her marriage to Henry VII followed his victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field, which marked the end of the civil war known as the Wars of the Roses.
Anne Neville was Queen of England from 26 June 1483 until her death in 1485 as the wife of King Richard III. She was the younger of the two daughters and co-heiresses of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, and Anne de Beauchamp. Before her marriage to Richard, she had been Princess of Wales as the wife of Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, the only son and heir apparent of King Henry VI.
The Princes in the Tower refers to the mystery of the fate of the deposed King Edward V of England and his younger brother Prince Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, heirs to the throne of King Edward IV of England. The brothers were the only sons of the king by his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, living at the time of their father's death in 1483. Aged 12 and 9 years old, respectively, they were lodged in the Tower of London by their paternal uncle and England's regent, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for Edward V's forthcoming coronation. Before the young king's coronation, however, he and his brother were declared illegitimate by Parliament. Gloucester ascended the throne as Richard III.
Dominic Mancini was an Italian monk who visited England in 1482–3. He witnessed the events leading up to Richard III being offered the English crown. He left in 1483 and wrote a report of what he had witnessed. He called it: De Occupatione Regni Anglie per Riccardum Tercium. The account is a major source of information about the period, but it remained in a French library in Lille until rediscovered in 1934 and published by C. A. J. Armstrong.
Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, KG was an English peer. His family was a venerable one, and by the time Thomas reached adulthood, they were extremely influential in national politics. He claimed a direct bloodline from King Edward I. His father died when Thomas and his elder brother were young. John soon died, and Thomas inherited the Earldom of Nottingham. He had probably been friends with the king, Richard II, since he was young, and as a result, he was a royal favourite, a role he greatly profited from. He accompanied Richard on his travels around the kingdom and was elected to the Order of the Garter. Richard's lavish dispersal of his patronage made him unpopular with parliament and other members of the English nobility, and Mowbray fell out badly with the king's uncle, John of Gaunt.
The history of the English penny from 1154 to 1485 covers the period of the House of Plantagenet, up to the Battle of Bosworth Field which brought about the beginning of the Tudor period. The Plantagenet era saw an overall rise in quality of the coinage but saw a decline in the number of mints used to produce coins.
William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings KG was an English nobleman. A loyal follower of the House of York during the Wars of the Roses, he became a close friend and one of the most important courtiers of King Edward IV, whom he served as Lord Chamberlain. At the time of Edward's death he was one of the most powerful and richest men in England. He was executed following accusations of treason by Edward's brother and ultimate successor, Richard III. The date of his death is disputed; early histories give 13 June, which is the traditional date.
The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses is an 1888 children's novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is both a historical adventure novel and a romance novel. It first appeared as a serial in 1883 with the subtitle "A Tale of Tunstall Forest" beginning in Young Folks; A Boys' and Girls' Paper of Instructive and Entertaining Literature, vol. XXII, no. 656 and ending in vol. XXIII, no. 672 —Stevenson had finished writing it by the end of summer. It was printed under the pseudonym Captain George North. He alludes to the time gap between the serialisation and the publication as one volume in 1888 in his preface "Critic [parodying Dickens's 'Cricket'] on the Hearth": "The tale was written years ago for a particular audience..." The Paston Letters were Stevenson's main literary source for The Black Arrow. The Black Arrow consists of 79,926 words.
Ricardians are people who dispute the negative posthumous reputation of King Richard III of England. Richard III has long been portrayed unfavourably, most notably in Shakespeare's play Richard III, in which he is portrayed as murdering his 12-year-old nephew Edward V to secure the English throne for himself. Ricardians believe these portrayals are false and politically motivated by Tudor propaganda.
The Great Seal of the Realm is a seal that is used in the United Kingdom to symbolise the sovereign's approval of state documents. It is also known as the Great Seal of the United Kingdom. To make it, sealing wax is melted in a metal mould or matrix and impressed into a wax figure that is attached by cord or ribbon to documents that the monarch wishes to seal officially. The formal keeper of the seal is the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain.
The Tudor myth is the tradition in English history, historiography and literature that presents the 15th century, including the Wars of the Roses, in England as a dark age of anarchy and bloodshed. The narrative that the Tudor myth perpetrated was curated with the political purpose of promoting the Tudor period of the 16th century as a golden age of peace, law, order, and prosperity. The hope was to elevate King Henry VII's rulership compared to his predecessors.
Richard Plantagenet or Richard of Eastwell was a reclusive bricklayer who was claimed to be a son of Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England.
Richard III of England has been depicted in literature and popular culture many times. In the Tudor period he was invariably portrayed as a villain, most famously in Shakespeare's play Richard III, but also in other literature of the period. Richard's life was not much depicted again until the 20th century when the "Ricardian" movement sought to restore his reputation. Much of more recent creative literature has portrayed him in a positive light. However his reputation as a hunchbacked villain has remained a familiar historical cliché within popular culture.
Ricardian socialism is a branch of classical economic thought based upon the work of the economist David Ricardo (1772–1823). Despite Ricardo being a capitalist economist, the term is used to describe economists in the 1820s and 1830s who developed a theory of capitalist exploitation from the theory developed by Ricardo that stated that labor is the source of all wealth and exchange value. This principle extends back to the principles of English philosopher John Locke. The Ricardian socialists reasoned that labor is entitled to all it produces, and that rent, profit and interest were not natural outgrowths of the free market process but were instead distortions. They argued that private ownership of the means of production should be supplanted by cooperatives owned by associations of workers.
The remains of Richard III, the last English king killed in battle and last king of the House of York, were discovered within the site of the former Grey Friars Priory in Leicester, England, in September 2012. Following extensive anthropological and genetic testing, the remains were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015.
Philippa Jayne Langley is a British writer, producer, and Ricardian, who is best known for her role in the discovery and 2012 exhumation of Richard III, as part of the Looking for Richard project, for which she was awarded an MBE. Langley has written books and appeared in film-length documentaries on the search for Richard III and was portrayed in the 2022 film The Lost King.
Louis John Frederick Ashdown-Hill MBE FSA, commonly known as John Ashdown-Hill, was an independent historian and author of books on late medieval English history with a focus on the House of York and Richard III. Ashdown-Hill died on 18 May 2018; he had had motor neurone disease for some time.
