That JORVIK Viking Thing Podcast

Richard III and York with Matthew Lewis

July 16, 2021 Miranda Schmeiderer, Matthew Lewis
That JORVIK Viking Thing Podcast
Richard III and York with Matthew Lewis
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This episode, we’re stepping out of the Viking era to talk about a topic near and dear to York: Richard III. One of the most controversial rulers in British history, York has always been loyal to the memory of Richard. But why? To understand that, we spoke with Matthew Lewis, chair of the Richard III Society, author of several books on the Wars of the Roses, and one of the hosts of History Hit’s new podcast Gone Medieval. He explains how Richard helped York out of a few sticky situations when he was still a Duke, how Richard championed the common man during his time in Yorkshire, and how his trip to York after his coronation may have led to his downfall.

Want to find Matthew? Check out his website, twitter, and new podcast!

Listen and enjoy, and please consider leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!

Miranda:

In Viking times, a"thing" was a gathering a place where leaders and warriors could meet and talk. In the 21st century, our "thing" is a virtual place where history academics and enthusiasts from around the world can come together to share knowledge. I'm your host, Miranda Schmeiderer. Hold on to your helmets for this episode of That JORVIK Viking Thing podcast. Today, we're stepping away from the Vikings to learn about another topic near and dear to York: Richard III. One of the most controversial rulers in British history, York has always been loyal to the memory of Richard. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the JORVIK Group ran the Richard III Experience. And this summer we're leading walking tours, examining how York might have looked during Richard's life and how the city geared up for his royal visit - something we'll talk about later in this episode. But to learn more about Richard and York, we decided to talk to an expert on the topic: Matthew Lewis, chair of the Richard III society, author of several books on the Wars of the Roses, and one of the hosts of History Hit's new podcast, Gone Medieval. Here's my conversation with Matthew. Well, first of all, thank you for being on the podcast. We're very excited. I'm a very big fan of your podcast, your new one. It's amazing.

Matthew:

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, though, it sort of came out of nowhere. And it seems to be doing really, really well.

Miranda:

That's amazing. Well, it's very interesting. I'm definitely excited to hear what else you guys have in store. So let's just start from the beginning, really, for our listeners who don't have a prior knowledge of Richard III, myself included. Can you give us a brief summary of who he was and why he's so well known?

Matthew:

I can try whether I can be brief or not is another matter is anyone who's ever asked me to talk about Richard III will tell you.

Miranda:

Yeah, it's a big question.

Matthew:

So here we go. Richard III is, I mean, he's born 2ndof October 1452, at Fotheringhey Castle in Northamptonshire. He is the fourth surviving son of Richard Duke of York, and Cecily Neville. So Richard Duke of York is perhaps the most powerful, richest nobleman in the country at the time. He's a distant cousin of King Henry VI, viewed by many as next in line to the throne for as long as Henry VI has no children. So it's an important family. But as a fourth son, he's probably not meant to be a very important person. Hence, you know, his birth isn't particularly well recorded. We only know his birthday, because he recorded it in one of his books later on as being his own birthday. His life is, I mean, he's born in 1452, which is kind of right on the cusp of the beginnings of the Wars of the Roses. So he's born shortly after his dad has been embarrassed and put in his place at Dartford when he's tried to oppose King Henry VI. So he's really born into this emerging conflict and it dominates his childhood. So for example, in 1459, we see him at Ludlow during what's called the Battle of Ludford Bridge. There's not really a battle, what we get is a royalist army running through Ludlow, emptying the pubs, stealing everything that they can steal, and generally having what might look like a football fans day out in Ludlow, but probably slightly more serious. And so Richard passes his seventh birthday just before this happens in Ludlow. So the build up to this is his dad getting ready for a military face off with the king again, so it looks probably quite exciting to a six year old boy, passing his seventh birthday surrounded by all these soldiers, and then within days, his dad has vanished, run away to Ireland, all of his older brothers - well, he's got two really much older brothers, the future Edward IV and Edmund, they run off as well. His famous first cousin, Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, the famous kingmaker, runs off and leaves them as does Warwick's dad, the Earl of Salisbury. So as a seven year old boy, he's kind of left standing in Ludlow with his mom, his slightly older brother George and his older sister Margaret, watching this rampaging army. So you know, his childhood is literally tossed around on the Wars of the Roses. In 1460, his dad claims the throne and tries to replace King Henry VI, and they come up with this strange act of accord, which is not really an accord because nobody is happy with it, whereby Henry VI will stay on the throne for the rest of his life, and York and his heirs will become heirs to the throne. All of this goes off the rails when York is killed at the Battle of Wakefield on the 13th of December 1460, so before that year is out, and early on in 1461, Richard is shipped off into exile. So at the age of eight, he and his brother George are literally put in a boat with half a dozen servants and sent across the channel to nobody knows where to nobody knows what fate. They end up in Burgundy. The Duke of Burgundy kind of doesn't know what to do with these two boys because he has lots of Lancastrian blood, he's quite friendly with the Lancastrian kings but doesn't want to offend what looks like the ascendant house of York, but these two boys are kind of pushed off to the side until he works out what to do with them. So again, this is kind of quite a frightening, exposing experience for an eight year old boy. His brother Edward goes on to win the Battle of Towton in 1461, becomes King Edward IV, so then all of a sudden, Richard and George are swept off to the court of the Duke of Burgundy and heralded as princes, brothers to the new king of England and that, they must be there, heads spinning, thinking what on earth is going on? We don't have a clue. They're shipped back off to England, ready for their brother's coronation and all of a sudden they're royal princes. I should point out that the the other older brother Edmund is killed alongside his father at the Battle of Wakefield. So George then becomes heir to the throne, while Edward IV has no children. And Richard is suddenly second in line to the throne. So already before he's 10 years old, he's gone from being the fourth son of an important noble family who was probably destined not for very much, possibly even the church, to now being second in line to the throne of England. It's pretty dizzying. You know, for any 7, 8, 9 year old boy to be going through all of this. He then undergoes a fair bit of training with the kingmaker, the Earl of Warwick, his first cousin, spends some time in his custody, learning how to be a nobleman from him. Warwick falls out with Edward IV as the 1460s go on. They end up in a big squabble, fight. Warwick has Edward ejected from the kingdom and Richard joins him at the end of 1470. So at 18 years old, goes off into his second period of exile. He chooses to join his brother, you know, George has joined the Earl of Warwick. So there's a division of the family's loyalties. He could have stayed in England with his mentor, George is the brother who he's been closest to all of his life but Edward is someone I think he sees as a father figure after the death of his dad. We get lots of accounts of Edward going to visit Richard and George and Margaret every day and making sure they're cared for and things, so he very quickly nails his colours to Edward's mast and heads off into exile in 1471. You know, I quite often depict this as Edward- people say, you know, he's got out of shape. He's let himself go and everything else, he heads off into Burgundy, kicked off the throne and you get this kind of sense of a Rocky training montage. He's running through the streets of Bruges up and down steps, punching joints of beef and all of this sort of stuff, getting himself back in shape, invading then in 1471 and Richard comes with him, gets his first taste of battle at 18 at the Battle of Barnet, where he has to fight the Earl of Warwick his first cousin, his former tutor, his brother's former chief supporter, and Warwick is killed, Richard is injured during that battle. They get back to London, take control of the capital again, march almost straight out. Whatever injury Richard had, we're not sure what it was, but he was clearly well enough to go off on the next campaign to Tewksbury. So the Battle of Tewksbury on the 4th of May 1471, at which the remainder of the Lancastrian cause is kind of defeated so Henry VI's only son Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, is killed at the Battle of Tewksbury, sort of ending that line. Henry VI meets a mysterious end - is probably murdered when they get back to London, just to do away with all of that threat altogether. Richard is implicated in the death of Henry VI, simply because one source mentions that he was at the Tower during the night in which Henry was probably killed. And that's kind of the tenuous links to crimes that we start to get with Richard fairly early on. It's possible that Richard was involved. But if he did it, he was definitely on instructions from his brother Edward, he wouldn't go around murdering former kings or whatever else on a whim and not face any consequences. So then for the 1470s, Richard ends up marrying Warwick the kingmaker's daughter Anne, inherits the big Northern patrimony of the Neville family. So loads and loads of Yorkshire is suddenly his. He installs himself in the North. And this is where the real connection with York and the North of England comes in. Richard is often viewed as the only Northerner ever to become a king of England. He was born in Fotheringhey in Northamptonshire, but spends a lot of time in the 1460s and then the whole of the 1470s into the early 1480s, in the North of England, carving out a really great reputation for himself that people like and respect and even love Richard, they like him as a lord. And then I guess if his career had ended there, he may have been a footnote in history as a reasonably successful nobleman in the 15th century. But his oldest brother Edward IV goes and dies unexpectedly in 1483. And then we get a whole load of controversy about what happened in that year. But in terms of the brief facts, Richard is appointed protector by his brother and protector doesn't mean that he has custody of the princes, the sons of Edward IV. Protector is a peculiar office to 15th century England, which essentially gives the holder of the office military control of England, so responsibility for defending England from outside threats as well as internal threats. So it's a military post, it doesn't really put Richard in charge of the government or the princes. But as this spring and the weeks go on, Richard claims, perhaps believes that there are plots against him. He arrests some of the Woodville family of Edward IV's wife, takes Edward V into his custody, arrives in London, appears to be preparing for the coronation of Edward V. Some will say this was all a show. Some will say it was entirely genuine, we really don't know is the truth. But eventually we get this story that Edward V is illegitimate. And in fact, all of the children of Edward IV are illegitimate and incapable of inheriting the throne because their father had married their mother bigamously. He'd already been married to a lady named Eleanor Talbot. But again, lots of people say this story is entirely made up by Richard as a pretense to steal the throne. I don't entirely by the idea that it's as convenient as some people say it is. But that's a whole 'nother podcast. I'll be here for several hours more talking about that. And so essentially, the government In London say that Edward V can't be king, none of the children of Edward IV can sit on the throne. By now George is dead as well. Richard is the only viable legal, heir to Richard Duke of York who is left alive and therefore is the King. And so Richard takes the throne on the 26th of June 1483, four days after his nephew has been declared illegitimate, and is then crowned at Westminster Abbey goes on to be Richard III and becomes one of the most famous infamous kings we've probably had in our history, even though you know, reigns for just over two years, and yet still manages to garner all of this fascination and interest in debates five centuries later. That probably wasn't a very quick overview, but...

Miranda:

No, that's perfect. That gives us like a really good insight, and especially it leads to my next question. So you've mentioned his, like, tenuous links to crimes, and he seems to be quite a controversial character in history. So why do you think he has that reputation? Is there kind of any grains of truth to it? Or is it just overhyped?

Matthew:

As a Ricardian myself, you know, if it wasn't for the controversy, we wouldn't be talking about him, would we, so let's be honest, the controversy is good in lots of ways. But it's a symptom of the fact that some of this period, particularly the events of 1483, is so badly recorded, for whatever reason, we don't have the kind of monastic chronicles that we used to have, they've died away before the 15th century. We don't have the machinery of government that we see developing under the Tudors a little bit later. So you think of Thomas Cromwell during Henry VIII's reign, creating this kind of civil service almost, recording everything that goes on. We're sitting in a big hole in all of that. So we don't have the information to know for certain what was happening in a lot of these events. And it's always going to be driven by what you think about Richard, if you think he was generally a good guy, you'll probably try and see the best in what he's doing. If you think he was a murderous monster, you're going to be willing to believe that he plotted all of this all along and that Shakespeare is telling the truth. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. It's all a little bit murky. There ares later sourc s that talk about Richa d murdering Edward the Prince f Wales at the Battle f Tewksbury. Most of t e contemporary sources talk abo t Edward being a casualty of t e battlefield. And if anyone had a vendetta against Edward, th Prince of Wales it was Georg, Richard's brother, for all so ts of reasons. George had been kind of pushed out of positi n by Edward Prince of Wales, o he had an axe to grind, hich Richard didn't. So if a yone singled the prince out to urder him, it was most likely G orge, probably not Richard, but e was probably just a casualty f the battle But this story develops that Richard, you know, stuck a knife in his back and laughed about it while he did it. Same with the murder of Henry VI. We can't say that Richard didn't do it. Because he was constable of England, he was responsible for law and order for the King. Edward may well have told him to get it done. It's not saying that Richard went and did it himself physically, but also murdering a king is a pretty big thing. And Edward IV has got to be careful how he does it and who he allows to do it, because you don't want to set a precedent that it's alright for any Joe Bloggs off the street to walk in and club a King to death because Edward would be the next victim of that. So we can't say that Richard didn't do it. We can say that if he did it, it was definitely on the orders of his brother. And he was instructed to do it. But the assertion that he does it, as I said, is based on this source that says he was around the Tower of London at the time that Henry might have died. And it's all you know, might have been could have been was there at the time.

Miranda:

(sarcastically) So we can't really rule him out, so clearly, he must have done it, right?

Matthew:

That's it. So for some people, that's enough to rule him in and find him guilty. So we can't say that he didn't do it. But I think the evidence that he did is pretty tenuous. When we get to 1483, it all revolves around what you think of Richard motives, how early you think he wanted the throne, if he wanted it at all. A Ricardian point of view would say that he wasn't after the throne, that all of this was a series of pretty catastrophic events that leads to Richard being the only heir available to the throne. You know, lots of people will then say, well, that's nonsense. he plotted it right from the very beginning. He took custody of Edward V because he meant to find a way to get him off the throne. We have a council meeting on the 13th of June in 1483, at which Richard accuses several people of treason, Lord Hastings is taken out and beheaded. And for lots of people, that's about getting rid of Lord Hastings who would have been one of Edward V's key supporters, he was sort of Edward IV's best mate. So had a vested interest in Edward V becoming King, it kept him in power. So lots of people will say that Richard is clearing the way to the throne for himself by removing all of these people. The other side of that story is that there are contemporary and even later Tudor sources that say that Lord Hastings was plotting against Richard by this point, that he was up to something, that he was holding meetings discussing how to deal with Richard, and perhaps even that he was still involved in some plotting with the French. So Lord Hastings hated the Woodvilles with a passion, he had a long running feud with them. And it's possible that he turned to the French to try and oust the Woodville family when they sort of tried to retain the power that they had as the Queen's family and the new King's family. So that all of that pivots on what you think of Richard and his motives by that point. Was he rooting out treason in the kingdom? Or was he clearing the path so that he could depose his own nephew and take the throne? I don't know is the frustrating answer, unfortunately. I come to it as a Ricardian and trying to see the best in Richard. But I'm sure your listeners will be, some of them will be shaking their heads and rolling their eyes and and saying absolute nonsense. He was a monster. And so all of this controversy then swirls around Richard. We get a story in 1485 - his wife passes away, dies of tuberculosis, but we get a story that Richard has poisoned his wife because he wants to marry his own niece. There is absolutely no evidence to support that idea. But we do have Richard appearing in front of the authorities in London making a statement that he doesn't mean to marry his niece. So clearly it's a contemporary rumor, people were saying this when Richard was around and he felt the need, pretty embarrassingly, I'd have thought, for a king to come out in front of a crowd and say, I don't want to marry my niece. That's a bit weird, but clearly, some people thought he did want to. Here's my Ricardian view on that. Richard, when his wife passes away, his only legitimate son has also passed away the year before as a young boy, so personally pretty catastrophic for Richard. Dynastically, also an absolute disaster, he has no heir and he has no wife with him to produce another heir. Richard is only 31, 32 at this point so he's a young man still really, and so he opens negotiations pretty quickly to remarry. And this is the center of these plans is a lady named Joanna of Portugal, a Princess from Portugal. England has lots of links with Portugal. Portugal has lots of Lancastrian blood from John of Gaunt in the royal family there. So this is kind of an idea of joining the red and white rose in the way that Henry VII would do with Elizabeth of York, we see Richard trying to do that as well. Part of those marriage negotiations is for Elizabeth of York, who is the niece that Richard is accused of wanting to marry, to marry a man named Manuel, Duke of Beja, who goes on to actually become King Manuel. So Elizabeth of York could well have ended up married to a man who was going on to be king. So far from Richard being mean to his brother's children, you know, he's making pretty good matches for them, actually. And I think there's an element here of hostile propaganda, picking up the idea that Richard is negotiating a marriage to a Portuguese Princess, and for Elizabeth of York to marry a Portuguese nobleman, and twisting that to start talking about Richard planning to marry his niece himself. All of this obviously means there's lots of dislike for Richard in the country by this point, because people are willing to conjure up this propaganda and to believe it and spread it, so he's not universally liked. I have lots of theories about why that is. Essentially, I think he had some novel ideas that people found incredibly strange for the age and threatening about championing the cause of the common man against the more senior nobility and those with power. And there are lots of instances, particularly in his time in the North, and I think this is why he's still so well liked in the north of England and around York. There are lots of examples of him behaving in this way, but people considering it good lordship. But when the king does it, perhaps it's considered a little bit of a threat to the establishment, the status quo. If we look at who rebels against Richard, they are people who are adversely affected by these policies that we might applaud it from a modern perspective, but he becomes a threat. He's deposed, he loses the Battle of Bosworth in August 1485 and is killed and there is nobody there to support Richard's legacy from then on, so Henry Tudor becomes King Henry VII we get the Tudor dynasty. You know, I don't particularly think the Tudor dynasty in terms of Henry VII and later monarchs, go after Richard III in particular, but I think they don't stop the kind of organic growth of this bad reputation for Richard. Because if Henry VII deposed Richard, then you want to be the hero who's deposing the bad guy. You don't want to be the bad guy deposing the hero. That's not a good look. So they're happy for all of this stuff to organically grow up. And it's interesting that really, it's not until the early 1500s, 1510s, sort of 20 odd years later, 30 years later that we start to get the really negative accounts of Richard from Polydore Vergil, Thomas More and people like that. So I think it's more of an organic thing than the Tudor government really going after Richard in a concerted way. But there's nobody there to back him up, to support him. There's nobody to offend if you give him a bad reputation, because all of his family are already dead. So I think this controversy is allowed to grow around him to paint him as a bad guy who needed to be deposed as an excuse for the Tudor monarchs really to have taken the throne.

Miranda:

Fair enough. But kind of in direct contrast to that, you mentioned his connections to the North and to Yorkshire and to York specifically. So did Richard ever spend any kind of length of time in York?

Matthew:

Absolutely. And his connections to York, I think he would probably say, were one of the most important things in his life and I'm not just saying that as a Ricardian who wants to, you know, talk nicely to York. He spends as I said, a few years in the 1460s in the household of the Earl of Warwick and that is normally based around Middleham in Yorkshire, they're not too far away from York. it's hard to talk about medieval people having a home, especially noblemen, you know, had lots of castles that they toured around and they were wherever business needed to be. But if we were to think of anywhere as being Richard's home, I think he would have pointed at Middleham Castle as the place that he considered home. So right on York's doorstep, York is the second most important city in the country, you know, the capital of the North effectively, Richard is on its doorstep for a significant portion of his life, and he would have spent an awful lot of time there dealing with the civic authorities, involving himself in daily life in York, in government in York, a lot of that was entirely popular. So we have a case in 1477, Richard visits York, and he's given a gift of six swans and six pike - strange presents, but must have been considered good at the time. And they said that the city recorded that this was given to Richard "for his great labors of now late made, and to the King's good grace for the conservation of the liberties of the city." So clearly, they hold a good opinion. And not everybody does, because part of the reason that they're grateful to Richard is because the previous year in 1476, a guy called Thomas Yotton had been suspected of fiddling the books of the city, essentially as one of the clerks. The council wanted to remove him. Yotton goes off to the Earl of Northumberland, who is kind of the other big Northern regional magnate and Northumberland intervenes and tells York they can't sack Yotton, so York go to Richard and say, we really want to sack this guy, he's dodgy and so Richard sort of imposes himself, he has more authority than the Earl of Northumberland, whatever the Earl of Northumberland would like to think, imposes himself and gets York what they want, gets Yotton removed, and so essentially, the city is incredibly grateful that they're able to turn to this man, the most powerful man in the region, second most powerful man in the kingdom really after the king, his younger brother in charge of the north of England, and he's willing to help them get what they say they need to run the city properly. You know, this isn't Richard going after someone for his own personal reasons, this is York coming to Richard and saying this guy's dodgy, whether he was or not, I don't know. But they've clearly gone to Richard with a bit of evidence and said, this guy's dodgy. Can you help us get rid of him? And so Richard does help. When he founds a college at Middleham at the church there, some of the saints that he reveres are very Northern saints. So particularly St. William of Yor is included in the saints to be venerated at Middleham College. So that shows a very clear connection in Richard's thinking to York and to the North of England. Richard and his wife Anne Neville join the Corpus Christi guild in York in 1477, which Richard parents had both been members of, so maintaining that familial link to the city of York. By 1482, Richard's been in the North for a decade or so, York are sending dispatches to Richard sending proof of the election of a new mayor for his approval, they want his rubber stamp that this has been done properly, and that this guy is officially the mayor. So they're looking to him for a lead and for support in the civic life of the city. There are people who complain about Richard getting involved in York politics as well. Normally the people who lose their elections think, you know, Richard's sticking his nose in and why do we want this guy appearing on our doorstep telling us what to do? So he visits the city when he's preparing to invade Scotland in 1482. His brother Edward IV sends him off on a mission to invade Scotland and Richard sort of bases himself at York, raises men in York and York are happy to help him. In 1483, when things are kicking off in London, Richard has been dragged down south, away from the North that he's known for more than a decade. And when things start kicking off, it's to York that Richard writes, saying, I need some help, you know, I might need some men to come down here and help me, things are really kicking off, can you prepare a force in case you have to come down and help me out? And I think the biggest sign of Richard's personal affection for the city of York is that when he becomes king, he almost immediately, within a few weeks of his coronation, evacuates London, goes on this royal progress, heads out sort of West a little bit, but heads north and his target is York. And I feel like this is Richard coming home. I pitch this as one of Richard's big mistakes because he leaves this kind of power vacuum in London into which plotting begins to emerge and all of that sort of thing. But I think it also speaks to Richard not being that kind of power grasping plotter that people think he is because why would you leave the center of power as soon as you've got it when you think you might have enemies? I think it points to a man who got way more than he expected for when he left the North and kind of wanted to go home for a rest. He wanted to go back to the people that he knew, back to the life that he knew. He wanted to show himself in the North as King as well. You know, he's the champion of this region. They've had a really good relationship. And look, now I'm king, I can bring loads more benefits to York and to Yorkshire. But for me, it smacks an awful lot of a tired, battered and bruised man who just wants to go home and put his feet up in front of the fire for a rest. And it's to York that he goes for that. Even after Richard dies at the Battle of Bosworth, we get this instance where the York house books, which is the Civic records of the city of York during this period, are kind of brave enough to be nice about Richard after he's been killed, and the new king is on the throne. So they officially record it in their notes that Richard is killed at the Battle of Bosworth and they add that he's killed with many of the Lords and nobles of these North parts. He was pitifully slain and murdered the great heaviness of this city. So it's kind of dangerous to be talking about the dead defeated King as being someone that you really liked because the new king is not going to approve of that.

Miranda:

Yeah, he won't be a fan will he?

Matthew:

No, exactly. You know, you're not making friends. This is not how you win friends and influence people. And York does submit to Henry VII, pretty soon after this because that's dealing with political reality. They have to face up to the fact that Henry is king but they are willing to kind of give this parting shot to Richard that they're really really sorry he's gone. So for all of the people who think he's a horrible murdering evil tyrant, people who knew him best in York and who dealt with him for almost 15 years miss him and are sad that he's gone.

Miranda:

Well, that reputation even kind of persists today, people of York love Richard, he still has this very positive reputation here. Why do you think even now that reputation has endured?

Matthew:

It's hard, I think maybe there is a lingering sense that York and Yorkshire had a very different relationship to Richard, when he was Duke of Gloucester, than the rest of the country had as Richard III. So he was remembered in the North for his his good lordship, his even hand. It wasn't just York that were happy with him, we get instances - there's a case in 1472, a woman called Catherine Williamson, her husband is pretty brutally murdered on the road on the way home from work kind of thing. These three brothers jump out, attack him, leavehim for dead at the side of the road and rob him of the few bits and pieces that he had. The three brothers then go back to their father, and they say, we've accidentally killed the guy and their dad says, don't worry, I know what to do. And he goes and enters the service of Richard III. So he tries to enter the household of the Duke of Gloucester as the most powerful regional magnate, because the system of livery and maintenance under which Lords take on men would normally mean that people would be protected from legal consequences of the crimes that they committed. So this guy is entering Richard's service in the hope that it will protect him and his sons from the consequences of this murder. He tries to get his sons into Richard's service as well. But as soon as Richard finds out that that's what this guy has done, rather than protecting him as this guy would have hoped Richard would have done, Richard has him arrested and sent to jail in York to face trial. And he sends out word that his three sons are now effectively wanted for murder, and tries to have them chased down, you know, that they never actually caught, they never actually come to face justice. But Richard has this, you know, dealt with in Parliament, in his brother's parliament in the early 1470. So he's willing to take these kind of what might look like a fairly minor local murder case onto the national stage. And that's the kind of power that you get by being associated with Richard, but he's using it not to create his own big affinity of ruffians who can go around and bully people into getting what he wanted. He does it to hunt down murderers. And so that's a good use of His Lordship that doesn't really fit with this idea of a monster that comes later. We have a really interesting case with a couple called John and Lucy Prince over a manor called Gregory's. So John and Lucy Prince actually are servants of Cecily Neville, who is Richard's mother, and a guy who is a goldsmith from London rides into Gregory's one day, attacks the place, says this is all mine now, off you go. I'm Richard, Duke of Gloucester's man, and he will back me up. This couple are chased off, the goldsmith starts stealing all of their crops, their cattle and whatever is in the house and everything else. And interestingly, John Prince doesn't come back but his wife Lucy does, she's obviously a pretty brave woman, she turns up with a note from the sheriff saying, stop what you're doing and get lost. So good on Lucy Prince. And we get this kind of face off where this this goldsmith from London is saying, I'm one of Richard Duke of Gloucester's men, he's going to back me up. And Lucy Prince is saying, well, we're Cecily Neville's people so she's going to back up. So they're setting up a big fight between mother and son about what is going to happen. And this is really a chance for Richard to flex his muscles against his mother and back his own man and make sure that he wins. And what Richard does is set up a legal council with three of his men, three of his mother's men, they investigate the title to Gregory's, this council find out that it belongs to John and Lucy Prince. And Richard slaps this goldsmith around the face, not literally, and tells him you know, don't you ever behave like this again, you're embarrassing me, you had no right to behave like that. Don't ever do that again in my name. So this isn't a man who is creating this big affinity of bullies going around getting whatever he wants. He's much more interested in right, and the law and equity. And if we look, it's kind of a weird thing to talk about. But there's a thing called fish garths in the 15th century, which are a pretty controversial topic, and they're prevalent around York. So fish garths are huge industrial size fishing devices that effectively blocked the river to catch all of the fish. So this reduces the catch for people downstream, it makes navigating the river by boat incredibly difficult. So they're hugely unpopular. Who operates fish garths? Rich people, nobleman, big abbeys, people with the money to set these things up, who don't normally care about the poor man further down the road who's trying to make a living and get some fish to eat. What does Richard do? He goes around all of the the nobles and the religious houses of the North and tells him to remove all of their fish garths. And the first thing that he does is have them all removed from his properties. So anywhere that he happens to own where someone has set up a fish garth, he takes out. So it's not do as I say, it's very much do as I do, he leads by example. And the fish garth thing kind of rumbles on for years and years and years. And York is always confident of having Richard's backing in trying to do away with these things. So if we look again, at who is Richard supporting here, and who is he alienating, he's alienating the richer baronial nobles and the big religious houses maybe, but he's doing it to look after the common man. So I think York and Yorkshire has this exposure to Richard as a good lord, a man who is willing to sort of upset the societal norms in order to look after and protect them. Most of the rest of the country sees Richard in 1483 - was he a horrible evil murdering monster who stole the throne? And I think York and Yorkshire just has this lingering, very different opinion of Richard because of the exposure that they had to him over the decade or so before 1483. So I think they just saw a side to Richard that the rest of the country never really got to grips with.

Miranda:

Well, so for our listeners who want to learn more about Richard II, where should they go?

Matthew:

I am duty bound to say join the Richard III Society, of course, a fantastic place to learn about Richard and the 15th century in general, all of the stuff that is going on that time, it's not just about Richard, there's loads of research about the people and the politics and what was going on at the time, lots of it focused on the North of England as well. So for people in York, there's hopefully loads and loads about Richard III Society, and that they would be interested in joining our AGM this year in October is due to be in York. So we'll be invading York in October this year. So you know, people can come and seek us out. There's lots of resources if you want to visit the Richard III website is a fantastic introduction to Richard III and some of those controversies. There are lots and lots of books to read. So on both sides of the argument, and I think it's always important to read widely. So if I was to give you a reading list, it would be Ricardian books to read about Richard III. And that would be completely unreasonable. But you know, there are books that follow a more traditional line about Richard and Michael Hicks' work on Richard III would fall into that category. There are great biographies of Richard III that tried to walk a fairly middle line, so Chris Skidmore's book I would put into that category. And then there are some more positive ones. So Annette Carson has written a fantastic book about "Richard III, the Maligned King," which is kind of an introduction to all of the controversies about Richard. So it's a great place to start, I wrote a book called"Richard III in fact, and fiction," which again, I think, is a good introduction. So it deals with some of those controversies around Richard's life and tries to pick apart what we know and what we don't know. So what is a fact and what is something that appears later in the story that isn't really supported by the sources. And I've also written a fairly big cradle to grave kind of biography of Richard, which makes a fantastic doorstep. If you can't read your kitchen cupboard, it's great to stand on. So if you don't want to read it, it has its uses around the house. But you know, that is definitely a positive revisionist look at Richard III. But I've tried to be reasonable and fair and balanced and back everything I say with source material. So there is a lot out there to read, I would suggest that people read widely because it's no good reading one side of any argument, is there? There are those who I won't say they disapprove of Richard, but they see him more as the traditional scheming plotter in 1483. There are some in between. And there are those of us who think that there's, there's much more to the story and that Richard wasn't the bad guy in everything that went on as well. So read a few books, read widely, but there's some great introductions and there's some great in depth books as well.

Miranda:

Excellent. And if they want to hear more from you, where can they go?

Matthew:

Almost anywhere. I literally crop up all over the place talking about Richard III to anyone who will listen and lots of people who won't. I have a blog, a WordPress blog, MattLewisAuthor.wordpress.com, I'm on Twitter far more than I should be, when I should be writing, Facebook and Instagram as well. I recently started a podcast for Dan Snow's History Hit called Gone Medieval. So this is focusing on the medieval period. And hopefully, you know, that's quite interesting. We've had some great guests on there and lots of interesting topics to talk about. So please go and subscribe and listen to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts from. There you go. Yeah, you know, I'm always happy to talk about Richard III. I'm currently Chair of the Richard III Society. So hence my vested interest in plugging, joining the Richard III Society, but I'm always more than happy to talk about Richard III and to delve into some of those controversies.

Miranda:

Amazing. Well, I definitely learned a lot. I think our listeners will as well. Thank you so much for being on our podcast. It was really great. It's fun interview.

Matthew:

Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Miranda:

Special thanks to Matthew Lewis for being our guest. If you want to learn more about Richard III, York is definitely the place to be this summer. The world famous 16th century portrait of Richard III will go on display at the Yorkshire Museum as part of the National Portrait Gallery's"Coming Home" project. Alongside the portrait will be the beautiful Middleham Jewel, the Stillingfleet Boar Badge and other fantastic items associated with Richard and Yorkshire. And if that's not enough for you, we're kicking off a brand new walking tour this summer! From Roman Eboracum to the 15th century, come delve into the every day lives of York's citizens. We're running for new historical walking tours from the 10th of July to the 5th of September, perfect for history lovers or walking enthusiasts looking to discover more about York. In fact, from the 23rd of August to the 5th of September, you can join us for our tour of"York in the time of Richard III." Imagine the Micklegate area of York as it might have been during the 15th century. Our walking tour looks at key historical and archaeological evidence to show how York might have looked then and how the city geared up to welcome its royal visitor. Each tour includes admission to Micklegate bar where several exciting fines will be on display. For more details and to book your tickets, check out the what's on section of our website, JorvikVi ingCenter.co.uk. Our next episode will be the start of our Archaeology Live series, a look at all the work that the York Archaeological Trust has done and even projects we're working on right now. I'll be talking to archaeologists from all of our branches starting with Arran Johnson, wh will help me to bust some myth about archaeology If you want to hear more from Matthew, we'll have links to al his social media accounts in th show notes, as well as a link o one of his books, "Loyal y." A fictional account of Richa d III's life from the Battle of Barnet to the Battle of Bosworth, "Loyalty" shows Richa d with all his foible, insecurities, and yet nev r paints him as the villai Thanks for listening to That JORVIK Viking Thing podcast. You. can find us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and anywhere you get your podcasts. Don't forget to rate and leave us a review and if you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. It's the best way to help support your favorite Viking podcast. That JORVIK Viking thing P dcast is a production of the J RVIK Group and York A chaeological Trust, researched b Miranda Schmeiderer and Ashley Fisher. Written and produced by Ashley Fisher. Sound designed an edited by Miranda Schmeider

Intro
Who was Richard III?
Richard's Reputation
Richard's Relationship with York
Richard's Enduring Legacy in Yorkshire
Outro