You may have seen the original TV cast of this, but here’s more detail. It does seem to be him…
Richard III burial
There’s a great deal strange about his story. He was much maligned in the rumor mills of the day…and accused of the murder of the two princes in the Tower.
The deed is laid at the feet of an otherwise distinguished gentleman who loyally served the king…one Sir Robert Tyrell, who was the boy’s jailer, who, accused of the murder, staunchly refused to disclose where the princes were buried, and who was eventually executed for the crime. His family maintained, later, that the princes were not dead, and that Tyrell had actually rescued them and gotten them to a place of safety, and that he died accepting the blame for a non-crime, because of his loyalty to the king.
Richard III was blamed as the one who gave the orders. But there was a complete tangle of politics surrounding that and other matters during his reign.
the fan club is not just american, CJ, but world-wide – and they paid for the dig, would you believe!
oh, LOL! this is really going some! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DCasz6oeL4&feature=youtu.be
Tony Robinson fronting a documentary which takes the illegitimacy of Edward lV to its logical conclusions ….
I say to Tony Robinson, what about the rightful heir of King Harold II Godwinson? Will he never receive justice and be restored to his throne?
All those Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, and Hanovarians are just upstarts and latecomers. They should all be ignored.
…Mind you… wasn’t Harold’s right to the throne a bit questionable? 😕
Edgar Aelthing, a boy of about 15 and Edmund Ironside’s grandson, was briefly declared king after Edward the Confessor’s death before Harold was declared king by the Earls – claiming Edward (as his brother in law and most powerful land owner in England) had appointed him successor on his deathbed.
It would also simplify all those u’s, ou’s, gh’s, and such….
Long lif King Harald!
Sir Robin of Locksley would probably have had things simpler too….
Constant pain does tend to shorten the temper. If the background pain level is high enough, other pains seem to fade in intensity in comparison. The habit of grumpiness is hard to break, even when the pain suddenly goes away, though you do rather feel high and light. What we call a standard wine bottle seems to have originated as one serving for one person for one meal, and a common saying at the time was, “As pretty a maid as ever drained a bottle”. Poppy would have suppressed the appetite, and in conjunction with that much wine, I have no idea how a person would fare.
In medieval times, wine came in barrels, not bottles. Glass bottles were expensive and uncommon in the medieval world. It was only in the 18th century, with improved glass-making techniques, that relatively cheap glass bottles became widely available. Even then a bottle wasn’t a standard serving.
Levels of alcohol were much lower in all alcoholic drinks than they are today. Perhaps 5% or even 3% in most wines.
Often water wasn’t safe to drink. Especially in places like London, no safe sources of drinking water were available. A low level of alcohol kills any bacteria, so people drank wine, beer, ale, or cider rather than water if possible. Of course they didn’t know about bacteria, but they were very well aware that water was often unsafe to drink, and alcoholic drinks were safe.
Perhaps I should have said that the volume of the bottle is based on the serving size… and that bottles need not be made of glass… I see nothing wrong with the idea of consuming 76.8 oz of fluid in a day, since doctors now recommend that we drink 64 oz, or two quarts of water, exclusive of other fluids, every day. Still not great for drug interactions, I’d think.
and Richard’s brother George was executed by being drowned in a butt of malmsey – ie a barrel of Marsala fortified wine ….(he rebelled during Edward lV’s reign and chose that method rather than being hung, drawn and quartered) really not a very nice family altogether … 🙁
ordinary people drank weak beer instead of water, even children …. and it was brewed in the home
I wonder if their ale/beer brewed at home was very different from those that make their own carbonated beverages, like ginger ale, root beer? Homemade ginger ale, root beer, &c all carry about a .5% alcohol rating – as is said – not like today’s hard-hitting alcohol percentages, regardless.
I remember reading a book in college about England after one of its wars (Napoleonic War? Of which our War of 1812 was but a side-show.) after which there was a big depression caused by high taxes to pay for the war (And we thought that was a modern idea… No wait, we don’t pay for them!), anyway they taxed beer, even home brew, which was a vital part of the foodstuffs, a major part of the diet and caloric intake. I remember it also talked about the importance of pollarding/coppicing trees.
Most modern Americans take refrigeration so much for granted (even fresh fruit and vegetables in January flown in from South America) they don’t realize beer, cider, wine, liquor, cheese, “corning”, ham, sausages, etc., was necessary to keep one from starving for most of the year. Preserve the calories or die.
Interesting. Many people don’t know that the Greeks and Romans watered their wine considerably, up to 9/10 water. People said of Cleomenes, the Spartan king who went mad, that it was due to his habit of drinking unwatered wine.
Was this for flavor, or to avoid getting drunk? Were the (ahem) spices in the wine stronger than are currently allowed in 48 states? Or was this to make the water safe to drink? (Though I can’t imagine 1–2% alcohol content making that much of a difference.)
This actually comes up in Talmudic discussions of wine: Rabbis in Greek-influenced and Roman-controlled Palestine spoke of wine not being fit to drink until it had been watered, while putting limits on how far it could be diluted and still be called wine. (Dilutions weaker than 1:6 wine-water ratio were deemed unusable for ritual purposes, BTW.) Skip forward a few centuries, and medieval Rabbis were speculating about how strong the wine must have been in Talmudic times, to allow for such dilution.
Actually, I just asked that question at http://history.stackexchange.com/q/7634/1326, a site (along with http://genealogy.stackexchange.com) that I’m worried about pointing you to: they’re fun and informative, but can be terrific time-sinks—and I do want to read more Foreigner books! 🙂
They’d drink for hours at a regular blow-out party. It amounted probably to a bottle of wine apiece, but dilute and spread over hours. They’d talk philosophy and gossip. You had to be semi-sober to do that.
Following the results of the Richard III investigation an MSP has called for a similar review of Macbeth and his slanderous portrayal by Shakespear. The fact is though, that we always knew that ‘That’ play was Politically motivated. A more sypathetic view of the Real Macbeth was made by Dorothy Dunnett in her book, King Hereafter.
Ah! The story of the three first cousins, Duncan, McBeath and Lady McBeath!
“Finding” Richard I’s mumified heart.
http://news.yahoo.com/solved-king-richards-heart-preserved-140618766.html
Saw that: apparently they’ve got daisies and flower remains and spices, but the heart itself has gone to powder. Dunno how much DNA might survive. I fear it’d be pretty iffy if they got any at all. Anyone sneezes, alas, poor Richard is all over…but they should definitely save it carefully. A lot of stuff we could analyze now is lost because people concluded it had no information.