Richard III and His Early Historians, 1483-1535
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 16348807 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alison Hanham (corresponding author), Alistair Fox |
| Year | 1969 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 72-75 |
| Publication date | 1969-12-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Renaissance and Reformation (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-429X • E-ISSN: 2293-7374 |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Libraries - UOTL (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.33137/rr.v13i1.12923 |
| OpenAlex | W2236904255 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
The character of Richard III and his reign presents one of the most difficult of historical problems, and a continuity of scholarly disagreements suggests that time may sometimes deliver rather more than truth.Alison Hanham's attempt to lay the ghosts to rest succeeds in several important respects, but will leave many readers unsatisfied in others.Dr. Hanham's stated aim is ambitiously twofold: to investigate and reevaluate the evidence about Richard's deeds and intentions, and to establish how the literary Richard came into being (p. 1 ).Few will wish to quarrel with her opening narration of the "facts," which are assembled mainly from Mancini's report on the usurpation, the Cropland Chronicle, and other independent contemporary sources such as the Stonor Letters, the records of the Mercers' Company, and the parliamentary rolls.The old revisionary thesis of Buck, Walpole, and Markham should be knocked on the head once and for all by the evidence, which is too early to be merely the product of Tudor bias.Apart from relegating a number of things to the category of unprovable (such as the details of the murder of the princes), Hanham changes very little in the traditional account: she tentatively questions the allegedly unusual fairness and efficiency of Richard's govern- ment (pp. 16-17),has found that Mistress Shore's first name was really Elizabeth, not Jane (p.179), and proposes a new date for the execution of Hastings -Friday 20 June 1483, rather than Friday 13 June as stated in most of the sources (pp.24-29).One's only query is that the revised date assumes an incredibly widespread falsification of documents and surprising lapses of memory in rather too many contemporary writers (p.68), and rests largely on a reading of Stallworth's letter of 21 June to Stonor that many will think unidiomatic and forced (p.42).Such quibbles, however, do not detract from Hanham's achievement in providing a lucid account of relatively undeniable facts.Even when she embarks on the first stages of the attempt to show the genesis of the liter- J
Early Modern Women Writers · History · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 1969 - 2023 (55) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |