Book Companion - Richard III

Hey, this is Adam Grant, host of Ted's podcast,

rethinking with Adam Grant.

If you heard of Bill, it's the intelligent finance platform

that uses AI to help you avoid costly errors

and optimize cash flow.

In fact, Bill reports that over 90 of the top 100 US

accounting firms trust them to manage, move, and maximize

money, proven by over $1 trillion in secure transactions.

Eliminate the friction and start scaling

with the proven choice.

Visit bill.com slash proven to talk with an expert

about automating your business finances

and get a $250 gift card as the thank you.

That's bill.com slash proven.

Turns and conditions applies to offer page for details.

With its two juicy beef patties, three slices of melted cheese

and tangy big-oats sauce, the big-oats

is what happens when you start making a McDonald's burger

and never stop the big-oats.

The most McDonald's McDonald's burger

yet for a limited time.

That's pure automotive joy.

I'm Peter, the owner of Muscle Car Junior.

It started as a hobby, then I started posting about it.

Before I knew it, I built the business

for storing muscle cars on Facebook Marketplace

and the community of car lovers on Instagram.

Today, new customers send me what's at messages from all over.

Not bad for a hobby.

Learn how meta helps over 35 million American businesses,

like Peter's Grow, at meta.com slash community.

Hello, Charlie Hicks in here.

Once again, with Willie, Willie, Harry, Steve, the podcast.

A project I began when King Charles III was crowned

and which has now become Willie, Willie, Harry, Steve,

the book.

Available now in all good bookshops

and it's all beautifully illustrated by my old friend,

Jim Moyer, aka Vic Reeves, Britain's greatest light entertainer.

So a treat for the eyes just as this podcast

is a treat for the ears.

So buy your copy now or several copies

if you're feeling flush.

And while you do, enjoy this.

Another chance to hear the original podcast series in order.

Starting with Willie and going all the way through to Charlie III.

I hope you enjoy it.

MUSIC

Willie, Willie, Harry, Steve, Harry, Dick John, Harry,

one, two, three neds, Richard two, Henry's four, five, six, then who?

Edward's four, five, Dick the bad. Yes, we've come to Dick the bad.

King Richard the third. And the Willie-Willy Harry Steve rhyme is pretty

unequivocal in its view of him. And history has indeed

remembered him as Dick the bad. Although in recent years there have been

moves to re-evaluate him, driven particularly by a group who call themselves

the Ricardians who want to unsully his reputation, claiming that he was

unfairly maligned by Tudor historians for propaganda purposes.

To support the cause of the man who deposed him, Henry Tudor, Henry the seventh

and subsequent Tudors such as Henry's son Henry the eighth.

Well, maybe at the end of this episode you could make up your own mind.

Was he Dick the bad or was he the victim of propaganda smears?

Now Richard has already appeared in a podcast. He started out as the

unassuming younger brother of Edward the fourth,

when the wars of the roses started he was too young to be involved at all

and he didn't seem to be that central to the story certainly to begin with.

But we've seen how he slowly moved center stage

and in the previous episode about Edward the fifth he finally made his move

striking fast and hard like a rattlesnake.

And that made quite an impact. He announced that his nephew Edward the fifth

was illegitimate and therefore not entitled to rule

and he stole the crown from him. Now we'll come onto that in a minute as we need to

start at the beginning of Richard's life. It was born in 1452

and he died in 1485. He was only 33 when he died.

In productions of the Shakespeare play he's often played by a much older actor

and we can lose sight of just how young he was when he took the throne.

And he only actually reigned from about two and a half years.

After Lady Jane Grey and Edward the fifth this was the third shortest reign of any English monarch.

And yet he managed to really make his mark on history.

How much of that is down to Shakespeare? I don't know I mean it you know the more successful

and popular Shakespeare plays mean that the subjects of those plays stay in our popular consciousness.

Richard was the last of the House of York and he also had the dubious honour of being the last

Plantagenet King. This line that had started right back with Henry II, the son of Jeffrey of

Anju and for over 300 years the Plantagenets or the Angivins as they were actually probably

more commonly known at the time had held the throne. But as I say it's Richard who finally

loses it to Henry Tudor and the next episode will launch the Tudor dynasty.

The Battle of Bosworth Field when Richard was killed he's often seen as the end of the Middle Ages

in England as we move from the Medieval into the Tudor era. So Richard was a really important

king and played a pivotal role in English history even though his actual reign was so short.

His father was another Richard Richard Duke of York who had fought so hard to take the throne

from his close relative Henry VI and after Richard of York was killed in 1460 the Battle of Wakefield

the fight was taken up by his son Edward who was Richard III's big brother.

Richard's mother was Cessli Neville. Now the Neville's as I'm sure you'll remember because we've

talked about them a lot before with this powerful northern family the Lords of the North who held

the Scottish marches as a bulwark to deter the Scots from invading England and back in 1396 a

guy called Ralph Neville married into the royal family. He got himself hitched to one of the daughters

of John of Gaunt from his second marriage Joan Beaufort on the Lancastrian side of the family

and they have about 10 children and now don't worry I won't go into them all here but one of them

is their daughter Cessli who as I say married Richard of York and they had 12 children

among them Edward IV flaky George the Duke of Clarence and our current subject Richard of Gloucester

who becomes King Richard III. Now if you all indulge me for a moment I'm going to briefly jump

back to Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort as I said they had 10 children including Cessli

and a son called yep he's another Richard and now this is Richard Neville the fifth Earl of

Solsbury who was the father of Warwick the Kingmaker which makes Warwick the Kingmaker the first

cousin of both Edward IV and Richard III I wish I could draw a diagram for you here but I hope

you can just tell that there's this complicated mayors nest of marriage and intermingling and it

doesn't stop there oh no no it just gets more tangled as Warwick the Kingmaker carries on with

this tactic of trying to make political marriages for his kids but we'll come onto that in a minute

if you didn't follow all that don't worry all you really need to know is that our featured

monarch Richard of Gloucester was the 11th of the 12 children of Richard of York and Cessli

and when the wars of the roses kicked off he was still a child he was only eight when his father

an older brother Edmund were killed at the Battle of Wakefield and young Richard was sent across

the channel for safety in the low countries then after the Lankastrians were defeated at the

Battle of Toughton a year later Richard returned and he was there for the coronation of his oldest

surviving brother Edward in 1461 when he became Edward IV and it was at this point that young

Richard became Duke of Gloucester after first being knighted and he spent some part of his early

years being looked after by Warwick the Kingmaker at his castle in Wensleydale before Warwick and

Edward fell out Warwick helped train Richard as a knight and Edward actually gave substantial

sums of money to Warwick for the boys upbringing and whilst he was there in Warwick the Kingmaker's

household he would have got to know Warwick's family including his daughter and Neville now while

he was still young Richard developed Scoliosis a curvature of the spine when his skeleton was

discovered under a car park in Leicester in 2012 experts examined the bones and deduced that

the curvature wasn't actually that pronounced one of Richard's shoulders might possibly have

been a little higher than the other but anything else would have been easily hidden under his clothing

so it was nothing particularly dramatic he was by no means the twisted crook back that he was later

personified as as if physical abnormalities somehow automatically make you an evil person

which is absolute nonsense of course and certainly nobody seems to have commented on his

physique at the time and he seems to have been a popular and well-adjusted young man

Hey this is Adam Grant host of Ted's podcast rethinking with Adam Grant let me share with you

why smart finance leaders turned a bill they know that clarity isn't just helpful it's strategic

as the intelligent finance platform bill uses AI to automate the busy work for nearly half a

million businesses so they can focus on intentional growth eliminate the friction and start scaling

with the proven choice visit bill.com slash proven to talk with an expert about automating your

business finances and get a $250 gift card as a thank you that's bill.com slash proven turns

in conditions apply see offer page for details with its two juicy beef patties three slices of

melted cheese and tangy big-oats sauce the big-oats is what happens when you start making a McDonald's

burger and never stop the big-oats the most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet for a limited time

but his life got totally disrupted when his big brother Edward IV fell out with their cousin

Warwick the Kingmaker they both wanted to be in charge and Edward as the king considered that

he was probably the best man for the job so Warwick temporarily switched his allegiance to

Edward's younger brother flaky George Duke of Clarence and married one of his daughters Isabella

to him big mistake George is rubbish his plans to take over the throne come to nothing

and Warwick has to flee to France where he he tried to make this unlikely and frankly bizarre

alliance with Margaret of all you his deadliest enemy in the fallon hope that they might get Henry

the sixth back on the throne and Warwick could be sort of Kingmaker again and at this point to

cement the deal Warwick married another of his daughters Anne and Neville to Margaret and Henry's

son Edward Prince of Wales the heir to the throne and then with help from the French Warwick and his

new allies got back to England and managed to briefly depose Edward and put Henry back on the throne

at which point Edward and Richard fled to Burgundy where there was something of an embarrassment

at the Burgundian court who didn't really know what to do with him but back home Warwick the

Kingmaker was becoming increasingly unpopular King Henry the sixth was a pathetic figure and

everybody knew that Warwick was really the man in charge so Edward didn't stay long in France

he rallied his forces returned to England and defeated Warwick's army at the battle of Barnett

during which Warwick was killed and Edward then goes on to finally defeat the Lankastrians

at Chuxbury killing young Prince Edward in the process and Henry the sixth was murdered soon

after now that he was a teenager Richard of Gloucester is now able to be Edward's right hand man

in these battles and proved himself an effective general he'd become a man he'd won his spurs

and the death of Prince Edward meant that Anne Neville Warwick the Kingmaker's daughter

was a widow and Richard quickly married her now this caused some problems in the family

he's older brother Flaky George Duke of Clarence as we saw before had already married Anne's older

sister Isabelle and was hoping to inherit all of Warwick's estates now it looked like he would

have to share this inheritance with his younger brother Richard so Richard had to sign a prenup

allowing George to take most of the land and titles but he still had to get permission from

the Pope to marry Anne as the two of them were so closely related but bad blood persisted between

the brothers and an angry King Edward had to step in and pronounce that everything should be shared

equally and from this point Edward began to favor Richard over George and eventually lost all

patience with George George kept scheming against his brother and causing problems and Edward

took the bold step of having him executed which is one way to deal with a brother you don't get

on with and from this point Edward increasingly gives lands titles and power to Richard he made him

Lord of Ireland and also effectively Lord of the North setting him up in York and almost splitting

the rule of England into two the idea was to keep the northern as happy and stop the scots from

having ideas about invading there were growing tensions with Scotland through this period and

there was a sort of a quasi war with the scots but they were too disorganized and Edward never

fully engaged so it was down to Richard to hold things together and there were some sort of

fairly ineffectual military maneuvering and this new Scottish threat didn't really amount to

anything in the end but then in 1483 King Edward unexpectedly died and Richard became Lord

protector of the realm everybody seems to be happy with this including it seems all of Edward's

closest advisors and his chief advisor Baron Hastings but now we see Richard turn we see a new

site to his character that that has not been in evidence before and the question is did he change

or had he always been this character playing the long game had he always had half an eye on the throne

and we saw in the previous episode how King Edward the fourths son and heir Prince Edward now

became King Edward the fifth and was brought to London by his mother's relatives including his

uncle Earl Rivers and Richard intercepted them at Northampton and after whining and dining the

men he had them arrested on trump top charges of plotting to take over the throne Richard cleverly

accused them of doing exactly what he intended to do but he kept quiet about it at this point

and everybody was still thinking that he was trying to protect Edward and that there was no

self interest in any of this and he then escorted young King Edward to London and installed him

in the Tower of London for his own safekeeping and started planning for Edward's coronation

and sometimes in potted histories and perhaps I implied in the last episode that events then move

really quickly and one thing instantly leads to another it is a little drawn out it kind of takes

a few months and perhaps at this point Richard was still planning to have Edward coronated and have

this anointing ceremony where he already is King of England but in the coronation ceremony when

you get anointed you're anointed by God you become this divinely appointed figure and become

something extra special and perhaps he was just trying to remove what was a potential threat from

Elizabeth Woodville's branch of the family who may have wanted to have a complete power grab

and oust anyone who might be a threat to Edward but one of the things that Richard does is to

accuse Hastings and the other remaining supporters of his older brother King Edward IV of plotting

with the Woodville's to murder him several prominent men were arrested and Hastings was taken to

the Tower of London where his head was cut off now we looked at all this in some detail in the

previous episode but I'll repeat it here for those of you who haven't diligently been listening

to every episode so Edward the Fifth's mother Edward the Fourth's widow Elizabeth Woodville

is taking refuge in Westminster Abbey with her other son Richard her brother has been arrested

her husband's supporters have been arrested she does not trust her brother-in-law Richard

of Gloucester at which point Richard gets a couple of his pet clerics to persuade Elizabeth

that everything was fine and that Richard was planning the coronation of Edward the Fifth

and that he was just being very careful and she somewhat reluctantly allowed her other son

Edward's younger brother Richard to join him in the Tower so that they could prepare for the

coronation ceremony together but she was right not to trust Richard of Gloucester because he eventually

executed her brother and then produced a legal document claiming that Edward's marriage to

Elizabeth was unlawful as he'd been betrothed to someone else thus making her two boys illegitimate

and as they were illegitimate they were not the rightful heirs to the throne so he declared himself

king and the two boys were never seen again the fact that until the moment when he took the throne

from his nephew Edward nobody had really thought that he had any designs on being king

is interesting and it was one of the reasons why he was able to to get away with it because when

he did reveal his outrageous and audacious plan he acted extremely quickly so nobody had a chance

to do it and he's like whoa what just happened oh my god I didn't see that one coming that's

extraordinary that they didn't see it coming and you know maybe as I say maybe it was only at this

point where he thought hang about maybe I should just become king maybe he thought that as long

as Edward was on the throne as a boy king there would be discontent there would be insecurity that

these the walls of the roses might might rekindle and drag on maybe he genuinely thought it

would be better for England if he was in charge and he basically drew a line under Edward's family

one version of these events claimed that Richard originally had planned to declare that his brother

Edward himself had been illegitimate but he decided quite wisely not to pursue that line

in case he got caught up in all these sort of claims of legitimacy and illegitimacy and he came

up with his alternative idea where he got a priest Robert Stillington to claim that he had indeed

been involved in making a pre-contract for brother Edward to marry this woman Dame Eleanor Butler

but that Elizabeth Woodville and her mother had used witchcraft to beguile Edward and dump Eleanor

so there he is Richard III is on the throne and despite his very thorough and decisive actions

removing all of the supporters of Edward IV he was not fully safe on the throne and was by no means

unopposed he wasn't able to arrest or wipe out all of Elizabeth Woodville's family

or the Beaufort branch of the family who fairly quickly launched a rebellion which ended up being

organized by the Duke of Buckingham and originally the rebels announced that they were trying

to put the rightful air back on the throne Edward V but at this point it must have become clear

that Edward V was dead now no body was produced and it was never officially announced that he

was dead he just wasn't there anymore so at this point we have to assume as everybody at the time

did that Edward V was dead and the rebels switched their alliance to another claimant to the throne

Henry Tudor and the Tudor family have been allied by marriage to the Beaufort branch

but we'll look at all that and how the Tudors fit into this story in the next episode so we're

stick with Richard so an afterist coronation Richard had set off on a progress around the country

which ended with him entering York in triumph at the end of August but in July news reached him

that there had been an attempt to rescue the two princes from the Tower of London the attempt had failed

but this was what probably led to the prince's death was too risky for Richard to leave them there

and to leave them alive and certainly everybody at the time now thought okay that's it the princes

are dead but Buckingham's rebellion this first attempt to to put Henry Tudor on the throne failed

Henry had been exiled in France and when he tried to get over to England there were storms and yet

again a great undertaking was thwarted by bad weather in the channel and Buckingham's own ships

were also caught up in the same storm and soon after that his army deserted him when

King Richard's the third army confronted them Buckingham was captured and beheaded so this rebellion

came to nothing but Richard now made the mistake that many previous monarchs had made

he started trying to install favourites into positions of power he needed to bolster his regime

he needed to get rid of any support for his brother Edward and therefore his nephew Edward V

he felt that his hold on the throne was shaky which it was so particularly in the north

he started putting in his new men into positions of power which didn't go down well with the

old guard and with the ordinary people so there was a lot of dissent and and there and there was

a lot of support for Henry Tudor but Henry Tudor hadn't given up two years after his first thwarted

invasion he tried again this time with the full backing of the French who supplied him with

funds and troops and any opportunity to have a go at the English king the French were up for

and Henry successfully invaded across the channel and marched north to where Richard's stronghold

was in the north and the two armies met at the Battle of Bosworth Field now Henry's forces

were considerably outnumbered probably by about 8000 to 5000 so 8000 on Richard's side and 5000

on Henry's side so it should have been a foregone conclusion but I think I use the analogy in a

previous episode of playing risk anybody who's had the awful frustration of trying to launch a big

battle in risk will know what I'm talking about where it looks like you have unbeatable odds on

your side and within a few throws of the dice you've been completely wiped out and this is what

happened to the unfortunate Richard and a big part in this change of fortunes was down to the

actions of three men one of the Persis Henry Percy and two brothers of the Stanley family

Lord William Stanley and Thomas Stanley now they were both big players at the royal court

hangovers from Edward's time two popular and two powerful for Richard to just get rid of

he was hoping they would support him against Henry but didn't fully trust them

he'd taken William's son George Lord Strange as a hostage to make sure that Stanley kept on

side at first the two brothers didn't get directly involved in the battle they hung back

waiting to see which way things would go and things started well for Richard he was you know

he was a brave man he was a good soldier and a good general leading his army mounted on his great

white charger and now in the heat of the battle he decides to risk a big throw of the dice to try

to end it all quickly and decisively another rattlesnake strike and he leads a cavalry charge into

Henry's ranks to try and get at Henry and kill him he did pretty well he cut his way through

several famous knights he killed King Henry's standard bearer and he got actually got close

enough to Henry to kill him himself he was in swords reach as it were but has he overreached

the Stanley's certainly think so they finally make their move they come in to support Henry

at which point Henry Percy who led a substantial number of men switched sides

now it's a big gamble for the Stanley's because if Richard wins they'll be executed along with

Williamson George they obviously figured that actually Henry was more popular and if they supported

Henry he would win and they would then be on the winning side so they made this tactical gamble

and this is one the odds in Henry's favour and Richard suddenly found himself surrounded by the

Stanley's men and he was brutally cut down and when the experts studied King Richard's body when

it was disinterred in Leicester they found that he was covered in wounds he had 11 wounds

eight of which were to the skull and he had clearly got them fighting in a battle they weren't

post-mortem and it seems that he must have lost his helmet and he took several blows to the head

from various different weapons so he was attacked by all sides and hacked down and there was a

massive sword cut that that chopped off the back of his skull so that was the end of Richard at

least he had a brave end dying in battle he didn't die from an exploding stomach or a red hot

poker up the arse or being starved to death in a castle somewhere he died as a valiant young man

leading an army into battle as I say he was the last of the Yorkists the last of the

plantagenets and he was the last English king to be killed in battle and Henry VII came to the

throne and started the chewed identity which we will pick up within the next episode after the battle

Richard's naked body was tied to the back of a horse and brought into Leicester it was probably

displayed in public for a while before being quickly buried in Greyfriars church in Leicester

and Henry didn't want to make a big deal about this he wanted it sort of kept quiet in some

way so he didn't want any sort of cult growing up around the dead Richard but over the following

hundreds of years Greyfriars church essentially disappeared they had been fires it been burnt down

redeveloped eventually pulled down in the reformation and built over but by 2012 a group of archaeologists

based in Leicester had deduced where they thought the site of the church was and where they thought

King Richard's grave might be and they got permission to dig up this car park and amazing the

first dig with this digger they found this body in a coffin it had mild scoliosis it had these

wounds particularly to the skull which were documented at the time of the battle and through DNA

testing they managed to track down his closest possible surviving relative I think the guy was a

carpenter they got a reasonably good DNA match and so they announced this was King Richard the

third body and he was re-buried with some ceremony and given a proper tomb and a proper

memorial so over those 400 years his reputation has wavered certainly during the Tudor period he

was painted in very dark colours because the Tudors needed to justify killing Richard and taking

his throne but then in later years people questioned this saying well this obviously was propaganda

Richard was a better man than the Tudors would have us believe and certainly you know before he

came to the throne he was a respected politician he was quite respected in the north he had helped

Edward to try and restore some kind of sense of order to the country he had done quite a lot to

improve the conditions of the ordinary people in the north by keeping peace and imposing strict

law and order and a strong clear judicial system he opened up the sale of printed books which had

been greatly restricted he tried to get the English laws and statutes all translated from the

French into English he was trying to democratize a government make it more accessible to the

ordinary English people but despite all this I have to say that I am not fully on the Ricardians

side the Ricardians being these modern day supporters of Richard I'm sorry if you are Ricardian

and you are listening to this hoping that I will say actually Richard was a really great bloke

people like to believe that they are cleverer than the experts that they know more that they

have the proper inside knowledge this secret and special knowledge but to me the sensible thing to do

is to look at the facts and to look at the most likely unrational explanations for what happened

is a recorded fact that the first thing that Richard did when he rode ostensibly to look after

the young king Edward V was to arrest and execute his uncle Earl Rivers and various other members

of his family he then effectively locked Edward and his younger brother Richard up in the tower

now who is the person that most benefited from killing these two boys it is Richard

he is there in Westminster he is ready and poised to take the throne the Ricardians claim that it

was Henry the seventh himself who somehow managed to kill the boys or have the boys killed even

though Henry at this time is hiding out in France and is nowhere to be seen there's a very famous

portrait of Richard in the newly revamped national portrait gallery which is well worth a visit

and the Ricardians look at this painting and they say this is the face of a kind,

intelligent and gentle man look at the way he's charmingly fiddling with his

signet ring which is actually something that King Charles III does he's famous for fiddling with

his ring and other people will look at this very same portrait and say this is clearly the face

of a killer an evil, wily, scheming man look at the way he's anxiously fiddling with his ring

you can read into that face whatever you want but it's the face of our last Plantagenet King

hi everyone this is Karine the voice of Simon Fairchild from the Magnus Arkys and today

I want to talk to you about boost mobile some things quietly drain you like an expensive

phone bill trapping your money month after month here's a quick money tip stop paying a carry

attack when you bring your own phone and switch to boost mobile's $25 unlimited forever plan

you can unlock up to $600 in savings that's money that belongs in your life not trapped in a

phone bill reclaim those savings for something you're actually into an EMF meter a thermal camera

or whatever strange corner of the universe you're currently exploring visit boostmobile.com

to unlock your savings and take back control after 30 gigabytes customers may experience slower

customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the boost mobile unlimited plan

boost mobile January 2026 survey comparing average annual payments of AT&T,

Ryzen and T-Mobile customers to 12 months on the boost mobile unlimited plan for full offer

details visit boostmobile.com with its two juicy beef patties three slices of melted cheese and

tangy big-art sauce the big arch is what happens when you start making a McDonald's burger and never stop

the big arcs the most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet for a limited time

and I have the perfect guest on today to talk about Richard III it's Matt Lewis who is the chair

of the Richard III Society I am and can you just talk through what is the Richard III Society?

The Richard III Society is now in its 99th year so next year we're celebrating our centenary and

it began in 1923 as something called the Fellowship of the White Boer which was essentially a group

of people led by a man named Dr. Saxon Barton who was a surgeon from Liverpool who were just

fascinated by Richard III and so they started getting together and having chats about it

meeting at each other's houses and it sort of blossomed into this fellowship of the White Boer

the group kind of went into a bay and it's a little bit during the Second World War for

probably fairly obvious reasons re-emerged then as something called the Richard III Society

and really has gone from strength to strength since then you know we do a great deal of academic

research and we provide a forum for people who are just interested in Richard III in the story

of the Wars of the Roses yeah it's really a group that's aimed at getting as close to the truth

about Richard III as we can so lots of people I think will see us as people who want to whitewash

Richard's reputation that's not necessarily what we're trying to do at all we're trying to get

closer to the truth well David Mitchell has just published his own history of the English monarchy

called Unruly and I had him on as a guest to talk about Edward V and he asked who was coming on

to talk about Richard and I said well it's Matt Lewis the chair of the Richard III Society

and he said oh well you won't get an unbiased opinion from him but but but I'm sure that as a

historian whilst you will have an opinion it will be a considered one I mean essentially

you're dealing with the facts the same as any other historian it's just how we look at them

absolutely I try to be as objective as I can I never deny that I have a more positive

view of Richard than most historians would probably subscribe to but I like to believe that it's

always based on the evidence that we have and one of the issues around Richard III is that we

have such limited evidence that you can get so far and then you have to take a leap and it will

be a leap in one direction or another which will be based on your subjective view of Richard and

the period and everything that's gone on around it yeah I mean you know it's interesting you're

talking about sifting through the evidence in 1990 the crime writers association voted Joseph

in Tay's novel daughter of time as the greatest crime novel ever written and it's interesting

because it's about her police inspector Alan Grant and he's in hospital recovering and

someone shows him the famous portrait of Richard III and he looks at it and he thinks you know

what he looks like quite a nice guy actually I'm going to investigate this and from his hospital bed

he does a complete sort of police detective investigation of Richard III and comes to the conclusion

that he wasn't guilty but you know it is fascinating that this will always remain an unsolved mystery

and the other fascinating thing is we posted a little clip of David Mitchell talking about Richard

and it caused a Twitter spat not exactly a storm but you know quite a lot of people saying

oh come on David I thought you're an intelligent person surely you're not going to really believe

that Richard III was guilty it's fascinating that something that happened 500 years ago

people are still arguing about and I'm still passionate about Richard ruled for just over two

years more than 500 years ago yet people are still passionately interested in that period today

and there are these little pockets of history that I think if you move through it and you aren't

aware of them they're like little landmines that can go off under your feet aren't they you

you stray into an area you mention something and all of a sudden it explodes and your leg is flying

across the room and you're not quite sure what happened and you've just wondered into one of these

history minefields and taken a wrong step and said something that someone really really objects to

well the great thing about these unsolved mysteries of sort of areas where we don't have all the facts

is it means people can impose whatever meaning they want onto it and bring their own facts and

prejudices to it which I guess is why people then get quite passionate about it it is and then you

fall back because you're lacking historical evidence to back up any argument further than a certain

point you are falling back on your own subjective views and life experiences and what you think people

are capable of and how you believe people might ask in certain situations and and that will be

different for almost every person you know you and I will have a completely different view on how

someone might react in a given situation like a lot of people in the country I was absolutely

hooked by the traitors the reality TV show where three people were randomly assigned to be the bad

guys and what was so fascinating about that is nobody had a clue how to read anybody else

and it was all like what she's a really nice person so she couldn't possibly have done this

and you know they didn't take on board the fact that they were randomly allocated it weren't that

they were evil from birth but you know there was an ex-police woman there who said well I'm an

ex-police woman so I'm used to this kind of thing and you think well we've seen time and time again

the police jumping to the wrong conclusion so yes our idea that we know anyone is self delusional

and the fact that we think perhaps we can know about Richard III based on the fact that someone

looks at the picture and thinks he looks like a nice bloke someone else can look at that picture

and think oh he looks like quite an evil bastard yeah absolutely but you've gone way beyond any

kind of knee-jerk reaction you've written extensively about the middle ages and the wars of the

roses and you're obviously someone who's passionate about history and passionate about getting

it out there and well I mean it's not it teaching people it's it's sharing that love and that

interest and you've written a lot about Richard most recently in 2018 with Richard III loyalty

binds me yeah that's my like cradle to the grave biography of Richard so right it's a bit of a

doorstep of a book I'm afraid but well no don't apologize people like big books but if you don't

like big books get hold of Matt's medieval Britain in a hundred facts a great little book with a

fun fact on every page now Matt as well as writing these books you are also the senior presenter on

history hit which is well I guess you could describe it as as an online history channel we try

and put out an original history documentary that we've made every single week on some period

of history alongside that there are a suite of podcasts as well so I co-host the Gone Medieval

podcast which covers all things medieval in what I describe as the greatest millennium in human

history so far as well as you know our flagship dance nose history hits a daily podcast with with

all kinds of fascinating stuff from across history and we are about to publish our first book too

so the history hit miscellany will be out at the end of September just in time to be the ideal

Christmas present packed with interesting snippets and facts and figures from across history which

people I hope will find very enjoyable and informative and entertaining excellent so to get back

to Richard are there any other British monarchs who have their own society is there this kind of

interest in anyone else I don't I don't think there is at all I think there is an element of

interest in Charles the first potentially but nothing like the Richard the third society around

that I guess the closest you might get to it is the kind of Jack the Ripper community that are

fascinated by the Ripper murders but then he wasn't a monarch or was he and I guess one of your

core aims is to is to reevaluate the entrenched idea that Richard was dick the bad and he was

actually the victim of Tudor propaganda so obviously Richard is killed in 1485 the Tudors come to

the throne and at that point I think Henry VII has to position himself as the hero he can't just say

you know what I've invaded the country and killed the king who was actually quite a good guy

Richard the third has to become a villain so that Henry VII can be the hero and it's interesting

that the Tudor era ends with the death of Elizabeth the first right at the beginning of the 17th

century by 1617 you've got a man named Sir George Buck who is putting together

is what is essentially the the first defense of Richard the third and he pulls together all of

these manuscripts sources lots of which have been lost to a synth so we can't actually even see

these manuscripts now they've been lost in fires and all kinds of things and so he pulls all of

this together and concludes he concludes similar to Alan Grant in the novel you know that Richard

the third wasn't actually that bad a guy and he probably didn't murder his nephews and he's seen

evidence that we don't have the chance to examine today and then you get people like Horace

Walpole you know writing his historic doubts about Richard the third and Jane Austin in her

history of the kings of England says that she's inclined to think that Richard the third was

actually quite a nice man so there has always been this idea that Richard was somehow

given this dreadful reputation to balance out the fact that the Tudors needed

a reason to have come you know the the only reason that Henry the South could have to invade the

country was that Richard was a terrible guy who needed to be removed and I think that the movement

around recording is my guess is a a reaction to that and maybe there's something in in us wanting

to rehabilitate someone who is something of an underdog you know this guy has had his reputation

trashed in the press and he's not here to answer for himself so perhaps we want to look at that

reputation and think does it actually stack up against the facts I mean David Mitchell made an

interesting point saying okay he was obviously a nicer guy than he was painted by the Tudors

and that traditionally he was thought of he said okay maybe he was a nice guy maybe he was a

good king maybe he was sort of things out that doesn't mean that he didn't then think actually

to keep things stable to keep things safe the best thing to do is to get the princes out of the way

so you know it's like saying it's all or nothing oh he's a nice guy and therefore we didn't do

any of these bad things I mean I know David Mitchell mentioned the idea of Occam's razor you know

the the simplest explanation will normally be the right one and I always feel a bit like Occam's

razor is in historical terms incredibly lazy it's basically saying I can't be bothered to it was

actually me he said Occam's real okay I think that's a bit of a cop out because you know it's

like Agatha Christie writing a mystery novel and having Poirot walk into the room and go no it

was probably you the end there is so much more but that's what he does really he takes Occam's

razor to it and he removes all the stuff you couldn't have done it because of this yet couldn't

have done that therefore we're left with the obvious choice which is you to certainly sent Poirot

is using Occam's razor but we don't have the evidence to do what Poirot does in this case because

we can't say it wasn't you and this didn't happen because we simply don't have the evidence

so people then use Occam's razor to essentially leap to a conclusion that isn't backed up by the

evidence which I don't think is what Poirot does but I would argue that there are there are many

ways to look at what happened and I never ever deny the possibility that Richard III murdered his

nephews because I don't know that he didn't do it I simply believe that there are plenty of other

options that fit better with him so when Richard becomes king in 1483 he's a 30 year old man

and we know a lot about him we know what he's been doing for the past dozen or so years of his

political life we know what he's interested in we know the ways that he behaves and that man that

monster in 1483 who you know comes out of his coronation and is kind of today are mostly murder

in children and just decides you know there's no other way out of this but to kill some kids

that man just doesn't exist anywhere before 1483 and one of the important things he's already killed

Earl Riverson John Gray executed I mean they're judicial executions and if Richard III comes to the

throne with the judicial executions of Rivers Gray and Hastings how does that compare to the way that

many other kings have come to the throne you think about his brother Edward the fourth comes to

the throne wading through blood at places like battle of touton where thousands of people have died

is three people really so bad I'd guess if you're members of their family you'd be bit upset

but three politically active men who are who are accused of things is different to two small children

who are his nephews who have never done anything in their own right and to some extent yeah but

if they kept alive then he's knows that he's never going to be secure on the throne yeah and I can

argue against my own case in this point because the issue with the boys really is what they represent

it's not what they've done or who they are it's what they represent in terms of a threat to Richard

I would never buy the idea that because they're declared illegitimate they're no longer a threat

and Richard doesn't have to worry about them they absolutely are a threat but there are examples

of how you can deal with so the perfect example in 1399 when Richard the second is deposed from

the throne and Henry the fourth his face with the situation where he's got two small children who

most people believe have a better claim to the throne than he does and who will be a threat to him

but he doesn't kill them what he does is takes them into initially fairly loose custody they're

abducted with the idea of putting Edmund on the throne they're quickly recovered and then they're

hidden much more secretly and they emerge in 1413 when Henry the fifth becomes king and they are

utterly loyal to the House of Lancaster for the rest of their lives so something about the way

that they're brought up has meant that they haven't actually rebelled and that was Henry the

fourth dealing with two little boys who weren't close relatives of his so I find it difficult

to believe that Richard wouldn't have thought in 1483 I've got an option here that I can try maybe

it won't work but surely it's got to be preferable to murdering the two small sons of my brother

who I loved and who I have been loyal to for his entire life wouldn't he wanted to try that option

but he was also originally planning to get his brother declared illegitimate what I don't buy that

at all so that that story okay no so the the sermons in 1483 were about the illegitimacy of Edward

the fourth children because he he'd married bigamously yes there is one source from an Italian

who spoke no English who talks about Richard trying to say that Edward the fourth was illegitimate

and that the key point about him it's Mancini the key point about him is that he reports back to

the French court and at the French court the illegitimacy of Edward the fourth was a running joke it

was Louis the eleventh's favorite joke that he used to make people tell him all the time all right

so I think he conflates the story he hears there's something about illegitimacy going on

and so he plays to this French audience who will know the story of Edward the fourth illegitimacy

but he's the only one that says it's about that everyone else says it's about the bigamy of Edward

the fourth marriage now it's almost impossible to have a discussion about Richard the third that

doesn't within about 30 seconds come back to the princes in the tower and that mystery and his

death at Bosworth Field are pretty much all that's discussed about his reign but he did do other

stuff I mean can we just talk about that I mean I guess he did most of his sort of ruling up in

the north before he was king because he was on the throne for such a short time but how good a

ruler was he from that time before he came to the throne and after yeah so essentially from

about 1471 onwards he rules in the north of England for his brother Edward the fourth so he's

based at Midland Castle and York at this point is still you know probably the second city in the

kingdom and he has really close ties and connections to York the north has always been somewhere that's

been beyond the reach of kings really and so for Edward the fourth it's a real boon to have this

loyal brother up there doing a great job of of ruling that part of the country on his behalf

and Richard builds networks of connections and an infinity that is is utterly loyal to him people

generally love him up there obviously not universally there are people in York who can

play in that Richard sticks his nose into city business that he ought to keep out of but that's

the way the world is isn't it nobody is loved by everybody so I mean it is a sort of

equivalent of of leveling up it's like please pay attention to what we're doing up here we're

important and so an important person is sent up and it's like oh great someone's gonna listen

to us yeah and for the region having the king's brother there is a real boon so they have issues

this this sounds really obscure and weird they have an issue with something called fish guards

which are essentially industrial fishing weas across rivers and so you have to have you have to

own land and you have to be wealthy enough to build one of these weas so they're owned and operated

by the church and the gentry and the nobility but what they effectively do is hugely reduce the

catch down river for other people who want to fish and they also hamper navigation of rivers at

the time when the rivers are the medieval motorway network you know this is how people get about

and so the north complained to Richard and and are in a position where he can go to his brother

and say can we ban fish guards and Edward says yeah go on then ban fish guards and the north

have been trying to deal with this for for decades well yeah I mean that they're mentioned in the

Magna Carta aren't they I remember talking to Nicholas Vincent about that and jokingly I said well

you know the Magna Carta is supposed to be this great political document and there's a load of

stuff in there about fishing rights and removing fish traps on rivers and he said no no no no that's

absolutely that's that's a really big important thing this is like 400 years later this is

obviously the problem wasn't solved that's it so centuries later Richard is actually delivering so

he bans fifth fish guards and what he does is he comes back and he writes to all of the tenants

and and managers of his own lands and tells them to remove all the fish guards first so that then he

can go to everyone else and say look I've done this now I expect you to do it so there is no

element of what we quite often see with medieval nobleman of him being very much do as I say and not

as I do he's leading by example and the issue is one of the important things I think about Richard

during this period Anders King is when he does something like this who is he benefiting the common

man the normal man the man he wants to get about on the river and he wants to catch some fish to

feed his family with who is he hurting rich landowners who have been making a lot of money off

those fish guards and now being told they can't do that anymore how do you build and maintain

power in medieval England you don't do it by making yourself popular with the common man because

they simply don't have the power to keep you where you are you do it by cultivating the nobility

and the gentry and the kind of shia knights they're the people who will keep you in office

and he seems to have this genuine interest in the lot of the common man which continues

into his time as king and his parliament that sits in 1484 is something that is frequently overlooked

or considered unimportant but it does some things that people if they think about it people say that

his parliament was a bid for popularity and a desperate effort to keep himself on the throne but

what he does in parliament is very similar to what he does in the north so he reforms bail law

some people still say that Richard III invented bail he definitely didn't bail existed before then

but he reforms bail law so that previously you could be arrested all of your goods could be seized

at the point that you're accused and if you're found innocent and released there was no obligation

to give you those goods back and that could be the tools of your trade or how you feed your family

and everything so Richard changes the law to say that you you can't have your good seas until

you're found guilty he changes jury composition laws to do away with a lot of the corruption and

bribery that goes on in juries and like the fish guards my question here is who's benefiting

the people benefiting are those at the bottom of the social ladder he introduces the first

version of legal aid that we have in this country the court of common please which allows people

who can't afford legal representation to have their cases heard who is he benefiting he's

benefiting the the very lowest rungs of the political social ladders but they're not the people who can

keep you on your throne as king they absolutely cannot in order to give them rights he has to take

them away from people further up the social ladder the gentry and the nobility who are the people

that can keep you on your throne so when we're looking at why people turn against Richard

and decide they might not want him to be their king anymore i think it's important to look at the

rights that he is taking away from some people to be able to give them to other people so he was

doing good things and helping the ordinary people of England but we'll never know if he would have

gone on to be a great king will we a great ruler because his reign was cut so short there is

always an argument to be made for any king that lives the rules for more than a couple of decades

will end up being a bad king they just live long enough to fail yeah so Richard a lot like Henry

the fifth you can make the argument that their reign being cut short actually helped to make their

reputation because they simply didn't have long enough to fail i think you can make a case for

Richard potentially being a good king the ultimate thing that we have to allow is that Richard

is a terrible failed king he he dies he loses his throne without an heir he ends the

plantation at dynasty you know after three hundred and thirty one years and so he hasn't bought

the country with him and i think a lot of the reforms that he tries to make he tries to make

too hard and too fast and he alienates too much of society and he's clumsy and naive in the ways

that he does that so there are definitely huge issues with Richard as a king i had to take to make

the comparison but when you think about people like Jeremy Corbyn and the way they wanted to

radically alter politics and then they get rounded on by certain elements of the establishment

it's it's not dissimilar to that yes and and the same thing i guess you could say happened

with Liz trust she tried to be too radical too quickly and um she had her own battle of boss with

field with a lettuce so the first sort of big uprising against him is what became known as Buckingham's

rebellion and i've slightly skirted around Buckingham because it's a lot of complication because

what sort of family faction does Buckingham represent i've been trying not to call people things

like Buckingham and Coventry and Ipswich or whatever and use their actual names because

i think people find it really confusing you know you've got so many bloody warrikes for instance

down the centuries i've just said oh well Buckingham had this rebellion but what family was he from

so he is Henry Stafford he's from the Stafford family who have been

Earls of Stafford in previous generations and have become dukes of Buckingham

the Buckingham Rebellion was often viewed for years it was viewed as an effort to put Henry

Tudor on the throne that this was the first bid that Henry made to become king but i think that

was about Buckingham trying to take the throne for himself so Buckingham has a perfectly good

claim to the throne of England he's descended three times over from Edward III he has a better

bow foot claim than Henry Tudor does and so i think the october rebellion is about Buckingham trying

to win the throne for himself i think Henry Tudor is is involved in it as a supporter of it

and with the plan that he will come back to England and be able to be Earl of Richmond

the problem with Buckingham is that we know so little about him my issue with him then is that

makes him the unpredictable unknown element in 1483 Richard is not the unknown unpredictable

element it's Buckingham so if someone is doing something utterly radical and unheard of like

murdering children Buckingham for me is a stronger candidate to have behaved in that manner

than Richard is right now i think it's time Matt to round up the usual suspects who killed the

princes in the tower you're putting Buckingham into the line up and recently Lady Margaret has

become a suspect plotting to get her son Henry onto the throne so is she implicated in this

uprising this this rebellion yes absolutely she is tried for treason in parliament in 1484

but is she but is she supporting Stafford or ultimately her son so my my take on Margaret

Beaufort is that what she really wants is Henry home she wants her son Henry Tudor to come home he's

been in exile for 13 14 years by the time he comes over at Bosworth she's made this agreement just

before Edward the fourth dies she gets this agreement from him that Henry Tudor can come home and

potentially marry one of Edward's daughters Edward dies before he signs that document we know that

Margaret Beaufort meets with Richard the day before his coronation to discuss some Beaufort debts and

some financial stuff we don't have evidence of it but i find it hard to believe that Margaret

wouldn't have said to Richard are you going to honor your brother's agreement that my son can come

home and i think Richard probably has to say no at this point we have all kinds of issues going

on a succession crisis now is not the time to be bringing home exiled attainted rebels i think

at this point Margaret has had enough of waiting this is where her patient snaps so i think she

she and and Bishop Morton the future Archbishop of Canterbury kind of egg bucking him on to rebel

and i think part of Margaret's arrangement for that she financially backs this uprising she

politically backs it she gets her son involved in it and i think her arrangement with Buckingham will

surely be you can be king my son can come home and be Earl of Richmond because it's when Buckingham's

rebellion collapses and fails Buckingham is caught and he's executed and it's a few days after that we

get the first ever reference of Henry the seventh as a contender for the throne so it's almost like

Buckingham has to be removed for that to happen so i think Margaret is absolutely up to her neck in

conspiracies against Richard for reasons that i think she would consider utterly legitimate she's

just had enough okay so i'm not sure if that means that Margaret was a suspect or not so so let's

maybe try and wrap this up i think it's time for you to share your theory of what happened to the

princes in the tower and there's a clue in the title of the book you published before your biography

of Richard which is called the survival of the princes in the tower murder mystery and myth

and you got the word survival in the title kind of gives it away doesn't it yeah okay so talk us

talk us through your your theory i used to introduce talking about this book by saying that it

was about the ideas that the princes didn't die at all and then someone pointed out they probably

are dead by now so it's not a book about zombie princes you know haunting London streets today

this was really an epic book there is a good book in that actually yeah um this is a book about

all of the ideas that i'd come across that get mentioned in little snippets and sentences that

they weren't murdered in 1483 by anybody and that they could have survived so undoubtedly

the the prevailing theories that Richard III killed his nephews and i will never say that that

didn't happen i don't know it's entirely possible it would have been out of character but people

in stressful situations behave out of character he could have done it fucking him could have killed

the princes in the tower Margaret Beaufort being involved is is quite a modern phenomenon

probably born out of particularly philippa Gregory's writing around the white queen and the white

princess things like that so we get that source that i mentioned from the early 17th century so George

he says that he saw a document that says Margaret Beaufort poisoned the princes in the tower

but then it goes quiet for kind of almost 400 years until philippa Gregory

creates the idea that Margaret Beaufort might have been behind it so there's no real evidence of

Margaret being involved i think the most likely suspects if they were murdered in 1483 a

rich of the third and did you could bucking him you know richer than third is king he's controlling

the tower he's got his people there i mean it's hard to one of these other people to somehow get

people in there to kill the princes hide the bodies and get out again without anyone noticing

absolutely but people also forget that the the tower of london isn't just a jail at this point it's

a working royal palace there are hundreds of people in and out of there all day it's a menagerie

it's a mint it's an armory it's a palace as well as being a prison although i mean as far as i

know nobody else from outside ever managed to secretly assassinate anyone being held there

i mean might say my theory if i'm pushed the book is an exploration of several different ideas but

my version of this i don't think rich of the third ever planned to kill his nephews i don't think

they were ever in any danger from him i think he might have known that they could be a threat in

the future but if they come back as 18 year old men and face him on the battlefield he can deal with

and justify their deaths at that point i think he separates them so these boys have been brought up

completely separately they barely knew each other so country to all that Victorian portraiture

of them clinging onto each other just waiting to be murdered they barely knew each other so i

think Richard would have sent Edward the fifth up to the council of the north so to the the place

that Richard has been for a dozen years to castles that are a filled with men who are utterly loyal

to him where he can rely on them being kept secret so that part of that Henry the fourth

plan that we talked about before the bit that didn't work was when everyone knew where they were

and they could be targets for abduction so if you wanted to refine that plan you remove that part

and you go straight to the bit where no one knows where they're being kept and they can't be

targeted so he's following the Henry the fourth playbook i think so but refining

the the process slightly to remove the risky bit so Edward's gone to the north where's Richard

i think Richard could have gone over to Richard the third sister Margaret who is the dowager

Duchess of Burgundy at this point we have a couple of accounts of money almost a year's worth

of exchequer revenue being sent over to the continent with Sir James Tyrell and we don't know where

that goes or what purpose it was to serve it's possible that it has something to do with military

problems in Brittany but it's equally possible that that was a payment to Margaret for the care

at least one of the princes in the tower to provide for their care and it is Tyrell the guy who

is often accused of smothering them yeah so Tyrell is the man that Thomas Moore says is behind

the murder of the princes in the tower which is built upon by Shakespeare and I think most

successful lies are built around a kernel of truth so if James Tyrell was involved in the

continued existence of the princes in the tower and he he was around them it's great to build

a lie around that that he was then involved in their deaths okay so Richard Richard goes to

Burgundy and then what happens so I think they ever come back into history when Richard loses the

battle of Bosworth when Richard the third loses the battle of Bosworth we get a mad dash to Yorkshire

so Henry the seventh sends men straight up to York that's definitely about recovering the

Earl of Warwick who is another Yorkist threat and it's definitely about recovering Elizabeth

of York who he's going to marry but I wonder whether there were rumors that Edward the fifth might

have been there too excuse me okay if that was the case and I'm always going to say if before all

of this because I can't prove what I'm saying this is my theory it's a good story if Edward was

there the natural place for him to go is to shoot across west to Ireland which is a Yorkist stronghold

Ireland has always loved the house of York and then we get this emergence of a plot in 1487 which

is remembered in history as the Lambert similar affair and history tells us that are you going to

tell me that that could be Edward yeah that's what I'm going to tell you okay so history tells us

that that's a plot in favor of the Earl of Warwick who was a prisoner in the Tower of London so it's

a joke it's an absolute joke that how could it possibly hope to succeed what history tells us is

that a 10 year old boy pretended to be the 12 year old Earl of Warwick who was a prisoner in London

in the tower at the time and Henry was able to make a joke of this by wheeling Warwick out and

showing him to everybody there are things about that Lambert similar affair that don't make sense

to me that makes sense if you just allow for a moment that it could have been an uprising in

favor of Edward the fifth so they invade and we get the Battle of Stoke in June 1487 when that

happened Edward the fifth if he's still alive would have been 16 and a half years old that's exactly

the same age as the Black Prince is at Cressy it's exactly the same age as Henry the fifth is at the

Battle of Shrewsbury it's only a few months younger than his father was when he started his

glittering military career in the Wars of the Roses so if you're going to follow someone into

battle is it going to be a 10 year old he's pretending to be a 12 year old would you follow a 12

year old probably not would you follow the 16 and a half year old son of the greatest warrior

king in living memory well you just might do that when he's he's emulating the Black Prince and

Henry the fifth so I think the Lambert similar affair could have been an uprising in favor of Edward

the fifth not the Url of Warwick I think maybe that was smoke and mirrors okay interesting but

I mean but my take on all this is that Simnall was just a puppet a stooge and the real leader of

the uprising was John De La Pole King Richard's nephew with the backing of once again Margaret

of York over in Burgundy and Simnall was just a kind of useful banner to march behind I mean

for your version to work Matt Simnall would have had to have been what 15 not not the 10 year old

boy we know from history so the boy that history remembers as Lambert Simnall that then goes into

the kitchens wasn't the boy that was leading that rebellion I believe he's just a patsy picked up

off the battlefield and you know offered a cushy life in the royal kitchens if you'll pretend to

be who he says he was and and so following on from that are you saying that Perkin Warwick

is is Richard Edward's brother yes I believe that I again I can't prove it but I think there is

so much evidence that points to the idea that he could have been genuine the people that believed in

him the people that were willing to die and if nothing else I think it's striking how many people

are willing to to risk their lives by the 1490s in the absolute belief that at least the princes

could still be alive were often told that they were dead Richard had killed them and everybody knew

it but in 1495 William Stanley so the man that led the charge at Bosworth that killed Richard

he's executed in 1495 for his part in Warbex uprisings yeah so he goes literally puts his neck

on the block and loses his head in the belief that at least one of Edward the fourth sons

could well still be alive in 1495 so if he believed that and he died in that belief

how can we be so sure now that they were dead by 1483

well I mean that you know that it that is really interesting and you know it just proves

what have fascinating this whole thing is and stories that come out of it and ways that you can

look at it you know I wish we could talk about this for another hour but I think our listeners

would probably start looking for a shorter podcast to listen to thank you so much for coming on

thank you for having me Charlie it's been a pleasure I I'm very happy to talk about the

princes in town Richard for as many hours as people will listen so thank you for having me

and just remind us what you've got coming up yeah you can tune into got medieval podcasts every

Tuesday and Friday yeah obviously in between listening to Charlie's and the history hit

miscellany will be on the shelves on the 28th of September fantastic thank you very much Matt

thank you so that was Matt Lewis chair of the Richard III Society and the author of an excellent

biography of Richard and I'll leave it to you listeners to make your own minds up as to what

happened to the princes in the tower my next episode is going to be another supplementary episode

rather than jumping straight in on Henry the 7th I'm going to backtrack a little and look at the

early history of the tutors with Tracy Bourman where they came from when they entered history

and how they got involved in the unholy mess of the wars of the roses it's a great and

often unlikely story about how this actually pretty insignificant family ended up

booting out the mighty plantagenets and taking over the throne of England follow or subscribe

to the podcast now so you don't miss it when it drops willy willy harry ste was written and

presented by me Charlie Hickson with music by Tom Jenkins and production by Mark jeeves willy willy

harry ste the podcast is the copyright of Charlie Hickson 2023

hi everyone this is kareen the voice of sermon fairchild from the magnus archives and today I want

to talk to you about boost mobile some things quietly drain you like an expensive phone bill trapping

your money month after month here's a quick money tip stop paying a carry attack when you bring

your own phone and switch to boost mobiles twenty five dollar unlimited forever plan you can unlock

up to six hundred dollars in savings that's money that belongs in your life not trapped in a phone

reclaim most savings for something you're actually into an EMF meter a thermal camera or whatever

strange corner of the universe you're currently exploring visit boost mobile dot com to unlock

your savings and take back control after thirty gigabytes customers may experience slower speeds

customers pay twenty five dollars per month as long as they remain active on the boost mobile

unlimited plan boost mobile January twenty twenty six survey comparing average annual payments

of AT&T rise in anti mobile customers to twelve months on the boost mobile unlimited plan for

full offer details visit boost mobile dot com with its two juicy beef patties three slices of

melted cheese and tangy big art sauce the big arch is what happens when you start making a McDonald's

burger and never stop the big arch the most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet for a limited time

hey this is Adam Grant host of Ted's podcast rethinking with Adam Grant if you heard of bill

it's the intelligent finance platform that uses AI to help you avoid costly errors and optimize cash

in fact bill reports that over ninety of the top one hundred us accounting firms trust them to

manage move and maximize money proven by over a trillion dollars in secure transactions eliminate

the friction and start scaling with the proven choice visit bill dot com slash proven to talk

with an expert about automating your business finances and get a two hundred fifty dollar gift

card is the thank you that's bill dot com slash proven turns and conditions applies to offer

page for details