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Good King Richard? An Account of Richard III and His Reputation
Richard III, the so-called 'last English King of England' and the wicked uncle of popular tradition, is the most controversial and enigmatic of monarchs. Still the Great Debate between traditionalists and revisionists rages on. Was he an enlightened legislator out of his depth in the political intrigues of his time? Or was he simply, brutally, the 'gargoyle on the great cathedral of English history'? Searching for the man behind the portraits, Jeremy Potter adduces a formidable array of colourful and quarrelsome voices from St Thomas More to Laurence Olivier.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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About the author
Jeremy Potter
27 books8 followersJeremy Potter served the Richard III Society as Chairman from 1971-1989. During his chairmanship, the Society launched several important initiatives, including the commissioning of a heroic statue of Richard III (on display in Castle Gardens, Leicester), the securing of royal patronage from H.R.H. Richard Duke of Gloucester, and the broadcast of a trial of Richard III, with Lord Elwyn-Jones, former Lord Chancellor, presiding. During his tenure, the Society also became active in sponsoring the publication of fifteenth-century source documents and works of current scholarship on the period. It also created the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, which provides financial support for graduate study and publishing. Potter was elected President of the Society at its Annual General Meeting in London, October 4, 1997.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 15, 2009
This book is a veritable treasure trove of Ricardian information. Let me be clear - in no way is it the type of non-critical, slightly hysterical, overly romantic defence of "the last English king" which is so off-putting and embarrassing to those of us who believe in his innate decency. On the contrary, it is a clear eyed look at the varying changes which time has brought to the reputation of Richard III.
This book takes the facts with which I am very familiar and organizes them differently. This tends to emphasize some aspects I had not considered as carefully as I might have. Potter offers gentle excuses for the more colourful excesses of More and Shakespeare and shows far more tolerance toward them than I am inclined to show. Each critic and supporter of the King is set in his own times which gives some rationale for why each wrote as he did. This chronological pattern is helpful in understanding why the Great Debate still rages.
Amongst the things I did not know was that a second set of bones was discovered in a walled-up room of the Tower of London in 1647 and were supposed to be those of the sons of Edward IV. This tends to cast a rather different light on those found buried beneath a staircase in 1674. Yet the latter set was reverently placed in an urn designed by Sir Christopher Wren which bears a slanderous inscription in Latin accusing their uncle of their deaths. Potter also includes the reasons why the Dean of Westminster Abbey will not now let the inurned bones be examined by modern forensic experts.
Potter makes a powerful case that Richard was not suicidal when the led the charge toward Henry Tydder at Ambrion Hill. (I am not entirely persuaded of his opinion.) However, I do agree with him that Richard was a far better soldier than politician and it was his failure to act decisively to put down the traitors at his court which laid the foundations for his betrayal at Bosworth.
One of the more interesting facts in the book is the mention of non-historians who have been convinced of the rightness of the Ricardian cause. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was one as was Jane Austen. Nearer out own day, Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, and especially Rex Stout were ardent Ricardians - the latter exiled More's Utopia from his bookshelves because of his outrage at the man's perfidy concerning Richard.
All in all, this is a fair-minded and meaty book which gave me much pleasure and even more food for thought. The illustrations are an excellent addition to the text and the front-piece showing the statue of Richard at Leicester is particularly moving. I am altogether delighted to have this volume on my shelves.
This book takes the facts with which I am very familiar and organizes them differently. This tends to emphasize some aspects I had not considered as carefully as I might have. Potter offers gentle excuses for the more colourful excesses of More and Shakespeare and shows far more tolerance toward them than I am inclined to show. Each critic and supporter of the King is set in his own times which gives some rationale for why each wrote as he did. This chronological pattern is helpful in understanding why the Great Debate still rages.
Amongst the things I did not know was that a second set of bones was discovered in a walled-up room of the Tower of London in 1647 and were supposed to be those of the sons of Edward IV. This tends to cast a rather different light on those found buried beneath a staircase in 1674. Yet the latter set was reverently placed in an urn designed by Sir Christopher Wren which bears a slanderous inscription in Latin accusing their uncle of their deaths. Potter also includes the reasons why the Dean of Westminster Abbey will not now let the inurned bones be examined by modern forensic experts.
Potter makes a powerful case that Richard was not suicidal when the led the charge toward Henry Tydder at Ambrion Hill. (I am not entirely persuaded of his opinion.) However, I do agree with him that Richard was a far better soldier than politician and it was his failure to act decisively to put down the traitors at his court which laid the foundations for his betrayal at Bosworth.
One of the more interesting facts in the book is the mention of non-historians who have been convinced of the rightness of the Ricardian cause. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was one as was Jane Austen. Nearer out own day, Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, and especially Rex Stout were ardent Ricardians - the latter exiled More's Utopia from his bookshelves because of his outrage at the man's perfidy concerning Richard.
All in all, this is a fair-minded and meaty book which gave me much pleasure and even more food for thought. The illustrations are an excellent addition to the text and the front-piece showing the statue of Richard at Leicester is particularly moving. I am altogether delighted to have this volume on my shelves.
January 4, 2021
“History is not made by great men and women, nor by social and economic forces. It is made by historians.” These first two sentences reveal the purpose of this book: not to provide the reader with a biography of Richard III from this author’s viewpoint but to survey what others have written about him over the centuries: historians, amateurs, a playwright, and a saint. The author announces at the beginning that he is not impartial (he was at the time Chariman of the Richard III Society), but he gives a clear-eyed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments of both the traditionalists (those who adhere to the belief that Richard was a deformed, wicked king who murdered his nephews) and the revisionists who believe he was an enlightened king and a moral man.
The traditionalist image of Richard began with the rumors and the untrustworthy chroniclers of the time, and became myth with Thomas More’s History of King Richard III. As the author points out, this work was not a history but a literary exercise in the representation of villainy. It incorporates the ridiculous canard about Richard’s monstrous birth, and at least one historian has suggested that More was famous as an intellectual joker and that this work was meant as an ironical parody of history. Even though More never sought to publish it in his lifetime, it has been accepted as truth telling because More, was after all, a saint. More’s vision became firmly entrenched as fact in the public consciousness through the work of the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare’s Richard III.
After the Tudor dynasty ended, the revisionist movement began with questions raised by Sir George Buck and later by Horace Walpole in his Historic Doubts. But one of the greatest philosopher’s of his time David Hume rejected Walpole’s conclusions. Even though a rationalist and skeptic himself, Hume seems to have based his stance on absolute faith that More’s “singular magnanimity, probity and judgment make him an evidence beyond all exception . . .his authority is irresistible and sufficient to overbalance a hundred little doubts and scruples and objections.”
The battle between the traditionalists and revisionists has continued ever since: Gairdner vs. Markham; Kendall vs. Ross. The author believes that Ross has retreated somewhat from the extreme position of the traditionalists. And while some traditionalists acknowledge the enlightened reforms of Richard’s parliament, they cannot bring themselves to give him credit, asserting either that he had nothing to do with the acts of parliament or, if he did, it was only a desperate bid for popularity. The author has given us a thorough and cogent summary of the debate that has raged over the centuries about this last Plantagenet king.
The traditionalist image of Richard began with the rumors and the untrustworthy chroniclers of the time, and became myth with Thomas More’s History of King Richard III. As the author points out, this work was not a history but a literary exercise in the representation of villainy. It incorporates the ridiculous canard about Richard’s monstrous birth, and at least one historian has suggested that More was famous as an intellectual joker and that this work was meant as an ironical parody of history. Even though More never sought to publish it in his lifetime, it has been accepted as truth telling because More, was after all, a saint. More’s vision became firmly entrenched as fact in the public consciousness through the work of the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare’s Richard III.
After the Tudor dynasty ended, the revisionist movement began with questions raised by Sir George Buck and later by Horace Walpole in his Historic Doubts. But one of the greatest philosopher’s of his time David Hume rejected Walpole’s conclusions. Even though a rationalist and skeptic himself, Hume seems to have based his stance on absolute faith that More’s “singular magnanimity, probity and judgment make him an evidence beyond all exception . . .his authority is irresistible and sufficient to overbalance a hundred little doubts and scruples and objections.”
The battle between the traditionalists and revisionists has continued ever since: Gairdner vs. Markham; Kendall vs. Ross. The author believes that Ross has retreated somewhat from the extreme position of the traditionalists. And while some traditionalists acknowledge the enlightened reforms of Richard’s parliament, they cannot bring themselves to give him credit, asserting either that he had nothing to do with the acts of parliament or, if he did, it was only a desperate bid for popularity. The author has given us a thorough and cogent summary of the debate that has raged over the centuries about this last Plantagenet king.
July 14, 2016
Evolution of history
My mentor in philosophy of history defended the credible assertion that history professes true fidelity to "accurate depiction of prior human events as they actually occurred" . Any progress in attaining that goal is dynamic--only variously successful and never fully completed. The historian can't expect to reveal fully and accurately "what really scored". History is the present evolution of proposed descriptions of an assumed set of events never directly accessible to any chronicler.
The story Richard III, his life and times, buffeted over the centuries by various commentators interspersed with biographical and historical essays of varying quality is a quintessential exemplar of centuries-long creation of bad history. This present review of a rehabilitative trend in the current history of Richard, last Plantagenet King of England, though under the sponsorship of a society with that aim, is a lucid, comprehensive yet concise and
horoughly satisfying work.
My mentor in philosophy of history defended the credible assertion that history professes true fidelity to "accurate depiction of prior human events as they actually occurred" . Any progress in attaining that goal is dynamic--only variously successful and never fully completed. The historian can't expect to reveal fully and accurately "what really scored". History is the present evolution of proposed descriptions of an assumed set of events never directly accessible to any chronicler.
The story Richard III, his life and times, buffeted over the centuries by various commentators interspersed with biographical and historical essays of varying quality is a quintessential exemplar of centuries-long creation of bad history. This present review of a rehabilitative trend in the current history of Richard, last Plantagenet King of England, though under the sponsorship of a society with that aim, is a lucid, comprehensive yet concise and
horoughly satisfying work.
January 2, 2015
In the interest of full disclosure, I was already a Ricardian before I read this book.
The author is clear to pronounce his partiality at the start (he was the Chairman of the Richard III Society, which is in essence devoted to improving and preserving King Richard's reputation), and doesn't claim to come at the issue impartially, but I still found parts of the text to be trying a bit too hard. All in all, though, that was the exception and not the rule.
This was published in the '90s so I found the most interesting chapter to be the one which addresses Richard's appearance. Judging by the new evidence of this decade, we are pretty certain that the remains of Richard have been found -- and that skeleton shows evidence of scoliosis (likely visible in the elevation of one shoulder) but definitely not the withered arm which was certainly invented posthumously by Shakespeare and other story-weavers. (A physical deformity was, in a highly ableist era, considered proof of his villainous ways) This chapter, written before the benefit of this analysis of Richard's remains, comes off very balanced and seems to have landed squarely on the mark....which definitely lends credence to Potter as a historian and researcher.
The author is clear to pronounce his partiality at the start (he was the Chairman of the Richard III Society, which is in essence devoted to improving and preserving King Richard's reputation), and doesn't claim to come at the issue impartially, but I still found parts of the text to be trying a bit too hard. All in all, though, that was the exception and not the rule.
This was published in the '90s so I found the most interesting chapter to be the one which addresses Richard's appearance. Judging by the new evidence of this decade, we are pretty certain that the remains of Richard have been found -- and that skeleton shows evidence of scoliosis (likely visible in the elevation of one shoulder) but definitely not the withered arm which was certainly invented posthumously by Shakespeare and other story-weavers. (A physical deformity was, in a highly ableist era, considered proof of his villainous ways) This chapter, written before the benefit of this analysis of Richard's remains, comes off very balanced and seems to have landed squarely on the mark....which definitely lends credence to Potter as a historian and researcher.
May 8, 2019
Perfect. This book seems so neutral, as opposed to other Richard biographies I've read. Instead of trying to clear his name, or convince me (and, for the record, I was already a Ricardian), he just presents the facts as they are and leaves the reader to decide.
January 5, 2025
my opinion on richard was shaped by this book (as was the entirety of my NEA)
February 25, 2016
After reading this book i realized that the main purpose is Richard's reputation. Everyone one saw Richard as the bad guy but what they do not realized is that he is not worst than than Henry VII. My opinion also after reading this book is that Richard was always falsely accused of something he never did all the time because they always portray him as the bad guy most times. Overall this was a really good book and i understood why they made Richard out to be the bad person and that is because that was the expectation but Richard tried really hard to maintain his reputation which he did in order to prove them all wrong about who he actually is. I really liked Richard in this book he was real and he treated everyone the same but during this era everyone disliked him and they wanted to see him fail but he tried and preserved his reputation. (159 words)
February 15, 2010
My favourite as the best summary of the evidence that King Richard III was the most falsely accused king in (at least) English history. A fantastic and fascinating read, and one of the books that made me question the historicity of the "Tudor myth." By Jeremy Potter, former chair of the Richard III Society......
June 8, 2013
An interesting read. A look at how Richard has been portrayed through the centuries by actors, authors and critics. Well worth reading!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews