Although the weather might have been better, warm, inviting hotels never failed to provide a comfortable welcome at the end of each day of discovery. (And, on one occasion, a rousing send-off by the entire staff at the conclusion of our stay.) Lavish meals quickly replenished our tired bodies, and at times our ‘Quest for Camelot’ nearly took a back seat to an ongoing quest for the perfect clotted cream. Dinners featured such difficult and tempting choices as hand-carved roast beef or smoked haddock, and made an elegant complement to our typically simpler traditional lunches of fish and chips, meat pies, or Welsh rarebit.

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I want to thank all of the participants for their pleasant company on this enjoyable journey: Don and Gail Kittle, Bill and Geneva Cleary, Jim and Nancy Hoy, John and Pamela Scott, Pat Troyer, Kathryn Naylor, Jim Snelling, Clayton Stein, Marion Gordon, Tad Berkowitz, Owen ‘Ddantgwyn’ Bassett, Sandra Regelbrugge, Fay Hummel, and Gayle Meier, our BRITISH HERITAGE photo contest winner. I hope that, with the capable help of Lord Addison Travel, BRITISH HERITAGE was able to make Arthur’s England a very real and memorable land for all of you.

Bruce Heydt,
Managing Editor

IN DEFENCE OF RICHARD

I was glad that Peter Kilby began his article on ‘The Princes in the Tower’ (October/November 1998, page 5) by acknowledging the long-standing debate over whether Richard III really killed his nephews. His piece, however, strongly implies Richard’s guilt. In the interest of fairness or accuracy, some of his points need to be put into fuller context, as they then take on a different light and illustrate why there has been such an impassioned debate on this question.

Mr. Kilby writes that Richard ascended the throne ‘after declaring that Richard IV’s marriage had been invalid and that his two sons were therefore illegitimate’. It should be mentioned, however, that this allegation was first made by a high-ranking clergyman, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells–and Chancellor of England under Edward IV. Stillington said he had been witness to Edward’s marriage pre-contract to an earl’s daughter some years prior to his marrying Elizabeth Woodville. The matter was put before Parliament, and it was Parliament which declared Edward’s marriage to be illegitimate.

The article also cites Dr. Argentine, young Prince Edward’s physician, as having reported Edward’s fear of impending death while he was in the Tower of London prior to his scheduled coronation. This should be identified as being a second-hand account contained in the writings of the Italian cleric Mancini, whom Mr. Kilby mentions elsewhere in the article. While that dosen’t necessarily invalidate the information, it is less reliable than had it been a first-hand account written by the doctor himself.

More seriously misleading is the quotation from Sir Thomas More describing Prince Edward’s despairing words, his ‘fear and misery’, and his resulting inability to ‘perform even basic tasks, such as dressing himself properly’, on the day of Richard’s coronation as though it were an eyewitness account. More was in fact only five years old in 1483 and his account was not written until some 30 years later. It was therefore based on second-hand sources at best, and is acknowledged to be full of errors, distortions, and contradictions.

Andrea de Castano
Kew Gardens, New York

TUDOR MYTHOLOGY

I really must object to the portrayal of King Richard III in the October/November issue. Historians invented the Tudor myth and succeeded in immortalizing the myth of King Richard III. The so-called murder of the Princes has never been proven. Richard had nothing to gain by their deaths and everything to gain by their preservation. After the death of Richard III, Henry VII sought for information to destroy the validity of Richard’s claim to the throne. During Tudor’s first parliament, he never accused Richard of the murder of his nephews when he had the opportunity to do so. Perhaps this is the first clue to the identity of the true murderer.

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