For those who want to learn about King Richard III without the biased views of the Tudor myth should contact the Richard III Foundation, 47 Summit Avenue, Garfield, New Jersey 07026, or visit our website at www.richard111.com.

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Joe Ann Riocca, CEO/President
Garfield, New Jersey

FOR MORE INFORMATION…

Regarding the Richard III controversy, recently ‘raging’ in your pages, I’d like those of your readers who might be interested in even more information about the defamed monarch to know that, in addition to the Richard III Society of New Orleans, there are two more Plantagenet societies in the United States.

Every 22nd August, in the New York Times obituary page, under ‘in Memoriam’, tributes are paid to Richard III by the following societies, as well as by the Richard III Society.

The Richard III Foundation
47 Summit Avenue
Garfield, New Jersey 07026

and

NY-CA Black Adder Society
(no address available)

Edith Finke
East Quogue, New York

Editor’s note: Can any readers supply the address for the Black Adder Society?

EDWARD AT MORTIMER’S CROSS

In your August/September issue, the article on the little-recorded battle of Mortimer’s Cross (page 46) is riddled with factual errors. Edward, Earl of March and later Edward IV, was never referred to as Edward Mortimer. His family’s legitimate claim to the throne came through their distaff side, the Plantagenets. He did not ‘cut his teeth’ at Mortimer’s Cross, having effectively won the battle of Northampton eight months earlier.

Edward was not ‘giving priority to stopping [Tudor's] advance’ when he moved to meet him. In fact, he intended to prevent the Welsh from blocking the path of his own force on its march to reinforce Warwick in London. The River Lugg did not protect Edward’s flank, because he fought with his back to it and Pembroke’s army came from the west, not the south. The triple suns phenomenon occurred on the day of the battle and not before it. The customary battle formation of the day was for the army to wheel right from file into line when they reached the field, making the vanguard the right wing. The thought of armies engaging ‘each battle in turn’ is ludicrous.

Geoffrey Richardson, MBE
Shipley, West Yorkshire

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

My publishers, M. Evans & Co. of New York, sent me a copy of the review that you wrote of my book, Down the Common (August/September 1998, page 60).

I want to let you know how much I appreciate your careful reading and your deep understanding of my efforts. I am neither a historian nor a writer. I was 82 when my book was published in England in 1996. I had, in a way, been thinking about it privately for some 50 years. The idea for it dates from a time soon after the War, when my mother, moving into and old house and having electric lights put in upstairs, said ‘How awful to have to attend to a sick child in the night and not even be able to strike a match.’

I thought about this–in detail. Years later in my stepson’s school history book was a chapter called ‘A Day in the Life of a Medieval Peasant’. I read it. The peasant was a man (rather easier lives), middle-aged (no children about), the day was in June (the best weather in England), it was a Sunday (no work for men), and I thought, ‘How false, how stupidly false was the impression thus given of medieval life. It should be done, I thought, from a woman’s point of view, and throughout a whole year.

This was the germ of my book. I knew it should be done without rose-tinted glasses, including all the s0rdid details and all the events likely to occur among a group of ordinary, plausible characters.

It was not until years later, in the silence of widowhood, that I came to realize that there could be a book in all my imaginative research, and that it might actually be me who wrote it.

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