HISTORY NOTE
I always had the intention of writing a historical novel on Lady Margaret Beaufort, but every time I started out and surveyed the cast of characters, Harry put his hand up, just like a boy in the classroom: ‘What about me, Miss? Write about me, Miss!’ And, yes, there was this fascinating young man, who supported Richard of Gloucester, made him king and then betrayed him? Why? That was when my research began, an exploration of Harry’s childhood and then a journey that took me to Brecon and into a search for the route taken by his army.
Little is left of Buckingham’s castle at Brecon but there is a picture in the Castle Hotel that shows how his castle may have looked in its glory. The manor house at Wooton Devereux has vanished as well but some of the lovely architecture in nearby Weobley recaptures the era of the fifteenth century, and there is a house dating back to 1323.
Some of the palaces in London that were familiar to Harry still exist. The Manor of the Red Rose is long gone but Westminster Hall and the Guildhall where he made his speeches are open to visitors and so, too, is the chamber in the White Tower of the Tower of London, where the famous meeting with Lord Hastings took place. The great hall of Richard III’s beloved Crosby Place was moved, stone by stone, from Bishopsgate to Chelsea and is now under private ownership.
How true is Harry’s account of what happened in 1483? Who did murder the princes? Probably, we shall never know. Fifteenth century political history is scraps pieced together by historians. What clouds the truth for us even more is that contemporary histories, just like bestiaries, were designed to teach morality. ‘All is written for our doctrine, and for to beware that we fall not to vice,’ commented William Caxton. The Tudor Dynasty would agree with him.
Isolde Martyn
The Devil in Ermine Page 32