Daughter of Time: Why it's a great book, Part II

Images from Digging for Richard III by Mike Pitts: the face

on the right is a reconstruction based on the discovered skull.

So Tey is probably wrong about who killed the princes. The aspect of her writing that sends professional historians into teeth-grinding pomposity is that she does miss context. Grant and Brent argue from a limited knowledge of the time-period and they isolate information--the princes' mother came out of sanctuary!--rather than placing action and reaction into a larger frame. Consequently, they miss the obvious: just because Richard didn't kill the princes at a particular time and place for a particular reason using a particular person doesn't mean he didn't kill them at a later time and place himself.

They don't even wonder if the princes simply died (because what kind of murder mystery would that be?!).

Nevertheless, Tey's book deserves accolades--not to say gratitude--for its lessons in historical research. Grant and even Brent may be amateurs, but they are amateurs who have grasped several basic principles of researching history, principles that non-amateur historians would do well to remember:

1. History tends to get reduced to memorable stories--this is normal, not evil.
2. Eyewitnesses don't always tell the truth.
3. Virtuous people may tell the truth; that doesn't mean the truth they tell is accurate.
4. Good historical research reveals its sources.
5. Contemporary judgments--such as sticking historical personages into pigeon holes--are not all that useful.
6. True history did happen; it is just terribly difficult to prove. 

What makes Tey's approach all that more fantastic is that Tey turned out to be sort of right . . . about Richard's position in history, that is.

The parking lot--the dig is about to begin!

Recently, Richard III's body was discovered underneath a parking lot in Leicester. Turns out, he wasn't dumped in a river, lost to us forever as that evil hunchback who didn't deserve a proper, kingly burial. I highly recommend the book of the find: Digging for Richard III by Mike Pitts. As Pitts makes clear, it was a scientific, archaeological find; when the skeleton was removed from its grave, it was not yet identified definitively as Richard III. It could be Richard III (it was--as the curved spine clearly indicates); it could also be an unknown male of the period.

However, a representative of the Richard III Society--of whom Tey would have been a proud member--wanted the skeleton removed with some dignity, as benefiting a revered-by-some, long-dead king.

"And so," Pitts writes, "late on a Wednesday afternoon in September, the remains of a then anonymous and undated man were carried across a car park in Leicester in a recycled cardboard box, draped with the flag of late medieval English royalty, and laid on the floor through the side door of a small white Citroen van."

There is something so charming and quirky and . . . oh, I'll say it . . . English about the whole thing, it brings a tear to the eye.

And lest anyone forget, the Richard III Society was largely instrumental in getting the dig started, continued, and accomplished in the first (and last) place.

So Tey's passion and the passion of those who have agreed with her over the years paid off.

Isn't that better than being stuffy and annoyed at her? As Mike Pitts writes about Daughter of Time, "[The book] is a warning to read evidence critically and not to accept blindly all you are told."

Exactly.

Tey should have the final word. At the end of his investigation, Grant returns the schoolbooks to the nurse who lent them:

 "We'll miss you, you know," she said. "We've grown used to having you here. We've even got used to that." And she moved her elbow in the direction of the portrait.
 A thought stirred in him.
 "Will you do something for me?" he asked.
 "Of course. Anything I can do."
 "Will you take that portrait to the window and look at it in a good light as long as it takes to count a pulse?"
 "Yes, of course, if you want me to. But why?"
 "Never mind why. You just do it to please me. I'll time you."
 She took up the portrait and moved into the light of the window. He watched the second-hand of his watch.
 He gave her forty-five seconds and then said: "Well?" And as there was no immediate answer, he said again: "Well?"
 "Funny," she said. "When you look at it for a little, it's really quite a nice face, isn't it?"

Daughter of Time: Who (or What) Killed the Princes, Part I

The Princes in the Tower by Millais

Why did everybody want the princes dead?

The problem was the princes may or may not have been illegitimate. Richard III would want them to be illegitimate (and they were declared so while he was acting as regent) since that enabled Richard to become king, a healthier state of affairs, generally-speaking, than a regency (child kings cause lots of problems).

Since the illegitimacy was a matter of law, not absolute proof, the princes alive would still have found supporters among potential rebels. In fact, Anastasia-like claimants did crop up throughout Henry VII and Henry VIII's reigns. A fundamental attribute of the medieval English and British throne is that every politically-minded (i.e. crazy) person wanted it. Not only did Henry VII and VIII deal with Edward V wannabes, they also dealt with Richard de la Poole who made a claim for the throne based on a rather haphazard family line--though no more haphazard than Henry VII's really. Richard de la Poole's dad is circled on the family tree below. (I guess Game of Thrones is more accurate than anyone realizes!)

Henry VII would have wanted the princes dead since he repealed the act that made them illegitimate, so he could marry their sister, yet he certainly would not have wanted them around. Whether or not Henry VII believed the princes were dead in 1483 (when he began invasion proceedings), he would have (1) invaded anyway (oh come on, does anyone really believe otherwise?) and (2) never shared a throne, even as regent, with a dispossessed 13-year-old.

Tey argues that Henry VII had the stronger motive for wanting the princes out of the way, and she has a point, especially from a mystery point of view. Unfortunately, her argument doesn't take into account fear and self-protection. Richard III and his cohorts had good reason to be sick to the eyeteeth with the whole War of the Roses. If a couple of dead princes would help it end faster, well, okay then. (For problems with this argument, see My Theory below.)

The main problem with Henry VII as the guilty party is the time frame. The princes seem to disappear from the historical record in 1483. This means something but not much since historical records are not infallible. Richard III became king that summer. Henry VII began invasion proceedings . . . before that point really but actively in Christmas 1483. The invasion took place the summer of 1485. Henry VII was crowned in October 1485.

If the princes were still alive, surely someone would have removed them from the Tower as soon as Richard's death at Bosworth was reported! (The princes' maternal relations may have wanted Henry VII to save the princes; no one with half a brain would trust Henry VII with the princes.) I am aware that some romantics hope that this did, in fact, happen. My personal assessment is that there is simply not enough evidence to trek down that path.

Anastasia-like claimants of the time believed otherwise! Faced with impostors claiming to be Edward V, Henry VII did eventually argue that the princes were too murdered, so there, nah, nah, nah.

My Theory

It's boring but from an Occam's razor point of view, it makes a tremendous amount of sense:

The princes died in 1483 from illness. Richard covered it up. Henry VII lied his pants off.

The death of Eustace, heir

of King Stephen (above) at 23,

helped end years of civil war.

Infant and teen deaths happened all the time in the medieval era. Richard III lost his heir when the child was 6. Elizabeth of York lost two out of six children in infancy and died giving birth to another child, who also died. Henry VII's first heir, Prince Alfred, died at 15, leaving Alfred's wife Catherine a widow. Edward VI died at age 15. James I's heir, Prince Henry died at 18 and Henry's sister, Princess Elizabeth, at 16.

The list goes on.

Death by illness explains why both Richard III and Henry VII would pretend otherwise. From no sane political perspective could Richard III inform the entire world that his two nephews, both in his charge, were dead, not when France was making noises about invading. Henry VII, with French help, invaded anyway; the princes' officially proclaimed deaths would only have stirred the flames of possible rebellion among Richard's own people.

Death by illness would explain why Henry VII reacted as he did--he invaded on his own behalf and for Elizabeth, not the princes. He may have suspected the princes were dead; he had no way of really knowing until he arrived in London. If he arrived and found dead bodies with no obvious external cause (blow to the head, etc.), he would do . . . exactly what he did do: have Parliament repeal and censor Titulus Regius, the act that declared the princes illegitimate and made Richard III king.

If there had been an obvious cause of death, such as murder, Henry VII would have executed someone. That's the way his mind worked (Henry VII executed Tyrrell--the supposed murderer--for supporting one of the de la Pooles; Sir Thomas More made up the stuff about Tyrrell murdering the princes after Tyrrell was dead; as Tey points out, this doesn't really make sense, likely because the murder never happened at all!).

Faced with no way to make the princes' deaths helpful to himself, Henry VII swept everything under the rug. He not only didn't want the act, Titulus Regius, to exist; he didn't want any reminders of what the act said. He wanted the princes to disappear as if they had never been.

The princes dying by illness explains in addition why their mother rejoined the court under Richard III. She may have detested him, but her unmotherly behavior--so exclaimed at by Grant--would have been a non-issue if she had seen the dead bodies and/or had confirmation from their physician of their deaths. Even if she merely suspected what had happened and wanted confirmation, her worries wouldn't have stopped her from playing politics.

Blackadder is annoyed when the queen pardons people

he has already executed. Royalty has a tendency to

change its mind!

The princes dying from illness isn't a glamorous explanation. It wouldn't serve as fodder for a play. It doesn't satisfy either the Richardians or, oddly enough, the Henry VII-ists, who blame ANY defense of Richard on "amateurism" (patronizing dopes).

Nevertheless, it makes a great deal of sense. And it creates a true human tragedy. Imagine you're Richard--you've just become king, your kingdom is reasonably stable, you have enemies but you also have supporters, France is making threats but eh, when does it not?

In addition, you've got your biggest threat, two nephews, locked up in comfort. No one can accuse you of being a bad uncle; people have seen them playing on the Tower grounds.

And then they die. Overnight. Suddenly. You stand there in the tower looking at their dead bodies and you know if you aren't stupid (and Richard wasn't stupid), "It's all over. There's no way around this. It's the ultimate rallying cry. Even if I bury them literally and figuratively, their disappearance will make matters as they currently stand worse."

And doesn't this explanation also say something about the randomness of nature and the plans of powerful people? All the plans in the world . . . you can't stop Mount St. Helen's from erupting; the rats still arrive in Europe loaded with fleas, and somebody still burns London to the ground by accident.

"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Part II will discuss Daughter of Time, the novel, overall.

Daughter of Time: Research & History: Claims 11 & 12

Ingrid Bergman as Anastasia being accepted

by the Dowager Empress. In real life, none

of the remaining Romanovs ever accepted

a self-proclaimed Anastasia.

While researching what truly happened regarding the princes in the tower, Grant (and Brent) postulate several scenarios. Although I am not qualified to judge the truthfulness of their scenarios, I can comment on several of the claims accompanying the scenarios.

Claim 11: If Richard had killed his  nephews, he would have published accounts of their deaths. After all, there is no point in having dead heirs if other people will claim they are still alive.

Consider Grand Duchess Anastasia. (And yes, the infamous impostor Anna Anderson was nuts. Added to which, in-depth forensic analysis of the assassinations of Czar Nicholas and his family indicate clearly that no one got out of that cellar alive.)

I think Grant and Brent have a point but miss out on context: according to one theory, Richard or one of Richard's cohorts reportedly ordered the boys killed on the eve of invasion as a kind of fail-safe. If this theory is correct, the deaths weren't thought through (and possibly not even approved); there certainly wouldn't be time to concoct, publish, and broadcast an official account.

Even if the boys died naturally (which I consider possible), I suspect that presenting the boys' dead bodies to the populace as fever victims would have been risky in the extreme. Richard had JUST taken the throne (he ascended to the throne in summer 1483 and was killed in battle in summer 1485). Having 2 "sweet" boys killed off on the eve of his royal triumph would hardly have made Richard look good (Henry VII and VIII would wait for their victims to hit adulthood before discovering excuses to order executions--how much difference a few years make!).

Claim 12 is one of Tey's sillier claims (yes, she does have them). The boys reportedly disappeared from view in 1483. (They were being kept under close guard in the Tower.) Their mother, Edward IV's wife, and her daughters returned to court. This is admittedly a bit odd. But Grant's deduction is still odder:

"Where would one have to go to meet a woman who became matey with the murderer of her two boys?" he exclaims, the implication of his indignation being that members of the royal family would never put their well-being above their children's. 

"How would you play her?" he later asks his girlfriend, Marta (an actress). "The woman who came out of sanctuary and made friends with her children's murderer for seven hundred marks per annum and the right to go to parties at the Palace." 

Grant makes at least two mistakes here: (1) he assumes that the prince's deaths correspond to their disappearance from the historical record.

Granted, Grant is making the same assumption as the historians he criticizes--all the more reason Grant should know better! The princes may have been killed in 1483; they may have been killed in 1485. Nobody really knows.

(2) Grant applies his own appraisal of how women should behave in 1950 to a medieval queen in the 1480s.

I'm guessing that Tey's interest in Richard was a limited--though fascinating--foray into history. Speaking historically, many royal mothers have shown less than maternal feelings (occasionally, too much). James VI of Scotland and I of England, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, never even knew his mother and made little effort to avenge her execution by Queen Elizabeth I. Queen Caroline, married to George II, had a less than satisfactory relationship with her son, Prince Frederick, who produced George III. Queen Victoria had strained relationships with several of her children, including the prince regent.

Before becoming queen, Elizabeth I did

everything in her power to placate a sister who 

feared her and a father who contrived the

execution of her mother: survival trumped all.

There are no murders here (in fairness to Grant, English queens showed far more loyalty to their children than to their husbands). However, the assumption that a royal mother will always act in the best interest of her child strains credulity. Consider that Jane Seymour's mother handed over her daughter to a man (Henry VIII) with a bad marriage record without apparently batting an eye.

In defense of Tey as a writer, I must add that Grant is reacting in character. He is a very smart guy with a blind spot, that blind spot being women in general (though not specifically). He understands his housekeeper and his girlfriend. That's about it. Otherwise, he seems to adopt the usual attitudes of a British man of his time (1950s). He fails to recognize that even if Elizabeth Woodville (mother of the princes) wasn't so blackhearted as to condone her sons' murders, she might be cunning enough to placate the king holding them captive. Plus, she has other children to worry about. When Grant later discusses Elizabeth of York, who married Henry VII, the man Grant does think murdered the princes (Elizabeth's brothers), he assigns her willingness to marry a monster to survival instinct.

So if Grant can accept that Elizabeth of York acted out of instinctive self-protection, why not accept that her mother might have acted out of the same motivation? 

Tey has made the same mistake here that, unfortunately, many historians make in reverse. Because Tey likes Richard and loathes Henry VII, she--through Grant--maintains that a good woman would have no practical reason to fear Richard but loads of practical reasons to fear Henry. Of course, Tey never saw an episode of Big Brother (he who holds the purse strings . . . )

I have no doubt that Henry would have killed the boys if they were alive when he took over the Tower. I also find it plausible that the boys were killed under Richard's aegis.

More to follow . . .

Daughter of Time: Research & History, Claims 9 & 10

At this point, Chapter 8 in Daughter of Time, Grant and his researcher Brent begin to debate what actually happened when Edward IV died and Richard III took over. Was it a planned coup? Was Richard, as regent, as surprised as everyone else when Edward IV's sons, including the next king, were declared illegitimate? 

I am not qualified to debate these points. It would entail far more research--likely at the British Museum, like Brent, if anyone wants to pay my way--than I have time for. In any case, my posts address Tey's claims about research. I am not totally invested in Tey being right about Richard (partly because I'm not sure that she is).

What I am qualified to discuss are Brent's claims:

Claim 9: Taught history can be wrong/ misleading.

Although this smacks of the cynicism that I deplore, Brent has a point. He uses the Boston Massacre as an example:

The total casualties were four. I was brought up on the Boston Massacre, Mr. Grant. My twenty-eight inch chest used to swell at the very memory of it. My good red spinach-laden blood used to seethe at the thought of helpless civilians mowed down by the fire of British troops. You can't imagine what a shock it was to find that all it added up to in actual fact was a brawl that wouldn't get more than local reporting in a clash between police and strikers in any American lock-out . . . That's partly why I like to research so much.

Brent is being a trifle dismissive. The point of the Boston Massacre is that it offered a great rallying point for disenchanted colonists. What I've always found far more fascinating than the numbers is that the soldiers involved were defended, in part, by colonial lawyers! John Adams and Josiah Quincy II helped acquit 6 out of the 8 British soldiers. That degree of objectivity (John Adams was already a declared Patriot) impresses me no end.

The important aspect of Brent's self-revelation re: the Boston Massacre is that it leads him to Claim 10: Truth isn't in accounts but in account books.

 "A neat phrase," Grant said, complimentary. "Does it mean anything?"
 "It means everything. The real history is written in forms not meant as history. In Wardrobe accounts, in Privy Purse expenses, in personal letters, in estate books. If someone, say, insists that Lady Whoosit never had a child, and you find in the account book the entry: 'For the son born to my lady on Michaelmas eve: five yards of blue ribbon, fourpence halfpenny' it's a reasonably fair deduction that my lady had a son on Michaelmas eve."

Brent is discussing primary research. He makes a mistake (common to students) in that he assumes that primary research doesn't lie; on my semester research test, I ask, "Is a primary source automatically more credible than a secondary source?" Over half my students get the question wrong by answering, "Yes." But a drunk as eyewitness is far less credible than the CSU investigators who came in after the fact.

Richard Evans

HOWEVER, Brent has hit on the fundamental reality of all good research: if you want to know the truth, you have to check the sources. In the David Irving libel trial (libel suit brought by Irving), the vastly irritated Richard Evans was able to damningly show that Irving consistently misused original source material in defense of German Nazism. Evans was able to do this because he is an expert in these same materials, because he read all of Irving's works, because he could show that Irving spoke and read German exceedingly well (it wasn't a "mistake" that Irving misused the material) but mostly because Evans and his grad students actually checked Irving's footnotes, something that other reviewers of Irving had often failed to do.

Judith Rich Harris

The fact is, scholars usually fail to check footnotes since it is incredibly time-consuming. Those who do are rarely thanked for the effort. In No Two Alike, Judith Rich Harris writes about how an amateur historian challenged popular sociologist Sulloway on his theories about birth order (oldest children support the status quo; youngest children are rebels, etc.). Sulloway was completely offended that an amateur would point out the flaws in his arguments (a detailed description of the controversy, including Sulloway's petulant reaction to being challenged, can be found here: "Science, Sulloway and Birth Order: An Ordeal and an Assessment.")  But all the amateur historian did was actually check Sulloway's research. Sulloway made the elementary mistake of reasoning backwards: since I've decided that all oldest children support the status quo and all youngest children are rebels, this figure from history must have been . . . One of my students writing on birth order made the same mistake and got a number of basic facts about the birth order of major historical figures, including Hitler, wrong.

The fact is, birth order theorizing, while not quite as bad as astrology, is not all that dependable since so many things affect how children behave (a youngest child who has an early growth spurt will often assume a leadership role on the playground, which will ultimately have greater effect on the child than the home environment, etc.). As Judith Rich Harris states, " Getting research mentioned in a newspaper or magazine article is far more difficult than getting it accepted by a journal. I'll bet you've never seen a newspaper article with the headline STUDY FINDS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FIRSTBORNS AND LATERBORNS. And yet there have no doubt been thousands of such studies."

In other words, sometimes following things back to their original source will prove nothing. As Brain Games points out, we are conditioned to make comparisons and find differences even when there are none.

Which is why both Brent and Grant are very brave to take on primary research. It is a daunting task! 

Daughter of Time: Research & History, Claim 8

Source 6: A book by the authority of the period, Sir Cuthbert Oliphant.

Here, Grant discusses (as mentioned previously) how Sir Thomas More "got his account of Richard [from] Richard's bitterest enemy . . . from one John Morton . . . It is on that story that Holinshed fashioned his history, and on that story that Shakespeare fashioned his character."

Grant then moves on to an analysis of Oliphant as a historian.

Henry VII, Richard's royal rival

Claim 8: A more objective source would be more transparent.

First, Grant argues that Oliphant, a fictionalized pompous historian, while not "consciously Lancastrian" does not exactly play fair: while traducing Richard as an awful monster, Oliphant is "very tolerant of Henry VII's usurpation [even though Henry VII] didn't have a vestige of a shadow of a claim to the throne."

Tey misses a historical reality here; when English nobles of the past became dissatisfied with a king, they would look anywhere for a contender. When English nobles became disgusted with John circa Magna Carta, they went to a very distant relative in France to lead their rebellion (as soon as John died and his 9-year-old son Henry succeeded, the rebels sent the distant relative home).

On the other hand, Grant does make the more than valid observation that Henry VII (and his son Henry VIII) had a chilling  (by any political standard) habit of killing off their opponents using shifty legal means. He later reads from a source that "it was the settled and considered policy of the Tudors to rid themselves of all rivals to the throne, more especially those heirs of York who remained alive on the succession of Henry VII." He marvels on "this placid acceptance of wholesale murder . . . Richard III had been credited with the elimination of two nephews and his name was a synonym for evil. But Henry VII . . . was regarded as a shrewd and far-seeing monarch."

Prince John: A knife! He's got a knife!

Eleanor: Of course he has a knife; 

he always has a knife; 

we all have knives! 

It's 1183 and we're barbarians! 

Grant has a valid point. I have read books about Richard that argued something like, "Well, we have to understand that the medieval era was a dangerous time."

Yes, yes, it was. The problem here is labeling everyone before 1500 (the Renaissance) as brutal, torturing barbarians and everyone after 1500 as enlightened and noble (i.e., "shrewd and far-seeing").

Problems also arise when people decide the opposite: everyone before 1900 was sweet and pro-nature. Everyone after 1900 is cynical and greedy.

The problem in general is assigning valued characteristics to certain eras. Certain eras certainly had certain points of view, not to mention certain attitudes, ideologies, and problems, many of which I'm glad have faded away. Certain eras are, to be fair, better than others. But deciding, for example, All women before 1920 were meek and mild and bossed around by their husbands! shows a complete lack of understanding of the human condition. Women had far fewer rights in the past (in some places, none at all), but there were bossy wives and meek wives and loving wives and hateful wives and tough wives and commonsensical wives and flighty wives just as there were domineering husbands and mild husbands and amused husbands and destructive husbands and protective husbands and

Prince Geoffrey: I know. You know I know. 

I know you know I know. 

We know Henry knows, 

and Henry knows we know it. [smiles] 

We're a knowledgeable family.

indifferent husbands and dimwitted husbands. In some ways, "historical" romance novels are more accurate than many academic essays! The world changes. Human nature doesn't so much.

Likewise, deciding that Richard is barbaric while Henry VII is wily simply because one ruled in the 1400s and one in the 1500s is kind of ridiculous. They were more like each other than either one was like us. And they were more like themselves than they would have been like each other.

After establishing that Oliphant is not completely objective in his assessments, Grant states, "I'm as completely bewildered as Sir Cuthbert Oliphant [by Richard's behavior]. The only difference between us is that I know I'm bewildered and he doesn't seem to be aware of it."

Grant is talking, in part, about transparency, the ability for a source to SHOW how it reach its conclusions. Transparency is the reason academic papers are supposed to list the author's primary and secondary research; it is the reason that census.gov shows its math; it is the reason that good pollsters show ALL their questions (see below). A transparent source will show the problems with the research, including the failure of the research to answer all questions/reach certain conclusions.

Not only should an author like Oliphant be able to think critically about his monarchs, he should be able to show that he has thought critically. In Grant's opinion, Oliphant is like the conspiracy theorist who wants to argue that a worldwide conspiracy of big business, government, and the internet controls people's thoughts, then USES the internet to prove his point.

Clip: Yes, Prime Minister discusses transparency.

Daughter of Time: Research & History, Claims 4-7: Don't Bother Arguing with Politicians

Robert Shaw (Henry VIII) & Paul Scofield

(Sir Thomas More) from the excellent

1966 A Man for All Seasons

Source 5: The History of King Richard III by Sir Thomas More

Grant reads the "official" version of Richard III, The History of King Richard III by Sir Thomas More. He finds it less than helpful.

Claim 4: Sir Thomas More was not an eyewitness to Richard III's rise to power and subsequent death.

This is true.

Grant's revelatory moment regarding Sir Thomas More is worth quoting (mostly) in full:

Grant had switched off his bedside light that night, and was half asleep, when a voice in his mind said, "But Thomas More was Henry the Eighth." This brought him wide awake. He flicked the light on again. What the voice had meant, of course, was not that Thomas More and Henry the Eighth were one and the same person, but that, in that business of putting personalities into pigeon-holes according to reigns, Thomas More belonged to the reign of Henry the Eighth . . . How old was More when Richard succeeded? He was five . . . Everything in that history [by Sir Thomas More] was hearsay (emphasis added).

This is the kind of revelation that political students, not historians, get freaked out by: ohmygosh, all history is a lie! Grant is a detective, so he treats the matter like a detective:

And if there was one word that a policeman loathed more than another it was hearsay. Especially when applied to history. He was so disgusted that he flung the precious book on to the floor before he remembered that it was the property of a Public Library and his only by grace and for fourteen days.

Grant's insight leads him to Claim 5: More was biased in favor of the Tudors.

Grant does not actually use the word bias--thankfully. I personally dislike the word since it smacks of deliberate, conspiratorial deceit. "Bias" can be deliberate. Most of the time, however, the author simply has an invested interest, the term I use when teaching research. Tey points out that Thomas More was Henry VIII's Chancellor. Even though Henry VIII sent More to his death (eventually), More worked for Tudors, not Yorkists.

This title demonstrates the kind of

SHOCK I find irritating. See notes below*

When I teach research, I try to push my students to be skeptical without being cynical: to realize that every source has its own agenda or purpose but to not slide too far in the "ohmygosh, all history is lie!" direction (see caption to Loewen's book). There is nothing particularly notable about realizing that there is more to a story than the small bit one currently knows ("Ohmygosh, I was lied to in high school!") or that different eras emphasize different aspects of history. There is always more to learn, and there are always more sources to uncover. That doesn't make history "relative"--it simple makes historical research complicated.

Grant's disgust at Sir Thomas More doesn't lead him to conclude that the War of the Roses never happened. He leads him rather to Claim 6: The character of the writer does not automatically make his or her opinion accurate (likewise, someone's poor character doesn't make his or her opinion wrong). 

Grant reads The History of King Richard III because he was recommended the book by people who admire More as a man who died for his principles--therefore, anything he writes must be true.  Grant reflects:

The fact that Sir Thomas was a martyr and a Great Mind did not cut any ice at all with him, Alan Grant. He, Alan Grant, had known Great Minds so uncritical that they would believe a story that would make a con man blush for shame.

Grant and his soon-to-be-hired researcher will later argue Claim 7: Someone other than Sir Thomas wrote The History. I consider this final claim regarding More's book to be a mistake on Tey's part (although she isn't the originator of it). Claims 4, 5, and 6 are enough to bring The History into doubt (it is usually considered literature, not history, in any case; Tey's point is not that it isn't literature but that it shouldn't be used as history). Trying to protect More's reputation by putting the book at  someone else's door is unnecessary.

My position: Ignore This Kind of Thing

However, Tey's first three claims here are completely valid and they count on both sides of the equation. That is, Tey uses them to demolish intellectual hoity-toityness but they can be used to demolish popularity-based or politicized history and science as well. Whenever I'm sitting in a meeting where people start throwing their pet experts at each other to support their pet political positions, Tey is whom I think of--no matter what that position is from the evils of GMOs to the evils of gays to the evils of fundamentalists to the evils of the NRA (or not) to the evils of Healthcare reform (its messy and stupid, not evil) to the evils of the Tea Party to the evils of evolution to the evils of creationism, blah blah blah blah blah.

"My expert is really smart," one political advocate yells at the other, "and everybody agrees with my expert-- even the press says so--and we can totally see it happening in these selective news reports that I got from my favorite radio or television pundit--and if don't believe me, the world will fall apart tomorrow--I'm the ultimate Chicken Little, and the sky is falling. Listen to me!!"

Ignore them all. Grant and his soon-to-be-hired researcher will start over their research of Richard III with primary evidence (more posts to follow) because Tey is right: if you aren't sure which expert to trust, then figure out where the experts are coming from, don't leap on the bandwagon of the person with the loudest voice and weepiest cause.

*Loewen's title demonstrates the kind of SHOCK I find irritating. It would be more accurate to write, "Half-truths my teachers taught me because like all people, including me, they have their own opinions." Or "inaccurate and incomplete information my teacher passed on due to lack of time." The idea that high school teachers are either deliberately teaching untruths or too stupid to teach the truth is a logical fallacy and does not prepare students for the ordinary and normal (mis)uses of information that occur in a democratic society with a free press.

Learn to discern, not to blame.

Daughter of Time: Research & History, Claim 3

Claim 3:
Source 3: A "Constitutional" History

This is the type of history book where "kings and queens were mentioned only incidentally . . . Constitutional History was concerned only with social progress and political evolution; with the Black Death, and the invention of printing, and the use of gunpowder, and the formation of the Trade Guilds, and so forth . . . [Grant] turned the pages and marvelled how dull information is deprived of personality."

True!

'Nough said. 

Tey follows Source 3 with Source 4, an invented piece of fiction called The Rose of Raby by Evelyn Payne-Ellis. My theory is that Tey may originally have wished to write an historical novel about the War of the Roses but her detective fiction roots pulled her in another direction.

Henry V, portrayed here by the excellent

David Gwillim, fought wars at 16

He succeeded to the throne at 26.

Actors who play Henry are almost

always older than the man they portray.

It's a virtuoso role!

There are no large claims attached to Source 4 though Tey brings out the youth of the princes, kings, and kings-to-be of the time period. Edward, who became Edward IV, was fighting wars at the age of 18. He was crowned at 19. He died at 40. After Edward was briefly deposed in 1470, Richard helped him retrieve the throne. He was 18. Through Edward's reign, Richard operated chiefly in the north; in his 20s, he was leading soldiers in battles with Scotland.

Since the average life expectancy was about 40, 18 obviously meant something different than it does now although this is complicated by math. So many children died in childbirth, 40 is low almost by default. However, the fact remains that nobody took for granted the expectations of the modern age regarding life and death.

On the other hand, sources have pointed out that members of the merchant and peasant class did not treat 18 as adulthood in the sense that reaching 18 automatically meant ALL the accoutrements of adult life. Outside the upper classes, people in the Middle Ages actually did wait to get married until their mid-20s, mostly for financial reasons. As far as Shakespeare is concerned, Romeo and Juliet truly are as young as we think they are.

What strikes me in any overview of the Middle Ages is the sheer expediency of the ruling classes: the kid looks old enough to be married even though he hasn't hit puberty, hey, let's marry him to a princess. The young man can lift a sword, so give him an army.

Personally, I've never understood people who think it would be grand to live as royalty then or now. Me, I'll take a solid middle-class trades background in any time period.

Daughter of Time: Research & History, Claim 2

Thomas Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby,

"served three kings, namely Henry VI,

Edward IV, and Richard III" according to

Wikipedia. He was wiser than many of

his peers and died of old age, not the axe.

After perusing the chronological, story schoolbook, Grant turns to a the "School History proper." Rather than divided by story, the book is divided by reigns. After reading the synopsis of Richard, Grant then reflects on the War of the Roses.

War of the Roses, short version: Henry IV (Lancaster) takes the throne from Richard II (York) and feels terribly, terribly bad about it (according to Shakespeare). Henry V succeeds and goes to fight wars in France. Nutty Henry VI succeeds and wafts about. Edward IV (York) takes the crown from Henry VI twice (the second time, Henry VI is disposed of rapidly, i.e. murdered); Edward IV is the father of the famous princes (who include, technically, Edward V). Richard III succeeds when Edward IV dies and the princes are declared illegitimate. Henry VII (Tudors) brings over troops from France, kills Richard in battle, and takes the throne.

Grant argues that the War of the Roses was "more of a blood feud than a war . . . a small concentrated war, almost a private party . . . No one was persecuted for being a Lancastrian or a Yorkist."

Eh. No. Here is where Tey, through Grant, is mostly wrong (with a little bit of right). In a country where kings were still perceived as ruling by divine right--and who stayed a king was a matter of continental politics--the switcheroos of British monarchs had long-ranging economic  impact, especially since the soldiers of any battle were often comprised of peasants who worked for a lord who had decided to back a particular side (Shakespeare does a fairly brilliant job explaining this in Henry IV, Part II).

Jane Seymour, wife #3, died giving

birth to Henry VIII's heir. At Henry III's death,

one uncle become Edward VI's protector and

was later beheaded. The other wanted to marry

Elizabeth (Mary would actually succeed first)

and was beheaded. This all took place before

Edward even died (within six years of

Henry VIII's death).

The little bit of right is that, as with Henry VIII's wives, while the messiness of brawling royal families hurt everyone from farmers to merchants (Tey needed to read the Cadfael mysteries), the short-term politics of the war had sudden and explosive ramifications for the aristocratic families involved--the ones who invested themselves in one dynasty or another by trying to marry their children into particular families or by backing a particular power-broker. 

Pick the wrong side in modern-day America, and you have to wait four more years to run. Pick the wrong side then and wave goodbye to your entire family.

Unless, of course, you are the clever Stanley, who arrived at the Battle of Bosworth and did absolutely nothing until it was all over . . .

Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey: An Exploration of One Writer's Claims about Research

One of my favorite books is Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. In this fictionalized novel of scholarly detection, Tey's Scotland Yard character, Alan Grant, delves into the truth behind the Princes in the Tower: Were they killed by their uncle Richard III?

It is the ultimate Richardian defense. It has flaws--for one, it is more than likely that one of Richard's cohorts did dispose of the princes. Unfortunately, many Richard III scholars who disagree with the Richardians tend to belittle Tey's novel, to the point where they ignore some of her fundamental (and valid) points.

The latest Richard III book I tried to read made complimentary noises about Daughter of Time being a good read . . . for sweet little ladies. I'm not kidding about the last part. It was the most patronizing and appallingly stupid remark I'd read in a long time. And the guy called himself a scholar!

So I decided that it's time someone took Tey's claims about historical research seriously. Not her claims about Richard III necessarily. But her larger points about history, sources, and scholarship. If I taught a course on research, this is the book I'd have people read. Hopefully, an examination of Tey's claims will explain why:

The novel begins with Grant, bored. He broke his leg chasing a suspect, so he is stuck in the hospital for several weeks (Daughter of Time was written in 1951; nowadays, Grant would get stuck with a few pins and be sent home.)

Grant's long-term girlfriend Marta Hallard suggests that he entertain himself by investigating a historical mystery. To get him started, she brings him pictures of various historical personages. Richard III's portrait (see above) is amongst them. Grant is so struck by the man's face (he doesn't look like a monster!), he begins to investigate.

Claim 1
Source 1: A schoolbook. 

Grant gets two schoolbooks from a nurse. The first is the type of tertiary source where history is broken up into chronological stories: "all in clear large print and one-sentence paragraphs." Tey writes:

This, after all, was the history that every adult remembered. This was what remained in their minds when tonnage and poundage, and ship money, and Laud's Liturgy, and the Rye House Plot, and the Triennial Acts, and all the long muddle of schism and shindy, treaty and treason, had faded from their consciousness (p.25). 

So true! I love the fascinating intricacies of history, the complexity that one discovers by delving into a single moment of time. Things look smooth and non-complex from the outside. From the inside, they are series of causes, consequences, choices, and randomness: everything at once!

However, I am a big fan of teaching the simple, orderly history that actually gets remembered. In my American & New England Studies program, I encountered students who complained about this "high school" approach. People should know that the North also owned slaves! People should know that there were multiple reasons for the Civil War! Stepping back a hundred years, it's true that more people than Paul Revere headed out to warn colonists that the "British are coming!"

Not the Middle Ages. Plate 3 from Hogarth's

The Rake's Progress, 1732-1733.

Except it turns out that Paul Revere's message had greater impact and spread to more people than either Dr. Prescott's or William Dawes' (see Gladwell's The Tipping Point). Longfellow's choice of hero carries a core of truth!

Besides which, knowing history stories is far less upsetting (and problematic) than a lack of knowledge about history--as when well-educated adults confuse the Middle Ages with the 1700s (I'm not kidding). I don't expect every educated adult to understand that the King James Bible was largely influenced by Tyndale's Bible. I don't expect them to know that Europe in the Middle Ages endured more than one plague. I don't expect them to know that plague doctors did in fact improve their doctoring methods (although nothing to the equivalent of antibiotics). I don't even expect all of them to know that the Dark Ages (Rome falls) is not the same as the Middle Ages (people pick up the pieces).
 
I do expect the average educated adult to know the distinction between Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. Things do get slightly more confusing after that. Still, the "modern era" belongs in a different category from the Middle Ages.

I have sympathy with those teachers and scholars who want to emphasize the complexity of history. I personally get quite irritated when people try to argue the one-way version of history ("Once upon a time, people were prim and proper about sex; they've gotten less prim and proper every decade until now when things are at their worst!"). The Regency era, for instance, was far more raunchy than the Victorian Era (which followed it) and even, in some ways, far less self-conscious about its raunchiness than us moderns are about ours.

Things don't always work to clear patterns. C.S. Lewis, for example, argued that the Renaissance was not a clean break with the Medieval Era. And he's right! (Tey will make a similar point later on.)

Still, knowing that the Renaissance represents a specific historical era is a place to start. The saddest aspect of history in school is that not teaching the simple, supposedly "bad" version of history doesn't give students any place to hang their hats. If they don't know the classic stories about the Revolutionary War, how will they understand the debates about the Revolutionary War? If they don't know when the American Civil War took place, how can they understand the attending complexities of the Civil War?

I recently had a student who didn't know what courting was; when he found out, he decided to write a paper about it (the sort of decision that makes teachers smile!). He got a long of things wrong (such as the assumption that every culture before "now" promoted arranged marriages). But at least he now knows that there was a "then"! Trying to explain the role of arranged marriages (and the semi-arranged marriages of Austen's time period) would be impossible if he didn't have a "then" in the first place.

Better simple, clear, chronological stories from history than a lot of different ideas about history with no context. 

Coming up . . . Source 2: The Other Schoolbook