Richard III & the Car Park

[Cogidubnus]

Bosham? Famous place squire...

Bosham is a fascinating (if somewhat odd) place anyway Phil, even without Harold...At high tide the sea overruns the coastal road, the lower car parking area, and parts of the harbour, and advances up the High Street...at very high tides it comes further! If you're in the local cafe when the tide rises, best to leave unless you want wet feet as the front steps and surrounding street are often covered.

The local pub (The Anchor Bleu) has a former submarine door between it's seaside terrace and interior, though this is now no longer watertight and various marks on the servery wall testify to historic sea levels!

A few houses nearest the coast have lead sheething from foundation level up to their ground floor windows...far more have peculiar raised sills under their front doors to prevent inundation...

It is one of the supposed locations for a certain gent reputed to have failed to turn back the sea, and it's ancient church is a proper beauty!

All the best

Dave

[Robert]

As I recall the church is indeed a beauty, full of light.

The ducks emerge from the harbour and waddle up the road!

There is a place nearby called Church Norton, about a mile from Selsey. The church is in fact all that remains of the original church, which was relocated to Selsey, leaving the chancel at Church Norton.

[Phil H]

Fascinating stuff. Thank you.

I attach some images of bosham I found. The altar frontal draws on the Bayeux Tapestry, I note.

Phil

[Mayerling]

Thanks Phil for the information on the probable location (s) of Harold's remains. In any event he did get some place with a monument over an apparent grave. More than Richard III apparently did.

I usually support that King Arthur was one of the leaders of the natives in Britain against the Romans. The information for him is sparse, but the legend is so strong and sweet in it's way that (like Robin Hood later on) it carries itself with the public despite academic and archeological doubts. I once read Sir Winston Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples", and recall he ended his treatment of the Arthurian Legend saying (with his usual eloquence) "it should be true". Hardly an answer from a supposed historian.

I would have thought the records (post Alfred) were better, so that certain figures would be relatively better documented (like the Viking based monarchs Canute and Hardecanute).

Jeff

[Phil H]

I agree, records do improve in the later pre-Conquest period -though its not really my part of history.

Quite complex too with the inter-relationships between Scandanavian "empires", Normandy and so on. Anglo-Saxon England had one of the most sophisticated systems of Government in Europe and a high standard of culture.

I believe that the Norman Conquest is now perceived as having been a set back, rather than something that exposed Britain to European culture.

Some historians have even seen the Norman invasion as the last "Viking raid" - William being descended from Rollo - a "northman" or Norman settled in France a few generations earlier.

I usually support that King Arthur was one of the leaders of the natives in Britain against the Romans.

I share yuor position. I see Arthur (Artorius?) as a war leader resisting the Saxon invasions in the aftermath of Roman rule. But I think the dates and maybe the sequence of events was more complex than the surviving sources suggest.

It is clear that in the late 300s CE (after Magnus Maximus led a force to the continent in 383ish) that Roman rule fell apart - there seems to have been one later British emperor set up by the army (Constantine) from whom Arthus MIGHT have been descended, and another by the Brits themselves The famous rescript sent by Honorius in 410 (if related to Britannia at all) may in fact have said - you think you can govern yourselves, so get on with it without me!!

I think Vortigern existed (the proud tyrant) as an over-king and an interesting recent idea is that HE was Arthur!!! make of that what you will.

For all its problems (it may all have been a strange and elaborate academic hoax) I love the late John Morris' book "The Age of Arthur". He almost committed scholarly suicide by trying to recreate the period and it should not be taken too seriously - but gosh it fires the imagination and brings the period alive like no other book I know. I think it is still available in p/back

Another ggod buy if you don't already have it, is Mike Ashley's " A Brief History of King Arthur - the man and legend revealed" (originally published as "The Mammoth Book of King Arthur". P/back by constable/robinson.

The new book which argues against any room for Arthur to have existed and wholly rewrites the period, is Guy Halsall's "Worlds of Arthur (OUP) which I could not put down. Fun to argue against!!

Enjoy

Phil

[Mayerling]

I

I think Vortigern existed (the proud tyrant) as an over-king and an interesting recent idea is that HE was Arthur!!! make of that what you will.

For all its problems (it may all have been a strange and elaborate academic hoax) I love the late John Morris' book "The Age of Arthur". He almost committed scholarly suicide by trying to recreate the period and it should not be taken too seriously - but gosh it fires the imagination and brings the period alive like no other book I know. I think it is still available in p/back

Another ggod buy if you don't already have it, is Mike Ashley's " A Brief History of King Arthur - the man and legend revealed" (originally published as "The Mammoth Book of King Arthur". P/back by constable/robinson.

The new book which argues against any room for Arthur to have existed and wholly rewrites the period, is Guy Halsall's "Worlds of Arthur (OUP) which I could not put down. Fun to argue against!!

Enjoy

Phil

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the suggested reading. If only we had triple life expectancies we could get through such and the current reading (now I'm into a book about the "Lost Colony of Roanoke" by Lee Miller). But I will keep all in mind.

Food for thought about the decline of English civilization after 1066 due to the invasion. It's possible. The Irish had remarkable learning going on in their monestaries until the Viking raids, so why should not the Anglo-Saxons have the same problem as well.

Years ago I read (in college) a book about the destruction of old England due to the Civil Wars and then the industrial revolution, called "The World We Have Lost". I can't recall the name of the author, but it was an interesting view of what price political and economic progress. I have to admit the writing could have been better.

Vortigern. Now that is an interesting subject. Of course I think of "Vortigern" as that claptrap play of William Ireland from the 1790s that briefly bamboozled the British public as a hitherto unknown work of Shakespeare's. Hasn't been revived at all, has it?

Jeff

[Phil H]

"Lost Colony of Roanoke" by Lee Miller

I have it. Very enlightening.

Phil

[Sally]

Hi Mayerling,

Food for thought about the decline of English civilization after 1066 due to the invasion. It's possible. The Irish had remarkable learning going on in their monestaries until the Viking raids, so why should not the Anglo-Saxons have the same problem as well.

Two different things entirely. 'Viking' raids, particularly the eariler 'hit and run' raiding activity, was enormously destructive to the artefacts of learning - books. The raiders sought them, of course, due to their valuable bindings, without regard for what was written inside. The production of a book was very labour-intensive, so the loss of a monastic libary would've been catastrophic - and the trouble with the hit and run Vikings was that you could never tell when they'd show up.

This was why, eventually, tired of the raiding and the damage that represented to their economy (and believe me, they had one) the community of St Cuthbert at Lindisfarne left for the mainland; and why Alfred recruited continental scholars to (re) write books in his newly founded schools - the libraries of the continent survived better, Vikings notwithstanding.

It was a very specific problem, with specific solutions: get out of the way, and replace what you can.

The Norman 'invasion' was the replacement of one elite with another, more or less - a handful of men retained their pre-conquest positions, but generally not. The installation of the Norman elite brought us some new words, and a few castles - that's what they'd been building on the continent for a couple of hundred years and the main reason they turn up here seems to be that they'd become embedded in continental culture.

But otherwise? I think for the majority of non-elite people, life continued much the same as it had before. New lords, same old ways. We used to think that the Normans brought feudalism, but (I hope) nobody thinks that any more; since it it obvious that a very similar form of landholding existed from the late Roman period onwards.

Perhaps it depends on what we consider 'culture' to be. If we think that it represents the art and literature of the elite, then I suppose yes, the Norman may have been slightly different. Not so much though - the Normans were only just out of being Scandinavians at that time, and Scandinavian culture had been part of 'English' culture since the 9th century at least - earlier than that in the north-east, where a trading network with Scandinavia already existed.

The real sea-change in culture to me came after the Black Death, which altered the entire fabric of society on a permanent basis and was ultimately the death knell for the feudal culture that had existed in England for a thousand years or more.

[Mayerling]

Thanks for the explanation Sally. I think that the Roman model for feudalism was the latifundia, but I could be off on that.

[Sally]

I think Vortigern existed (the proud tyrant) as an over-king and an interesting recent idea is that HE was Arthur!!! make of that what you will.

I've been thinking about this. We get Vortigern from Gildas, essentially - writing from his south-western perspective. If you believe that Arthur operated from that area (and not Wales) then I suppose you could cast Vortigern in the Arthur mould.

That said, the number of - what shall we call them? Local overlords, petty kings - that sort of thing - operating in the region at that time is open to speculation.

It is obvious that the late Roman state in Britain already showed signs of the fragmentation that eventually led to the multitude of small polities extant in the Tribal Hideage. How did that start? Big late Roman landowner with retinue, left to develop his own militia sometime in the 5th century.

Kings before you know it.

The thing that always interested me about Vortigern was the story of how he invited the Saxons in to help him fight wars and then paid them off with land - that sort of thing was happening on the continent and suggests - what we already know from other sources - a Romanised western Britain maintaining the old ways.

Nennius has Vortigern separate from Arthur - from what I recall, he says very little about Arthur at all.

Coincidentally, I was up on South Cadbury hillfort on Wednesday. Really, it's magnificent. Somebody with significant resources lived there in the 5th century - Arthur or otherwise.

[Phil H]

One source of post-Roman kings are celtic tribal chieftains,or the heads of the civitae such as Leicester.

Ambrosius is said to have had parents who "wore the purple" which could mean many things, from being "Roman" to imperial descent - maybe from a family that had produced a "British" Emperor such as Magnus Maximus or Constantine III.

Magnus seems to have left a distinct mark on his period.

On the tyrants there are various theories, I'll re-read the book which posits Vortigern as Arthur and try to summarise the argument. Too late now.

The absence of mention of Arthur is, of course, notorious, and scholars have used many arguments to explain it, some more convincing than others.

the latest "World of Arthur" book that I mentioned above, takes a different line. Re-examining the archaeological evidence it argues that the "invasions" did not happen as, or where, the traditional account has it. thus, there is no need for Arthur - no significant wars to fight - and no room for him in time. It is a fascinating book which really makes you think. I continue to believe that Arthur was real - I want him to be - but I am less sure than I was a year ago.

I find Arthur a fascinating comparator to JtR, in that there is not much evidence, some of it is contradictory, so all we have is logic and deduction and we need to examine the sources and traditions very carefully.

Phil

[Steve S]

I'm sure there were "Wars"...But as (I believe) an Irish manuscript of the period says anything over 50 men is an army.....We also don't know who they were between...Germanic Foederati fighting for one Romano-British Warlord against another is quite feasable,IMHO...........

[Beowulf]

You prob already heard about this but...

Coffin at King Richard III Site Holds...Another Coffin

http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/king-richard-coffin-130729.htm

[Phil H]

Stone coffins were much earlier in date than Richard's day.

There was a Leicester legend - Monty may know more - that Richard had been buried in a stone coffin, and one was indeed exhibited in the C17th as his. Patent rubbish, and part of the fiction that his bones had been tossed into the River Soar during the Reformation.

Richard's body, as we now know was buried uncoffined and without even a shroud, dumped into a too small grave with the head resting against the side of the pit. I assume decomposition in August weather had made the body a very unpleasant thing to handle after several days exposure to public gaze.

The recent exposure of Gaddafi's body might be a parallel, with viwers having to wear face masks against the stench.

Phil

[Beowulf]

So, why is Richard not getting a Catholic burial?

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/08/06/no-catholic-burial-for-richard-iii/

Very strange. There was no Anglican Church when he died? Why should he be buried anywhere other than a Catholic cemetery given the fact that he known to have been Catholic.

How did the state enter into the negotiations and why is the Bishop so acquiescent?