Epetition - Richard III

[lexin]

I draw to your hopeful attention an epetition asking the government to lay Richard III (newly discovered under a car park etc, etc) to rest in York Minster, rather than in Leicester.

I view York as a far more fitting place for him than Leicester, with which place he had little to do in life.

Comments

[coughingbear]

I do sympathise with the idea that York's more suitable, but it seems a little harsh on Leicester, which is perhaps not as well-endowed with landmarks and attractions as York. And he has been there all this time.

[lexin]

I see what you mean, and I like Leicester (it's a place I know well) but Richard had no connection to the town in life.

[aunty_marion]

There's already a statue of him there, being as it's the largest close-ish town to Bosworth Field (assuming that's still the place most people assume it to be!). I agree, York has a better claim.

[snakeling]

Can't sign, alas, as I'm neither a resident nor a citizen :/

I do wish to know, though, why there are talks of having him buried in the rites of the CoE, which was founded after his death by the son of the man who killed him. The man was a devout Catholic, it goes without saying that the burial mass should be Catholic. (I have no particular objection to the place itself being CoE, though I'd be hard-pressed to explain the double standard.)

[lexin]

I agree, it should be a Catholic ceremony.

[coughingbear]

I wish they would attempt to reproduce a 15th century reburial/requiem. (And it should at least be in Latin.)

[lexin]

I agree, he deserves to have it as close as possible to what he would have known in life.

[sollers]

I'm not so sure. He married a close relative without bothering to get a dispensation (unlike his brother) and owned a Bible in English. If he had lived, the Reformation might even have come earlier, for better reasons.

[lexin]

That's an interesting thought.

[liadnan]

I don't think we can read too much into possession of a bible in English, in practice they seem to have circulated comparatively widely at the time without too comment (even though they almost certainly derived from Wycliffe's 1st translation - they were ok so long as they purported to be a translation made before 1408, which, of course, they all so purported). In 1528 Thomas More (writing against Tyndale's assertion that the church wouldn't allow an English bible in any man's hand) said that if that were true he agreed it was wrong but that he had "seen and can show you bibles fair and old written in English which have been known and seen by the bishop of the diocese and left in laymen's hands, and women's too, such as he knew for good and catholic folk that used it with devotion and soberness".

According to the contemporary chronicler John Rous Richard had a particular name even in his own age for endowing chantry chapels and colleges of priests. One modern historian described it as an obsession, which doesn't easily fit with radically reforming tendencies. His sister Margaret of Burgundy was chummy with the Low Countries reformers.

[raincitygirl]

I'm CoE, not Catholic, and even *I* think it makes no sense for him to be buried using Henry VIII's faith.

[lexin]

I'm an atheist...my view of it is that while I'm an atheist, he wasn't and he was a Catholic.