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{"id":16526,"date":"2014-09-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1419"},"modified":"2014-09-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T00:00:00","slug":"richard-iii-black-or-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2014\/09\/richard-iii-black-or-white\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard III, Black or White"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

Desmond Seward\u2019s\u00a0Richard III<\/a> is mostly black, and that\u2019s because he takes Thomas More\u2019s portrait as a basis for his account of Richard\u2019s life: \u201chowever unreliable, Sir Thomas More remains the fullest source of information about Richard III. . . . Undeniably his history has many faults. There is no question that it dramatises the principal characters\u2019 speeches and much else besides. It\u2019s wrong about Edwards IV\u2019s age and Lord Hastings\u2019s Christian name, it confuses Eleanor Butler with Elizabeth Lucy, and it portrays Queen Elizabeth Woodville as a spotless figure when in reality she was a grasping intriguer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, Seward defends More. Records were scanty and difficult to come by. Besides, More\u2019s manuscript as we possess it was an early draft that More never was able to finish. More\u2019s character and professional training should lead historians to give him the benefit of the doubt: \u201cSir Thomas has strong moral convictions about public life, and certainly wanted to tell a good story. Yet it should never be forgotten that he was a brilliant and very experienced lawyer \u2013 Erasmus thought that he had the finest legal brain in Europe. No one could have been more skeptical of allegation or rumour, fairer in weighing evidence. Describing the murder of the Princes, he says he does so \u2018not after every way that I have heard, but after that way that I have so heard, by such men and by such means as me thinketh it were hard but it should be true\u2019\u201d (20-21).<\/p>\n

Seward\u2019s Richard is dark, but not a monster. Rather more like another Shakespearean description: Richard was a \u201cMachiavel,\u201d a \u201cpeculiarly grim young English precursor of Machiavelli\u2019s Prince\u201d (21).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"