The Richard III controversy – Attempts at distortion of history – Mask mandate in Philadelphia – The current upsurge of COVID – Evening statistics
At a friend’s recommendation I have just completed reading “The King’s Daughter” by Sandra Worth, a novel based upon the life of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII and ancestress of the Tudor dynasty.
It’s not particularly well-written and its subject matter is the usual farrago of the Richardians, who believe that, since history is written by the victors, Richard III has been greatly maligned by the Tudors who triumphed over him. If Hitler had won out, Worth comments in her ham-fisted way, the reputations of Roosevelt and Churchill would have suffered as a result. There we have it: Henry VII is the 15th-century equivalent of Hitler and Richard III is a misunderstood statesman of Churchillian stature, if indeed he is not Too Good for This Sinful Earth.
As far as Henry VII is concerned, there can hardly be two opinions about his abilities as a ruler. After his forces won the Battle of Bosworth and he began his administration, England was in a state of chaos as a result of over 30 years of civil war and was further hindered by a bankrupt exchequer. At the end of his reign the government was stable and England was not only financially solvent but a major player among European powers. Unlike his more famous son, he had no mistresses or illegitimate children, and all accounts of his marriage to Elizabeth show evidence of deep affection on both sides. He certainly was not a model of liberality, but casting him in the role as a villain of Hitlerian proportions is, to say the least, a bit of a stretch.
The portrayal of Richard in Shakespeare’s play, by which he is principally known, is certainly rather over the top. He was not a hideously deformed dwarf; he merely had some curvature of the spine and in other respects was sufficiently healthy and well-looking. He did some good things as a ruler. He lent his support to a few improvements to the British legal system. He appears to have been on happy terms with his wife. How his reign ultimately would have turned out we cannot tell. It lasted only two years, and it was a period of continual unquiet, marked by numerous rebellions, of which one in the end terminated his rule and his life altogether.
By this time most of the Richardians have abandoned the idea that Henry VII engineered the deaths of the two princes, the sons of Richard’s brother Edward IV, since even they are perplexed to justify such a theory in light of the fact that Henry lived in Brittany during the entirety of Richard’s reign until the Battle of Bosworth. For a while the Duke of Buckingham was designated as the originator of the scheme, but now Margaret Beaufort, Henry’s mother, is the favored candidate. No doubt Margaret, who was devoted to her son, plotted along with many others to bring him into power, even to the extent of participating in Buckingham’s rebellion; and no doubt, also, she was an important figure at court once Henry assumed the throne. There is not the slightest evidence, however, that she assassinated anybody, and it is difficult to see how she could have managed the murder of the princes even if she desired to do so. It is not, after all, as if she could casually pay a visit to the princes in the Tower for the purpose of slipping some undetectable poison into their afternoon snack. Once the princes were confined to the Tower, no one outside of Richard’s henchmen had access to them.
We don’t know how the two princes died and it is even possible that they succumbed to illness rather than foul play – quite a plausible explanation, as they were confined all day long for months on end in a damp, ill-ventilated building on the edge of a mosquito-infested river. The fact remains that Richard placed both of them under house arrest, without the slightest justification, as soon as he assumed the reins of power and that nothing was ever heard of them afterwards. Richard’s supporters frequently argue that Elizabeth Woodville, the princes’ mother, would not have entered negotiations with him if he had been guilty of the murder of her sons. They conveniently forget, however, that Richard executed both one of her brothers and one of her sons by her first marriage at the earliest opportunity, and there is no reason to suppose that she felt less attachment to them than to the sons of Edward IV.
Elizabeth Woodville’s behavior, incidentally, is typical of that of many of the prominent women during the Wars of the Roses, which in general offers a number of puzzles for modern observers. Anne Neville is one example. At one point she married Edward, the son of Henry VI. Edward was killed in the Battle of Tewksbury by the forces of Edward Duke of York, who then crowned himself as Edward IV – and indeed it is possible that Edward IV was personally responsible for the young man’s death. Later Anne married Richard, at that time Duke of Gloucester. Didn’t she find it rather odd to be marrying the brother of the man who killed her first husband? Shakespeare certainly did.
Then there is Cecily Neville, the mother of both Edward IV and Richard III. During the first months of his reign Richard’s agents spread the rumor that Edward IV was in fact not the true son of Richard, Duke of York, in order to bolster Richard’s assertions that the two young sons of Edward came from an illegitimate line and thus had no claim to the throne. In other words, Richard publicly accused his own mother of adultery. If she felt any resentment at this treatment, she gave no sign of it. She remained on cordial terms with her son throughout his lifetime and appears to have shrugged the matter off as a piece of necessary realpolitik.
I have delved at some length into what may appear to be a fairly minor matter because I feel curious about how, in some remote future period, certain figures of our own era might be portrayed once those who have played a role in major events are long dead and their motives become obscured over time. In particular, I wonder if, say, about a century from now whether some historians will attempt to construct a kind of hagiography about Donald Trump and try to justify his support for an insurrection, or about Vladimir Putin for his brutal and vicious ravaging of Ukraine, much in the style that Richard III’s adherents are tirelessly attempting to rehabilitate a man who, when all is said and done, obtained power by unscrupulous means and who ruthlessly eliminated opponents without any regard for the legality of his actions.
Philadelphia announced today it will reinstate an indoor mask mandate, the first major U.S. city to do so. The mandate goes into effect next week. Currently the average number of daily new cases for the city is 142, greatly below the 4,000 average it was experiencing in January. But the case rate has been rising sharply for the past few days, prompting the city officials to take a pro-active approach.
The CDC is not, at this point, followed suit. Mask wearing indoors remains optional. Certainly people have been using masks very infrequently after the mandates have been lifted. In recent days I have been in stores in which I have been nearly the only person wearing one; staff members as well as customers have discarded theirs. The nationwide increase in cases has been about 3% from that of two weeks ago, but the increases are far from evenly distributed. Many large cities in the Northeast besides Philadelphia, such as DC and New York, have seen increases as large as 50%. But the national daily case rate is still far lower than the increase we have experienced during the past winter and the mortality rate remains low (less than 0.5%). The new BA.2 variant does not appear a cause for special concern. It is, like its parent variant omicron, is relatively mild in its effects and vaccinations are proving to be equally successful in providing protection against it. The use of ICU beds to date has not significantly increased during this upsurge.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 499,635,315; # of deaths worldwide: 6,205,439; # of cases U.S.: 82,093,030; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,012,348.