All reviews copyright 1984-2023 Evelyn C. Leeper.
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES by Winston S. Churchill:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/19/2016]
I finally got around to reading the four-volume A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES (THE BIRTH OF BRITAIN, THE NEW WORLD, THE AGE OF REVOLUTION, THE NEW DEMOCRACIES) by Winston S. Churchill ISBN 978-0-880-29427-0).
Churchill begins back in the Neolithic Period (well, he starts with Caesar's invasion and then jumps back to the Neolithic), of which he writes, "At that point we can plainly recognise across the vanished milleniums a fellow-being. A biped capable of slaying another with iron is evidently to modern eyes a man and a brother."
At times he waxes poetic, perhaps even to the point of excess:
"From outside the uncouth barbarians smote upon the barriers. Here on the mainland were savage, fighting animals, joined together in a comradeship of arms, with the best fighting men and their progeny as leaders. In the rough-and-tumble of these communities, with all their crimes and bestialities, there was a more active principle of life than in the majestic achievements of the Roman Empire. We see these forces swelling like a flood against all the threatened dykes of the Roman world, not only brimming at the lip of the dam, but percolating insidiously, now by a breach, now in a mere ooze, while all the time men become conscious of the frailty of the structure itself. Floods of new untamed life burst ceaselessly from Asia, driving westward in a succession of waves. Against these there was no easy superiority of weapons. Cold steel and discipline and the slight capital surplus necessary to move and organise armies constituted the sole defences. If the superior virtue of the legion failed all fell. Certainly from the middle of the second century all these disruptive forces were plainly manifest. However, in Roman Britain men thought for many generations that they had answered the riddle of the Sphinx. They misconceived the meaning of her smile."
Churchill fills his work with small details that bring it alive. For example, in the fourth century, the Britons developed an invisibility cloak for their ships. Well, not really, but they painted them sea-green--"the vessels, the hulls, sails, the men's clothes, and even faces"--which made them, if not truly invisible against the sea, at least incredibly difficult to see at a distance.
He tells of Offa, who took over the Canterbury mint and had his name inscribed on their coins. One of them was "a gold dinar, copied from an Arabic die, and is stamped with the superscription 'rex Offa'. The Canterbury evidently regarded the Arabic as mere ornamentation, and all men would have been shocked had they known that it declared 'There is no God but one and Mahomet is his Prophet.'"
Churchill is a master of the understatement; speaking of the size of a Viking ship found in Norway in 1880, he writes, "It was remeasured with precision in 1944 in spite of other distractions."
Or, "It was Twelfth Night, and the Saxons, who in these days of torment refreshed and fortified themselves by celebrating the feasts of the Church, were off their guard, engaged in pious exercises, or perhaps even drunk."
Occasionally, it is the final aside that almost seems to be the point: "They were, in fact, the most audacious and treacherous type of pirate and shark that had ever yet appeared, and, owing to the very defective organisation of the Saxons and the conditions of the period, they achieved a fuller realisation of their desires than any of those who have emulated their proficiency--and there have been many."
When he writes, "This sublime power to rise above the whole force of circumstances, to remain unbiased by the extremes of victory or defeat, to persevere in the teeth of disaster, to greet returning fortune with a cool eye, to have faith in men after repeated betrayals, raises Alfred far above the turmoil of barbaric wars to his pinnacle of deathless glory," one hears echoes of Rudyard Kipling's "If".
Churchill claims, "The tailed comet or 'hairy star' which appeared at the time of Harold's coronation is now identified by astronomers as Halley's Comet, which had previously heralded the Nativity of Our Lord; and it is evident that this example of divine economy in the movements for mundane purposes of celestial bodies might have been turned by deft interpretation to Harold's advantage." Actually, the consensus is that the "Star of Bethlehem" was not Halley's comet, which would have been visible in 11 B.C.E., too early by any accepted dating of the Nativity.
Not surprisingly, Churchill weighs in on the Richard III controversy: saint or devil? Churchill begins by admitting that Sir Thomas More's account was completely biased against Richard and for the Tudors (who were, after all, usurpers by any reasonable standard):
"Sir Thomas More late in the next reign wrote his celebrated history. His book was based of course on information given him under the new and strongly established regime. His object seems to have been less to compose a factual narrative than a moralistic drama. In it Richard is evil incarnate, and Henry Tudor, the deliverer of the kingdom, all sweetness and light. The opposite view would have been treason. Not only is every possible crime attributed by More to Richard, and some impossible ones, but he is presented as a physical monster, crookbacked and withered of arm. No one in his lifetime seems to have remarked these deformities, but they are now very familiar to us through Shakespeare's play."
And of course Shakespeare also wrote under the Tudors. So Churchill admits More is untrustworthy, and that the physical characteristics attributed to Richard were at best overstated, if not entirely fictitious. (The recent discovery of Richard's skeleton indicates that there was at least some deformity, but the X-rays they show of Richard's spine look a lot like those of mine with its scoliosis, and I am not quite the deformed monster Richard is described as.)
But after acknowledging all this, Churchill goes on to say, "Needless to say, as soon as the Tudor dynasty was laid to rest defenders of Richard fell to work, and they have been increasingly busy ever since. More's tale however has priority." In order words, we know we cannot trust More, but we have no other account, so we will accept his. Churchill then recounts the June 13 Tower scene as told by More as if it is fact.
Churchill claims that after the second Prince was moved to the Tower, "neither he nor his brother was ever to leave [it] again." It is not clear what his source is for this.
He also admits (as far as I can tell) that Edward IV does seem to have been married to someone (either Elizabeth Lucy or Eleanor Butler) before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, which means that if Richard III did claim Edward IV's children by Elizabeth Woodville were bastards, he was right.
Churchill claims:
"It is contended by the defenders of King Richard that the Tudor version of these events has prevailed. But the English people who lived at the time and learned of the events day by day formed their convictions two years before the Tudors gained power, or were indeed a prominent factor. Richard III held the authority of government. He told his own story with what facilities were available, and he was spontaneously and almost universally disbelieved. Indeed, no fact stands forth more unchallengeable than that the overwhelming majority of the nation was convinced that Richard had used his power as Protector to usurp the crown and that the princes had disappeared in the Tower. It will take many ingenious books to raise this issue to the dignity of a historical controversy."
Of course, he does not provide specific citations for his claims. THE BIRTH OF BRITAIN was published a few years after Josephine Tey's THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, so all this is probably somewhat in response to this. (That Churchill had not read THE DAUGHTER OF TIME, which discussed at length his role in the Tonypandy riots, does not bear consideration.)
Churchill also writes:
"It is certain that the helpless children in the Tower were not seen again after the month of July 1483. Yet we are invited by some to believe that they languished in captivity, unnoticed and unrecorded, for another two years, only to be done to death by Henry Tudor. According to Sir Thomas More's story, Richard resolved in July to extirpate the menace to his peace and sovereignty presented by the princes."
Back to the unreliable More again.
He then writes:
"In the reign of Charles II, when in 1674 the staircase leading to the chapel in the White Tower was altered, the skeletons of two young lads, whose apparent ages fitted the two princes, were found buried under a mass of rubble. They were examined by the royal surgeon, and the antiquaries reported that they were undoubtedly the remains of Edward V and the Duke of York. Charles accepted this view, and the skeletons were reburied in Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster with a Latin inscription laying all blame upon their perfidious uncle, "the usurper of the realm". This has not prevented various writers, among whom Horace Walpole is notable, from endeavouring to clear Richard of the crime, or from attempting to cast it, without any evidence beyond conjecture, upon Henry VII. However, in our own time an exhumation has confirmed the view of the disinterested authorities of King Charles's reign."
Actually, all an exhumation could confirm is the approximate age of the two skeletons, and the approximate year they died. The margin of error in these cannot allow a "confirmation" that they were killed during Richard's reign, and as far as they might guess the cause of death, it could apply to either Richard or Henry VII. But Churchill tries a quick hand-waving (I am sure there is a name for this logical fallacy) to convince the reader it has been proved that Richard is the villain.
The irony is that while Churchill cites as support for Richard's villainy that the people supposedly feared him, etc., in THE NEW WORLD he says that in spite of the murders, burnings, persecutions, tortures, "severe penalties," and oppression by Henry VIII, "yet his subjects did not turn from Henry in loathing." This certainly would seem to indicate that the villainy or lack thereof in a monarch is not necessarily reflected in the people's feelings towards him (or her).
[Oddly, this series does not seem to have been issued unabridged in a single-volume, though it might be possible, as it totals 1760 pages, while the unabridged LES MISERABLES is 1488 in mass-market paperback. Also, I will not that it ends with the Boer War, probably because after that point, Churchill had become involved in politics and so, when writing this work, felt either that he could not be objective or that he would not appear objective.]
A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES: THE BIRTH OF BRITAIN by Winston Churchill:
THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/04/23]
The "Classical Stuff You Should Know" podcast has been doing an on-going series about the Plantagenets and is finally getting to Richard III (referred to from here on out as just Richard, since there is no other Richard in sight here). They have been quoting a lot from Winston Churchill, presumably from A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH SPEAKING PEOPLES: THE BIRTH OF BRITAIN (Bloomsbury USA Academic, ISBN 978-1-472-58524-0), so I decided I should get the jump on them for Richard III, since I count myself as a Ricardian, which is to say, I believe that Richard did not kill the two Princes, and that Henry VII did. (And also that most of the other negative claims about Richard are also false.)
I will admit to being influenced by Josephine Tey's THE DAUGHTER OF TIME (Scribner, ISBN 978-0-684-80386-9, although I highly recommend the audiobook read by Derek Jacobi, BBC Audiobooks America, ISBN 978-1572702448), but I realize that is a work of fiction. Therefore what I base my conclusions on are facts that I can verify in real sources, and logical conclusions from them, rather than citations from (possibly) fictitious sources (e.g., Oliphant).
Starting with the obvious, Churchill seems determined to take Sir Thomas More's biography as reliable. First he explains why More should be considered unreliable: "Sir Thomas More late in the next reign wrote his celebrated history. His book was based of course on information given him under the new and strongly established regime. His object seems to have been less to compose a factual narrative than a moralistic drama. In it, Richard is evil incarnate, and Henry Tudor, the deliverer of the kingdom, all sweetness and light. The opposite view would have been treason. Not only is every possible crime attributed by More to Richard, and some impossible movies, but he is presented as a physical monster, crookbacked and withered of arm. No one in his lifetime seems to have remarked on these deformities, but they are now very familiar to us through Shakespeare's play [based on Holinshed's Chronicles, which were written under the Tudors as well]. Needless to say, as soon as the Tudor dynasty was laid to rest defenders of Richard fell to work, and they have been increasingly busy ever since."
(Just a reminder: Thomas More was eight years old when Richard was Killed Bosworth, so hardly a reliable witness to the goings-on of Richard's reign.)
After King Henry VI was replaced by Edward IV, Henry VI said (as quoted by Churchill), "Since my cradle, for forty years, I have been King. My father was King; his father was King. You have all sworn fealty to me on many occasions, as your father swore it to my father." Then Churchill goes on to say, "But the other side declared that oaths not based on truth were void, that wrong must be righted, that successful usurpation gained no sanctity by time, that the foundation of the monarchy could only rest upon law and justice, that to recognize a dynasty of interlopers was to invite rebellion wherever occasion served, ..." Churchill conveniently ignores what this means in terms of Henry VII, who was arguably a usurper and interloper (and who specifically claimed the kingship by right of conquest), or for that matter King William I (a.k.a. William the Conqueror).
Churchill acknowledges the possibility of an earlier marriage of Edward IV, saying, "[Clarence] may have discovered the secret of Edward's alleged pre-contract of marriage with Eleanor Butler which Richard of Gloucester was later to use in justifying his usurpation. Certainly if Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville were to be proved invalid for this reason Clarence was the next legitimate heir, and a source of danger to the King [Edward IV]."
But then he announces, "More's tale however has priority." And why? Apparently because it describes a very dramatic scene at the Council in the Tower. Whether there is any evidence that this scene took place, or is one of the "impossible crimes" of Richard, Churchill does not say. But the fact that it is dramatic does not make it real.
Churchill also quotes Fabyan's Chronicle about how the English people came to hate Richard because of his crimes, and though he adds, "It is contended by the defenders of King Richard that the Tudor version of these events has prevailed," he still seems to take Fabyan as accurate--even though Fabyan's Cronicle was published (posthumously) in 1516, thirty years into the Tudor dynasty.
Later, he says of Richard's tour of England, "Yet he could not escape the sense that behind the displays of gratitude and loyalty which naturally surrounded him there lay an unspoken challenge to his Kingship." Apparently, Churchill can not only read minds, but can read minds 450 years dead. This is fabrication, pure and simple.
Churchill says, "[We] are invited by some to believe that [the Princes] languished in captivity, unnoticed and unrecorded, for another two years [after what Churchill says was their last appearance, in July 1483), only to be done to death by Henry Tudor." But apparently he believes that Richard would have the Princes killed in secret and pretend they are still alive--and expect to keep up this pretense for years, if not decades. As many have pointed out, if he had them smothered, the smartest thing to do would be to announce they had died of a sudden fever and display their bodies, thereby removing them as a rallying point.
Richard is quoted to have asked, "Whom should a man trust when those who I thought would most surely serve at my command will do nothing for me?" This is too similar to "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" (Henry II speaking of Thomas Becket) to be taken as accurate without some real evidence.
Of the supposed actual murderer, Sir James Tyrell, Churchill writes, "But it was not until Henry VII's reign, when Tyrell was lying in the Tower under sentence for quite a separate crime, that he is alleged to have made a confession upon which, with much other circumstantial evidence, the story as we know it rests." Why he would have confessed these murders is not clear (unless Churchill is referring to a confession to a priest). But note that it is merely alleged that he made such a confession, and all the other evidence is circumstantial.
In 1674, two skeletons were found under some rubble in the Tower, They were the apparent ages of the Princes, and the royal surgeon and others "reported that they were undoubtedly the remains of Edward V and the Duke of York." Charles II had them buried in Westminister with an inscription blaming Richard. Churchill dismisses attempts to clear Richard and to blame Henry VII by saying, "However, in our own time (1933), an exhumation has confirmed the view of the disinterested authorities of King Charles's reign."
Even if the exhumation proved the skeletons were those of the Princes (and there have been many criticisms of it, including that no tests were done to determine even the gender of the children, or the number, since what was found was not two intact skeletons, but disarticulated bones in a wooden chest), it is certainly true that in 1674, there was no way to determine whether they were murdered in 1483 or 1485.
Churchill does have a sense of humor, at one point saying, "Money--above all ready money. There was the hobble which cramped the medieval kings; and even now it counts somewhat."