Parody Richard III’s Ghost

Happy Birthday, Richard III Richard was not only the last Plantagenet King of England but the last English king to die in battle, and very bravely at that. Nothing like Laurence Olivier’s portrayal of him as a deformed and serpentine child-killer, Richard did not have a hunchback or a withered arm. He suffered from scoliosis, but it was a sideways curvature of the spine and would not have been noticeable unless he was naked. Foreign envoys and visitors are always more reliable sources than English chroniclers writing under the Tudors, who had no blood claim to the throne and usurped it. The Silesian aristocrat Nicolas von Poppelau traveled with Richard and his court, forming a highly favourable opinion of the king’s appearance, behaviour and popularity. I am not going to enter into a discussion setting out the arguments for and against Richard’s innocence or guilt when it came to his nephews, but I will say that there is no evidence against him that would stand up in a court of law. Moreover, during his one parliament as King, he introduced a series of laws benefitting the common people and curbing official corruption. These included the introduction of Bail, jury reform (which prevented the bribing of jurors), and the establishment of an early form of legal aid, allowing the poor to petition the king directly without paying court fees. Richard also outlawed "benevolences"—a form of forced, extra-parliamentary taxation previously used by monarchs to extract money without consent, and ruled that statutes and laws be recorded and published in English rather than Latin or French, making the legal system comprehensible to ordinary citizens. Richard also curbed corrupt practices in local piepowder courts, by requiring plaintiffs to take oaths, and penalizing dishonest officers. After he was hacked to pieces at Bosworth, the city of York lamented, “on this day was our good King Richard most piteously slain and murdered.”