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The quoted paragraphs below are actually from an article about US politics (https://tinyurl.com/ruw9zrnj), and they are a masterclass in how to twist (medieval) history from this side of the Atlantic. I make no comment about US politics, but I do regard these paragraphs as bumf. For those who aren’t familiar with the word, it’s used in this instance to mean bum fodder….er, loo roll, toilet paper. Again, not US politics, only these paragraphs about Richard III.
“….When Richard III seized the English throne toward the end of the Wars of the Roses, he pressured Parliament to legitimize his usurpation of the Crown from his nephews. Parliament responded by passing a law that accused the late Edward IV, Richard’s brother, and Edward’s wife, Elizabeth Woodville, of all manner of misdeeds. The law, Titulus Regius, was an incendiary one….”
“….It claimed that Edward’s reign had seen the laws of God and his Church, of nature, and of England left “broken, subverted and disregarded, contrary to all reason and justice.” It denounced his marriage as invalid, in part because Elizabeth had allegedly bewitched him through “sorcery and witchcraft.” And it conveniently declared that their children, who stood ahead of Richard in the line of succession (and had gone missing under his care), were bastards and automatically ineligible for the throne….”
Riiiight…. 
That really is the “Tudor” version of Richard, taking a few bits and pieces and weaving them into the desired fiction, certainly not the truth. There is no attempt whatsoever to add that by the standards of the time, the accusations about Edward IV and his marriage were the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth! Elizabeth Woodville and her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, did dabble around in arts they should have left well alone. Oh, and by the way, the Woodvilles did their best to murder Richard (who was now Protector) in the confusion caused by Edward’s demise. They wanted to rule England through the minority of Edward IV’s senior son, set to be Edward V.
Elizabeth’s “secret marriage” to Edward IV was, well, iffy. And that’s being kind. He already had a wife, Eleanor Talbot. Now, by wife I mean he’d promised marriage in order to get Eleanor between the sheets. At least, it’s believed that’s what he did because he certainly didn’t acknowledge her as his queen! Maybe Eleanor wasn’t the first either. Who knows? Back then to promise marriage and then consummate the promise was the equivalent of marriage.
He then tried the same trick on Elizabeth Woodville, but came unstuck, so to speak. Circumstances led him to pretend he really was married to her, and Eleanor was quietly forgotten, not dying until four years later. So, Edward and Elizabeth were never legally married, and all their children were illegitimate. The Church wouldn’t countenance marrying them when they’d been openly living together and had children!
Now, when all this came to light on Edward’s sudden death, what was his brother Richard supposed to do? Well, shut up and carry on regardless is what the general consensus appears to be. Why the heck should he? He himself was now Edward’s legal successor, being the late king’s only surviving brother, and he had a son of his own. Why should he ditch his own and his child’s future in favour of his brother’s baseborn offspring? The succession didn’t work like that. Illegitimate = no crown!
Put it this way. If your elder brother died and then it turned out that his children were all illegitimate, how would you feel? You and your own children are all legitimate and therefore rightful heirs to the family title and fortune. Back then illegitimate children didn’t inherit, they only got whatever their father/mother chose to leave to them. And that couldn’t include titles and entire estates. It certainly excluded the throne itself!
Oh, darn it, one of my hobby horses has cantered into the room, so I’ll shut up. But no, wait—suffice it that Richard III did what he had to do. He treated his nephews and nieces very well, and he certainly didn’t pressure Parliament to make him king. Nor, incidentally, did he murder the boys in the Tower. There’s no proof they were murdered at all, but plenty of proof that they lived to adulthood. See the vast amount of evidence unearthed by Philippa Langley in her Missing Princes Project.
Meanwhile, apropos the boys being possibly murdered. If they were, my money’s on the traitor who usurped Richard’s throne at Bosworth Field. One Henry Tudor. He’d promised to marry the boys’ eldest sister, Elizabeth of York, and to do that, he had to make her legitimate again. But illegitimate = no crown, remember, so keeping his promise to legitimise and marry Elizabeth of York automatically gave her brothers a better claim to the throne than his own. Now, call me old-fashioned, but that gave him a very powerful reason to get rid of them. Q.E.D.
OK, this time I really am going! 
by viscountessw
