Calendar of Events 2006
Actor Robert Hardy will be at the Bosworth Battlefield Centre on the week-end of August 19th. Mr. Hardy will be signing his book on "The Longbow".
Richard III: Lord of the North
Friday and Saturday, September 29 and 30th, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
5:00 pm - Mass in honor of the 550th birthday of Queen Anne Neville at the church of St. Mary and St. Alkelda, Middleham
6:30 pm – Dinner at Friar’s Head at Akebar
Saturday, September 30, 2006
The conference will be held at the York CVS, 15 Priory Street, York, England, YO1 6ET. The conference will begin with registration at 9:30 and will conclude at 5:00 pm.
Our speakers for the day will include:
Randall Moffett – The Military Organization of York in the Second Half of the 15th Century
Prof. Anne Curry - Richard III of England and I of France
Andrew Morrison – The Middleham Jewel and Other Objects from Middleham
Prof. Craig Taylor - Chivalry in the 14th and 15th century?
Mr. Russell Butcher -
The Diplomatic Triangle: England, France and Burgundy.
Dr. Peter Clarke – New Evidence Concerning Noble and Gentry Piety in
Fifteenth Century England.
Tickets for the event are £21 for patrons, £25 for non-patrons, £10 for students (students must provide student identification). To order your tickets, please fill out the enclosed form and make your cheque out to "The Richard III Foundation, Inc." and forward your form and cheque to Mrs. Mary Kelly, VP of the UK Branch, 77 Deacons Green, Tavistock, Devon PL19 8BN.
Bosworth Revisited
We are pleased to announce our August 19, 2006 Conference to be held at the new conference hall at the Bosworth Battlefield Centre. The hours of our conference will begin with registration at 9:30 am and will conclude at 4:00 pm. Tickets for the event are £20 for patrons and £25 for non-patrons. Tickets are non-refundable.
Our speakers and their topics for the day include:
-
Glenn Foard
Professor Anne Curry
John Austin
David Baldwin
Mick Manns
Please note that this is a ticketed event. To order your tickets, please fill out the enclosed form and make your cheque out to "The Richard III Foundation, Inc." and forward your form and cheque to Mrs. Mary Kelly, Vice President of the UK Branch, 77 Deacons Green, Tavistock, Devon PL19 8BN.
The Yorkist Era Conference
We are pleased to announce our April 1, 2006 Conference entitled "The Yorkist Era". The location of the conference will be at the Farnham Memorial Hall, West Street, Farnham, Surrey. The hours of the conference are from 10 am and 5 pm with registration beginning at 9:30 am. Tickets for the event are £20 for patrons, £25 for non-members of the Foundation and £15 for half day sessions. Tickets are non-refundable.
Our speakers and their topics for the day include:
Professor Michael Hicks – "Queen Anne Neville and her marriage to Richard III"
Dr. Sean Cunningham – "The National Archives and its collection"
Ann Wroe - "Perkin Warbeck: Searching for an enigma".
Michael D. Miller –"The use of attainder and forfeiture by King Edward IV"
John Ashdown-Hill – "What can we learn from local repositories?"
Please note that this is a ticketed event. To order your tickets, please fill out the enclosed form and make your cheque out to "The Richard III Foundation, Inc." and forward your form and cheque to Mrs. Mary Kelly, UK Manager, 77 Deacons Green, Tavistock, Devon PL19 8BN.
New Publication on Francis, Viscount Lovel.
Francis, Viscount Lovel: Time Shows All Things by Joe Ann Ricca. Priced at £16.95 plus £3.50 for shipping and handling in the UK, or $26.95 plus $5.95 for shipping and handling in the US. All other countries please contact the corporate office at Middleham@aol.com for pricing.
Francis, Viscount Lovel represents the Yorkist age in many ways. He should have been an important figure, and yet he was swept up in the passion and power struggles that were so typical of these years, where uncertainty about the rule was to dominate mens’ lives.
In his early life, bereft of parents, he was nothing more than trading material of great value as people used his income to better themselves, from a Lancastrian family to a Yorkist one, from a follower of Warwick back to the Yorkist persuasion, until in his last years, he emerged as a person. His land and income had been freely enjoyed by Edward IV, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and the Fitzhugh’s, with no regard for his own wishes. But now, in close association with Richard, Duke of Gloucester, he began his own life. Apparently the two became good friends, for Richard bestowed honors on him and kept him close. Francis responded with loyalty.
Viscount Lovel was not a fighting man; there is no record of his knightly training, and none of battle experience. When Richard made him a banneret in Scotland, it was at Dumfries, and so he may have been involved in the taking of the castle, but this is not stated and was probably not a fact. He seems more to have been an administrative type, an executive, a friend and advisor. All the more of a surprise that after Richard’s death, he was outraged sufficiently enough to go into the field to organize a revolt. He seemed to do this for no other reason than outrage.
He secured money and men from Burgundy, then willingly surrendered power to the earls of Warwick and Lincoln, who, at that time, were no more than silent partners. His military experience was a mercenary captain. Even at the crowning of Edward VI in Ireland, although undoubtedly the stage manager, Lovel did not push himself to the front.
The appeal of Francis to Joe Ann Ricca may lie in the fact that after Richard’s death, Lovel remained loyal and determined to right a wrong when he could have made his peace with the new king and lived a safer, richer life. Instead he held off and did his best to organize a counter invasion that would drive Tudor out of England, back into exile and into the obscurity that he deserved.
His mission failed, and Francis disappears from our view, dead perhaps, perhaps an anonymous exile in perpetual fear of discovery. But in failure, Francis demonstrated that precious quality of loyalty to a man and a dream of better government. We know of no instance of simple greed or avarice, of false loyalty, of uncontrolled egotism. He made the history books as a failure, surrounded by failure, but we also see him as a success in one value that we admire, loyalty.
This book could not have been easy to write for the obvious lack of record. His beginnings are vague, his maturing years obscure, and in the end, he simply vanishes. His moment of fame is brief and glorious, but not of historical importance. It is important, though. He is the first of many who stand for Richard III after the King’s death, who say to the world that the black legend mantle belongs on the shoulders of Henry Tudor, usurper of little achievement.
The Lovel line extends
through Buck to Markham to Tey to Kendall to Ricca; she had to write
this book as a tribute to Sir Francis Lovel, a man who first honored
Richard III in a most dramatic and selfless way.
Calendar of
Events for 2005
March 19 - Ceremony at the tomb of Queen Anne
Neville
April 17 - Barnet Battlefield Walk
May 14 - Perkin Warbeck and Cornwall Symposium
May 21/22 - St. Albans- 550th Anniversary of the Battle
July 9/10-Tewkesbury Medieval Fayre
August 21/22-Re-enactment of the Battle of Bosworth
September 24/25- Re-enactment of the Battle of Blore Heath
October 8/ 9- The Lovel Connection Symposium
October 28-30 - Living History Fayre, Warwick
2004 Calendar
The Richard III Foundation, Inc.
