Excerpt from Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, Vol. 1 In 1594, nine years before James's Accession, Parsons the Jesuit published A Conference about the next succession to the Crown of Ingland. In this work he entered very minutely into the history of the succession, and pointed out the claims which might be advanced on the death of Elizabeth by many different fami lies descended from Edward claims which there was some' dan ger might even be disputed with bloodshed. Owing to various acts of bastardy, attainders, and other statutes, the question of law was ex tremely perplexing. Parsons him self, after reviewing the arguments for and against each possible com petitor, comes to no definite conclu sion. When the question came to be decided the practical good sense of the nation at once adopted a principle which cleared it of all legal subtleties. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III. And Henry VII The additional letters here are mainly derived from the same sources as those in the first volume. A small number however, are from foreign archives. These were chiefly obtained from the copies made for the late Record Commission, but I have had the most important compared with their originals at Paris. The greater part of the volume is similar in character to its prede cessor. Avoiding legal and formal documents, the selec tion has all along been limited to contemporary papers of genuine historic interest. Nothing has been re published of which a full and accurate text had been already printed, except some 'of the papers in the Appendix to the present volume. A very few that had appeared in the Archwologia and the French Documents I Md'its, which were too important to be altogether omitted, have been placed there in small type along with kindred matter, partly derived from foreign publications. In another Appendix are notes of some of the most interesting entries on the Patent Rolls of Henry VII., which, besides other uses, may serve as aids to the chronology of the reign.1 Besides these the only matter of a special character is the Scotch correspondence. Of this I shall have occasion to speak a little later. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The peculiar origins of the Tudor family and the improbable saga of their rise and fall and rise again in the centuries before the Battle of Bosworth have been largely overlooked. Based on both published and manuscript aources from Britain and France, The Making of the Tudor Dynasty sets the record straight by providing the only coherant and authoritative account of the ancestors of the Tudor royal family from their beginnings in North Wales at the start of the thirteenth century, through royal English and French connections in the fifteenth century, to Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth Field in 1485.

Excerpt from Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, Vol. 2 IN giving this second and final volume to the public a few words may seem necessary with regard to the work as a whole, to account for, and in some measure to remedy, the imperfect arrangement of its contents. When I first began collecting the materials, it appeared to me they could not possibly exceed the bulk of a moderate-sized volume. I was far from supposing that, even if I had devoted many years to it, I could have made anything like an exhaustive search, so as to feel finally confident that no important letter had escaped me. But the archives from which most was to be expected, -the few collections of mss. Likely to yield much fruit to a systematic Search, lay within easy reach and comparatively moderate compass. I had also special advantages from other researches prosecuted under the direction of the Master of the Rolls in the Record Office and the British Museum. And when I committed the first sheets to the press, I trusted to have arranged all the materials in true chronological order. As the work advanced, however, I became conscious of omissions. I added appendices. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Did Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes on the Tower, survive his imprisonment? In this revealing new book medieval historian David Baldwin presents an original and intriguing scenario. On 27 December 1550 an old man named Richard Plantagenet was buried at Eastwell in Kent. He had spent much of his life working as a bricklayer at St John's Abbey, Colchester, but, unusually for a bricklayer, he could read Latin. Reluctant to give any account of his background, he eventually told his employer that he was a natural son of Richard III. Yet, if this was true, why was he not publicly acknowledged by the king? Richard III made provision for his other bastards, John of Gloucester and Katherine. The fact that he was called Richard Plantagenet is also revealing. Had he simply been Richard III's bastard, he would have been styled 'of Gloucester' or given the name of his birthplace. And, most tellingly of all, where is the evidence that Prince Richard actually died? David Baldwin opens up an entirely new line of investigation and offers a startling solution to one of the most enduring mysteries in English history and a final exoneration for Richard III.