#charles ross

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[blackboar]

The de la Pole claim and actions 1/3: Did Richard III named John de la Pole his heir?

It is an accepted fact for many that Richard III named John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, as his heir. Paul Murray Kendall, in Richard III, openly states so, pointing to his claim as Richard III's nephew, his adulthood, and his (supposed but probable) competence. This idea was often put in the public eye, as with The White Queen, in which Henry VII says to John that he was named heir by Richard III (even if John then supports Warwick's claim after). However, Richard III never officially named him heir, which doesn't mean the de la Pole claim is irrelevant in English royal succession.

The only contemporary source openly stating John de la Pole was named Richard III's heir is Jon Rous (1420-1492), author of Historia Regum Angliae, a history of the kings of England. Rous was a cleric from Warwickshire who also wrote about the Beauchamp family. He had Beauchamp connections considering he was chaplain of the Collegiate Church of St Mary, founded by a Beauchamp and in which many Beauchamp Earl of Warwick are entombed. He was a Ricardian supporter before switching after Bosworth to less generous views of Richard III. His Historia Regum Angliae is posterior to Bosworth and more hostile to Richard than his Rous Roll. Rous claim in Historia Regum Angliae that Richard III named Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick (and of the Beauchamp family) as heir after his own son's demise in 1484 but that he changed his mind in 1485 in favor of John de la Pole. For Paul Murray Kendall, those choices might have been made after Anne Neville's death, who pushed for her nephew to be the heir. Her death allowed Richard III to change his mind. Needless to say, no official document confirms that. Charles Ross also doesn't think it's true, considering that Edward Plantagenet couldn't be named heir by a king whose own claim is based on the exclusion of his nephew, barred from royal succession by an act of attainder.

The truth is difficult to assess. On the one hand, it's possible that Richard III would again infringe on succession rules for his nephew Warwick if he desired so. Familial solidarity might have played: Edward was the last Plantagenet after him. On the other, it could create a dangerous heir that Richard III couldn't afford at the moment

Naming John de la Pole was better because he didn't have a lineage that suffered from a recent attainder. He was a magnate with extensive connections: his father was duke of Suffolk, and his stepfather was the Earl of Arundel. Richard III might have needed to secure their support by naming John heir. John de la Pole was also a magnate on his own right, with many estates given by his father to give him the estates necessary to maintain his ranks of Earl. He was the son of a younger sister of Richard III, and his eldest sister, Anne of York, already had a daughter (Anne St-Leger). Richard III couldn't choose Anne St-Leger as heiress, considering he executed her father for treason less than two years ago and that having a ruling queen would be unprecedented in England.

So John de la Pole was an adult nephew, a magnate with significant connection and a capable man. It make sense that Richard III would chose him amongst the various candidate of his family. However this analysis is clearly made a posteriori. It is made with the inside knowledge that Richard III would die at Bosworth heirless and without any new marriage that would bring him a new heir. It's telling that Rous wrote about John de la Pole's promotion after Bosworth (and maybe Stoke) and would fall under the fallacy that Richard III should have named an heir as if he preempted his future demise. We know that Richard III was under negotiation for the hand of Joanne of Portugal. An unfounded rumor spread about his potential marriage with Elizabeth of York, and others have theorized about a marriage with Anne of Britanny. Richard III was under the active search of a new queen that would eventually bring him heirs. This option actively pushed him to not name a presumptive heir considering that in his mind, he would only keep this position for a short time. It was needless to do it, and similar kings without male heirs for a time acted the same (Edward IV until the birth of Edward V in 1470, Henry VII before Arthur's birth in 1486).

That doesn't mean Richard III didn't consider it or sent hints to John de la Pole, as to secure his family's loyalty. John was given lands worth 500 marks and an annuity of £176 13s 4d from the duchy of Cornwall. He was also named Lieutenant of Ireland in October 1484 and made him president of the newly-established Council of the North. Those were good rewards, and one can point out that the Lieutenancy of Ireland and annuities from a duchy traditionally given to the king's heir were hints of a potential royal destiny. The Lieutenancy of Ireland and Cornwall was granted before to Richard III's sole son and heir. However, it is worth noting that the Lieutenancy was also granted to other members of the royal family or even outsiders. It might have been a hint of Richard III's consideration for John and a tacit message that John would be preferred to other pretenders if Richard III couldn't have heirs but not a clear patent making John de la Pole heir to the throne. Richard III certainly thought unnecessary to elevate one family member as heir and risk creating a dangerous precedent, and creating discontent amongst his nobility. He intended to have a son as his heir shortly and this is why he never bothered with naming a presumptive heir.

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Charles Ross

Star Axis / Solar Pyramid

1976

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Nearly 50 years after Charles Ross began working on “Star Axis,” the artist’s gargantuan work in the New Mexico desert is nearing completion.

Bottom photo is of Ross on a boulder during the construction of “Star Axis” in 1982.

“Star Axis” itself is meant to embody an astronomical phenomenon called precession. First noted around 130 B.C. by Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer who is also credited as the inventor of trigonometry, precession refers to the top-like wobble of the earth’s axis due to the sun’s gravitational pull on the slightly bulging Equator. The result of precession is that while Polaris, in the constellation Ursa Minor, is currently the closest bright star to the northern celestial pole, that will change over time, as other bright stars from surrounding constellations happen to slowly become the polestar. (The entire cycle takes about 26,000 years.) “How could I not want to illustrate that,” Ross says. “How could I not want to find a way to walk through time?”

At the bottom of the stairs, you see through the porthole the sky more or less as it is today (actually, as it will be in around 2100, when, as it happens, Polaris and the pole itself will be perfectly aligned). But with each step (he commissioned professors from the University of Washington’s Department of Astronomy to date them in exact increments, one by one), the field of vision widens, tracking the change in Polaris’s orbit. And so, as you climb, you move through the earth’s 26,000 year precession. At the top, you glimpse the most distant past and future orbits of the polestar — the sky as it was at the beginning of the cycle, in 11000 B.C., and as it will be in A.D. 15000.

Read more here

via: T Magazine

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Charles Ross

Trilogy No. 2

1948

Oil on Masonite

23 ½ x 23 ½ inches

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It is an indication of the continuing hostility of the Tudors towards Richard, as well as of their bad manners, that no move was ever made to give him fitting burial. Whether for reasons of policy of piety, previous 'second generation' usurpers had done public penance. Henry V had Richard II's remains transferred from King's Langley to a stately tomb in Westminster Abbey beside his first wife, Anne of Bohemia. Richard III himself had caused the corpse of Henry IV to be moved from Chertsey Abbey to lie across the choir of the Garter Chapel in Windsor from the sepulchre of his old rival, Edward IV. No such generous move came from an uncaring Henry VIII. With the problematic exception of Edward V, Richard III is the only English king since 1066 whose remains are not now enshrined in a suitably splendid and accredited royal tomb.

Charles Ross, Richard III

(Until now.)

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Charles Ross by Romain Leguay

Artist commentary: “Illustration for "Arkham Horror: The Card Game". It is featured in "The Unspeakable Oath", the second Mythos Pack in The Path to Carcosa cycle.”

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Charles Ross

Spring Burn, 1971