Shakespeare’s Monster King Gets A New Look: ‘A Virtuous Prince And Wise’ | Eastern NC Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Hank Berrien.

    The English king who was limned as one of the most villainous personages in all of history is getting another look after a 17th-century history was found.

    Richard III, killed at the Battle of Bosworth in Leicestershire in August 1485, was memorialized by Shakespeare as a monster who had his two young nephews murdered in order to cement his claim to the throne.

    But Richard III Society members obtained a republication of The History of King Richard III by Sir George Buck, and the text, approved by the esteemed Society of Antiquaries, states that Buck found "contemporary evidence" adding, "And Richard was accounted a good and faithful man all his life. And was reputed a virtuous prince and wise. And his law and government were of the best and without stain," The Times reported.

    "It's a really important text. The Society of Antiquaries guards its reputation fiercely. For them to give it their thumbs-up is huge," historian Philippa Langley, who supervised the finding of the king's body in 2012, told The Times.

    Buck wrote his history in the early 1600s, but his death preceded its publication. His great nephew edited the piece "heavily" while hiding "its true contents" before publishing it, The Times noted.

    Academic Arthur Kincaid published his recreation of Buck's text in 1979, but it fell out of print. The discovery of Richard's body prompted calls for its republication.

    Richard III was the last ruler of the House of York; he was succeeded by Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch and the ancestor of Queen Elizabeth I, who was queen during Shakespeare's lifetime.

    Novelist Josephine Tey's classic work, "The Daughter of Time," considered one of the greatest and most compelling mysteries ever written and voted number one in The Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list compiled by the British Crime Writers' Association in 1990, deals with Scotland detective Alan Grant conducting a painstaking search of the past to ascertain exactly what the truth was about the life of Richard III.

    In the novel, Tey references various historical myths in addition to the story of Richard III to illustrate the fact that the truth of events is often perverted, leaving behind a false picture of actual history. She cites the false claim that troops fired on the public at the 1910 Tonypandy Riot; the often mis-told story of the Boston Massacre, and the history of Mary, Queen of Scots.