There are other possible culprits. The first man worthy of close scrutiny is the Duke of Buckingham. ibid.
Once Richard has taken the throne, in a strictly legal sense the Princes in the Tower are no longer a threat to him because as bastards they have become irrelevant to the succession. Dr Michael K Jones, author Bosworth 1485 Psychology of a Battle
What I’ve got here is an annals written by we think a London merchant, a London citizen ... Under 1482-3 which it says: ‘This year King Edward IV’s sons were put to death in the Tower of London by the vice of the Duke of Buckingham’. Peter O’Donoghue, The Royal College of Arms
A world of monks, Masses, of colour and plainsong, a world of brilliant images: the world of Catholic England ... Then, in a generation, this stopped being a truism and started being treason. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Burning Convictions, BBC 2000
What a strange world this Catholic England was. ibid.
William Tyndale, an ordained priest, was the first to take on the dangerous task of translating, publishing and printing an English version of the New Testament. ibid.
What followed was an English version of the Inquisition. ibid.
Henry – the man who without ever really meaning to would turn Catholic England into a Protestant nation ... In 1509 King Henry VII died and his seventeen-year-old son came into his own. The young King was a spectacular sight. You could practically smell the testosterone. ibid.
Her name was Anne Boleyn ... Anne Boleyn entered the glittering dangerous world of the Tudor Court. Physically, she was no raving beauty. ibid.
For the first time in English law it was a crime just to say things. ibid.
Cromwell stepped up his assault on the old religion ... crushing the cult of saints and shrines. ibid.
This would be the real Reformation: just look what happened in the six years of Edward’s reign. All the customs and ceremonies of the old church ... were banned. Away went the religious guilds and ceremonies. ibid.
And so England’s first female ruler since Queen Matilda ascended the throne with just two aims in mind: to return England to its obedience to Rome and to produce a Catholic male heir to keep it that way. ibid.
But if Elizabeth put out the fires of religious fanaticism, she lit them in the breasts of patriotic Englishmen and women ... The reinstatement of a truly English way ... It was above all a Protestant Englishness ... Now Protestantism and patriotism were one and the same. ibid.
What was once a national church became a faith on the run. ibid.
It doesn’t do to be too starry eyed about the Virgin Queen. Elizabeth I was only too obviously made of flesh and blood. She was vain, spiteful, arrogant, she was frequently unjust, and she was often maddeningly indecisive. But she was also brave, shockingly clever, an eyeful to look at, and on occasions she was genuinely wise. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: The Body of the Queen
She simply adored being adored. ibid.
Dudley was everything Cecil was not: flashy, gallant, a noisy extrovert and not least incredibly good looking, especially on a horse. ibid.
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots: throughout the whole tortured history of their relationship Elizabeth was eaten up by curiosity about her cousin Mary ... Mary was next in line to the English throne. ibid.
The cult, the religion of Elizabeth, was spectacularly created. ibid.
In Rome the Pope declared that Elizabeth was to be considered a heretic. Whoever sends her out of the world, the Pope decreed, does not only does not sin but gains merit in the eyes of God. ibid.
A mother dressed in a breast-plate of steel. Everything Elizabeth had ever learned came together at Tilbury. ibid.
Elizabeth and Mary Stuart never met. ibid.
Here at Edgehill, Eden had become Golgotha. Over the next long years the nations that both James and Charles yearned to bring together would tear each other apart in murderous civil wars. Hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost in battles, sieges, epidemics, famine. Simon Sharma, A History of Britain: The British Wars
What’s truly amazing and very touching about the Spring and Summer of 1642 is the abundance of evidence we have about the agonies of allegiance. ibid.
The war was over and Parliament had won. So finally God had spoken. Surely even Charles could see that. ibid.
On January 30th 1649 the English killed their King. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Revolutions
The poet John Milton, an ardent champion of the parliamentary commonwealth, was hired to attack the cult of the king-martyr as so much wicked idolatry. ibid.
Off to the Tower went the Leveller leaders like so many traitors ... A petitioning campaign to demand the release of the Levellers was mobilised in London by Leveller women. ibid.
Say hello to the antichrist across the Irish Sea. The target of Cromwell’s march through blood was an army of royalists holding out in Ireland in the name of King Charles ... This was Cromwell’s war crime. An atrocity so hideous it contaminated Anglo-Irish history ever since. ibid.
For the Scots had invited the 20-year-old Charles II to come and be their King, and went to war on his behalf. ibid.
What kind of a republic was it supposed to be? ibid.
To Cromwell the Rump was a monstrosity. A bastion of selfishness and greed. More like Sodom than Jerusalem. ibid.
He chose to become Lord Protector – that had a good ring: authority but not tyranny. ibid.
What it turned out Cromwell wanted for everyone was a quiet life. But Catholics were excluded from this vision. ibid.
The irony about the restoration of Charles II was that he came to the throne not because England needed a successor to Charles I, he came to the throne because England needed a successor for Oliver Cromwell. ibid.
Prince William, they asked, would you mind invading Britain and saving us from a Catholic King? ibid.
In February 1689 William of Orange and Mary Stewart were proclaimed King and Queen of England. But during the ceremony something profoundly novel happened. A declaration of rights was read out listing the condition under which the new monarchs were allowed to sit on the throne. ibid.
In London and Edinburgh news of the Massacre at Glencoe was greeted by pious professions of shock ... If the intention had been to cower the Jacobites into submission it had all gone horribly wrong. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Britannia Incorporated
Britannia Incorporated: It was one of the most astonishing transformations in European history ... Scotland and England were joined at the hip. ibid.
Money, drink, libels, gangs of toughs, this was all-out war at the Hustings. Tories accused the Whigs of being fanatics, the dregs of the populus, atheists, commonwealth men. Whigs accused Tories of being willing tools of the Jesuits and the French. ibid.
1714: Queen Anne died with no heir. To make sure of a Protestant successor no fewer than fifty-seven individuals with blood ties to Anne were passed over to arrive at the next King of England. An uncharismatic, middle-aged man who didn’t speak English ... George I of Great Britain ... his coronation was greeted with rioting in twenty towns. ibid.
The Union had failed to dampen the enthusiasm in Scotland for the Jacobite cause. In fact quite the opposite. ibid.
Robert Walpole ... In effect Britain’s first Prime Minister. And under his leadership the British economy boomed as never before. Walpole’s appeal was to shameless self-interest. ibid.
There had been philanthropy before of course but this was the first time that businessmen came together with high profile artists, writers and sculptors in a campaign to attack a hideous evil in what was supposed to be a Christian modern metropolis ... The Foundling Hospital was philanthropy with a purpose. ibid.
The Jacobite cause had refused to die ... Bonnie Prince Charlie ... He was a Stuart ... For Charles nothing less than the conquest of England would do ... The Jacobites defeated themselves ... The Prince lost the vote by a substantial margin. The Jacobites turned about and headed north, beginning the long tramp back to Scotland through dreadful winter weather pursued by those newly returned England regiments. ibid.
Villages were burnt to the ground. Captured men hanged or shot. Cattle were stolen. Thousands driven from their homes. Even the wearing of highland dress was banned in an effort to strip the clams not just of their possessions but of their identity. ibid.