Friday, March 27, 2015

Richard III AKA "Crookback Richard"

last of the Plantagenets and late King of England, was finally laid to rest this week with Full Pomp and Circumstance having been duly dug up from underneath a parking lot after he lost the Battle of Bosworth in fourteen something-or-other. His Majesty was buried....according to the Anglican Rite despite the fact that Richard was a nominal Roman Catholic, indeed his Monarchy came and went decades before Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. You'd a thought, Richard's bones might have been at least handed over to the Franciscan Friars for stately reburial (they having allegedly concealed his body the first time)...but no the Archbishop of Canterbury presided without anyone in the U.K. turning an eyebrow. This is a muted example of the Catholic-Protestant schism in England that was rage on and off up to Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden in 1702. It is also an ironic inversion of Machiavelli's famous Dictum from "The Prince", in this case "The Religion of the People Shall Be the Religion of the Prince".