Odds and ends

Following the 'Wars of the Roses' at the Rose, and the rather unsatisfactory way in which Richard III's appointment as monarch was depicted there, I thought I would look up his coronation in Strong's book of coronations.

It seems that we have the needlework account, so we know that £3,124, twelve shillings and three farthings was spent on liveries - essentially fancy dress for the participants - and banners. A great deal of money at that time. The needlemen and women of London must have made a very good thing out of all the dynastic turmoil, rather as those of Paris did out of the Napoleonic penchant for the same sort of thing, slightly updated. From which we may deduce that the coronation was actually quite a performance. A performance which went all the better for the preparations which had been made beforehand, but not carried through to performance for Edward V, who went on instead to become one the missing princes in the tower.

We also know that Richard added lustre to his coronation by the creation of 17 knights of the bath, which creation, in those days, really did involve a bath, this being attested by the nearly contemporary book of the garter written by one Writhe. Out of stock at Amazon, but Abebooks can do you one for $700 or so. Some kind of a reprint.

From there I went on to read that the Poles, having exported a couple of million of their younger citizens to the UK and other destinations in western Europe in recent years, are getting cross that people like M&S and BHS are springing up in their High Streets, springing up in places where there should be good Polish shops. Also that they are getting even crosser at the idea that they should take in a few Syrian refugees, this despite the facts that their population density is less than half that of the UK (according to the Economist 2014 pocket book of such facts) and that what must be their rapidly ageing population could do with some youngsters to staff up their care homes. One wonders whether the remaining Jews there are any more accommodating on this point, more ready to take in some fellow Semites, than their Catholic compatriots. Perhaps they just keep their heads down.