Sir, – With no end in sight to curiosity about the remains of King Richard III (Small Prints, May 30th), it may be appropriate to recall a piece of diplomacy involving Richard (1483-1485) and the Earl of Desmond.
The attainder and hasty decapitation of the previous Earl of Desmond in February 1468, during the reign of Richard’s predecessor (and brother) Edward IV, was one of the crimes of the century in England and Ireland. Recognising the injustice of the earl’s execution, Richard sent the Bishop of Annaghdown (Thomas Barrett) to the dead earl’s son and successor, Earl James, with an offer of pardon. Conditions were attached: the violence generated by the execution was to end, and Earl James was to marry an English bride provided by Richard.
The bishop’s embassy was not a success; turmoil continued and the earl married an Irish bride (a daughter of O’Brien of Thomond); finally, at the end of 1487, the earl was murdered by some of his Desmond relatives.
Earl James would have done well to heed Richard’s warnings. The Tudors, shortly to succeed Richard after his defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth, had none of the sympathy with the Desmonds that distinguished Richard and his predecessors, sympathy founded to some extent on the fact that the Desmonds and the Plantagenets were cousins, and both belonged to a church with the pope at its head.
A memento of the bishop’s embassy to the earl survived: a gift to the earl of a gold collar with Richard’s emblem, a white boar, pendant. It is likely that the boar emblem of the Desmonds dates from the occasion. – Yours, etc,
GERALD O’CARROLL,
Tralee, Co Kerry.