If Strawberries Were Ripe on June 13,
Was October 2 Really Richard III's Birthday?

Charles T. Wood
(Speech delivered at the William B.Schallek Memorial Fellowship Award Fund-Raising Breakfast, October 3, 1993)

In Memoriam | Charles T. Wood, Ricardian | History in the Comic Mode Symposium

Charles T. Wood with 3-D Neuschwanstein puzzle won at 1994 American Branch AGM Schallek Raffle

It's a special treat to be here today since it marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first time I spoke at an AGM. I find, however, that many things have changed in the interim, not least the fact that I have now published extensively on Richard III as I had not in 1968. Because there was then no evidence to the contrary, a quarter century ago I could be welcomed as a refreshing antidote to A. L. Rowse, the Society's most recent and not very friendly academic speaker, whereas last summer's Register, in announcing today's event, could only caution: "Since that first AGM presentation, Professor Wood has written and lectured on Richard extensively, not always to the satisfaction of Society members who take exception to his views."

I hasten to add, though, that the Register then qualified this statement with a warmer: "Nevertheless he has been a good friend to the Society for many years," and the cause of that friendship also goes back to 1968 even as it brings us together today. For it was at that AGM twenty-five years ago that Bill Hogarth, then the Society's chairman, asked whether I was willing to serve on the selection committee for a graduate fellowship that he hoped the Society would find ways to fund. I agreed immediately, but it took another ten years to solve the funding problem. As I understand the story (and I checked it with Bill Hogarth only four days ago), when Maryloo Schallek joined the Society, she got husband Bill to join too, and it was he who first thought up the idea of the Richard III Society Graduate Fellowships that bear his name today. Anonymously, too, he provided much of the early funding just as Maryloo graciously continued to do after his death. As a result, Bill Hogarth insists that all credit should go to Bill Schallek, but insofar as nothing would have happened without the enthusiastic support of the person who was then chairman, it's clear that this Society and a remarkable string of graduate students owe Maryloo and both Bills an enormous debt of gratitude. The fifteen years I've served on the selection committee have been deeply rewarding -- and enough of our fellowship recipients have now published that I can also assure you that the whole world of fifteenth-century studies is being significantly enriched by their findings.

That point raises a crucial question, why it is that a Society such as ours -- made up, after all, primarily of people who have largely an amateur's love of the past in general and of Richard III in particular -- should bother to fund fellowships for kinds of graduate training that non-scholars often attack as narrowly incomprehensible, worthless, and boring. Nevertheless, understandable though that reaction may be, I hoped in choosing my subject today that some of my remarks might at least lightly suggest why such doubts about academic research are really short-sighted even for the amateur.

Indeed, evidence that I was not entirely mistaken began to surface almost as soon as I had invented my title. When I passed it on to Joe Ann Ricca, for example, she responded: "[O]ne member once told me that she read that Richard was born at midnight on the 2nd, and so, in reality, Richard's birthday is really the 3rd." Left unstated was what I suspect was Joe Ann's hidden motive here, the fact that her own birthday also falls on the 3rd, an anniversary she would doubtless be happy to make a joint one. On the other hand, for the last thirty-one years my daughter Martha has had to share her birthday with Dickon, and insofar as she has loyally accepted views of her father to which "Society members . . . take exception," she has made it clear to me that she would gladly let Joe Ann do the sharing from now on.

Yet the dating problem I have in mind is really far more complex than thus far suggested. Indeed, I began fully to grasp it only in 1978, the year in which Bill Schallek's generosity brought our fellowship committee into practical existence. As it happens, too, it was also the year in which I published "Who Killed The Little Princes In The Tower?", a piece that reviewed the competing claims of a variety of neglected suspects ranging from Sir Robert Brackenbury to Elizabeth Woodville and -- my favorite -- Jane Shore. In turn, that article inspired many letters, one of them from a Greek Orthodox monk, Brother Andrew of Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts. Brother Andrew had a problem, so was turning to me for advice. Calling me "America's foremost authority on [his] favorite English king," he wanted to know the true date of Richard's birth so that on it he could properly celebrate memorial masses for the salvation of that favorite's soul. The problem, obviously, was that while the Orthodox Church continues to follow the Julian calendar of Richard's day, society at large now employs the Gregorian. That means, in turn, that in Brother Andrew's monastery the day that we take to be October 2 is only September 19. On the other hand, if he were to wait until his October 2, our calendars would read October 15. Since you have seen what a difference a day makes for Joe Ann and my daughter Martha, you can imagine what a difference this near-month made for Brother Andrew.

It can, of course, for other people as well. For example, the astrologically inclined will immediately recognize that a Richard III born on either October 2 or October 15 would be a Libra, whereas one born on September 19 would become a Virgo. Wanting to know the potential implications of this possible sign change, I therefore wrote the most knowledgeable astrologer of my acquaintance and received the following reply:

Those scholarly disclaimers aside, if Richard III was born in the sign of Virgo, he would be high strung, critical, kind to the small and weak (arguing against the murder of the little princes), earthy (but only in the most private ways), stubborn, discriminating, logical, insecure, loyal to friends and family, and fastidious. Felix Unger of "The Odd Couple" is the classic stereotype of a Virgo man...

If, on the other hand, Richard was a Libra, we would be dealing with a different sort of critter altogether. Libras are leaders, and seek leadership roles although they do not seem to be the stuff of which leaders are normally made. Ruled by the planet Venus, they are lovers of beauty, harmony and romance. They like balance in all things and have a scrupulous if somewhat wearisome sense of justice. It is very difficult for them to make [good] decisions [quickly]. Although capable of great exertions, they are often considered lazy because of their great need for rest. Eisenhower was a Libra. His D-Day plans were great since he had enough time to work them out. He would not have done so well on the fly. His presidency, made memorable by the desire of the country to live the good life (very Libra), is another example of Libra leadership . . . .

Now, given what I remember of Richard III, I would say that he was far more likely to have been born on October 2. His career, particularly toward the end, unfolded the way it did because of a lack of decision making on his part. Libras, particularly those smit- ten by Cupid, can do some pretty outrageous things, and that whole thing with his niece speaks more of passion than of reason, far more likely to come from a Libra than a Virgo. And, of course, the princes in the Tower would not be the work of a Virgo unless he was really, really warped. Either way, though, Richard was no dummy since both Libra and Virgo are "bright" sun signs in the intellectual sense. But I can easily see a Libra biting off more than he could chew, becoming worn out with the incessant need for decision making and the tiresome parade of demands that being a national leader entails. Did he have a Camp David to run away to? Did he play golf and paint? If not, this worn-out and befuddled Libra most likely was undone by his own inability to think things out as quickly as his opposition did. I hope this is of help to you. Let me know if there is anything else I can offer.

In an article published in 1972, Alison Hanham had argued that Richard had apprehended and executed William, Lord Hastings, only on June 20, 1483, and not one week earlier, on Friday the 13th, as tradition had it. So persuasive did I find Hanham's case that in 1975 I incorporated her new dating into "The Deposition of Edward V," an article in which I tried to demonstrate that Richard of Gloucester had in no way sought the crown during most of his Protectorship. In correspondence Ross attempted to persuade me of the error of my dating ways, so to rebut his evidence I found myself arguing, among other things, that John Morton's strawberries couldn't possibly have been ripe as early as June 13. In response, Ross chose not to challenge the reliability of Shakespeare's and More's famous story; rather, he simply pointed out that my argument failed to take into account the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

Since, in fact, I had no clear idea at that point of precisely what had happened when the switch occurred, I hastened to find out, only to discover that the change -- one that England and its American colonies made only in 1752 -- involved a one-time omission of twelve days from the calendar so that astronomy and calendar would once more agree. Importantly, however, no attempt was made to adjust earlier dates to the new system. That being the case, since the calendrical difference in 1483 had been nine days, in turn that meant that Morton's mess of strawberries had had plenty of time to become ripe, his and history's June 13 being the astronomical and hence seasonal equivalent of our June 22.

Now, if you've followed this shaggy dog with care thus far, you can see why I was forced to give a surprisingly complex answer to Brother Andrew. I was able to assure him that if his concern was only about having his masses coincide with the date on which Richard and his contemporaries thought he had been born, then October 2 was the proper day, his choice of calendar. But if he was interested from an astronomical and/or astrological point of view -- that is, one concerned with the precise position of the earth and of the whole solar system on the day of Richard's birth -- then his Ricardian masses should be celebrated on September 23 in the Gregorian calendar or, in other words, on September 10 in the Orthodox-mandated Julian one. The astrologically inclined should note, though, that even if Brother Andrew decided to commemorate Richard's birthday on September 10 (he never told me what his ultimate decision was), the last of the Plantagenets would likely remain a Libra, not a Virgo, because the crucial issue in astrology is planetary positions, not man-made dates, and in the Julian calendar Libra now begins on September 10 and will continue to do so for another 107 years, presumably well beyond either Brother Andrew's lifespan or our own.

I'm not sure, of course, whether these research findings will lead to a change in the date of our AGM, but I hope that they do suggest why the continuing vitality of the Richard III Society depends to a surprising degree on the willingness of its members to fund graduate education with its Schallek fellowships. True history depends on knowing the facts, but many of them remain as yet unknown or, more confusion still, "facts" seemingly as well known as the date of Richard's birth turn out to be much more slippery and ambiguous than most of us had ever imagined. Since much of the work involved in developing these facts and in providing new insights about them can be surprisingly arcane, we need trained scholars to do it, scholars whose findings will eventually provide new ammunition for our own societal debates. In proof of this point I need only cite the work of the two former Schallek fellows who now sit with me on the selection committee, for it is thanks to Lorraine Attreed that we now have a much deeper understanding not just of the Middle Ages' deep love of children, a love that undergirds the story of the mythic princes in the Tower, but also of Richard's relations with the City of York, not to mention of the precise workings of that city's government itself. Similarly, to Shelley Sinclair we owe not just a fuller knowledge of the Vere earls of Oxford, but also thanks to her Kalamazoo paper this year, a much more lively appreciation of the extent of the so-called treason conspiracy of 1462 against Richard's brother Edward IV.

The demonstrable success of our former fellows brings me to one last point, one that I make not just as a member of the Schallek selection committee, but even more fundamentally as a former investment banker who now serves as Treasurer of the Medieval Academy of America. Thanks to member generosity, and especially thanks to the good offices of Wendy Logan and Laura Blanchard in gaining us that wholly unexpected bequest of $7,000 from the estate of Edna Kean, pledges and gifts for endowing the Schallek Memorial Fellowships have now reached our original target of $25,000. That's tremendously good news. On the other hand, when that target was originally set, our assumption was that income from an endowment of that size would easily fund two fellowships annually of $500 each. Now, however, different conditions prevail. Interest rates have fallen sharply, while the rise in the stock market has not been matched by a corresponding increase in earning and dividends, thereby making the percentage yield on common stocks also much lower than was the case when we were doing our preliminary planning. As a result, our new endowment, wonderful as it is, will no longer comfortably fund the two $500 fellowships that were our minimum annual goal. In closing, then, I can only say that if any of you are moved to get out your checkbooks to help our endowment grow to the level now needed, I'm confident that neither Joe Ann Ricca nor Laura Blanchard will pose objections. Indeed, should they note what I assume will prove to be the differing dates on your several checks, I doubt whether they will even join me in asking which calendar you are using.

Thank you.