 Session IV The Lighter Side of Fifteenth-century England Sponsored by Richard III Society and the Congregatio de Silvescendo
Left to Right: This is the ninth session on Fifteenth Century England at Kalamazoo sponsored by the Richard III Society, American Branch, and the fourth session in the symposium in honor of Charles T. Wood. Despite views of Richard III that tend to make some Society members compare him unfavorably with the Antichrist, Charlie Wood has been a consistently good friend to the Society. He has trained scores of Dartmouth undergraduates to think critically by questioning the traditional portrait of Richard III. He has twice been a speaker at our annual general meeting. Perhaps most importantly, he has been the driving force in the creation, maintenance, and funding of our graduate scholarship program, now in its eighteenth year. So, despite his published view that Richard III was not only guilty but a dim bulb who blundered his way into regicide , Charlie Wood is someone we count among the Society's strongest allies, and we're very pleased to honor him today.
 Our first speaker, A. J. Pollard, is a professor at the Centre for Historical
Research, University of Teesside. Over the years Pollard, too, has been a good
friend to the Society, organizing several academic conferences on its behalf and,
recently, joining the Board of the
Richard III and
Yorkist History Trust.
Pollard's publications include The Tyranny of
Richard III, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses, The Wars of the
Roses, The Wars of the Roses, [not a misprint; two books with the same title]
and the ever-popular, drop-dead gorgeous Richard III and the Princes in the Tower,
the best coffee-table book about Richard III ever written. Despite convincing his
fellow historians of the guilt of Richard III, though, Pollard's testimony as
a witness for the prosecution didn't stop a jury of English citizens from
acquitting Richard III in a 1984 mock trial. Today, Pollard will tell us what
happened...
 Our second speaker, Gilbert Bogner, is not as directly connected with the Society as our
other three speakers, although he has Ricardian connections of the subtler kind: he
obtained his Ph.D. from Ohio University, training with Compton Reeves, chair of the
American Branch. Now at Latrobe College (birthplace of Arnold Palmer and Rolling
Rock Beer), he combines his research skills, honed under Reeves' guidance, with
a nose for the bizarre, the uncommon, and the outré that is positively Woodsian
as he tells us about...
Helen Maurer is a doctoral candidate at the University of California at Irvine; her thesis is
on Margaret of Anjou. Maurer also serves as curator of the American Branch's 400-volume
research library and for the past decade has both served as librarian and also as
research advisor to members. This is Maurer's second appearance at a Richard III
Society session at Kalamazoo. The last time, she analyzed all the evidence related
to Those Bones, allegedly of the Princes, found in the Tower in the seventeenth century.
At that same sesison, Charles Wood spoke on Richard III and the beginning of historical
fiction. Today, Maurer will be talking about...
Compton Reeves is Professor of History at Ohio University, the author of Purveyors and Purveyance,
Lancastrian Englishmen, and Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England.
He is also Chairman of the American Branch, thanks in part to Charlie Wood. At
Kalamazoo in 1994, three of us were entreating Reeves to accept the nomination for
the chair. As he wavered, Charlie Wood (who happened to be sitting nearby) said, "Oh, go ahead,
Compton--it will be fun," and his doom was sealed. Reeves is researching cathedrals
for his forthcoming book for Alan Sutton Publishing . This paper is an outgrowh of that
research as well as his revenge on Charlie Wood for that "helpful" advice at
Kalamazoo four springs ago...
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