Sir, – Some exasperation has been expressed as to what on earth the reburial of an obscure English king has got to do with Ireland and what it is doing in your correspondence columns (Letters, March 26th).
The point deserves some answer.
Richard III held the lordship of Ireland as well as the kingship of England. In 1984, Galway celebrated with some fanfare the 500th anniversary of the grant of its charter in 1484 by Richard III. One good deed perhaps?
For nearly 800 years, Norman, English, and later British, monarchs, played some role in Irish history. Equally importantly, Ireland was a springboard for challengers to the crown, as in 1460 (“From Ireland thus comes York to claim his right”, Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part III) , not to mention the rebellions of Yorkist pretenders against Henry VII, Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.
Unlike his Tudor supplanters, Richard III did not subordinate the Irish parliament to the English Privy Council via Poynings’ Law (1494), nor did he declare himself head of the church, suppress the monasteries, and demand the surrender and re-grant of lands, nor did his lord deputies lay waste to much of the country.
If many Irish people took an interest in The Tudors filmed in Ireland, why should they not be equally interested in the far from obscure subject of Richard III, one of Shakespeare's best-known history plays, part of the rich cultural heritage which we share that is available to us in our second official language? – Yours, etc, MARTIN MANSERGH Tipperary, Co Tipperary.