Of Interest

King Richard III and Little Malvern Priory ?

The recent discovery of the remains of King Richard III under a car park in Leicester has sparked a renewed interest in that monarch. Was he the unscrupulous murderer of his two royal nephews (Edward the Prince of Wales and Richard the Duke of York) in order to secure the throne of England or is he the much maligned victim of subsequent Tudor propaganda? The Richard III Society certainly believes the latter to be the case and, for reasons which are not entirely clear, the American Branch of the Society makes a small annual donation to Little Malvern Priory. What then, if any, is the link between Richard III and LMP?

Our east window is the obvious starting point, and indeed it features in the Richard III Society’s website. As most of congregation will be aware it depicts, albeit in a now fragmented form, the Yorkist Royal Family at the time that the window was commissioned by Bishop Alcock in or around 1482. The reigning monarch, Edward IV, is now missing as is his younger son Richard Duke of York, but Edward Prince of Wales is clearly depicted, together with his mother Queen Elizabeth Woodville and his sisters, Princess Elizabeth of York, Cecily, Anne and Katherine. The window is of historical importance, not only because it is a particularly fine example of late Medieval English stained glass, but also because it is one of only two known contemporary depictions of  Edward Prince of Wales who nominally became King Edward V on the death of his father in 1483, only a year after the window was installed.

That is as far as the story in our window takes us. However, as Edward was only 13 years old when his father died he and his younger brother were placed under the guardianship of their paternal uncle, Richard of Gloucester, who in May 1483 was appointed Protector until Edward came of age. Only a month later the two boys were placed in the Tower of London and Parliament petitioned Richard to accede to the throne, which he did on 6 July 1483, around the time previously set for Edward’s coronation. If Shakespeare is to be believed the boys, The Princes in the Tower, are already doomed. (Richard III’s aside in Act 3  – “So wise so young, they say, do never live long”). Whoever was responsible for their deaths, they were never seen alive in public again.

 However, Richard III’s reign was to be short lived as he was slain at the Battle of Bosworth Field in August 1485 (A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!)  by the army of Henry Tudor. Richard’s body was taken to the nearby Greyfriars Priory, and for over 500 years the exact location of his burial was lost until it was rediscovered by a archaeologists last August beneath a council car park.

Another link in this chain is, of course, Bishop Alcock whose emblem of three cockerels  is  depicted in our window. He not only commissioned our east window, but was tutor to the “Princes in the Tower”, Lord Chancellor to Edward IV, confidant of Richard III, and subsequently Chancellor to Henry VII after his victory over Richard at Tewksbury. He is also believed to have been instrumental in encouraging the marriage of Henry VII to Princess Elizabeth of York, thus reconciling the Houses of York and Lancaster, which brought the Wars of the Roses to an end and ushered in the Tudor dynasty. Clearly he was a supreme statesman who managed to remain at the centre of national affairs through violent, changing, dynastic fortunes.

A rather more tenuous link relates to Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI and vigorous defender of the Lancastrian cause. Her army was defeated at the Battle of Tewksbury in 1471 by numerically superior Yorkist forces which included Richard, then Duke of Gloucester. It is just possible that Margaret, fleeing from the battle, sought refuge at Little Malvern Priory.

Is our link with Richard, slender as it is, worth pursuing?  Does it warrant putting something on our audio-history?  Perhaps we should invite a speaker from the Richard III Society to come and give us a talk to explore it further.

John Chatten

Pancake Party

   Many thanks to all those who came and joined in, helping to make our pancake party such an enjoyable event.

   Hugh and I only meant it to be a sociable time, but thought that as it was at the beginning of Lent, it would be good for us to remember those in need. The result was £150 in cash and a very large box of goodies of allsorts for the Malvern Food Bank. Many thanks for all who contributed to such an unexpected (to us) outcome.

Annie Burge and Hugh McMichael

Open Day Plant Stall

Don’t forget that we need plants for the plant stall for the Open Day on May 6^th. If you are planting seeds for your garden, then plant every seed in the packet. Any surplus plants can then be grown on for the Plant Stall. If you need extra plant pots, give me a ring on Malvern 569003. I have a good supply of pots. Similarly if you are dividing up existing plants, then take extra cutting for the stall. I can also store some extra plants in my greenhouse if necessary.

When the big weekend arrives, you can bring your plants up to Little Malvern Court between 9:30 and 12pm on the morning of Saturday the 4^th of May when we are setting up. This will give us time to label and price everything. If you can’t do this, you can still bring them on Sunday or Monday and they will still be welcome.

Tricia Steel 01684 569003

ANNIVERSARIES CELEBRATED IN THE YEAR 2013

Feather watch

“I watched a blackbird on a bidding sycamore

One Easter day, when sap was stirring twigs to the core

I saw his tongue and crocus-coloured bill

Parting and closing as he turned his trill;

Then he flew down , seized on a stem of hay

And upped to where his building scheme was underway……”

“I watched a Blackbird” by Thomas Hardy

With winter now in full retreat, banished by a crescendo of birdsong, we can now begin to look forward to listening out for the new sounds of spring arrivals….. The birds that will be spending the summer with us that, despite all the world’s troubles, Nature’s always there for us if we choose to stop and listen.

In the old quarry the ravens, after a successful brood last year, have again beaten off the peregrine falcons for the best nest site. Feathers flew for days on end. Finally the falcons retreated  - 1t’s 2-0  to the ravens! High on the Hills , skylarks and pipits are returning after their winter foraging. At the foot of the Beacons, wild daffodils can be seen in small clumps—” they come before the swallow dares , and take the winds of March with beauty”. In these parts the county name is the Lent Lily. Buds on the old chestnut trees are beginning to swell and are almost ready to open.

Talking of ‘old chestnuts’,  the abandoned Severn Barrage project is to be reconsidered. We are told that it promises to generate 5% of UK electricity. The scheme will cost £30 billion and take seven years to complete. By changing the Severn estuary forever in such a drastic way, an area of special designation and outstanding natural beauty will be affected. Has the scheme taken into account that, alongside the Wash ,the estuary provides the most important staging post and feeding grounds in the UK for millions of birds? With wind farms failing to offer a reliable source of energy, this plan may well be pushed through. If we really care about what happens to our natural world, allow this to happen? This cannot be a sensible way

forward. Come on every body!

Register your concerns with the RSPB and/or  your MP.

Philip Kedward

Churchyard Chatter.

Hornbeam Up-date.

You may have seen the Malvern Gazette article about the felling of the Victoria Park pine trees.

In addition to being an inappropriate species they seem to have been planted far too close together.

However you feel about their demise I know some-one who will be very pleased about their proposed

replacements, none other than the fastigiate form of Hornbeam.

So-smile away "JHJ".

[See Pewsletter Churchyard Chatter Oct./Nov.2012]

Roger.

A Journey

   I have recently been to see lots of interesting films at the Borderlines Film Festival based around Hereford. One of the most memorable for me was a Tibetan film called Sun Beaten Path.

It was about a young man who lived in a remote area some way off the main road. He and his brother went off to the main road where the bus stopped, to meet their Grandmother who was coming for the imminent birth of her grandson. The brothers were showing off a little, one on a motorbike and the other on a vehicle that was best described as a tractor. Grandmother rode on the back of the motorbike, wearing a long scarf. This got caught up in the bike chain and she got pulled off and run over and died. The brother who had run her over was mortified and didn’t know what to do. They went back to their relations in the village amidst noisy mourning. The young man who felt responsible couldn’t interact with the family and just wandered off with a big rucksac.Interestingly no one from the family seemed to be trying to stop him. They seemed to know he needed to leave and sort it out for himself.

A lot of the film was about him journeying, walking like clockwork along the big metalled road to and from Lhasa, the sacred place for Tibetan Buddhists. The truck drivers gave him food, he had a blanket for the nights and pots and pans for cooking. However, he refused all lifts, which made him very strange in such a vast and inhospitable country. He said the journey would be too short and not long enough if he had lifts. He clearly knew somehow that he needed time to sort himself out and gain his forgiveness.He did take a bus, though and met a man who engaged with him. He was wearing a sky blue scarf which is the sacred colour for Buddhists in that region, so will have been identified as a spiritual person. This older man was thoroughly rebuffed initially, but persistence paid off. He managed to persuade the young man that he had “paid his debt” by going to Lhasa and was now “clean as snow” and it was time to return home. During this time, the older man was repeatedly contacted by his son on his mobile phone. The son wanted to know where he was. His constant reply was “I’m on the Way”. I think this helped the young man to see a bit of what life could be about. Eventually the young man caught another bus and got off at the same spot where he had met his Grandmother all that time ago. Miraculously his sister in law was waiting there for him with her baby. No words were exchanged except the young mother introducing the stranger to her baby as “Uncle”. The baby then kept on repeating “Uncle, Uncle” with much evident joy. And that was the end of the film.

I was affected by a lot in the film. The family understanding that the young man had to go off and sort himself out, with no obvious recriminations. The “Journey”, outwardly to Lhasa and inwardly to himself. The older man who befriended and challenged him and who was also “on the Way”. The wonderfully accepting homecoming by the youngest member of the family whom he had never seen before.

A strange thing was that, had the bible readings for the day not followed Mothering Sunday, they would have been the Prodigal Son. There seemed to be a lot of connections between the two stories, and some important differences. I hope you enjoy thinking about them!                 

 Anne Burge March 2013     

The Church, Sex and Films

When I knew him some years ago, Jack Dominian was a compassionate, common-sense psychiatrist. He has subsequently written extensively on love, relationships and breakdown. He is also a respected Catholic theologian who was invited by the Second Vatican Council to give his views on love and sex: he emphasises that sex plays a vital role in relationships far beyond that of procreation. He describes sex as a sacrament expressing love, and our sexual drives are a gift from God. He abhors traditional church teaching which so strongly associates sex and sin.

In the last 12 days Annie and I saw 25 films at the Hereford Film Festival many of which explored aspects of erotic drive. These included depictions of a child girl soldier in the Congo, the upbringing of a young adolescent girl in Saudi, false accusations of sexual abuse against a teacher, investigation of a murder in rural Turkey, and a historical account of an affair between a ‘progressive’ king’s adviser and a Danish queen. But the two which impacted on me the most were the 2 classics, namely Anna Karenina and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, each of which expressed for me the unequal treatment of women by men and society. (The other films served as a reminder that little has changed worldwide.) Tess, from a lower social class, was raped by ‘gentry’ and bore a child, thereby excluding her from a subsequent loving marriage. There was, of course, no criticism of the rapist because it was the woman who had ‘fallen’. (This reminded me of my involvement with a large mental ‘asylum’ when some ‘patients’ who had been incarcerated for upwards of 40 years were being discharged – women labelled ‘moral defects’ because they exhibited sexual behaviour or had an illegitimate child. Of course no men were so incarcerated.)

Anna Karenina was different. She was an aristocrat who had been married off aged 18 to a man perhaps 20 years her senior. (Parallels with a Saudi girl of 11 being married off to a man of 20.) No erotic love or passion but a duty to produce a son and heir. Anna had a passionate affair with a glamorous army officer with whom she had a child. Her end then became inevitable: while her lover continued to be accepted and welcomed by Society, she was rejected by all, lost her children through divorce and committed suicide. Why are men and women treated so differently? Why do so many operatic heroines have to sing their way to death at the end of many great operas? ‘Used’ women no longer have an appeal – to men or society (BBC news readers?). Why can society not accept that women too have erotic needs which cry out to be fulfilled?

I was brought up to believe that women would try to trap me into getting them pregnant then I would have to marry them (sorry, her) and she would have a meal ticket for life. At school, our sex education from a local GP emphasised the dangers of masturbation and told us that if we wanted sex after we were married, we should bring home a bunch of flowers. I was so sickened by that bribery image that I have always refused to buy flowers for my partner!

Many prevailing societal attitudes make sex into a battle for power. Can Christian attitudes help society towards equal and loving relationships where power is shared and each can give and receive the love and acceptance we have all craved at some level. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable implies losing power and control. “Unless we become as little children ——-”, we will not find the joy of love in all its forms.

Hugh McMichael.

  CHURCHYARD WILD FLOWERS