# Retroactive birther movement

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retroactive-birther-movement/505386>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [August 5, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retroactive-birther-movement/505386 "2009-08-05T03:17:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retroactive-birther-movement/505386/21 "2009-08-06T15:21:54Z")

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> [@Oy](#):
>
> Polydore Virgil was, with regard to any Plantagenet history, roughly equivalent to Rush Limbaugh as a historian of the Clinton years; he was writing under Henry VII. George, Duke of Clarence, along with Warwick, were also completely unreliable as sources, since they were attempting to depose Edward in favor of George \<“Drowned in a butt of malmsey”\> himself. There is no credible source of any question of Edward’s birth; Shakespeare was also a Tudor creature, and wrote Richard III based on the biography credited to Thomas More, but actually probably written by John Morton, Bishop of Ely, who hated Richard with a passion. And I don’t see the Walken resemblence, although I’ll grant you the shirts. Edward was considered an uber-hunk, and was himself an incorrigible womanizer in his day.

However, the allegations of King Edward’s illegitmacy was purely circulated by partisans of Warwick the Kingmaker and later of Richard III, and maligns Cicely (Neville) York, Duke Richard’s wife, who was still alive through the Wars of the Roses and both her sons’ reigns, dying in 1495 with Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York, Cicely’s granddaughter, on the throne.

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**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retroactive-birther-movement/505386/22 "2009-08-06T16:37:34Z")

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Right. It wasn’t the Tudors who claimed that either Ed IV or Ed V were illegitimate. It was Richard III who done it.

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**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2009, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/retroactive-birther-movement/505386/23 "2009-08-06T22:17:15Z")

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I challenge you to find a contemporary account of Richard or his partisans prompted by him claiming that. It would have traduced his mother, his wife, and his sister-in-law, all of whom lived quite comfortably with Richard during his reign; sister-in-law Elizabeth (whom no one blamed for her illegal marriage, as Edward had kept it secret) accepted a pension from him.

Tudor writers later claimed that Richard said it, but I’m not aware of any contemporary evidence to that effect.

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