# You can't make up history like this **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 19, 2008, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-up-history-like-this/473485 "2008-11-19T18:33:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 39
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2008, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-up-history-like-this/473485/39 "2008-11-27T00:36:29Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Unlikely. Much more likely that Henry Tudor had them offed. > > RIII didn’t have much of a motive- he’d already had them declared illegitimate (and they really were, it seems). > > But Henry had a huge motive- if he was legit, then they were, and they had a better claim. So I was searching for an old post, where I could have sworn that I had argued in the opposite of this - that Richard III had very good and pressing reasons for taking them out. I’m pretty sure I based this on Charles Ross’ biography of Richard III - Ross being in the “rather more likely than not” category. Instead I found this [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=355250) from 2006 where **Mississippienne** and I were discussing death rates of extinction among nobility. Which tickled me, because I remember the cite I couldn’t recall then :p. > [@So, what was Henry the VIII's problem anyway?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-henry-the-viiis-problem-anyway/341060/5): > > However bad luck probably plays a roll and was nothing unusual. Dynasties, great and small, died out all the time from a lack of _legitimate_ male heirs. I forget the exact number, but tornover was high in the medieval world among noble houses ( I want to say about a third of them went extinct in the male line every generation, but I’d need to look for a cite ). > [@So, what was Henry the VIII's problem anyway?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-henry-the-viiis-problem-anyway/341060/7): > > I don’t know about a third of the noble houses going extinct every generation, that number seems excessively high. You’re right - it was more like a quarter ( ~24-30% ) of the English peerage per 25 year generation in the 14th century :D. Per K.B. MacFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England ( 1973 Clarendon Press, Oxford ). Poking around apparently the numbers were much the same for the 15th and 16th century and E. Perroy ( for France ) and A. Grant ( for Scotland ) have turned up roughly similar numbers. So noble houses in western Europe seemed to have gone extinct ( or were very occasionally dispossed ) in the male line, on average, after four generations, at least in the High Middle Ages/Renaissance. Err…sorry for the hijack, but it IS rather mundane and pointless ;). --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-up-history-like-this/473485)._