Richard Plantagenet or Richard of Eastwell (? 1469 - December 22, 1550) was a reclusive bricklayer who claimed to be a son of Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England.
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According to Francis Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, Richard boarded with a Latin schoolmaster until he was 15 or 16, without knowing who his real parents were (though he was visited four times a year by a mysterious gentleman who paid for his upkeep and who once took him to a "fine, great house" where Richard was met and treated kindly by a man in a "star and garter"). At the age of 16, just before the battle of Bosworth, the gentleman took him to see Richard III, who informed him he was his son. The king told him to watch the battle from a safe vantage point and that, if he won, he would acknowledge him as his son but that, if he lost, he must forever conceal his identity. The latter occurred, with Richard of Eastwell fleeing to London to be apprenticed to a bricklayer, though keeping up the Latin he had learned by reading during his work.
Whilst working on Eastwell Place for Sir Thomas Moyle around 1546, Moyle discovered Richard reading and, having been told his story, offered him stewardship of the house's kitchens. Used to seclusion, however, Richard declined the offer and was granted his request to build a one-room house on Moyle's estate and live there until he died. A building called "Plantagenet Cottage" still stands on the site of the original.[1]
The record of Richard's burial was re-discovered in the parish registers around Michaelmas 1720 by Lord Heneage, Earl of Winchelsea, whilst he was researching his own family, and passed on (along with family tradition of his story) to Thomas Brett, L. L. D, who communicated it in a letter to William Warren, L. L. D., president of Trinity Hall, who in turn passed it on to Peck.
The burial record in the Eastwell Parish Register is a 1598 transcript of the original and is dated 22 December 1550. The handwriting is consistent and not considered a forgery.[2][3] The register entry reads: "Rychard Plantagenet was buryed on the 22. daye of December, anno ut supra. Ex registro de Eastwell, sub anno 1550."
In 1861, John Heneage Jesse published his Memoirs of King Richard III[4]. He states:
Anciently, when any person of noble family was interred at Eastwell, it was the custom to affix a special mark against the name of the deceased in the register of burials. The fact is a significant one, that this aristocratic symbol is prefixed to the name of Richard Plantagenet. At Eastwell, his story still excites curiosity and interest ... A well in Eastwell Park still bears his name; tradition points to an uninscribed tomb in Eastwell churchyard as his last resting place; and, lastly, the very handwriting which, more than three centuries ago, recorded his interment, is still in existence.
A rubble-stone tomb with modern pointing, within the floor plan of the now ruined church of St Mary's, Eastwell has a plaque with the following words:
Reputed to be the tomb of Richard Plantagenet, 22. December 1550
Although his name is inscribed on one of the tombs, the grave is more likely to be that of Sir Walter Moyle, who died in 1480.[5] The church, which has been a ruin since the 1950s is cared for by a national charity the Friends of Friendless Churches.
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