If you were a claustrophobic young heir to the throne the 15th century was one to avoid. When you should have been dreaming of accession, and lopping off the heads of people you took a dislike to, mad uncle Richard was walling you up in the tower. At least you had the company of your little brother, as Richard bricked him in too. Not that Richard III was quite the hunchbacked villain of Shakespeare’s play. Apparently the Tudors gave him the hump, the irritable old bugger.

The Princes bricked up in the tower

Elsewhere, just as the good news came through from north of the border that the Scots were going to concentrate on killing each other for a while, bleaker news emanated from Wales where the locals were getting disgruntled about all the holiday castles being built by the English. Pyromaniac Plaid Cymru leader Owain Glyndwr tried to introduce a bill whereby second castle owners had to pay council tax twice, and when that failed he set fire to everything.

For those who missed out on this little altercation there was another around the corner - The War of the Roses. This all began during ‘Todmorden in Bloom 1455′, when a number of white roses appeared in the red rose beds around this Lancashire border town. The white roses were ripped up by angry Lancastrian horticulturalists, which lead to revenge attacks by white rose loving Yorkists. This set in motion the most savage tit-for-tat flower clipping in our bloody history. Sap did flow, thousands of roses were massacred. The introduction of the pink rose in 1487 thankfully brought the dispute to an end.

If you missed out on all this fun and were finding the Middle Ages to drag a bit, waiting around for the Renaissance perhaps, and the invention of perspective, you could play a new game called tennis. It was during this period that a British tennis player last won the Wimbledon men’s title. Although this was before the advent of rain covers and all his opponents broke bones or twisted ankles on the water-logged court. And then he just won on a disputed line call.

Of course the 15th century wasn’t all bad, there were no Daily Mail readers, very few people suffered from RSI and it wasn’t long to wait for Henry VIII to liven things up. But this was a century in which not even a cute little prince with blond locks was safe. Are you sure you’d rather live in the 15th century?

Person to be in the 15th century - a Yorkshire stone mason
Person not to be in the 15th century - a claustrophobic heir to the throne

Previous Living in the Past posts