Richard Plantagenet (Richard of Eastwell)

Richard Plantagenet or Richard of Eastwell (? 1469 - December 22, 1550) is known only from Francis Peck's "Desiderata Curiosa", which indicates that the reclusive bricklayer may have been a son of Richard III, the last Plantagenet King of England.

Life

His life rests entirely on Heneage family tradition as transmitted in the "Desiderata Curiosa" account. According to this, he boarded with a Latin schoolmaster until he was 15 or 16, without knowing who his real parents were (though he was visited 4 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 as the family 'odd-job' man until he died.

Though his tomb does not survive, Peck states that his entry in the Eastwell parish burial register survived in 1720 as follows::"Rychard Plantagenet was buryed on the 22. daye of December, anno ut supra. Ex registro de Eastwell, sub anno 1550."

An interesting book on this subject is written by Barbara Willard, entitled, "A Sprig of Broom". It is an account of 'what might have been'.

Re-discovery

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.

A rubble-stone tomb in the churchyard ruins of St Mary's, Eastwell has a plaque with the following words: " Reputed to be the tomb of Richard Plantagenet,22 December 50."Photograph available.