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From: "Todd A. Farmerie" <>
Subject: Re: Phillip and Richard
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 11:55:58 -0700
References: <3C9D7962.4080907@interfold.com>, <a05100301b8c3b2727109@[10.0.1.2]>


Cristopher Nash wrote:

>
> In the most of his many booklength studies of Richard, John Gillingham
> (his leading modern biographer) says unproblematically that "Richard
> acknowledged a child. Indeed his illegitimate son is a central figure
> in one of Shakespeare's plays. Philip Faulconbridge, the
> personification of sturdy English virtues, is doubtless a far cry from
> the Philip to whom Richard gave the lordship of Cognac as part of his
> campaign to hold the counts of Angoulême in check." [Richard I, 1999,
> 264] Gillingham cites e.g. Richard's contemporary Roger of Howden
> (Hoveden) as having evidently taken it as a matter of course that Philip
> was R's son.


While I would have to dig out the details, Philip was also
accepted without question as an illegitimate son of Richard in
Sheppard's critical analysis of English royal bastards. I have
not seen any doubt of this relationship by any historians, and
have only seen it questioned based on the "Richard was homosexual
so Philip couldn't have been his son" argument, which is
logically flawed in addition to putting the cart before the horse
- changing the facts to fit the hypothesis, rather than
developing the hypothesis from the facts.

taf

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