Treason!
Richard's City Boasts Welsh National Emblem
!
There's only one York. The capital of a united Yorkshire, under the White Rose, it was Richard's City. He loved the place. He loved its people, and they loved him. Just for them, he was crowned a second time here. He invested his beloved son as Prince of Wales here. He invented the Royal Walkabout here. And in 1485, after the treachery of the Welsh and Lancastrians at Bosworth had taken him from us, it was the Mayor and Aldermen of this great City who sadly proclaimed here:
".. that King Richard, late reigning mercifully over us, was.....
piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this City..."
The traitorous victors of that battle were Henry Tudor and his adherents. Welshmen like Rhys ap Thomas, said to have personally hacked Richard to death, and Welsh borderers like the Stanleys. When Richard fell, and that tragic battle was lost, the Red Dragon of Cadwallader flew on high over the crushed White Rose of York and the Lions of England, as Richard's body, naked and savagely despoiled, spat upon and with a halter around his neck, was slung over the back of a horse and later tied spreadeagle to the gates of a Leicester church.
Whenever I get the chance, I love to make the pilgrimage here to my capital, this York, this capital not only of my Yorkshire but also of my world.
Not being a great one for public transport though, I almost invariably drive there. Not long ago however I decided, (as I am not impartial to a decent drink in one of other of York's many old and fine inns),to travel there by train instead of driving. Now it had been many years since I had done this, and I discovered, not entirely to my surprise, that the railways haven't improved a bit. The journey, or should I say the ordeal, was, of course, horrendous. Slow, late, full of wretched football fans and other alarming looking characters; I alighted at York feeling my throat, not only to allow a little air to circulate but also to make sure nobody had cut it. But worse, oh, far, far worse, was to await me.
You can imagine the shock I had... the abject horror... when, shortly after getting off the train and walking out of the station, I beheld, to my utter astonishment.... that somebody had planted, right underneath our ancient city walls.... a load of WELSH DAFFODILS!
I was mortified! I was speechless! Who on earth, in such an historic city with such a glorious past, can have been so historically numb, so grossly insensitive, so ignorant (by the dictionary definition of the word--"to ignore") of York's history and of her fallen heroes, to go and stuff a load of Tudor's Cenhinen Pedr in the ground, right in front of the city walls, the very first sight which greets York's visitors, with not a White Rose in sight?
I very nearly went and got back on the damned train!
Along with the Leek, the Daffodil is, of course, the National Emblem of Henry Tudor's beloved Wales. Revered upon St David's Day, to the Welsh it is every bit as cherished a symbol as their Red Dragon of Cadwallader.
To actually see, in reality, not only to endure in some bad dream, these alien forms of life sprouting out of the soil of York, bathing themselves in the sun of York, whilst in no public place in the entire city could I find a single White Rose, actually depressed me.
If there is anything which even a small following of Ricardians can do to effect some change in this world, then surely it is to petition the York City Council to evict these outrageous symbols of York's defeats and affronts to her Identity and plant some White Roses instead?
--- Michael Alan Marshall