Domenico Mancini : de occupatione regni Anglie New Translation With Introduction And Historical Notes By Annette Carson
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Definitely worth buying to get away from the word ‘usurpation’ in the title and on the cover of the previous editions by C. A. J. Armstrong, who showed his bias against Richard III by translating the same word differently elsewhere in the text. Annette makes sure to be consistent in her translation for each occurrence of the word ‘occupatione’ and is scrupulously fair in her translation. She includes all the latest relevant knowledge about the events covered, and demolishes the myth of Mancini being a ‘detached foreigner’. She also reveals his influence on all the later Tudor-era writers, which previous historians had dismissed as unlikely.
As you will have seen, the book title is in the original Latin, a neat touch. Annette asked a scholar of medieval Latin to translate “occupatione”, without giving him the context. Mancini uses that word in his title, then in chapter 5, when referring to Henry VI, which Armstrong translates as ‘occupation’, and in his heading for chapter 6, which Armstrong translates as ‘took possession.’ Annette is consistent in her translation of each word in the text, taking into account who Mancini was writing for and the effect he wanted his story to have on his audience.
The translation is livelier than Armstrong’s, who jumped to conclusions about what happened, ignoring Mancini’s own statements “...I was insufficiently apprised of the names of those to be described, the intervals of time and the secret designs of men in this whole affair”. “I decided accordingly to write, as best I can, the account which I believe you (his patron, one of the French king’s high-ranking advisers) require....”
And the key sentence: “Whether, however, he (Edward V) has been taken by death, and by what manner of death, so far I have not at all ascertained.”