The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds
Page 1
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Maps
Preface
Family Trees
Timelines
Introduction: The Inspiration
1. The Road to the Dig
2. The Great Debate
3. So It Begins
4. Yearning for a Noble Cause: Richard’s Early Career
5. The Discovery of the Church and the Location of the Nave
6. Seizing the Throne
7. The Discovery of the Skeletal Remains
8. Richard as King
9. The Identification of the Remains
10. Bosworth
11. The Man Behind the Myth
12. The Man and His Times
Photographs
Appendix 1: The Fate of the Princes in the Tower
Appendix 2: Psychological Analysis of Richard III
Acknowledgements
Picture Credits
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Also by Michael Jones
Copyright
To all those who saved the Dig, and to all those whose researches have illuminated Richard III as man and king
Maps
Billsdon: Medieval plan of Leicester
Greyfriars area including car parks
Thomas Roberts’s map of 1741
Bosworth: the approach to battle
The Battle of Bosworth: the final phase
Preface
ON 22 AUGUST 1485 two armies faced each other at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. King Richard III, of the House of York, lined up in battle against his rival to the throne, Henry Tudor – a clash of arms that would determine the fate of England. It was Tudor who won the victory. Richard was cut down after leading a cavalry charge against his opponent and killed in savage fighting, after being only a few feet away from Henry himself. He was the last English king to die in battle.
That year marks a pivotal date in our history books: the ending of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. The House of Tudor became one of our most famous ruling dynasties – and its 118-year triumph culminated with William Shakespeare’s history plays. Within them, Richard III emerged as one of England’s most consummate and appalling villains, a ruthless plotter, an outcast from his own family, deformed in body and nature, who murdered his way to the throne. The most horrifying of these crimes was the killing of the young nephews placed in his care, the Princes in the Tower. In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the king’s own death at Bosworth is powerfully portrayed – alone, with no means of escape and surrounded by his enemies, Richard calls out: ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ His despairing cry is not heeded and he is overpowered and slain. It is the judgement of God upon his wickedness.
Shakespeare’s drama was based on a series of Tudor histories that progressively blackened Richard’s name. The principal charge against him in the reign of Henry VII was that he had seized the throne by killing his nephews. That ghastly accusation – believed by many – should have been enough to consign him to the scrapheap of history. But by the reign of Henry VIII he had already been accused of a number of additional crimes, including disposing of his brother, George, Duke of Clarence, in the most startling fashion, drowning him in a large vat of malmsey wine. By the reign of Elizabeth I it was commonly believed that he had poisoned his own wife. It is striking how the Tudors kept adding to Richard’s tally of victims. Alongside this was an almost compulsive need to distort his appearance. A physical characteristic, where one shoulder was raised higher than the other, was deliberately exaggerated in a succession of Tudor portraits to depict the king in increasingly sinister fashion.
By the time of Shakespeare this propaganda had reached its zenith. Richard had now become a crouching hunchback, whose bent and distorted body mirrored the hideous depravity of his crimes. By then, the king’s actual body, buried hastily in Leicester in the aftermath of the Battle of Bosworth, had disappeared from view. It was widely believed that the disgraced monarch’s humble grave, in the Church of the Greyfriars, had been lost at the time of Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries – its contents even emptied into the River Soar. With the king’s remains seemingly absent, the Tudors further twisted his historical reputation. He grew into a dark Machiavellian figure, an outcast from all sensibility – whose life and death provided a terrible moral warning.
It was a damning indictment – yet some were suspicious. Early in the reign of James I a number of attempts were made to present an alternative, redeeming portrait of the vilified king. Such efforts have persisted to this day, with the founding of the Richard III Society, determined to present a more human and sympathetic picture of Richard as man and monarch. More recent academic studies have modified the Tudor legend in some respects. Yet, despite all these efforts, Shakespeare created a play so sinister and darkly seductive that it still remains the portrait most are drawn to. Shakespeare’s powerful and unsettling depiction, of a man beyond the moral pale, gained new currency when it was transformed into the Sir Laurence Olivier film in 1955. It has been long recognized that only a discovery as important as Shakespeare’s drama is compelling would provide a counterpoint to the Tudor villain the playwright portrayed. Now – in a municipal car park in Leicester – that discovery has been made. The grave of Richard III has been found – with the king’s body still within it. It is one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of recent history.
This book reveals the remarkable series of events that led to this astonishing find. It tells of a search for Richard’s remains – and also, accompanying it, the search for his real historical reputation. For, before the remnants of his body were uncovered, permission was obtained by Philippa Langley for them to be laid to rest – in a proper and fitting reburial – in Leicester Cathedral. Here at last was an opportunity to step beyond Shakespeare and make peace with the most vilified of our rulers. Not to condemn him, nor to sanitize his actions, but to place him firmly back in the context of his times.
As Richard’s bones were painstakingly examined, it was found that he had scoliosis, a curvature of the spine that would have left one shoulder higher than the other. It also quickly became apparent that his body was racked with battle injuries. A time capsule had been opened, showing the last moments of Richard’s bloody fight at Bosworth: the king’s head shaved by the glancing blows from a halberd or sword, the back of his skull completely cleaved off by a halberd – a two-handed pole weapon, consisting of an axe blade tipped in a spike. And then, as his face was powerfully reconstructed from the skeletal structure around it, we at last had the opportunity to see him as he really was.
This is the story of one of history’s most infamous kings – now restored to us – and the man behind the Tudor myth.
Philippa Langley and Michael Jones
July 2013
Chronology of Richard’s Life
2 October 1452
Richard born at Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire
12 October 1459
Richard’s father goes into exile after his defeat at Ludford
&n
bsp; 30 December 1460
Battle of Wakefield. Richard’s father and brother Edmund killed
2 February 1461
Battle of Mortimer’s Cross. Richard’s oldest brother, Edward, Earl of March, victorious against the Lancastrians
17 February 1461
Earl of Warwick defeated at Second Battle of St Albans. Richard and his brother George sent for protection to Philip, Duke of Burgundy
4 March 1461
Edward IV proclaimed king in London
29 March 1461
Yorkists defeat Lancastrians at Battle of Towton
12 June 1461
Richard and his brother George return to England
1 November 1461
Richard created Duke of Gloucester
May 1464
Edward IV marries Elizabeth Woodville
September 1465
Richard resident in household of Earl of Warwick
January 1469
Richard returns to court
June 1469
Warwick’s rebellion starts
26 July 1469
Battle of Edgecote. Henry Tudor’s guardian, William, Lord Herbert, Earl of Pembroke defeated by rebels and subsequently executed
17 October 1469
Richard made Constable of England
12 March 1470
Warwick rebels again. Battle of Losecote Field. Warwick and Clarence flee to France and ally themselves with the Lancastrians
2 October 1470
Warwick invades; collapse of Edward IV’s authority. Richard accompanies Edward into exile in Burgundy. Readeption (Restoration) of Henry VI
March 1471
Edward IV and Richard return from exile and land in Yorkshire
14 April 1471
Earl of Warwick is defeated at the Battle of Barnet
4 May 1471
Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian Prince Edward are defeated at Tewkesbury
21 May 1471
Henry VI is murdered in the Tower of London, almost certainly on Edward IV’s orders
Spring 1472
Richard marries Warwick’s daughter Anne Neville, starts to fight for a share of the Neville inheritance and begins to build up a northern affinity
29 August 1475
Edward IV and Louis XI meet at Picquigny, ending the English invasion of France. Richard shows his displeasure by absenting himself from the agreement
18 February 1478
Richard’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason and executed in the Tower of London
24 August 1482
Richard invades Scotland. Berwick recaptured
9 April 1483
Death of Edward IV; succession of Edward V
29–30 April 1483
Richard and Buckingham arrest Rivers, Grey and Vaughan at Northampton and Stony Stratford and secure custody of Edward V
4 May 1483
Richard and Edward V enter London: George Neville, Duke of Bedford dies and Richard loses hereditary right to the Neville lands
10 June 1483
Richard appeals for help from northern supporters against the Woodvilles
13 June 1483
Execution of Lord Hastings and arrest of Morton and Archbishop Rotherham at council meeting
22 June 1483
Richard’s right to the throne proclaimed in a sermon by Ralph Shaw
26 June 1483
Richard becomes king
6 July 1483
Coronation of Richard III
29 August 1483
Richard arrives in York on royal progress
10 October 1483
Rebellion flares up in southern England
2 November 1483
Execution of the Duke of Buckingham at Salisbury
23 January 1484
Richard’s only parliament meets at Westminster
April 1484
Death of Richard’s son, Edward of Middleham
7 December 1484
Richard’s first proclamation against Henry Tudor
16 March 1485
Death of Richard’s queen, Anne Neville
9 June 1485
Richard arrives in Nottingham to await Henry Tudor’s landing
23 June 1485
Richard’s second proclamation against Henry Tudor
7 August 1485
Henry Tudor lands at Milford Haven
22 August 1485
Battle of Bosworth. Richard III killed; Henry Tudor (Henry VII) succeeds him
History of the Church of the Greyfriars, Leicester
1230
House in existence on Greyfriars site
1255
Church of Greyfriars first mentioned
1402
Rebellion: number of greyfriars executed by Henry IV
25 August 1485
King Richard III buried in the choir of the Greyfriars Church
1495
Tomb and epitaph erected over burial by Henry VII
1538
Dissolution of the Monasteries. Greyfriars expelled and priory and church closed. Sold to John Bellowe and John Broxholme to remove roof lead and timbers
1540s
Greyfriars priory and church become ruins. Site sold to Sir Robert Catlyn
(superstructure of King Richard’s tomb removed)
1600
Site sold to Robert Herrick. Mansion house and gardens built
1611
John Speed reports King Richard’s grave lost and his bones dug up at the Dissolution
1612
Christopher Wren records a ‘handsome stone pillar’ marking the site of King Richard’s grave in Herrick’s garden
1711
Herrick’s descendants sell land to Thomas Noble. New Street laid out with houses
1759
Herrick’s mansion house sold to William Bentley
1914
Land and gardens sold to Leicestershire County Council who erect offices around it
1930s–40s
Land and gardens tarmacked to become car parks
1968
Site passes to Leicester City Council, Social Services Department
Looking for Richard project, Leicester
2004–5
Philippa Langley visits car parks. Dr John Ashdown-Hill discovers Richard III’s mtDNA
2007
University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) digs in nearby Grey Friars Street but uncovers no trace of Greyfriars Church
2008
Ashdown-Hill refutes River Soar story. Annette Carson in Richard III: The Maligned King asserts the king’s grave is probably in the Social Services car park
21 February 2009
Langley and Ashdown-Hill meet. Langley begins Looking for Richard (LFR) project at Cramond Inn, Edinburgh
September 2010
Leicester City Council supports LFR project
January 2011
Langley obtains TV rights to John Ashdown-Hill’s book, Last Days of Richard III
March 2011
Langley commissions ULAS for LFR project
June 2011
Langley receives permission from Leicester City Council for Ground Penetrating Radar Survey and archaeological investigation of Social Services car park
28 August 2011
Langley carries out Ground Penetrating Radar Survey of the three car parks
March 2012
April dig cancelled
July 2012
International Appeal saves dig
25 August 2012
Two-week dig begins. Leg bones discovered beside letter ‘R’
31 August 2012
Langley instructs exhumation of remains found beside letter ‘R’. ULAS applies for licence to exhume up to six sets of remains of persons unknown
3 September 2012
Discovery of Greyfriars Church. Exhumation licence received from Ministry of Justice. Dig extended into third week by Leicester City Council
4 September 2012
Exhumation of remains beside letter ‘R’ begins
5 September
Full set of remains exhumed (minus feet). Discovery of choir of church
12 September 2012
Announcement of discovery of the remains thought to be those of Richard III
6 December 2012
Carbon-14 dating analysis confirms remains are late fifteenth century
16 January 2013
Facial reconstruction revealed to Langley
3 February 2013
DNA match confirmed between remains and Michael Ibsen (living relative of Richard III)
4 February 2013
University of Leicester confirms remains found on 25 August 2012 are those of Richard III. Channel 4 and Darlow Smithson Productions premiere Richard III: The King in the Car Park
Introduction
The Inspiration
I SUPPOSE I had always known about Richard. Shakespeare’s villain must have registered somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but he didn’t strike a chord with me. When I was growing up in the northern market town of Darlington, history had been my favourite subject. We had studied the Viking period through to 1066, our teacher bringing history vividly to life, and I’d revelled in the characters that formed our island nation. Oddly enough, we were never taught about Richard III and the Wars of the Roses, the conflict that tore the country apart. And there was another mystery that I discovered years later: Richard, Duke of Gloucester’s home at Middleham Castle lay a short drive away yet there had been no school trips to see the history right on our doorstep.
I began to take an interest in Richard after I read Paul Murray Kendall’s biography, Richard III, in which he questioned Shakespeare’s interpretation of the king, proposing a different character altogether. Kendall drew on the testimonies of those who had known Richard intimately, such as the city fathers of York who, the day after Richard’s death at Bosworth, had written: ‘King Richard, late mercifully reigning upon us … was piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city…’ noting he was ‘the most famous Prince of blessed memory’. Richard’s life had everything: politics, power, romance, intrigue, mystery, murder, self-sacrifice, loyalty and incredible acts of bravery. I was intrigued to know more about the man and why it had been so necessary for the Tudors to rewrite his story.