The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds

by Langley, Philippa

  This was the potent mix of accusation, allegation and selfbelief that propelled Richard to the throne. The Tudors saw it as a web of fabrication, masking Richard’s cruel ambition to seize a crown never rightfully his. But in the powerful crucible of events in the summer of 1483 Richard was under serious threat. He quite possibly feared for his political future, and even for his own life. In these dramatic circumstances, Richard may genuinely have come to believe not only that taking the throne was the only way out of his difficulties, but a rightful claim was being presented to him by providence.

  If this was so, the way Richard brought it into effect was undoubtedly as ruthless as others during this tumultuous era, including Henry Bolingbroke’s taking of the throne (as the future Henry IV) in 1399, his own father’s attempt to seize it in 1460 and his brother Edward’s regaining of it in 1471. It was a sign of the times. But Buckingham’s petition stunned many who heard it. Mancini related that there were some who believed that Richard had been overcome by ‘an insane lust for power’. And this tradition was drawn upon and amplified by the Tudor chroniclers. But others accepted the logic of realpolitik upon which it was based.

  It was no longer desirable or safe to have a Woodville-dominated government. And although the Croyland Chronicler insinuated that the entire document had been drawn up by Richard in advance, its charges were not in fact without substance. Edward IV’s illegitimacy could not be entirely dismissed; the accusation had been made in 1469, and had featured in the act of attainder passed against Clarence in 1478. Edward was defensive about it. Tudor chroniclers glossed over this by saying that Richard chose to slander his mother, and that this was further proof of his wickedness. But if we follow the testimony of Mancini, Cecily herself was behind the revival of this issue in 1483.

  The pre-contract matter brought up the deeply divisive issue of the Woodville marriage, which many of the English aristocracy had never been able to accept fully. According to the French chronicler Philippe de Commynes, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was the real source for the revealing of the precontract, rather than it being conjured up by Richard, as the Croyland Chronicler imagined. When the Titulus Regius was overturned in the first parliament of Henry VII’s reign, it was clearly stated there that ‘it was Stillington’s bill’; in other words, that the bishop was behind the allegation. Parliament wished to question Stillington on the matter, but strikingly Henry, who had arrested the bishop in the aftermath of Bosworth, refused their request and instead gave Stillington a free pardon. It seemed that Henry, rather than seeking a chance to discredit Richard, was uncomfortable about what might be disclosed, and chose instead to let the matter pass.

  While Buckingham was delivering the petition to an assembled audience at Westminster, Rivers, Grey and Vaughan were executed at Pontefract. The next day, 26 June, after formally receiving a further petition from lords and commons, Richard symbolically chose to occupy the king’s chair in the court of the King’s Bench at Westminster. He was now monarch and rightful heir of the Yorkist dynasty. The reign of Richard III had begun.

  7

  The Discovery of the Skeletal Remains

  Day Eleven

  Tuesday, 4 September 2012

  IT’S 7.45 A.M. at the Social Services car park. A few clouds are floating around but it’s going to be another warm, sunny day. I’m introduced to Simon Farnaby, presenter of the Channel 4 TV documentary who, like me, is from Darlington and we rattle on about familiar places. It’s good to have this bond. Farnaby’s only prior knowledge of Richard III came from Shakespeare’s play so the research has been something of a revelation for him, but he’s up for the challenge to try to uncover the real Richard III.

  I go across to say hello to Dr Jo Appleby, the osteologist who’ll be working with Dr Turi King on the exhumation. She’s young but Richard Buckley assures me her knowledge is top-notch. Carl Vivian from the university is filming again, which makes three cameras in the car park, including DSP’s new cameraman. I’m on edge. I don’t want the cameras here, yet I know they have to be to record whatever we find, but I can’t stop myself being anxious to protect these remains.

  I phone Mick Bowers, Head of Greyfriars Property Services, and Luke Thompson in security because I want the blinds down at all the windows facing on to the site. While Mathew Morris and I put more tarpaulin over the fencing all the blinds are lowered; the gravesite is now protected from any visual intrusion. I walk over to the northern end of Trench One, and look down at the plastic sheeting poking through the earth that covers the remains. It’s a sad and vulnerable sight.

  Turi King and Jo Appleby, clad in their white masks, suits and gloves, head towards me and Trench One. Meanwhile Richard Buckley is excited about Trench Three, telling me it’s full of finds and the team is enjoying excavating it. The western slot in Trench Three will be dug this morning to try to expose more of the grave cuts there, so it may get a bit noisy with the excavator. He asks me what I’ll be doing. I reply that I’ll be watching the exhumation; I’m not going anywhere else. He gives me his ‘Are you all right?’ look. I say I’m fine and I’ll enjoy sitting in the sunshine watching the girls do their stuff. He gives me a shoulder hug before sauntering off to Trench Three. I watch him go, this big bear of a man with such a big heart, and thank God that he agreed to come with me on this car park adventure.

  I fetch another bucket from Morris’s van at Turi King’s request, then pull up a chair for myself from the gazebo. It’s going to be a long day. King and Appleby kneel in the earth below me and set to work. I take a deep, steadying breath; it’s 10.30 a.m.

  The painstaking work of scraping away at each morsel of earth proceeds slowly, not helped by last night’s rain, which has made the soil dark, wet and sticky. The tiny tools they are using remind me of implements in children’s plasticine kits. King laughs at my remark and says they are exactly like that, but have been thoroughly sterilized to protect any DNA and avoid contamination. Appleby explains that the foot and hand bones are tiny and can be easily overlooked, so they must feel every small bump, every minute piece of soil before it goes into the buckets. They can’t afford to miss anything; the smallest piece could prove crucial in the lab analysis.

  The top layer of earth has been removed. It doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent in the layers over the remains, yet the buckets have produced a large spoil heap beside me. As I lift the buckets to help, they are heavy, not only because the Leicester earth is thick clay with largish stones but also because a good part of the loads is rubble from the Victorian building work.

  The late morning sun is creeping over the tarpaulin, and the girls are beginning to sweat. The western side of the slot, where the skull will be if it is a fully articulated skeleton, looks a little short. King chips away at it with her mattock, similar to a pickaxe, but it’s difficult in her protective gear. By lunchtime, when they down tools, she’s done most of it, leaving another great mound of earth, rocks and rubble on the burial site which will need checking this afternoon. If we’re looking at a complete set of remains, I can’t see how they’ll be ready to remove today. Neither can King and Appleby, but suggest that things may speed up in the afternoon.

  There’s a buzz of news from Trench Three adjacent to us. The two grave cuts in the central flooring have been exposed further and it looks as if there is more flooring and what might be an internal wall. The Church of the Greyfriars is coming to life, slowly revealing its secrets. We in Trench One are the ‘also-rans’ in today’s news. We discuss the remains in our trench and agree that they should be taken out of this smashed-up place. The others think they’re unlikely to be of interest even if they do turn out to be a fully articulated set of bones and complete burial. I nod but say nothing. For the academics and scientists evidence is paramount.

  After lunch, King and Appleby get back to work. Suited up again, they look like investigators at a crime scene, which I find somehow appropriate. As the only non-scientist/academic, I always seem to be quietly apologizin
g for my beliefs and intuitions. It’s an isolating thought. But then I look around. There is such a feeling of camaraderie and everyone is so excited by the dig that I realize we are a real team and I am part of it; in a sense it’s my team, after all.

  King and Appleby are working almost directly below where I had my intuition and only a few feet from the letter ‘R’ that led me here. I haven’t felt that instinct since the first day when we exposed the bones. It was that sensation that began my quest for the king and has brought me to this moment. And now, after nearly four years of fighting, it’s all quiet – serene even. The excavator is silent, Richard Buckley and the film crew are all in Trench Three, the blinds are down in the windows all around, and I think how perfect it is. If these bones are Richard’s, his exhumation will be peaceful. And, I suddenly realize, carried out by women. I wonder what he would have thought of that.

  The layers of earth are solid as the sun makes its way round the car park. The two women won’t manage to uncover the remains today but will get as much soil off the area as they can. Tomorrow Turi King will be in Switzerland at a conference so Jo Appleby will do the exhumation, with Mathew Morris overseeing it. As I try to contain my disappointment that we won’t exhume the remains on this perfect day and set-up, I hear clanking behind the tarpaulin. I investigate and see a ladder going up at a window; it’s a pest control company come to remove a wasps’ nest. I manage to persuade them to come back at the end of the week. If news of the exhumation gets out, any hope of it being peaceful will be lost.

  At 4 p.m., while King and Appleby are recovering the lower leg bones to protect them and finishing up for the day, we hear about the discoveries in the new slot in Trench Three. They’ve found more flooring and tiles from what seems to be two levels, so a new medieval floor may have been put in at a later date. They also found what look like human bones, probably discovered by the Victorian builders and returned to a hollow dug into the ground, which the archaeologists call a charnel burial. From the street, the public could see the length of the trench but not into it so no fencing and tarpaulin were needed to shield the removal of the remains found in the charnel.

  Simon Farnaby is filming as Leon Hunt works round the bones. Jo Appleby arrives, minus her CSI wear as Hunt has said that he thinks the remains are female so no DNA analysis will be needed to confirm if these are the remains of Richard III. After investigating the skull and pelvis, Appleby confirms that the remains are indeed female. I have only one female on the list of potential burials in the Greyfriars Church: Ellen, wife of Gilbert Luenor, a possible founder of the friary, who may have died about 1250. I look at the grave cuts. As man and wife, they would have been buried together, so is this Ellen? If not, who? There can’t be many single female burials in a priory church.

  Mathew Morris brings a finds box, a simple brown rectangular cardboard container, long enough to fit a femur bone. It’s rather sad: mortal remains reduced to a cardboard box. Hunt asks how it’s going in Trench One, and I explain that the remains won’t be recovered today. Simon Farnaby asks me why I’m so fixated on them when there’s so much happening here, in Trench Three. I tell him briefly about my intuitive experience in 2005 and the ‘R’ on the tarmac: the reasons why I began this search in the first place. ‘Interesting one,’ he says. ‘Bonkers one,’ I reply. He laughs. ‘Sometimes bonkers is good. It got us here, didn’t it?’ I want to hug him for that.

  Day Twelve

  Wednesday, 5 September 2012

  The day dawns like any other recently, blue skies and unbroken sunshine. It will be the day I never forget.

  At 7.45 a.m. everyone is still buzzing about the grave cuts in Trench Three, and eager to get on with the new eastern slot that will be cut there this morning in the hope of revealing more of them. I’m not really interested. My mind is still on Trench One.

  I’m alone again on the plastic chair in the sunshine, enjoying the solitude as Jo Appleby works below me. Appleby picks up the mattock, chipping away at the western edge of the slot. It’s hot, heavy work and I try to help by grabbing some of the bucket loads of earth she passes up.

  Leon Hunt comes to tell us that the eastern slot in Trench Three is already exposing more grave cuts and I really should take a look. I arrive to see enormous slabs of dark grey slate on the spoil heaps. Morris says they’re probably left over from the Victorian buildings, part of their infill. They look like grave tops to me. He cleans one off but it’s local slate with no markings, so … Victorian rubble.

  Back at Trench One, before I can sit down, Appleby says I need to look at something. A smooth expanse of creamy yellow bone is poking out of the earth at the far western end, almost beneath my feet. It’s the top of a skull with a large gash in it. Battle wound? No. She apologizes, and says that she was using the mattock when it crunched into something. When she brushed away the soil, she realized the mattock had driven straight into the skull, the clean white edges of the crack indicating the newness of the damage. She’s mortified and explains that as the leg bones are so much lower in the earth, the skull should not have been where it is. She thinks it must belong to different remains. The real skull, if the leg bones are articulated, she says, will be beneath this. Seeing my concern, she tells me not to worry, and assures me that the damaged skull is not part of the same remains. Morris arrives and sees the crack. ‘It happens,’ he says.

  It’s not the start I was hoping for. If there is more than one burial here, it could be a lengthier process to determine if one is Richard. Appleby exposes more of the skull, which is perfectly round with no other marks or wounds, but needs a lot of work before it can be removed from the earth. It looks like the skull of a male. The large upper leg bones, the femur bones, are now exposed, as are the arm bones. The foot bones have gone, thanks, it would seem, to the Victorian builders, and it was probably a shroud burial since the hands are still in place over the pelvic area and the legs are together.

  The leg bones look strong and healthy, with no marks or battle wounds. One of the lower leg bones was mashed up a little by the excavator as the trench was being dug but the others are in good condition. The arms are normal with no marks or battle wounds, and no signs of being ‘withered’. It also looks as if the skull is part of the same remains as there is no other in the ground, but Appleby can’t understand why it would be so high up in relation to the rest. I ask how tall he was. She can’t be certain as she doesn’t have a measuring tape, but the size of the femur, the longest bone in the body, is reasonable so he wasn’t small. I look down at the remains, trying to gauge his height from my own leg. I’m five foot nine and the remains look roughly that or slightly less.

  I ask Appleby her opinion as to the possible identity of the remains. Since there are no wounds, normal arms, good height and a shroud burial, located in the nave of the church, she believes it could be a friar. Morris agrees. As I look down at the bones, I remember from contemporary sources that Richard was reputedly small in stature, and begin to think that this can’t be him. I feel odd, as if the world were closing in on me.

  Truth be told, I’m shattered by this news and want time on my own to digest it so I head off to Piero’s, stopping at Trench Three on the way. Everyone there is hugely excited. Richard Buckley is filming with Simon Farnaby and the DSP team beside three grave cuts, one of which, the central one, has everyone transfixed. It’s a long cut in the central flooring of the church, a place of great honour, but there are bricks poking through the top soil which they need to investigate. There’s also a new wall exposed by the earlier western slot that could be the remains of the base of a choir stall. A square piece of an elaborate stone frieze, virtually intact, has been found, as well as the most beautiful window tracery in the eastern slot, which may be from the east window of the church.

  No wonder the team are all in Trench Three again. If we are looking at part of the east window then this could be the choir of the Greyfriars Church and, more importantly, Richard’s grave could be here. I look at the tracery which is so
perfect, as though it fell into the ground yesterday, not several centuries ago. Jon Coward is smiling. ‘Not bad for a morning’s work,’ he says. I ask about the grave cuts and we chat about the middle one that is cut into the flooring and runs much further east. Coward is not totally convinced it’s a burial, as he hasn’t yet removed the top layer of soil with the bricks, which he thinks are most likely Victorian, but could be Georgian and have to be checked out.

  I can understand everyone’s interest in this cut. We believe that Richard was interred in the choir and if you’re going to bury a king it would surely be in a place of honour, in a central position with the floor cut to accommodate him. If this is Richard’s grave and it has modern rubble at its surface, did the Victorians or Georgians accidentally remove him? I’m interested but strangely not concerned. I’m still reeling from the disappointment in Trench One.

  In Piero’s I have no appetite and sit at the back. Mohcin, who works there, brings me my drink and tries to cheer me up. I hadn’t realized I looked as miserable as I feel. Why did I get the intuitive feeling for a friar? I try to reason with myself. Perhaps this friar has a story to tell, something that might throw some light on Richard and his time. Perhaps I need to focus on Trench Three. I wander the Leicester streets, then sit by the soothing fountain in Town Hall Square, and ponder what I have to do next.

  Back on site, I head to Trench Three. This, I’ve persuaded myself, is where I should be, but I don’t get there because the DSP team want to film me at Trench One. Simon Farnaby has a question he wants to put to me before we see Jo Appleby in the trench but he won’t tell me what it is before the cameras roll. He looks rather on edge, so I don’t push it.

  ‘So, Philippa, do you remember that story you told me about where you felt Richard was buried and how that came about? Can you tell me about it?’