The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA

by John Ashdown-Hill

  The duty involved was not a particularly pleasant one. After having confessed and taken communion, the king was required to rinse his hands, then press them upon the suppurating sores of each of the afflicted, while one of his chaplains intoned the Latin words: Super egros manus imponent et bene habebunt (‘They will lay their hands upon the sick and they will recover’: Mark, xvi, 18). The ceremony could be held in either a secular or a religious building. In England it took place with the king seated, the sick being brought before him.30 After their sores had received the royal touch, each was given a coin. By 1485 this was almost certainly one of the recently introduced gold ‘angels’, depicting the Archangel Michael overcoming evil, and bearing the legend: Per crucem tuam salva nos Christe Redemptor (‘Christ, Redeemer, save us by your cross’).31 On Wednesday 30 March, five days after his queen’s burial, we know that Richard III was at the Priory of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem (Knights Hospitaller) in Clerkenwell32 – where he made an important public statement, which we shall examine in detail in the next chapter. Since the Hospitallers were specifically dedicated to the care and healing of the sick, it is possible that this Holy Week visit by the king was in order to conduct the royal ‘touching’ ceremony at the knights’ priory on this occasion.

  The following day was Maundy Thursday, and the king must have attended the mass of the Last Supper, most probably at St Paul’s Cathedral. After the gospel reading from the thirteenth chapter of St John had been intoned, in accordance with ancient custom Richard III donned an apron and went down on his knees. He then proceeded to wash the feet of thirty-two poor men while the choir chanted a series of antiphons, from the opening words of the first of which this whole day derives its English name.33 Having washed the feet of the poor in imitation of Christ, Richard then gave to each of the thirty-two men the apron he had worn to wash that man’s feet, together with the towel with which he had dried them. Additional gifts followed, including for each man a gown, a hood, a pair of shoes, bread, fish, wine and a purse containing thirty-two silver pennies. Both the total number of poor men and the number of pennies distributed to each of them reflected the years of the king’s age.34

  Friday 1 April found the king on his knees again, for the penitential rite of ‘creeping to the cross’, which was the main focus of the Good Friday liturgy. For preference, the cross adored by medieval English kings on this occasion was the reliquary Cross Gneth captured by Edward I from the Welsh and containing a fragment of the True Cross. From the reign of Edward III this was normally kept at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Since Richard III was in London on Good Friday 1485, either this royal reliquary cross was brought to him from Windsor, or a different cross must have been used on this occasion. At the appropriate point of the Good Friday liturgy ‘the king would … prostrate himself, and then – without getting up – slowly approach the symbol of the crucifixion’ in a semi-prostrate condition.35

  Early in the fourteenth century this Good Friday veneration of the cross – practised universally throughout the Church – had acquired in the chapel royal an additional element, which all subsequent English monarchs then observed until the Reformation. After his adoration of the cross, the king would make a special and unique offering, originally comprising newly minted gold and silver coins. These he would then redeem by replacing them with an equivalent offertory in the form of old coins. Meanwhile, the new coins of the first offering would be taken away to be made into ‘cramp rings’, which were believed to be capable of relieving muscular cramp, spasms and even epilepsy.36 These rings were given away, and were much sought-after. From the reign of Henry VI the offering ceremony was simplified slightly. Thereafter, gold and silver from the treasury to the value of twenty-five shillings was made into cramp rings prior to Good Friday. It was then these ready-prepared rings that the king first offered to the holy cross, and subsequently redeemed with coins to the same value.37 All English monarchs from Edward II to Mary I seem to have observed this custom. ‘For two reigns only the evidence is lacking – those of Edward V and Richard III … [The relevant accounts] from Richard III’s reign seem to have been lost or destroyed.’38 However, there is no reason to suppose that Richard would have neglected this Good Friday ritual, or failed to produce and distribute cramp rings on the two Good Fridays that fell within his reign.

  In accordance with tradition, no mass was celebrated on Good Friday, being replaced by the special liturgy for this day, which, as we have seen, included the veneration of the cross. The king may also have attended the gloomy office of Tenebrae, when the church was lit by only a single candle.39 If he did so, the reiterated words of the third responsory of the third nocturn for Good Friday may well have resounded in his ears like an echo of his own private sorrows:

  Caligaverunt oculi mei a fletu meo, quia elongatus est a me, qui consolabatur me. Videte, omnes populi, si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus.

  My eyes are dim with weeping, for the one who comforted me is far away from me. O all you people, see whether there be any sorrow like mine.

  2

  ‘It Suits the King of England to Marry Straight Away’1

  By 1485, having successfully overcome challenges to his tenure of the throne, Richard III appeared firmly established as King of England. However, he had unfortunately become a king without an heir. While not a disaster, this was certainly a problem – albeit one which could hopefully be remedied relatively easily, now that the queen too was dead. The background to Richard’s problem was the fact that for a hundred years England had been experiencing disputes over the royal succession. This sorry story had begun with another king called Richard, who had likewise found himself with no direct heir. That fact and its sequel were well remembered. It is therefore quite certain that Richard III must have realised he had a problem and that something needed to be done about it. Indeed, it is clear that Richard’s diplomatic activity during the five months from March to August 1485 was precisely focused upon rapidly resolving this dilemma by providing a new queen consort for the kingdom – hopefully leading in due course to a new heir to the throne.

  As a matter of fact, the king was not childless. As we have seen he had a son and a daughter, both probably born long before his marriage to Anne Neville. Richard’s son, John of Gloucester (or John de Pountfreit), might possibly have been conceived during Richard’s first solo expedition: a visit to the eastern counties in the summer of 1467, at the invitation of Sir John Howard.2 If so, John of Gloucester will probably have been born in about March 1468, and he might even have derived his first name from Sir John Howard, who could have been his godfather. These can only be speculations, because nothing has so far been discovered relating to John of Gloucester’s birth.3 However, if he was born in about March 1468, that same month in 1485 would have marked his seventeenth birthday. It is therefore interesting to note that it was on 11 March 1485 that King Richard announced John’s appointment as Captain of Calais. The royal patent refers to ‘our dear bastard son, John of Gloucester, whose disposition and natural vigour, agility of body and inclination to all good customs, promises us by the grace of God great and certain hope of future service’. Richard goes on to note that John is still a minor, and makes provision to take charge himself of subordinate Calais appointments until John ‘reaches the age of 21 years’.4 It is clear from this patent and appointment that Richard III hoped his illegitimate son would become a future support to the dynasty. At the same time, his uncompromising revelation of John of Gloucester’s bastard status precludes any notion that the king would ever have sought to make this lad his heir. Both the house of York as a whole and Richard III personally based their claims to the throne on the principle of absolute legitimacy. We can therefore be confident that Richard would never have countenanced the notion of such an advancement for his own illegitimate son.5

  Richard was still a young man, and the death of Queen Anne Neville (however sad this may have been in itself) did offer him the possible hope of future royal heirs. He had only to remar
ry. There can be no doubt whatever that his immediate advisers, well aware of the fact that his consort was dying, had already urged him to begin seeking a new queen even before Anne had breathed her last.6 In the secrecy of the royal council it seems clear that well before 16 March the desiderata for a future consort had already been thoroughly thrashed out. A foreign princess was preferable. This would conform with the traditional pattern established for medieval English kings, while at the same time avoiding the dangers inherent in advancing the daughter of any particular English noble family.7 Naturally the chosen princess should be of an age to bear children. However, it seems also to have been decided to take advantage of the situation to try to end once and for all the dynastic feud between the heirs of York and Lancaster. That this was the case emerges quite clearly from the points put forward subsequently by the royal councillors of Portugal, to their sovereign and his sister, as one argument in favour of the royal marriage pact proposed to them by Richard III. The Portuguese Council of State recommended the projected English royal marriage to their king’s sister for various reasons, but most specifically ‘for the concord in the same kingdom of England that will follow from her marriage and union with the king’s party, greatly serving God and bringing honour to herself8 by uniting as one the party of Lancaster, and York – which are the two parties of that kingdom out of which the divisions and evils over the succession are born’.9

  FAMILY TREE 1: The heirs of the house of Lancaster (simplified). The three individuals directly involved in the 1485 marriage plans of Richard III are shown in bold type.

  In the legitimate male line the house of Lancaster had been extinct since the death of Henry VI in 1471, and there were also no living descendants of any of the Lancastrian kings in legitimate female lines. However, there were living descendants both of Henry IV’s sister, and of his half-sister. The most direct heirs of these two Lancastrian princesses in 1485 were respectively King John II of Portugal and Queen Isabel of Castile.10 Both Portuguese and Spanish infantas were therefore strongly favoured as possible brides, although preference seems to have been accorded to Portugal, probably because the Portuguese royal house of Avis had a stronger dynastic claim than the Castilian royal house of Trastámara to be the senior surviving Lancastrian heirs.11

  Proof that a second wife for the king had already been discussed before the first had died lies in the fact that, on Tuesday 22 March, less than a week after Anne Neville’s death, and before her body had even been buried, Sir Edward Brampton, a converted Portuguese Jew who had long served King Edward IV, was sent back to his former homeland to offer, on Richard’s behalf, for the hand of King John II’s elder sister, the Infanta Joana.12 It is also as a result of Brampton’s negotiations in Portugal that we have knowledge of the alternative English plan for a marriage with the Spanish infanta, in case the Portuguese match should come to nothing. In fact, the contemporary commentator Álvaro Lopes de Chaves, writing retrospectively in about 1488, reported that the Portuguese Council of State had been very anxious to ensure that the Portuguese marriage proposal was accepted. Behind their forceful support of the proposed Anglo-Portuguese marriage pact lay the councillors’ openly expressed fear that if the Portuguese marriage did not take place, Richard III ‘could marry the Infanta Doña Isabel of Castile [sic] and make alliance with those kings, and become your enemy and opponent’.13 Indeed, knowing that such an alliance with England was only too likely to prove agreeable to ‘the Catholic Kings’ of Spain, the Portuguese royal advisers reiterated their anxiety, strongly underlining the risk that if the projected marriage with their own Infanta Joana were not quickly brought to a successful conclusion, ‘the sovereigns of Castile may give him [Richard] their eldest daughter as his wife’.14 The Portuguese councillors were also well aware that Richard III was in a hurry to remarry, since they commented specifically on the fact that ‘it suits the king of England to marry straight away’.15

  In fact, the marriage proposal brought to Portugal by Sir Edward Brampton was for a double alliance. Richard III himself would marry Joana, while his niece, Elizabeth of York, would marry John II’s cousin Manuel, Duke of Beja (who later became King Manuel I). This point too is established beyond question by Álvaro Lopes de Chaves who referred to a ‘marriage between the daughter of King Edward of England … and the Duke of Beja Dom Manuel … which said marriage had previously been appointed by Edward Brampton on his coming as ambassador of King Richard (brother to the said King Edward) to swear the betrothals and commit the Princess Joana in marriage’.16 On the Portuguese side it was hoped that, in return for the proposed matches, Richard would provide King John II with English help against dissident members of the aristocracy, who were being supported from Castile.

  Brampton’s overtures were later followed up by someone described as the Count or Earl of Scales [Scalus].17 In earlier publications relating to this subsequent visit, both Barrie Williams and his modern Portuguese source, Gomes dos Santos, mistakenly assumed that the activities of this ‘Count Scales’ represented a follow-up embassy from Richard III. In addition, Williams embroils himself in vain speculations as to the identity of ‘Count Scales’.18 Unfortunately, he is at sea in suggesting that Richard Woodville might have inherited the Scales title from his elder brother, Anthony. In fact this title had merely been acquired by Anthony Woodville as a result of his marriage to the Scales heiress. Nevertheless, it is known that Anthony attempted to bequeath it to his other brother Edward.19 This attempt had no legal validity, but it explains why Edward Woodville might have called himself ‘Lord Scales’ – and indeed, the Portuguese records establish beyond question that in fact he did so.

  They also prove that Edward Woodville’s visit to King John took place after Richard III’s death, in 1486, at a time when Edward was returning home to England after taking part in the ongoing Spanish reconquista of the southern kingdom of Granada.20 Thus his visit would be too late in its timing to have any interest for us in the present context, were it not for the fact that the soi-disant ‘count’ sought to revive half of Richard III’s proposed Portuguese marriage pact – namely the part involving the marriage of one of his nieces to Dom Manuel, Duke of Beja (King John’s cousin). By seeking to revive this proposal, Sir Edward explicitly drew attention to the fact that Richard III’s initial overtures in 1485 had included such plans for the marriage of one of Edward IV’s daughters with Dom Manuel. We shall return to this interesting second aspect of Richard III’s Portuguese marriage project shortly.

  As for the Infanta Joana, she was a few months older than her prospective husband, having been born in February 1452. She was deeply religious, and had already rejected previous offers of marriage from several other European rulers. However, either because she herself was genuinely interested in the proposed English royal marriage, or because she was placed under considerable pressure by her brother, King John, Joana seems to have given very serious consideration to the idea of marriage to Richard. In fact, had the latter not lost the Battle of Bosworth, the Portuguese royal marriages would very probably have taken place.21

  As has already been noted, of the two princesses who were apparently regarded as the leading potential contenders for the English consort’s crown, it must have been the fact that the Infanta Joana was the most senior living heir of the house of Lancaster (after her brother, King John) which chiefly influenced Richard III and his council in her favour, for in other respects she might well have been considered less than ideal. As a childless and hitherto unmarried princess, thirty-three years of age, her chances of bearing for Richard the all-important son and heir he so badly needed must, in retrospect, be regarded as somewhat questionable. There is no doubt that, in terms of age, the fourteen-year-old Spanish infanta, Doña Isabel de Aragón y Castilla, who shared Richard III’s birthday (2 October) but who was eighteen years his junior, would have been a far more promising prospective mother of a future prince of Wales.22

  As we have seen, the proposed Portuguese marriage was part of a package deal.
Not only was Richard III to marry Joana, but also his niece, Elizabeth of York – the eldest illegitimate daughter of Edward IV by Elizabeth Woodville – was to marry the Portuguese prince Manuel, Duke of Beja, cousin (and eventual successor) of King John II. The subsequent attempts on the part of ‘Count Scales’ to revive this second marriage proposal were aided by the fact that Richard III’s negotiations had apparently never referred to Elizabeth of York by name, but had simply spoken of ‘[a] filha del Rej Duarte’ ([the] daughter of King Edward).23 For Richard III this circumlocution may have been advantageous in that it skirted round the potentially tricky problem of Elizabeth of York’s status. In 1485 she was, of course, a mere royal bastard and not an English princess – but unfortunately for Richard there were no legitimate English royal daughters then available for the marriage market. Without actually being openly deceitful, the terminology employed by Richard’s envoys tended to imply that the proposed bride was an English princess – and indeed, probably the most senior royal daughter available.24

  There may also have been one other advantage. If anything should happen to Elizabeth, one of her sisters could easily be substituted for her without the need for renegotiations. This was a period when death readily claimed young victims, and even promising royal sprigs did not always manage to successfully complete their journey into adulthood. Some children of Edward IV by Elizabeth Woodville had already died young.25 The names of Elizabeth, Cecily and Anne of York may have meant little even to King John II, while his cousin, Dom Manuel (who was to marry this English girl), was at that time a relatively minor member of the Portuguese royal house, whose marriage negotiations probably did not demand the detailed precision which would, for example, have surrounded the betrothal of King John’s son and heir. But undoubtedly both the Portuguese king and his cousin had heard of King Edward IV himself. Thus ‘King Edward’s daughter’ was in every way a convenient phrase.