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

by John Ashdown-Hill

  IMAGE 1: Conjectural reconstruction of Herrick’s pillar, based on an architectural engraving of 1596.

  As for John Speede’s unreliability, he reported that at the beginning of the seventeenth century the gravesite was ‘overgrowne with nettles and weedes … very obscure and not to be found’.14 Many subsequent writers uncritically repeated Speede’s account. Nevertheless, it was worthless, because Speede’s 1610 map of Leicester wrongly labelled a site well to the north-west of St Martin’s church (now Cathedral) as ‘Graye fryers’. This site had actually belonged not to the Grey friars but to Leicester’s Black (Dominican) friars. The real site of the Franciscan Priory lies to the south of St Martin’s church (Cathedral) (see figure 28). On Speede’s map the authentic Greyfriars site is not labelled at all, but it can still be easily identified. This fundamental error on Speede’s map – which completely misled many subsequent researchers – proves that John Speede sought Richard III’s grave in entirely the wrong location. His nettles and weeds grew not on the site of the Franciscan Priory, but amongst the ruins of the former Dominican Priory. Small wonder, then, that Speed was unable to find any trace of Richard’s tomb. He was looking amongst the wrong priory ruins!

  Even if Richard’s grave was unmarked for a time, this can only have been for a very short period. We may guess that Herrick’s commemorative pillar at the former Greyfriars site was put in place by the year 1610 at the latest. Herrick had been born in 1540 – only two years after the dissolution of the Greyfriars priory – and he may well have seen Richard III’s 1495 tomb as a boy, since it is probable that this monument (or the remains of it) had remained standing in the priory ruins until at least the last quarter of the sixteenth century. We know that many other monastic and collegiate church tombs survived until about that time. John Weever – author of Ancient Funeral Monuments – went round in the early years of the seventeenth century and recorded their existence, while only a decade or two earlier, Queen Elizabeth I had found and rescued the remains of her Yorkist ancestors amongst the ruins of the east end of the collegiate church at Fotheringhaye.

  It is just possible that by about 1550 the superstructure of Richard’s tomb had been vandalised, though we have no actual evidence to this effect. Even if this was the case, however, it would certainly not imply that Richard’s remains were disturbed, and in this context it is worth noting in passing that the short text carved on Alderman Herrick’s new monument indicated plainly that Herrick’s inscribed column was not a cenotaph. His deliberate choice of the words ‘Here lies the body …’ shows that Herrick was not only certain that his column marked Richard’s burial site, but also that Richard’s physical remains still lay buried beneath it.

  Thus, while the Greyfriars’ church may have been gradually demolished, and parts of the priory site may have been redeveloped, the ground where Richard III lay was never built over. Only some building work in the nineteenth century came dangerously close to destroying the original burial. A narrow trench cut by the nineteenth-century workmen cut across the eastern end of the king’s grave, depriving posterity of the bones of Richard III’s feet. Apart from this, the king lay quietly where he had been buried, while above him Alderman Herrick’s garden was eventually transformed into a council car park.

  13

  ‘The Honour of a King’1

  While Richard III lay undisturbed in his grave in Leicester, his reputation was changing. Some of the change may have been natural, but many aspects of it were orchestrated by the regime and dynasty which had replaced his rule. As a result Richard III became, and remains, one of the most controversial figures in English history. Some contemporary writers certainly characterised him as a good king.2 He appears to have been for many years a loyal son, brother and husband.3 Yet – unsurprisingly perhaps – after his defeat and death at the battle known as Bosworth Field he became the subject of vilification under the ‘Tudor’ regime which replaced his own Yorkist dynasty. It may be worth emphasising at this point that the unsupported word of Henry VII is not invariably trustworthy, since clear evidence exists that on occasions the first ‘Tudor’ monarch told lies or rewrote history. Thus, as we saw earlier, during his exile in France he represented himself as a son of Henry VI in order to enhance his dubious ‘Lancastrian’ credentials. Once on the throne he ruthlessly wrote Lady Eleanor Talbot out of history, and falsified Richard III’s claim to the throne. These are not matters of opinion, but of fact.

  However, Henry VII’s position on his predecessor was complex, and was apparently subject to a degree of evolution. Henry purported to champion the cause of the house of Lancaster, and this inevitably implied overall opposition to the claims of the house of York. But at the same time, Henry claimed to be reuniting the rival Yorkist and Lancastrian claims (just as Richard himself had been planning to do in 1485). In Henry’s case this aim was furthered by means of his marriage to Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Richard III’s elder brother, Edward IV, by Elizabeth Woodville. In general, therefore, Henry had no choice other than to accept the legitimacy of Edward IV as King of England. He is even on record as having referred to Edward as his ‘father’.4 This in itself was a somewhat anomalous position for the ‘Tudor’ monarch to take, since there can be no question that King Edward had deposed and replaced Henry VII’s ‘uncle’, Henry VI, for whose subsequent death Edward IV may also have been responsible. The political correctness of the new ‘Tudor’ regime in 1485 certainly stressed that Edward IV had been a lawful and (on the whole) good king. It also suggested that Edward V would have been a lawful – and probably good – king had circumstances allowed him the opportunity. On the other hand, Richard III was initially presented as an evil usurper, from whose illegal tyranny Henry VII had rescued England. Even in 1485, however, the de facto kingship of Richard III had perforce to be acknowledged for practical reasons. Moreover, only if Richard was de facto king could Henry VII, by defeating him, have gained the crown. Richard had also to be publicly acknowledged as a valiant warrior, since Henry’s victory over him was thereby magnified and seen to be glorious.

  At a slightly later date, when a putative son of Edward IV appeared on the scene to challenge Henry’s right to rule, the latter’s position was inevitably subject to a degree of modification. Although not all writers on the period seem to have grasped this fundamental point, in reality it was always absolutely clear that in legal terms the respective claims to the throne of Richard III and the sons of Edward IV were mutually exclusive. Supporters of the house of York could not simultaneously claim both Edward V and Richard III as lawful monarchs. If Richard was the rightful king then Edward IV’s sons were bastards with no claim to the crown. Conversely, if Edward’s sons were legitimate claimants, Richard III was a usurper. Richard himself had demonstrably perceived this point with absolute clarity. Nor was it lost on Henry VII. Thus, in the 1490s, when Henry was confronted with the ‘Perkin Warbeck’ phenomenon, he appears to have modified his position on Richard III. As previously noted, it was at this period that Henry created a royal tomb for Richard, almost certainly furnished with a carefully worded epitaph, the text of which has fortunately survived.

  Later still, when the threat of ‘Perkin’ had been overcome, and the pretender was safely dead, Henry largely reverted to his earlier stance on Richard. It was at this stage that – for the first time – Richard was accused of having killed Edward IV’s sons. This claim seems to have been initially advanced in a posthumously published ‘confession’ allegedly made by Sir James Tyrell of Gipping (Suffolk), Captain of Guines.5 This ‘confession’ killed two birds with one stone. It had the effect of blackening Richard’s name (by attaching to it the opprobrium of what was to become his most notorious supposed crime), while at the same time also conveniently removing Edward IV’s sons from the running in respect of the succession, by purporting to establish beyond question (and for the first time) that both of the boys were long dead.

  Opinions about Richard III have been violently polarised ever since. Chief amon
g the controversies associated with Richard’s name remain the propriety of his accession to the throne, and the fate of his nephews, those so-called ‘princes in the Tower’. Various attempts have recently been made, by means of new evidence and new approaches to existing evidence, to shed light on the matter of Richard’s accession.6 In order to try to elucidate the fate of the so-called ‘princes’ it will be necessary to seek new sources of information. One potential new source might be the DNA sequences of key members of the house of York, and this is an area which the author has been researching for some time. Aspects of this ongoing DNA research – what has so far been learnt from it, and what we may yet hope to learn – constitute the main subject of the chapters which follow. Finally, we shall look into the future to see what further discoveries might yet be made, and by what means.

  14

  Richard III’s Genes part I – the Fifteenth Century and Before

  Modern attempts to discern ‘the real Richard III’ behind the ‘Tudor’ and later image have certainly encompassed an astonishingly wide variety of approaches and sources. These have included the study of fifteenth-century and later written evidence, examination of Richard’s portraits, and analysis of the books which comprised Richard’s library. In addition, attempts have been made to analyse Richard III’s handwriting, and to cast his horoscope.1 However, prior to my research, no-one had attempted to explore Richard’s genetic make-up.

  Before 2012, no direct investigation of Richard III’s physical remains was possible because, until the recent excavations in Leicester, Richard’s body had been inaccessible. Therefore I initially sought alternative sources of appropriate genetic material. The obvious route would have been the remains of one of Richard’s descendants, but this approach also appeared to be closed to us. The king’s only legitimate son, Edward, Prince of Wales, died in childhood, some months before his father. What some believe to be the boy’s tomb is in the church at Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire, but the identity of this burial is controversial, nor is it easy to obtain permission for the exhumation of royal remains. Richard’s other known children, Catherine Plantagenet and John of Gloucester, were illegitimate. John was executed by Henry VII.2 His tomb and that of his (half?) sister have not been located. Moreover, since (so far as is known) all Richard III’s children died childless, the king apparently has no direct living descendants.3 Thus, in seeking Richard III’s genes I was obliged to range further afield, exploring collateral lines of descent from Richard’s siblings. Of potential interest were Richard’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of York; his brothers, Edward IV, Edmund, Earl of Rutland and George, Duke of Clarence; and his sisters, Anne, Duchess of Exeter, Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk and Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy.

  The burial sites of some of these individuals were known, and their remains could very easily have been examined – had their exhumation ever been authorised. The Duke and Duchess of York, together with Richard’s brother, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, lie entombed in secondary and tertiary burials at Fotheringhaye church. Earlier, their tombs were in the chancel, at the east end of the collegiate church, but when the Reformation led to the demise of the college and the ruin of the chancel, Elizabeth I had the bodies of her ancestors and relatives moved into the surviving nave of the building. The new tombs which she provided flank the present high altar.

  Richard’s brother, King Edward IV, still lies in his tomb in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and his eldest sister Anne of York, Duchess of Exeter, lies in a nearby side chapel, in the same building. Permission to exhume these remains is unlikely ever to be granted. Nevertheless, some genetic material from the body of Edward IV is available. This avenue has been explored, and we shall return to this point presently.

  The burial site of Elizabeth of York, Duchess of Suffolk, the second surviving sister of Richard III, is also known. Elizabeth lies undisturbed in her alabaster tomb at Wingfield church in Suffolk. Apart from the king himself, she is one of the few members of Richard’s immediate family whose remains had lain untouched from the time of her death in 1503 until the present day.

  As for George, Duke of Clarence, he was probably buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire, but the remains once thought to be his are now considered to be of doubtful authenticity.4 These bones lie behind the high altar in what is known as the ‘Clarence Vault’. The remains are contained in a glass case which was opened and examined in 1982. On that occasion a physical examination revealed the fragmentary remains of at least two individuals – at least one male and at least one female. Superficially this sounds quite promising, since the Duchess of Clarence was unquestionably buried at Tewkesbury,5 and Clarence is believed to have been interred beside her. However, the male remains were tentatively assigned to the age range 40–60+ years, while the female remains were designated in the range 50–70+ years. This was completely incompatible with the known ages of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence at the time of their deaths (when they would have been 28 and 25 years of age respectively). It is known that in the eighteenth century the Clarence Vault was taken over for burials of members of the family of Samuel Hawling, an alderman of Tewkesbury, and it seems highly probable that at least some of the skeletal remains now in the Clarence Vault are those of Hawling and his wife and son, who were aged respectively 72, 96 and 86 at death.6 To date, however, no DNA testing of the bones from this vault has taken place. Osteological re-examination of the bones would be highly desirable and, depending on the results of that examination, DNA testing of them might at some stage be considered.

  As for Richard’s youngest sister, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, the current whereabouts of her remains present major problems of their own.7 Nevertheless, it was the confusion regarding Margaret’s burial that provided the immediate impetus for my research which finally led to the establishment of a mitochondrial DNA sequence for Richard III and his brothers and sisters.

  At her own request, Margaret of York’s body was buried in the Fransciscan Priory Church at Mechelen (Malines), in modern Belgium.8 This building lies just to the west of Mechelen’s cathedral church of St Rombout. The Priory Church, sacked during the religious conflicts of the ensuing centuries, is now a cultural centre, and all trace of Margaret’s once splendid tomb has vanished. A manuscript copy of Margaret’s memorial inscription tells us that she was buried ‘beneath the threshold of the doorway of this chancel’.9 This rather odd location, which now appears to reflect precisely the burial location of her brother Richard at the Franciscan Priory in Leicester, may not have been accidental. Perhaps Margaret deliberately requested burial in a priory church of the same order as her slaughtered brother, and deliberately asked for her tomb to be placed in an identical position, just inside the entry to the choir. Until Richard’s burial was discovered, however, the exact meaning of the somewhat imprecise description had been debated, owing to the fact that the choir of the Mechelen priory church may have had more than one entrance. Originally, of course, the meaning had presumably been clarified by the physical location of the bronze memorial plaque within the church. Sadly, however, this vital evidence was lost to us. As a result, doubts had been expressed as to where exactly Margaret’s corpse had been laid to rest.

  In 2003 Dr Paul De Win published in Mechelen a paper on the multiple possible remains of Margaret of York.10 He explained the circumstances of Margaret’s burial, explored the subsequent vicissitudes of her tomb, and catalogued twentieth-century attempts to find her body. He also highlighted the problem of resolving which (if any) of the various female remains disinterred from the former Franciscan church in Mechelen might really be Margaret’s bones.

  As reported in Paul De Win’s paper, three sets of female remains of approximately the right age were found in the former Franciscan church of Mechelen during the course of the twentieth century, and in locations which could potentially be interpreted as consistent with the approximate site of the lost tomb of Margaret of York.11 These remains were found respectively in 1936 (excavations led by Vaast Steur
s),12 1937 (excavations associated with the name of Maximilien Winders)13 and 1955 (accidental discovery, subsequently examined by Professor François Twiesselmann).14 Until recently these remains were stored in five boxes at the Mechelen Town Archives. They have recently been transferred to the Archaeology Service,15 and are now stored in two boxes (but reportedly a record of their former numbering has been retained). The bones from the 1955 discovery were photographed at the time, and these bones were subsequently coated with varnish. As a result, they can still be relatively easily identified. It is not currently possible to distinguish for certain which of the other female remains from Mechelen’s Franciscan Priory site were discovered in 1936, and which in 1937.16

  In 2003, following discussions with Dr De Win, I began the attempt to establish a mitochondrial DNA sequence for Margaret of York and her siblings. Since mtDNA is normally inherited unchanged in the female line, the methodology adopted was to seek a living all-female-line descendant of Margaret’s mother, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, or of one of Cecily’s close female relatives. We shall follow this research in a moment. First, however, it may be useful to summarise briefly what DNA is, and how it can currently be used in historical research.

  The letters ‘DNA’ are an abbreviation for ‘deoxyribonucleic acid’. All living beings have DNA, which functions rather like an order pad. It lists, in coded form, the materials required to make the components of living bodies, and it specifies the order in which they must be assembled in order to create these components. In 1953 two Cambridge scientists, James D. Watson and Francis Crick, first worked out the structure of DNA, and demonstrated its significance as the basic coding material of life. ‘Watson and Crick had discovered that each molecule of DNA is made up of two very long coils, like two intertwined spiral staircases – a “double helix”. When the time comes for copies to be made, the two spiral staircases of the double helix disengage.’17