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

by John Ashdown-Hill

  23. C.W.C. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages, ad 378–1515, New York, 1953, pp. 78, 103.

  24. C. Weightman, Margaret of York, Gloucester, 1989, p. 102.

  25. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. 1(i), no. 2246, p. 1006, citing Lambeth MS 306, f. 204.

  26. J. Ridley, Henry VIII, London, 1984, p. 72.

  27. ‘The 21st [September], confirmation of the news of the defeat of James IV, by a messenger, who brought the Scotch King’s plaid [paludiamentum seu tunicam] with the royal arms upon it.’ Letters and Papers … Henry VIII, vol. 1(i), no. 2391, pp. 1060–61.

  28. Jones, Bosworth 1485, p. 160.

  29. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, p. 39 (G. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ‘The Knight’s Tale’, lines 1001–08).

  30. As with the case of James IV, it has been debated whether the bodies displayed as those of Edward II and Richard II were the authentic remains of those kings, but this point is not particularly significant in the present context.

  31. This part of the plan was by no means always successful, of course, and royal martyr cults did tend to spring up around the royal bodies, in spite of their discreet burials.

  10. The Franciscan Priory

  1. VCH, Leicestershire, vol. 2, 1954, pp. 33–35.

  2. TNA, C1/206/69 recto, lines 4 and 5. For the precise words, see chapter 11 below.

  3. Ellis/Vergil, p. 226.

  4. For an explanation of the differences, see J. Ashdown-Hill, Mediaeval Colchester’s Lost Landmarks, Derby, 2009, p. 65.

  5. See above: Kendall.

  6. As we shall see shortly, Richard was buried in the choir of the priory church: a part of the building normally accessible only to the friars themselves.

  7. Ashdown-Hill, Mediaeval Colchester, p. 74.

  8. My italics. R. Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England, London, 1684, p. 235. For Speede’s text see below, appendix 4.

  9. Green, Legends, p. 22, asserts that the friars ‘begged for the body’, but as usual, she cites no source. The guardian (religious superior) of the Leicester Greyfriars in 1485 may have shared the dead king’s name. The guardian in office in 1479 had certainly been called Richard: VCH, Leicestershire, vol. 2, pp. 32–35 and n. 19.

  10. Richard III’s parents had employed a Franciscan chaplain, and later his sister, Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy, chose to be buried in the Franciscan conventual church in Mechelen.

  11. Stow, Annals (ed. 1615), p. 327, cited in W. Page (ed.), VCH, London, vol. 1, Section 12, London 1909.

  12. Accounts suggesting that Richard III was buried in a stone coffin date only from the seventeenth century and are anachronistic (see below). When his body was excavated in 2012, it was clear that he had been buried only in a shroud.

  13. See above: description of Queen Anne Neville’s funeral rites.

  14. Calendar of State Papers – Venetian, vol 1, 1202–1509, p. 156.

  11. ‘King Richard’s Tombe’

  1. BL, Add. MS 7099, f. 129.

  2. By comparison, Henry VI, for example, had had to wait thirteen years for his new tomb.

  3. Will of Cecily Neville, dowager Duchess of York: Nicholls and Bruce, eds, Wills from Doctors’ Commons, p. 8.

  4. TNA, C1/206/69 recto, lines 4 and 5.

  5. He witnessed a deed on 10 August 1490: Nottinghamshire Archives, DD/P/CD/13. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Mayor_of_Nottingham (consulted June 2009).

  6. R. Edwards, ‘King Richard’s Tomb at Leicester’, Ric. 3 (no. 50, Sept. 1975), pp. 8–9, citing PRO [TNA], C1/206/69. This is a record of a chancery case brought by Rauf Hill of Nottingham against Walter Hylton, alleging the fraudulent insertion of Rauf’s name in indentures between Hylton and Sir Reynold Bray and Sir Thomas Lovell, concerning the making of a tomb for Richard III. About one-third of this manuscript is now virtually unreadable. The supposed figure of £50 for the cost of the tomb is an interpretation advanced by a previous researcher – who may indeed have been able to decipher more of the text than is now legible. However, my examination of the manuscript did not succeed in substantiating this figure, though two separate references to ‘xv li’ and ‘xx li’ respectively were found.

  7. See Edwards, ‘King Richard’s Tomb at Leicester’.

  8. J. Blair and N. Ramsey, eds, English Medieval Industries, London, 1991, p. 37.

  9. Blair and Ramsey, English Medieval Industries, p. 35;J.C. Cox, Memorials of Old Derbyshire, London, 1907, p. 108.

  10. M. Hicks, Richard III and his Rivals, London, 1991, p. 342; NA, PROB 11/11, will of Richard Lessy, 1498. I am grateful to Marie Barnfield for these references. The hard stone tomb with brass memorials for Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and his second wife cost 400 marks (or about £267) in 1524.

  11. The tomb of William Shore, erstwhile husband of Edward IV’s last mistress, is marked by an incised alabaster effigy, similar in appearance to a ‘brass’. See Beloved Cousyn, figure 19.

  12. The Latin texts of these two royal epitaphs are given in appendix 6, for comparison with the Latin text of the Richard III epitaph.

  13. The manuscript texts give vano rather than vario (i.e. ‘vain’ or ‘ostentatious’ marble).

  14. Sandford and BL, Add. MS 45131, f. 10v: ‘Was by many called Richard the Third’.

  15. ‘Exactly’ or ‘merely’. The word means ‘just’ in both senses.

  16. The extant manuscripts give a variant version of this line: ‘… and caused a non-king to be revered with the honour of a king’.

  17. 2 x 5 = 10, -4 = 6. An alternative possible (but less likely) reading of this line would be: ‘When [in] twice four years less five’ (i.e. 2 x 4 = 8, -5 = 3).

  18. 300 x 5 = 1500, minus the figure given in the previous line (either 6 or 3) would give 1494 (or – less probably – 1497). This dating technique is a complex numbers game. The punctuation given here assumes that the writer’s intention was to convey the date of the inauguration of the tomb and epitaph. With different punctuation, however, one could argue that the intention was to give the date of Richard’s death – in which case the writer evidently became so tied up in his own cleverness that he got it wrong!

  19. On 22 August.

  20. Sandford and BL, Add. MS 45131, f. 10v: ‘… the right it claimed’.

  21. Henry VII himself referred to this first Yorkist pretender simply as spurium quemdam puerum (‘some illegitimate boy’): J. Gairdner, ed., Letters and Papers illustrative of the reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, London, 1857, p. 95, citing BL, Add. MS 15385, f. 315.

  22. The real identity of this person is not known for certain, but Henry VII later sought to establish that he was one Pierre Werbecque of Tournai, and he is therefore usually referred to as ‘Perkin Warbeck’.

  23. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Coins attributed to the Yorkist Pretenders, 1487–1498’, Ric. 19 (2009), pp. 69–89 (pp. 81–86).

  12. ‘Here Lies the Body’

  1. Seventeenth-century inscription from Alderman Herrick’s pillar marking the gravesite of Richard III: C. Wren, Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, London, 1750, p. 144.

  2. A tomb effigy which fits the description of Richard’s, and which shows signs of weathering, is now preserved in Tamworth church. P. Tudor-Craig, ed., Richard III Exhibition Catalogue, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1972, no. 172.

  3. Wren, Parentalia, p. 144; D. Baldwin, ‘King Richard’s Grave in Leicester’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, vol. 60 (1986), p. 22.

  4. Richard III Society, Barton Library, personal communication from S.H. Skillington, Hon. Secretary, Leicester Archaeological Society, to Saxon Barton, 29 October 1935.

  5. In the present Social Services Department car park on the former Greyfriars site.

  6. See Richard Corbet’s Iter Boreale (c. 1620–25), cited in J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘the Location of the 1485 Battle and the Fate of Richard III’s Body’, Ricardian Bulletin, Autumn 2004, pp. 34–35.

/>   7. Such violent exhumations did sometimes occur in the seventeenth century, during the Civil War. It is perhaps significant, therefore, that the story of the digging up of Richard’s body was disseminated at about that period.

  8. The Commons were protesting against Cardinal Wolsey’s attempt to enforce a ‘benevolence’, thus contravening a statute against these forced taxes, enacted by Richard III. Wolsey rebuked the MPs, saying: ‘I marvel that you speak of Richard III, which was a usurper and murderer of his own nephews.’ They, however, responded robustly: ‘Although he did evil, yet in his time were many good Acts made’: J. Potter, Good King Richard? London, 1983, p. 23.

  9. It would be interesting to compare the DNA of this skull with that of Richard III (as revealed below), were it not for the fact that carbon-14 dating has already shown the skull to date from before the Norman Conquest (A. Wakelin, ‘Is there a king under this bridge?’, Leicester Mercury, 8 October 2002, p. 10).

  10. VCH, Leicestershire, vol. 2, p. 33. The superior of a Franciscan Priory has the title not of ‘prior’ but of ‘guardian’.

  11. See, for example, the extensive but roofless remains of the former Greyfriars at Little Walsingham in Norfolk.

  12. Speede, History, p. 725 (see appendix 4).

  13. Wren, Parentalia, p. 144.

  14. Speede, History, p. 725 (see appendix 4).

  13. ‘The Honour of a King’

  1. Richard III’s epitaph.

  2. The bishop of St David’s so described him, and in August 1485 the city of York noted in its records its deep regret at his death: Road, pp. 135, 223. We have also seen that the House of Commons recalled him as a good king in the presence of a rather astonished Cardinal Wolsey during the reign of Henry VIII.

  3. Although Richard III had two known illegitimate children, they seem to have been older than his legitimate son. They are thus likely to have been begotten before Richard married.

  4. ‘… our father, King Edward the Fourth, whom God assoile’: letter from Henry VII to Sir Gilbert Talbot, quoted in J. Gairdner, History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third, Cambridge, 1898, p. 276.

  5. ‘Very truth it is and well-known that at such time as Sir James Tyrell was in the Tower for treason committed against the most famous prince, King Henry the Seventh, both Dighton and he were examined and confessed the murder [of Edward V and Richard Duke of York]’: R.S. Sylvester, ed., St Thomas More, The History of King Richard III, New Haven & London, 1976, pp. 88–89. Tyrell was executed in May 1502 for his support of the Yorkist prince Edmund de la Pole (son of Richard III’s sister, Elizabeth of York, Duchess of Suffolk, and younger brother of John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln).

  6. See R3MK; Eleanor; Beloved Cousyn.

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

  1. For Richard’s books, see the series of articles by A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, Ric. 9 and 10 (1991–96). For his handwriting, see B. Hickey, ‘Richard III – a character analysis’, published by P. Stirling-Langley, Ricardian Bulletin, September 2000, pp. 27–34, and March 2001, pp. 16–22. This article also refers to earlier published material on the same subject. For Richard’s horoscope, see J. Elliott, ‘The Birth Chart of Richard III’, Astrological Quarterly, vol. 70, no. 3 (Summer 2000), pp. 19–37.

  2. Richard III certainly had two illegitimate children. His daughter, Catherine, was married but died childless. His son, John of Gloucester, was put to death by Henry VII. There is also the curious story of Richard Plantagenet of Eastwell, an old man who died in Sussex in the reign of Elizabeth I, and who reportedly claimed to be Richard’s son. See P.W. Hammond, ‘The Illegitimate Children of Richard III’, Ric. 5 (1977–81), pp. 92–96.

  3. As far as is known. John of Gloucester might conceivably have had illegitimate offspring of his own, but if so, no record of them survives.

  4. A letter dated 20 February 1478 mentions plans for Clarence’s burial at Tewkesbury.

  5. Bodl, MS Top. Glouc. D.2, f. 40r-v.

  6. R.K. Morris and R, Shoesmith, eds, Tewkesbury Abbey, History, Art and Architecture, Almeley, 2003, pp. 32–40.

  7. The account which follows is based upon P. De Win, ‘Danse Macabre around the tomb and bones of Margaret of York’, Ric. 15 (2005), pp. 53–69.

  8. Her heart and intestines were buried in the Carthusian monasteries at Herne and Scheut respectively.

  9. Sub limine ostii huius chori. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, fr. 5234, f. 146.

  10. P. De Win, ‘Danse Macabre rond graf en gebeente van Margareta van York’, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Kring voor Oudheidkunde, Letteren an Kunst van Mechelen, 2003, pp. 61–86; English version published as ‘Danse Macabre around the tomb and bones of Margaret of York’, Ric. 15 (2005), pp. 53–69.

  11. The precise location of the original tomb was somewhat unclear. See De Win, ‘Danse Macabre’, Handelingen, p. 63 (Ric. 15, p. 55) & passim.

  12. Three skeletons found, one of them female; the latter aged between 50 and 60, and 1.54 metres in height.

  13. Two skeletons found, one of them female.

  14. Partial skeleton (secondary burial?), with hair, belonging to a woman of about 50.

  15. Dienst Archeologie.

  16. Information supplied by Dieter Viaene, Mechelen Town Archives, 29 June 2007.

  17. B. Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, New York & London, 2001, p. 27.

  18. E. Hagelberg, B. Sykes and R.E.M. Hedges, ‘Ancient bone DNA amplified’, Nature, vol. 342 (1989), p. 485.

  19. A.J. Klotzko, A Clone of Your Own? Oxford, 2004, p. 52.

  20. J. Marks, What it means to be 98% Chimpanzee, London and Berkeley, 2002, p. 34.

  21. The designations, lifetimes and places of origin of the clan mothers as given here are derived from Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve, p. 195 and passim. It was Professor Sykes who named the clan mothers.

  22. D. Brewer, Chaucer and his World, London, 1978, p. 89.

  23. Ibid.

  24. These adjectives of nationality are, of course, anachronistic in a fifteenth-century context, but it is convenient to employ them.

  25. One recent writer suggests the contrary, stating that ‘it is possible to speculate that, given [Gilles’] time in the court of the English King and Queen, his wife or wives were of English origin’. J. Lucraft, Katherine Swynford, the History of a Medieval Mistress, Stroud, 2006, p. 2. However, there is actually little evidence that Gilles spent a great deal of time at the English court.

  26. J. Gardner, The Life and Times of Chaucer, London, 1977, p. 118.

  27. J. Perry, ‘Philippa Chaucer’s Tomb’ (2002), http://members.cox.net/judy-perry/Philippa.html (consulted June 2009), p. 2. The tomb, with an effigy of a lady in a wimple, is uninscribed. It is identified as Philippa’s on the basis of the de Roët wheel badge which the lady wears on her breast. Philippa’s son, Thomas Chaucer, held the manor of East Worldham from 1418–1434.

  28. ODNB, vol. 30, pp. 888–89.

  29. Later Marquess of Somerset and Dorset.

  30. G.C. Coulton, Chaucer and his England, London, 1908, p. 31. Chaucer’s sons were apparently proud of their de Roët heritage. It has been claimed that they abandoned their father’s coat of arms, preferring to use the de Roët arms which came to them from their mother. G.K. Chesterton, Chaucer, London, 1932, p. 80.

  31. Reported in J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Alive and Well in Canada – the Mitochondrial DNA of Richard III’, Ric. 16 (2006), pp. 1–14.

  15. Richard III’s Genes part II – the mtDNA Line

  1. Kendall, Richard the Third, pp. 261, 274.

  2. ODNB, vol. 13, p. 22.

  3. ODNB, vol. 13, p. 22.

  4. J.D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, 1485-1558, Oxford 1952, p. 387.

  5. ODNB, vol. 13, p. 22.

  6. All of Margaret Babthorpe’s (Cholmley) daughters married, some of them more than once, however, only one bloodline – the one followed here – has successfully been traced to the present day.
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  7. One who conformed in public as an Anglican, but who was a Catholic in private.

  8. ODNB, vol. 50, p. 939, quoting Slingsby’s diary.

  9. Joy Ibsen, personal letter, 13 November 2004.

  10. TNA, PCC Wills, Prob 11/884, ff. 161r-162v.

  11. TNA, PCC Wills, Prob 11/884, f. 161v.

  12. Curiously, given Barbara Yelverton’s royalist ancestry, Sir Robert Reynolds was the Solicitor General under the Commonwealth. He purchased Elvetham from William Seymour, Duke of Somerset.

  13. R. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, London 1974, pp. 165; 166.

  14. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, p. 162.

  15. J. Pollock, Wilberforce, London 1977, p. 159.

  16. Furneaux, William Wilberforce, p. 166.

  17. Pollock, Wilberforce, p. 305.

  18. The only living descendants of Barbara Spooner [Wilberforce] are in through her sons: J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘A Granddaughter of William Wilberforce’, Genealogists’ Magazine, September 2004 (28:3, 2004), pp. 110–11.

  19. E. Adams, ed., Mrs J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, London 1926, p. 16.

  20. Joy Ibsen, 1 August 2006.

  21. Joy Ibsen, 13 December 2005.

  22. A. Comyns Carr, J. Comyns Carr – Stray Memories, London 1920, p. 53.

  23. Adams, ed., Mrs J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, pp. 13–14.

  24. Adams, ed., Mrs J. Comyns Carr’s Reminiscences, pp. 14–15.

  25. Joy Ibsen, 13 November 2004.

  26. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 21.

  27. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 2.

  28. Arthur was the eldest of the three Strettell children, born in 1845. Alice was born in 1850 and Alma in 1854.

  29. He died, at the young age of 36, on 24 January 1882 at Colorada Springs, though his will was not proved in England until 13 December 1890.

  30. Comyns Carr, Stray Memories, p. 112. Henry Irving made his debut on the London stage in 1866, where he was reputed the greatest English actor of his time. Born in Somerset in 1838, Irving began his acting career in the provinces. In 1878 he formed a partnership with Ellen Terry at the Lyceum Theatre, where he became actor-manager. The first actor in British history to receive a knighthood, Sir Henry Irving died in 1905.