You may have seen the original TV cast of this, but here’s more detail. It does seem to be him…
Richard III burial
There’s a great deal strange about his story. He was much maligned in the rumor mills of the day…and accused of the murder of the two princes in the Tower.
The deed is laid at the feet of an otherwise distinguished gentleman who loyally served the king…one Sir Robert Tyrell, who was the boy’s jailer, who, accused of the murder, staunchly refused to disclose where the princes were buried, and who was eventually executed for the crime. His family maintained, later, that the princes were not dead, and that Tyrell had actually rescued them and gotten them to a place of safety, and that he died accepting the blame for a non-crime, because of his loyalty to the king.
Richard III was blamed as the one who gave the orders. But there was a complete tangle of politics surrounding that and other matters during his reign.
There’s a Korean movie (The Slave Hunters) on Netflix streaming, which has some real what-it-must-ve-been-like with early guns. Not a bad series, either…not as good as Great Queen Seondaok or Baek Dong Soo, but good.
BlueCatShip said, “Too bad we can’t jump back and listen or talk to them.”
The closest we can get to that is to read what they wrote. It’s the best way to get a real insight into the lives they led.
In the medieval period there are the Chronicles of Froissart and the Paston Letters. And in fiction, of course, Chaucer and Thomas Malory. There’s also a huge quantity of primary source documents divided up by date, country and subject at the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
The Pepys Diary website has started again this January going through the diary from the beginning with an entry each day. He’s currently in the turbulent period before the restoration of Charles II. London is full of soldiers wanting the pay owing to them. The comments and annotations by readers are well worth looking at.
Bowell’s Life of Johnson is still the best work of biography ever written, with loads of conversations and details of everyday life. It starts to get interesting after Boswell meets Johnson in 1763, so that’s a good place to start reading. Or even better is to start with the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson LL.D.. You can find it on Project Gutenberg as Vol 5 of the Life of Johnson, but it is actually a stand-alone book, and was originally published separately.
In the late 18th century, the diaries of Fanny Burney (also known as Madame D’Arblay) are really worth reading. She was a highly successful novelist, and a great inspiration to Jane Austen. She knew Dr Johnson and his whole circle, and for 5 years was lady in waiting to the Queen – through the whole period of the first bout of insanity of George III. She left a very vivid and detailed account (very different from the movie). She later married a French general and spent most of the Napoleonic Wars in Paris. She was in Brussels during the Battle of Waterloo and saw the soldiers marching through to the battle, and the long columns of wounded and dying coming back afterwards. She had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy in 1811, without anesthetic – of whch she gives a harrowing account. But she recovered fully, and lived another 30 years, well into her 80’s.
on Fanny Burney – what a modern woman! she supported her french husband too when they came back to England (she met him when he was a political refugee in England, before the french revolution – highly romantic), with her writing – I haven’t read the diaries, but I have read a very good biography by Claire Harman
She had a wonderful sense of humour too!
Her Diaries are online at the Internet Archive in 6 volumes. The first is here
http://archive.org/details/diaryandletters01burn
It starts:
DIARY AND LETTERS OF 1778
This year was ushered in by a grand and most important event! At the hither end of January the literary world was favoured with the first publication of the ingenious, learned, and most profound Fanny Burney! I doubt not but this memorable affair will, in future times, mark the period whence chronologers will date the zenith of the polite arts in this island!
This admirable authoress has named her most elaborate performance, Evelina: or, a Young Lady’s Entrance info the World.
Perhaps this may seem a rather bold attempt and title, for a female whose knowledge of the world is very confined, and whose inclinations, as well as situation, incline her to a private and domestic life. All I can urge is, that I have only presumed to trace the accidents and adventures to which a “young woman” is liable; I have not pretended to show the world what it actually is, but what it appears to a girl of seventeen: and so far as that, surely any girl who is past seventeen may safely do?
Thanks for the links…Col. Fitch could be one of Jane’s relatives: I’ll have to check it out.
I’m already swamped with back reading, but those sound good. I’ll bookmark the links.
I might passably read Middle English still, and I might even make a little headway with Middle French…maybe. My memory of English Lit. I went by in a blur at the time, but I liked what I read. My French Lit. classes, well, the prof was quite an eccentric Frenchwoman, but I liked the classes.
Col. Fitch? Huh, odd coincidence. I just sent a very rough draft to a friend, written 01-25 and today, with a character whose last name is Fitch. Surely not connected, but it caught my eye.
well, positive identification! this is an interesting article with a slideshow and the specialist who dug him up … http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21282241
so soon we will have a reconstruction of his face, it seems … tv programme tonight all about it, a time team special I think …
and the university of Leicester has a special website here http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/
The interesting thing is the photo of the skeleton. If it’s laid out accurately then the problems with Richard’s back were certainly not minor.
Sir Thomas More described him as “little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher then his right”. This now appears to be accurate.
People have usually taken ‘crook-backed’ to mean that he was hunchbacked, but it actually doesn’t mean that. It means that his back wasn’t straight, and the description of one shoulder being higher than the other, shows that it was bent sideways. Sir Thomas More gave an accurate description of his scoliosis.
So all the revisionists who have been saying for so long that the descriptions of problems with his back were all a dastardly Tudor plot to make him look bad – were wrong. The Tudor historians were right.
a fb friend who has scoliosis remarked on the painfulness of the condition. even for an aristocrat (and one that spent his teens in exile, maybe in not wonderful conditions) his life must have been made a misery by it – one has to feel sorry for him. I thought it very interesting that Alison Weir has waded in already to say that there’s evidence that he DID have the two boys murdered (in support of a book, I presume). seems there’s going to be an uproar – over where he is finally laid to rest, and over the rights and wrongs of the story as the tudor historians had it.
It may be genetic within my maternal line. My mother suffered quite a lot, as she said, from her own birth at home (one of those horse-riding docs with a black bag kind of births)—that her shoulders were broken. But a chiropractic xray shows my own backbone as a bit of an s-curve, and I wonder about hers. Via figure skating and a lot of chiropractic I have gotten my posture much improved over what it could be. But I do have some lower back issues, one leg operating as slightly shorter than the other (many people do and never notice) —and of course one epic fall on the ice didn’t help one hip—but shoulders are ok. The s-curve surprised me considerably: I think I might have been an inch or two taller if not for that—but—compared to Richard, there, his is worse. Not horridly worse. But worse, even for a guy who’s been knocked off a horse and. I think an osteologist would have to pronounce on how bad the condition was. Note that the bones of the spine are not laid out with ‘life’ precision.
I believe she already maintained he killed the princes in her book, The Princes in the Tower. That is, if memory serves.
here we go! 😀 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2013/feb/04/richardiii-archaeology-leicester-scepticism?intcmp=122
The DNA part should be doable: if there’s one set of centuries-ago bloodlines that’s got plenty of who’s-related-to-whom in well-kept records, it’s the royals and armorial families of Europe. The 1450’s-1500’s are not, in genetic terms, that long ago. Eighty years later, the American colonies were underway.
My understanding is they have two known female-line relatives (descended from sisters), so the mitochondrial DNA is solid evidence. They also have a sample from a male-line descendant of John of Gaunt (or one of his sons), which should be the other positive test.
(It helps that the university is very good at DNA matching.)
I’d like to see a reconstruction, too.
“To confirm the hunch, however, researchers at the University of Leicester conducted a series of tests, including extracting DNA from the teeth and a bone for comparison with Michael Ibsen, a modern-day descendant of Richard III’s sister Anne of York.
Indeed, the researchers found the genetics matched up between Ibsen and that from the skeleton. ‘The DNA remains points to these being the remains of Richard III,’ University of Leicester genetics expert Turi King said during a press briefing.”
Fun stuff!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_haplogroups_of_historical_and_famous_figures#Empress_Alexandra_Fyodorovna_of_Russia
AND: http://www.eupedia.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-25236.html
The closest to mine (H5b MtDNA) is a mystery woman, an H5a, buried near King Sweyn (Sven) II of Denmark. It was thought she was Sweyn’s mother Estrid, but the DNA does not match that scenario. Likely IMHO she is a wife or daughter.
Curiously my autosomal DNA (snippets taken throughout one’s mixed personal code) is thus far all British Isles and my mum’s code (H5b) is from the Balkans et al southward.,.AND Holland, not that far a hike for a guy from Denmark.
No H1a’s in the list, much lest H1a1. I always knew we were peasants.
Reconstruction! Here’s the BBC article. Very cool. Looks extremelty similar to the old pictures we’re familiar with although apparently there are no surviving contemporary portraits.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21328380#
Nice looking fellow.
Not terrible looking, but kinda dish faced…
He doesn’t look especially tyrannical. But looks don’t always show that.
Young and no scars or other markings from the reconstruction. Would a reconstruction be able to tell things like scars, acne marks, or other facial distinguishing features? Died at 32… Easy to forget life was cheap then.
The face is not ugly, nice looking, actually. Though I might not call his apparent physical problems ugly, even so.
That is a very realistic (and sympathetic) reconstruction. Fascinating that they can do that so well now.
I’m irritated i can’t recall the style of headgear, very popular for many years back then. The pearl’s not bad either. Certain alien ship’s captains would approve.
I watched the programme, and the reconstruction was interesting – I have seen the artist before on historical reconstruction/forensic shows – seeing it next to the portrait which had him looking as if he was in pain and very preoccupied and sad, (quite possible – he lost his two children and his wife in the last year of his reign) – with yes, the same hat and hairdo as the portrait – a very pretty young man, and clothed you would not have seen the scoliosis apart from one shoulder being higher, they said. they also said that his skeleton and his skull bordered on the feminine, which apparently was borne out by contemporary report that remarked he fought extremely well, surprisingly for such a light weight looking chap.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkBZZhQeuA83nTnkPNHVbpF-QnyntzQxI
university of leicester’s videos of the whole thing … 😀
Here’s more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/world/europe/richard-the-third-bones.html?_r=1&
Mitochondrial DNA confirmed a match with his sister Anne’s known descendants.
Thomas More also described Richard as being “hard-favoured of visage” – which we see in his portraits. This may well have been due to chronic pain.
Everything I’ve seen about scoliosis says that can sometimes be painful and uncomfortable, especially when wearing anything constrictive.
It certainly couldn’t have been easy for him to spend long periods on horseback, and in armour. The armour would have been specially made for him, but custom-made armour was normal for the wealthy anyway.
He must have had great courage and a very strong character. But there must certainly also have been some psychological effects, given the attitude towards physical disabilities in that age.
but Thomas More is relying on second hand information, I wouldn’t take anything he wrote for certain, considering the propaganda he was perpetuating. and all the portraits we have are not contemporary with the man himself.
As I pointed out above, More’s description of Richard’s physical disabilities has now been proved to be completely accurate.
I think the only propaganda around is that emanating from Richard III revisionists – but I don’t want to get into a heavy debate here. If you read the book I recommended earlier, or look at serious scholarship on the issue, you’ll get the other side of the story.
I just bought a book for my kindle which has lots of interesting research by Peter Hancock, looking forward to getting my teeth into it! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Murder-Tower-Peter-Hancock/dp/0752457977/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360077129&sr=1-3
plus a second hand paper back of Alison Weir’s book 😀
Happy reading!
You’ll find two very different styles of history writing, as well as two different conclusions.
😉
I think that this is going to spark a lot of Richard III hobbyists in America and Britain, and I’m waiting for the ‘major motion picture’, which I’ll bet this sparks. Americans love a good mystery, for sure, and whichever side of the line one comes down on—people are going to learn some history, which is a good thing. Who’d believe a British king from the 1450’s could gain an American fan club and spark pub arguments? But neither is impossible.
I was at his Wikipedia page yesterday and it’s already updated!
(Had to ask my sister, he’s a 1st cousin 20+ times removed, or the other way around–I can never keep that quite straight.)
very interesting – I already discovered this via the timeteam previous special on richard 111 – “Recent evidence, uncovered in 2002 in the library of Rouen Cathedral by historian Dr Michael Jones, sheds new light on these matters and indicates that Edward IV was almost certainly illegitimate, which means that Richard III was the last true English King and had a very real claim to the throne.” http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_RichardIII.htm
obviously it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill the princes, probably would have felt it was necessary under the circs.