The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds (15 page)

We head over to Leicester’s Guildhall, a magnificent fourteenth-century timber-framed building where Richard Taylor from the university has called a press conference at 11 a.m. to update the media on the dig’s progress. Assistant City Mayor Piara Singh Clair will speak on behalf of LCC, and is delighted to hear the positive results from the dig so far.

In the afternoon, Richard Buckley calls from his office to say he needs to amend our agreement to allow DSP to film the human remains. The original agreement allowed for specific photography but not filming. They, and Carl Vivian, have already filmed the lower leg bones, but I’m aware that a potential full set of human remains is a different matter to individual bones. Filming will be needed for the historic record. Reminding myself of the conditions in place to protect the remains from general circulation if they are those of Richard III – an identifiable individual – I agree to the change and ask Buckley to confirm that nothing else in my agreement is to be altered, which he does. The change allows the filming of human remains on dedicated memory cards that will be kept securely by ULAS.

Later that day, Trench Three in the former grammar school car park is outlined with yellow spray paint by Leon Hunt and Mathew Morris. It is then buzz-sawed ready for machining first thing next morning, when Stevie, the excavator driver, will be back.

Day Eight

Saturday, 1 September 2012

It’s 8 a.m. and I meet archaeologist Steve Baker, our site supervisor for the weekend work. Baker guides the excavator and Stevie, its driver, out on to a quiet St Martins and into the former grammar school car park. The final twenty-five-metre-long Trench Three is machined in the north of the site, immediately adjacent to, and east of, the Social Services car park – and Trench One. At the medieval level in the centre of the trench, large areas of mortared flooring are appearing, along with possible grave cuts. These are excavations made in the earth to bury a body or coffin and generally have straight edges. There is also an area of paving with medieval floor tiles in the south of the trench.

Excitingly, it looks as though there is a continuation of the massive east–west robbed-out wall from Trench One together with an equally large northern one, running parallel. Could this really be the Church of the Greyfriars?

Day Nine

Sunday, 2 September 2012

The cleaning of Trench Three reveals two grave cuts in the large central mortared floor area. It also looks as if the large robbed-out wall to the north had a buttress on its northern edge, facing on to St Martins. The estimated width between the two great parallel robbed-out walls is 7.5 metres which is, Richard Buckley informs me, consistent with priory churches (the exact width turned out to be 7.4 metres).

Everyone is getting really excited about Trench Three. Buckley and Morris believe we’re in the east end of the Greyfriars Church, but are not exactly sure where yet, although the grave cuts are highly suggestive. We might be near the altar or choir, which means that the human remains found on the first day would be in the nave of the church.

Day Ten

Monday, 3 September 2012

Richard Buckley wants to find out more about what they are uncovering in Trench Three. It looks like the mortared floor in the central area is much higher than the surround. At this stage, however, he won’t be drawn on what it might be, but he’s very keyed up. The others are much happier to speculate though. Could it be the choir of the church and the location of the burial of Richard III? Quantities of inlaid medieval floor tile have also come from the new trench. To the south, and outwith the church building, there is now a definite area of random paving using medieval floor tiles of different sizes that may have been robbed from the friary buildings and re-laid at a later date. Buckley speculates that this might be paving from Robert Herrick’s garden.

With the grave cuts and robbed-out walls being on the right orientation (east–west), and with associated building materials consistent with a medieval religious house, Buckley is as sure as he can be that we have found the Church of the Greyfriars. At an on-site meeting with Sarah Levitt from LCC, he says he wants to dig an additional (fourth) trench in the Social Services car park to pick up the west end of the church (or at least confirm whether it carries on into New Street), and expand Trench Three in the hope of revealing more of the interior of the church and the burials it contains.

With more difficulties, and costs, arising from a fourth trench in the Social Services car park, it’s decided instead to expand Trench Three using the contingency fund available within the original budget. Two central slots – east and west – will be cut into Trench Three starting tomorrow. Both slots will be large enough to reveal a significant portion of the archaeology without hitting services or undermining the nearby dividing wall between the car parks, or the former grammar school building.

News of the discovery of the Greyfriars Church is passed to Leicester’s mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, who immediately authorizes a third week for the dig. The extra week will be paid for by LCC with help from the university. The Exhumation Licence has now come through from the Ministry of Justice, made out to ULAS as the archaeological contractor. Jo Appleby, lecturer in bioarchaeology at the university and our osteologist, is unavailable today so it’s agreed that the exhumation in Trench One will start tomorrow morning when she’s back. Turi King, also a trained archaeologist, will assist.

I can’t quite believe that we may have found Herrick’s garden. I feel the need to get involved and help with some of the cleaning work under the guidance of archaeologist Neil Jefferson. At the southernmost end of Trench Three it looks like the pattern of the tiling is heading in a circular direction. Could this be the central area that held Herrick’s ‘handsome stone pillar’, the last known marker of King Richard’s grave? If so, what does it tell us about the remains in Trench One? They could be too far away from here to be those of King Richard. Or, as Herrick’s central area is situated outside the church, did he get the location of Richard’s grave wrong? Tomorrow’s exhumation might hold some clues.

6

Seizing the Throne

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1483 King Edward IV passed away. This monarch, who had begun his reign in the spring of 1461 with so much heady optimism, had died unnaturally early, at the age of forty. He left a court dangerously divided and the king’s personal charm – which had kept many of these tensions at bay – could now no longer be exercised. And he had left no clear provision for the government of the country until his oldest son and heir Edward V, twelve at the time of his death, came of age. This uncertainty, and the hatred or deep suspicion that still existed among the aristocracy of the realm about the family of his queen, Elizabeth Woodville, was a ticking time bomb that would blow up with terrible force, leaving carnage in its wake.

The sequence of events that followed has normally been told with Richard, Duke of Gloucester as the villain, usurping power not rightfully his by a series of strikes against an unsuspecting political community. The reality was rather more complex. When Edward IV died there were three power bases in the country. The first lay in London, where the king’s court had assembled, government was carried out, and the council was now ruling the country on behalf of the twelve-year-old Edward V. The second was in Ludlow, on the Welsh Marches, where Edward V was actually staying, nominally head of the king’s council for Wales, although affairs were in fact directed by the queen’s brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers. And the third was in the north, at York, where Richard, Duke of Gloucester was to travel from his residence at Middleham to receive oaths of loyalty from the northern community to the new king.

The queen and those members of her family in London held the advantage. They were at the centre of government, and they were first to be informed of the king’s death, although rumours of his serious illness had been spreading earlier, and they took immediate action to enable their own faction to gain control as rapidly as possible. Their measures were principally directed against the young king’s uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

On 11 April, two days after the king’s death, the council met. From the testimony provided by Dominic Mancini, who was in London at the time of these events, we learn that shortly before his death Edward IV had added a codicil to his will naming his brother Richard Protector of the Realm, and giving him control of the kingdom until the coronation of Edward V took place. The Woodvilles now concentrated all their efforts on overturning this provision.

Their immediate intention soon became clear: to disregard the late king’s wishes, ignore Richard’s appointment as Protector and instead take political control themselves. Their plan was simple: to bring the young king to London at the head of a large army, rush forward the coronation to the beginning of May, and then, with the king crowned, and holding all offices of government and with an army at their back, rule the country as they pleased with the young king as their figurehead. This scenario could not have been more threatening to Richard.

A series of stormy meetings took place, against the backdrop of the continuing arrangements for Edward IV’s funeral. The Woodvilles took prompt steps to strengthen their position. Another of the queen’s brothers, Sir Edward Woodville, was put in charge of the fleet. The late king’s treasure was quickly divided between the queen, Sir Edward, and her eldest son by her first marriage, Thomas, Marquis of Dorset. Dominic Mancini’s account – our most important contemporary source – is clear that the council, dominated by the Woodvilles, embarked upon this course because they did not want political power to pass to Richard. Their raid on the late king’s treasure – and for Mancini this was tantamount to theft – was confirmed by an extant financial memorandum dating from this time, which showed the remaining financial reserve dispersed among the queen’s kin. Its consequence was a sudden and dangerous shift in the balance of power in the kingdom. ‘We are so important,’ said the Marquis of Dorset, ‘that even without the king’s uncle [Richard] we can make and enforce our own decisions.’

News of Edward IV’s death reached Ludlow on 14 April. Anthony, Earl Rivers, the guardian of the young king, had already put in hand dispositions to recruit a substantial force to accompany Edward V to London. In March, he had sent instructions to his business agent in London, Andrew Dymmock, who was to send him copies of the royal letters patent that enlarged his political powers in Wales and gave him authority to muster troops. The Woodvilles intended to raise a large army, and only the determined resistance of the late king’s chamberlain, William, Lord Hastings, who opposed their plan in council, briefly restrained their ambitions. Hastings took the extraordinary step of threatening to retire to Calais and mobilize the garrison there on his own behalf, if his wishes were not met. As a result this force was limited to 2,000 men. It was still a considerable body and Hastings was powerless to prevent the coronation being moved forward to 4 May. The Woodvilles intended to crown Edward V as soon as he reached London, and seemed on the verge of achieving a coup, one that would leave them in command of the country.

Richard heard of Edward’s death a day later, on 15 April. At the same time, or shortly afterwards, he received a letter from William, Lord Hastings informing him of what was taking place in London. It is likely that Hastings warned him of the unbridled ambition of the Woodvilles, and he may even have suggested that Richard try to seize control of Edward V before the young king reached London. However, with the Woodvilles already mobilizing armed support for their cause, this was not an easy course to pursue.

Faced with this dangerous situation, and careful not to be wrong-footed by these rapidly moving events, Richard acted correctly. He informed the queen of his support for the regime and that he would come to London to offer his loyalty to the new king.

On 19 April Edward IV was solemnly buried at Windsor. On that day, with remarkable prescience, John Gigur, the warden of Tattershall College in Lincolnshire, wrote to William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester: ‘Now our sovereign lord king is dead – whose soul Jesus take in his great mercy – we do not know who shall be our lord and who shall rule over us.’ The Woodvilles were doing their best to resolve Gigur’s uncertainty. The following day a council meeting was held where, according to the
Croyland Chronicler,
‘the most urgent desire of all present was that the Prince should succeed his father in all his glory.’ In fact, the council was dangerously divided, with a small but important group, clustered around the figure of William, Lord Hastings, strongly opposed to what the queen’s family was doing.

On 21 April Richard held a remembrance service for his brother at York and had all the nobility of the region swear an oath of loyalty to the young king. Richard wrote to Anthony, Earl Rivers, suggesting that they rendezvous on the journey south. This proposed meeting carried an undercurrent of menace. Richard was all too aware that two previous Dukes of Gloucester who had aspired to the Protectorate, Thomas of Woodstock in the fourteenth century and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, uncle of Henry VI, in the mid-fifteenth, had died violently or suddenly. Woodstock was murdered – probably on the orders of Richard II – in 1397; Humphrey had died in suspicious circumstances in 1447. The Woodvilles held the political and military initiative, and their forces would considerably outnumber Richard’s own personal retinue.

This was a threatening scenario, but Richard’s reaction to it was restrained. He had limited his retinue to 300 men, although he could certainly have recruited more. In September 1450 his father, Richard, Duke of York, had also restricted his retinue to around 300 men on his return from Ireland to demonstrate his continued loyalty to the Lancastrian King Henry VI. And Richard and his entourage were still in mourning for his brother, Edward IV.

If events were to change, Richard had a vital factor working in his favour: his courage and proven experience in war. In contrast, it was rumoured that the outwardly affable and cultivated Rivers, who enjoyed the panoply of the joust and tournament, was – in a moment of crisis – in fact a coward. In 1471 Edward IV had responded to Rivers’s request to go abroad on pilgrimage with the dismissive remark that it was entirely typical of him, with the country in a state of turmoil, to try to absent himself as quickly as possible. Five years later, in 1476, it was Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, who was to make a similar observation. Rivers had arrived at Duke Charles’s court full of grand gestures. He first offered his services to the duke for his forthcoming campaign, but when told that the enemy army was rapidly approaching had a sudden change of heart, and abruptly made his excuses and rode off at speed. Duke Charles bluntly told the Milanese ambassador that Rivers had left ‘because he is afraid’.