The King's Grave: The Discovery of Richard III's Lost Burial Place and the Clues It Holds (20 page)

I give the news to Annette Carson, back at home in Norfolk, and she drops everything to arrive the next day. By this time one of the cameramen reveals that he too suffers from curvature of the spine. That evening, after a long day’s filming with a heavy camera, he’s in considerable pain.

At my reunion with Annette the mood is subdued. Neither of us has any doubt that the man in the grave is someone we have sought to understand most of our adult lives. Annette shares with me an indefinable sense of the weight of history, and a potent awareness of many people’s expectations.

On Saturday, 8 September, there is a public open day at the dig. LCC gives me the honour of leading the first and final tours, and Michael Ibsen, seventeenth-generation nephew of Richard III, is on my first one. It’s a difficult day. Many of the public who come are emotional at the possibility of finding Richard’s remains but we’re not allowed to say anything about the discovery in order to give the university time to corroborate the find.

We’re into the third, extra, week of the dig. The university is due to hold a news conference on Wednesday, 12 September and intend to run with the hunchback findings. I fight hard against this with Richard Taylor, their Director of Corporate Affairs, until the initial analysis comes through. This reveals that although the skeleton had a curved spine, it was not what is sometimes inappropriately termed ‘hunchbacked’; it didn’t have kyphosis. It looks as if Richard III had severe scoliosis, which is a condition, not a disability, and doesn’t rule out an active lifestyle. He could fight, it seems, as the records said he did, but his right shoulder may have been higher than the left.

So why was there confusion at the graveside regarding the position of the skull on the chest? It seems the grave was cut too short, forcing the head upward and forward as the body was lowered in feet first. Was the burial carried out in a hurry? It is, of course, speculation at this stage, but I try to contain my joy. What we can now see fits with the contemporary descriptions we have of Richard. We may be able to uncover the real man after all.

At the 12 September press conference, the university confirms the discovery of the two sets of human remains, one female, the other male, revealing important information about the male skeleton: the remains appear to be that of an adult male located in the choir of the church where it was reported that Richard III had been buried. On initial examination, the skeleton seemed to have suffered significant peri-mortem trauma to the skull which appears consistent with, although not certainly caused by, an injury received in battle. A barbed iron arrowhead was found between vertebrae of the skeleton’s upper back. It is also revealed that the skeleton had acute spinal abnormalities, confirming severe scoliosis – a form of spinal curvature. This would have made the right shoulder visibly higher than the left, consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard’s appearance. Finally, the skeleton did not show signs of kyphosis – a different form of curvature. The man did not have the feature sometimes inappropriately known as a hunchback and did not have a withered arm.

By now Ken Wallace, the metal detector expert, has discovered numerous artefacts including Lombardic-style copper alloy letters in Trench Three, and a ‘D’ in Trench One, which could be from tomb inscriptions. Sadly, they do not spell ‘Richard’ and date from the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries. Wallace has also found a medieval silver halfpenny in Trench Three, and in Trench Two pointed archaeologist Kim Sidwell to another beneath the ground. Sidwell then carefully unearthed a medieval silver halfpenny bearing the head of Edward IV, which the archaeologists believe dates it to around 1468–9. In Trench Three, Leon Hunt and Jon Coward have also discovered the most beautiful inlaid medieval floor tile in almost pristine condition. Its design is similar to the half tile found by Hunt earlier, but this, they believe, is a heraldic eagle from the arms of Richard of Cornwall as King of the Romans and dates from around 1277.

Measurements from the site have enabled Richard Buckley and his team to plot the locations of the Greyfriars Priory Church and buildings as archaeologist Andy McLeish, with much experience in urban archaeology, completes the drawings. It seems that the medieval window tracery,
circa
1400, might have been unearthed at the time the Victorian grammar school was built, since the tracery’s similarity to the medieval gothic-style windows of the school’s chapel is startling. It appears likely that the tracery inspired the Victorian builders to replicate it and it now represents a very visible modern connection to Leicester’s medieval past. Buckley has suggested that the friary may have been built of grey sandstone, with slate roof tiling (also discovered) and decorated with glazed ridge tiles. But there was another intriguing discovery: he and his team could detect stains of red-brick dust on the fifteenth-century masonry fragments. It would need further analysis but this could suggest that the east end of the church was built, or faced in, brick and if so, Buckley confirmed, the Greyfriars Church would be one of the earliest medieval brick buildings in Leicester.

In the final week the gravesite is painstakingly examined by Tony Gnanaratnam. He finds church floors in the sides of Trench One that match those in Trench Three and he exposes the north wall of the church at the very northern end of Trench One. Richard Buckley and his team believe that the burial in Trench One might have taken place in the south-west corner of the choir, with the grave positioned against the southern stall. We also discover that Vickie Score at ULAS has been busy baking. In the gazebo, Richard Buckley is presented with perfect miniature cake hard hats. Roaring with laughter, he munches into them.

The dig closes on Friday, 14 September and I’m finally able to go home. Trench Three has revealed several grave cuts and a large lead-lined stone sarcophagus. Leon Hunt says it might not be hermetically sealed as he can see a small gap in the top. I wonder if this could be the grave of Sheriff Moton (later known as Mutton), or one of the important provincial ministers of the Greyfriars order (William of Nottingham and Peter Swynfeld). Richard Buckley would like to investigate further and has proposed a new dig so perhaps one day we will find out. The site and graves will be protected with a geo-permeable membrane before being filled in, with the exception of the area that contained Richard’s remains. This will be left open for posterity. LCC is planning a new Richard III Visitor Centre in the former grammar school where a ‘Sold’ sign will appear shortly. A new chapter in the story of the Greyfriars of Leicester is about to begin.

Back at the laboratories in the university, work is only just beginning.

8

Richard as King

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N 26
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1483, the first day of his reign, Richard III seated himself on the marble throne of the Court of the King’s Bench in Westminster and summoned the judges from all the various courts. The king made clear his wish ‘that they justly and duly administer the law without delay or favour’, emphasizing that they do so, ‘to any person, as well as to poor as to rich’. Richard’s concern for justice had been a feature of his rule of the north in his brother’s reign, and now it would become the signature of his own kingship. Richard would return to the Court of the King’s Bench on a number of occasions during his reign, personally observing important trials and discussing legal issues with the judges concerned. He demonstrated an unusual interest in the law for an English sovereign, and his enquiries were informed ones, showing that he had more than a layman’s legal knowledge. Richard would introduce important changes to the legal system, and his first and only parliament would pass major reforming legislation.

It remained to be seen whether these aspirations of good kingship would offset the controversial manner by which Richard had seized the throne. On 28 June 1483, two days into his reign, Richard III granted the dukedom of Norfolk to his loyal supporter John, Lord Howard. The introduction to the grant was both unusual and striking, showing – if we accept its rhetoric at face value – that Richard saw himself as being appointed by God as the man most suitable to be king: ‘We, who under his providential design rule and govern his people,’ the king began, ‘endeavour by his grace to conform our will and acts to his will … to illumine [honour] those noble and distinguished men who are most worthy of public weal [esteem]…’

The wording, which echoed the preamble to Richard’s foundation of a religious community at Middleham five years earlier, with its sense of destiny and spiritual protection, showed that Richard had moved beyond seeing his brother Edward IV’s marriage pre-contract as an impediment to his nephew’s claim to the throne. He now believed himself engaged on a divinely ordained mission of reform, one that would restore morality to a corrupt courtly way of life through a reinvigorated royal legislature.

Late medieval monarchy was a mixture of self-belief and pragmatism. John, Lord Howard had proven abilities, and was being promoted because he was a close ally of Richard and vital to the strength of his regime. And yet Richard was also righting an injustice. In November 1481 Howard ought to have received a half share of the lucrative inheritance of John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, on the death of his daughter and heiress Anne. However, Edward IV, strongly influenced by his queen, ignored both Howard’s rights and his proven record of loyalty to the House of York, and instead granted the lands to his younger son, Richard. This decision alienated Howard from the Woodvilles. Thomas More commented dismissively of Richard’s patronage that ‘by great gifts he won himself unsteadfast friendships’, but this royal grant won Howard’s unswerving loyalty. Howard vigorously suppressed the Kentish section of the revolt against Richard in October 1483, and fought and died in the king’s service at Bosworth.

Another victim of Edward IV’s grant of the Mowbray lands to his son in 1481 was William, Lord Berkeley, and on the same day that Richard created Howard Duke of Norfolk he also elevated Berkeley to the earldom of Nottingham. The witness list to this creation suggested that an influential group of noblemen – including the Dukes of Buckingham and Suffolk, the Earls of Arundel, Lincoln and Northumberland and Lords Dudley and Stanley – had become disenchanted with the Woodville family and were, as a result, prepared to support Richard’s accession as king. Richard also had the backing of Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Kempe, Bishop of London, and Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had revealed to Richard the existence of Edward IV’s pre-contract of marriage earlier that month.

Even Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor, was at this stage willing to support Richard. On 5 July, on the eve of the coronation, she and her husband Lord Stanley sought an interview with the king at the Palace of Westminster at which Richard’s chief justice William Hussey was also present. The possible return of her son Henry to the Yorkist court was under discussion and Margaret was also concerned about money – the substantial ransom that was owed her family by the French House of Orléans. Richard gave his full backing to her efforts to recoup this sum; Margaret, always the pragmatist, agreed in return to play a prominent part at Richard’s coronation.

And at the sumptuous coronation ceremony of 6 July 1483 a substantial number of the English aristocracy were in attendance. They swore a remarkable oath of fealty to Richard III:

I become true and faithful liegeman unto my sovereign lord King Richard III by the grace of God King of England and to his heirs, Kings of England, and to him and them my faith and truth shall bear during my natural life, and with him and his cause and quarrel at all times shall take his part and be ready to live and die against all earthly creatures and utterly endeavour me to the resistance and suppression of his enemies, rebels and traitors, if I shall know any, to the uttermost of my power, and nothing count that in any way be hurting to his noble and royal person.

The liturgy was enacted, the king was anointed, he took his own oath and afterwards feasted. Richard had made two important innovations to the ceremonies: he took the oath in English – the first time this ritual had not been conducted in courtly French; and he decided that the holy oil should in future be housed with the other regalia in Westminster Abbey. These two personal interventions were indications of Richard’s own cultural interests and choices: he wished to update the ceremony in the interests of clarity and understanding, and he revered relics and religious ceremonial.

Richard, following the example of his brother Edward IV, also knew how to dress like a king and present himself in a regal setting. It took the literary ability of Sir Thomas More to stamp upon the Tudor imagination the idea that Richard was ‘little of stature, ill-featured of limbs … hard-favoured of visage’, or, as Shakespeare was to put it, ‘not made to court an amorous looking-glass’. He does not seem to have been ugly in appearance. The more flattering of the two early portraits, in the Royal Collection, shows a not uncomely man, despite the lines of anxiety on the brow. He seems also to have possessed a pronounced taste for personal finery, fully in keeping with a respect for the dignity of kingship. For his coronation he wore, above a doublet of blue cloth of gold, ‘wrought with nets and pineapples’, a long gown of purple velvet, furred with ermine and enriched with ‘powderings’ of bogey-shanks, thin strips of fleece from the legs of lambs – a visually striking ensemble.

It was essential to dress to impress in late medieval society, and a failure to do so would have been greeted with scorn and derision. Later on the day of his coronation Richard changed into a long gown marked with the insignia of the Order of the Garter and with the White Roses of York. On the morning after it, the royal household supplied him with several changes of clothes (in crimson cloth checked with gold) together with a gift from his queen, a long gown of purple cloth of gold wrought with garters and roses, and lined with no less than eight yards of white damask.

Nor does the life of his court seem gloomy or restrained. Richard entertained at Middleham, in early May 1484, a German visitor, Nicolas von Poppelau, who was much taken by the king’s graciousness towards him. For eight days he dined upon the royal table, and on one occasion Richard spontaneously gave him a gold chain, taken from the neck of ‘a certain lord’. Poppelau was also struck by the magnificence of the music during the royal mass. Richard’s interest in music as king is clear. He issued one warrant to one of the gentlemen of his chapel ‘to seize for the king all the singing men as he can find in all the palaces, cathedrals, colleges, chapels and houses of religion’, and some of his musicians were identifiable composers. Not all of them were concerned with sacred music; there were also the courtly dances, commented on – with clerical disapproval – by the
Croyland Chronicler,
recalling an ‘unseemly stress upon dancing and festivity’ during the court’s celebration of Christmas in 1484.