The Life, Love and Loss of King Richard III

The Life, Love and Loss of King Richard III has been specially composed by Abigail J. Fox to mark the occasion of the dig in Leicester. 

This piece is written in honour of the truth about King Richard III. It begins with life at Middleham. It transitions into the love theme of Richard and Anne Neville. After life and love follows loss - both of those he loved and also the loss of his own life on Bosworth field. Lying, facing the sky he hears the song of Middleham on the wind and then begins the life after death.

The Remains of King Richard III in Leicester

Grave site:

• Sloping sides
• Concave Base
• Too short for the individual

Body Condition:

• Feet missing
• Hands and sternum damaged
• Scoliosis (not from birth - due to grave being too small?)
• No withered arm (both used normally)
• Slender build
• Skull damaged in excavation

Preparation:

• No coffin
• No shroud
• No clothing in evidence

Position: 

• Lower limbs fully extended
• Hands crossed right over left at hip (unusual - were hands tied?)

Observations:

• Very slender build
• Late 20s - 30s
• 5 foot 8 inches without curvature of spine

Injuries:

• None overlapped
• 1. Skull: small penetrating wound on top of head - direct blow from weapon rather than arrowhead - not fatal
• 2. Skull: large wound to base of skull at back - slice cut off skull by bladed weapon - could have been fatal
• 3. Skull: bladed weapon - wound 10.5cm - could have caused loss of consciousness and death
• 4, 5 and 6. Skull wounds on outer surface of vault - shallow - blade sword or halberd shaved off small area of bone - not fatal - blood loss
• 7. Skull: small rectangular injury on cheek bone - cause unknown - dagger - pierced cheek, came out on side of face 
• 8. Skull: cut mark on lower jaw - bladed, knife or dagger - not fatal
• Helmet lost by this stage in order to have such injuries. Attacks to face less severe than other battle victims- were they done after death to humiliate?
• 9. Cut mark on rib - blow did not penetrate rib cage. During battle protected by plate armour. Stripped after battle, rib in back exposed.
• 10. Right pelvic injury - blade from weapon, knife or dagger, from behind, upward movement - reconstruction of pelvis indicates thrust into right buttock - protected in battle
• Possible when thrown over a horse, buttock exposed

Unanswered Questions

Updated on February 4, 2013 by Abigail J. Fox

Following the evidence presented in Leicester this morning: 1. Richard III did not have a withered arm and a hunchback. Paintings of him were known to have had been amended to show these and historians have been more than willing to accept both features as true. Now that the withered arm has been showed to be a lie, and the hunchback a false conjecture at best, will the historians responsible be regarded as suspect from now on? 2. What has happened to the arrowhead in the back? This was announced early on in the project, but was not mentioned in the evidence today.

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What is Idiopathic Structural Scoliosis?

This condition begins in childhood or adolscence (often 10 to 12 years) and tends to increase progressively until skeletal growth is complete. It can lead to severe deformity, especially when the chest (thoracic) region is affected. In adults with longstanding deformity it may be accompanied by pain.

The skeleton (from the photographs) exhibits mainly a thoracic scoliosis with the curve to the right. This would be accompanied by rotation of the vertebrae on a vertical axis, thrusting the ribs backwards on the convex side, increasing the appearance of the deformity.

The cause is unknown.

~ Dr. F. J. Fox

How do we determine identity?

It is an old adage that fossils are dated by the rocks in which they are found and the rocks are dated by the fossils inside them. It is a flaw and difficult to overcome. Our preconceptions colour our conclusions and we are fools to think it is otherwise. The evidence from Leicester today raised one problem in my mind: did preconceived ideas contribute to the conclusions? If DNA is accurate enough to produce a reliable conclusion, then why were other factors so important? Why were the age of the bones, the height of the man and the presence of the curvature necessary to prove the identity of the remains as King Richard III. The answer of course is that the DNA tests are not sufficient.

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A Shadow of a Doubt

The history of mathematics is riddled with good practitioners, who were convinced that they had proved a theorem, only to find a fatal error buried in their algebra. So, when the University of Leicester announces that the skeleton on display is "beyond reasonable doubt" that of King Richard III, this mathematician reaches for a bottle of caution. Proof is a tricky business. Poor Timothy Evans was hung by the neck for murdering his wife and child, because a jury were convinced of his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. What must they have felt, when it transpired that they had executed the wrong man?

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What now remains?

From the research findings released by the team at the Richard III Project we discovered that there was a strong possibility the body recovered from the Grey Friars Priory was submitted to at least one humiliation injury after death. The injury described is that of having a dagger of some form rammed into his pelvic area with such ferocity as to leave a mark in the bone of the pelvis. We should not really be surprised by this. Only a few years previously we know that Richard's father, the Duke of York, and his elder brother Edmund were both submitted to far worse humilitiation after the Battle of Wakefield in 1460. Their heads were struck from their bodies and carried to the nearby city of York, where they were placed on spikes above Micklegate Bar, the Duke of York's head adorned with a crown of paper or straw in cruel mockery.

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Making Monsters out of Men

Updated on February 9, 2013 by Abigail J. Fox

This essay is not about Richard III. And yet it is. It is about a man who has suffered similar damage to his legacy, a man whose name - just like that of Richard III - has been attached to an unchallengeable stereotype, and yet a man who would very probably have been a better neighbour and more loyal friend than most. William Cowper was an athletic youth. He excelled in every sport at school. He was bright. He liked girls, at least the few the schoolboy knew. He was inclined to make pranks on them and had sufficient charm to be forgiven. When Cowper was still a young man, he encountered more problems than he could handle. His father died. His best friend drowned. He and his fiancee were separated by her father. On the plus side, Cowper received a job through sinecure, so at least he would be well placed as a new member of the Bar. But Cowper did not like the job he was given. It was too public, too important, too serious. He wanted another man's job. He wished the man would die to create a vacancy. And then the man died!

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The Judgment of Richard III

We lose sight of our purpose in pursuing the life and character of Richard III, when we make such a fuss about whether his bones have, or have not, been found. The Lord God Almighty knows where the remains of his child are laid and will raise him to glory at the last day.

What matters is the truth. Digging out bones does not tell us whether he was a malicious deceiver, who engineered the death of his brother, Clarence, stabbed Henry VI to death with his own hand, murdered his nephews, stole the crown, poisoned his wife, lusted after his niece and died manfully fighting those, who had betrayed him.

These, and these alone, make the man. And these elements are outside the competence of pseudo-scientific methodology. These matters cannot be decided with mattocks and DNA.

~ John L. Fox

Is there really something fishy about Richard III?

Updated on February 14, 2013 by Abigail J. Fox

Updated on February 25, 2013 by Abigail J. Fox

Updated on February 27, 2013 by Abigail J. Fox

Updated on March 12, 2013 by Abigail J. Fox

In Richard III: The King in the Car Park, aired on Channel 4 last Monday, the radiocarbon dating of the remains discovered in Leicester gave the "wrong" result, for those who wanted them to be the remains of Richard III. One test suggested 1430-1460 and another 1412-1449, both well outside the actual year of the King's death, in 1485. Professor Buckley swiftly changed the result to give the dates 1475-1530, with a 69% confidence. He did so by stating that it was all to do with fish. Radiocarbon dating of marine organisms can be out by up to several hundred years, and this effect can occur to a lesser degree in terrestrial life where sea-food forms part of the diet. The mass spectrometry of the Greyfriars bone samples reveals that the individual in question had a high-protein diet including a significant proportion of seafood. This would seem reasonable for a medieval nobleman, and certainly for a member of the royal family. http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/science/carbondating.html Now the radiocarbon dating is not the only test of the remains. But, as the University of Leicester site states: What it does is remove one possibility which could have proved that these are not Richard’s remains. http://www.le.ac.uk/richardiii/science/carbondating.html This begs certain questions.

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Was History Horrible?

At one point in Richard III: The King in the Car Park, the presenter, Philippa Langley and two Leicester Scientists stand around the remains discussing wounds. And the conversation eventually settles upon one word: brutal. It is passed around as not only a comment on the way the body was treated (before and after death) but as an indictment upon the time. It is a judgment that fits in well with the general tone of history today and is popularised by the children's series Horrible Histories, which is nothing but playground whispers ... Did you know what they ate? Can you imagine? Do you know what they believed? What morons! Did you hear what they did to one another? So inhuman!

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A Lack of Back-bone

At the start of Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones has surmounted spiders, poisoned darts, murder and treachery. Having finally reached the safety of his friend's sea-plane the audience is allowed a welcome slice of comedy, as our hero, freaks out, when he discovers the pilot's pet snake coiled next to him. His friend acidly remarks, "Come on, show a little back-bone, Indy!" Back-bone is the attribute noteable by its absence from those Ricardians, who have swallowed - hook, line and sinker - the infallible decrees of Leicester University, as to the identity of the remains discovered in the car park. For years those well disposed to Richard have rejected his physical descriptions given by Tudor lackeys. In this they have had support from portraits, showing evidence of tampering to give the appearance of a man with shoulders of uneven height.

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An intolerable little priest

John Rous was born around 1411 near Warwick. Having been education at Oxford he only left it in 1445 to enter the employ of the Beauchamp family. He became one of the two priests retained as Chaplain of St. Mary Magdalene at Guy's Cliff 2 miles from Warwick. Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick founded it for masses to be sung for himself, his wife, parents and friends. When Richard Neville succeeded to the earldom in 1449 by right of his wife Anne, Rous simply exchanged one patron for another. He remained totally loyal to the earls of Warwick and their descendents even after Richard Neville fell at Barnet in 1471.

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Desert Island Discs with Richard III

For those outside of the range of BBC Radio 4, I should first explain that Desert Island Discs is a long-running programme in which a guest chooses 8 favourite pieces of music, which they would choose to have with them on a desert island. A similar thing has been adapted for King Richard III, with the University of Leicester's concert of a selection of music it is supposed the King would have known. It is a curious conceit. I - for one - would not like a selection chosen for me in 500 years. Given the range of time used in the case of King Richard, the selection might be as diverse as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Manson - indicative of the time, but both irrelevant to my taste.

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Bending the Truth?

Richard S. Sylvester commenting on Thomas More's description of Richard III (see page 7 of the Yale Edition of the Complete Works, Volume 2) writes: This detail (crook-backed) is not found in Rous, the Croyland Chronicle, Fabyan or Polydore and it is certainly not noticeable in the contemporary portraits of Richard. ... If Richard had such a deformity it could not have been conspicuous. In Richard III: The Unseen Story Dr. Piers Mitchell of Cambridge University stated that the remains discovered in Leicester displayed a curve of 60 to 80 degrees - a very noticeable and very conspicuous deformity.

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Science can "prove" anything

In 1974 as a post-graduate student in Theoretical Physics I attended a course of lectures in Cambridge on The Structure and Evolution of Stars. The lecturer, Dr. Gough, good humouredly spent about 8 one hour sessions constructing a mathematical model to show how he believed stars had evolved over vast amounts of time. Such a structure was full of guesses, approximations and some tough mathematics, as are all complex theories. At last he had reduced his labours to a single number, a value which could be checked by observation on real stars in the heavens. With a sober face he announced that the two values - theory and observation - differed by a factor of 10.

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To Prove a Villain

"See, I told you that Shakespeare was right!" Over the last month this jibe had echoed down the internet from the ignorant and misinformed in a variety of ways. But the message is unmistakeable. The skeleton found in Leicester has a severe curvature of the spine - crippling in its severity and this is precisely the kind of deformity envisaged in the play of "Richard III". From this all sorts of unspoken, as yet, inferences emerge, to the effect that this twisted body housed a twisted mine and this man did unspeakable things. With almost religious fervour the haters of Richard III cling to this mantra: "Crook-back!"

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Looking for Richard Project: A Statement by David and Wendy Johnson

In February 2009 Philippa Langley launched the Looking for Richard Project. As close friends and fellow Ricardians we joined forces with Philippa to become the project’s founding members, working behind the scenes on documentation and guidance. Our principal objective was to recover King Richard’s remains and reinter them with the honour and dignity so brutally denied in 1485 following the battle of Bosworth. We now wish to correct a number of important misconceptions about the project and make clear why we are now actively supporting the campaign to inter King Richard’s mortal remains in York Minster.

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